Ezekiel 37, 12-14 + Psalm 130 + Romans 8, 8-11 + John 11, 1-45

Prepared during a time of self-isolation during the pandemic.

The last of the seven signs that make up John’s Gospel is proclaimed today. Looking up and looking at the other six would be a good assignment as we all stay home this weekend hoping to remain healthy. For now, as often for me, it’s the verbs in this text that can lead us deeper in this mystery. “Take” “Come” and “Untie.” With those three words, the mission of Jesus, the will of his Father, and hope within us all is laid out for our contemplation. Perhaps, in these three commands there is for us mission given and the order is given for what we must do in the name of Jesus.

He tells us, in a sense, to “Take Away” a stone, a stone that is a barrier or for some, perhaps a burden. We are a people commanded to lift or remove the stones that keep others from living, that keep others away from their loved ones, that keep others away from Jesus himself. If this Gospel is real, and if God is speaking to us right now, as we believe happens when the assembly is together, then God commands again that we Take away something, anything, that keeps someone away from love, life, or perhaps lonely, in the darkness of a tomb of resentment or shame. Take Away God says to us.

Then again, God speaks to us and says: “Come out.” Perhaps at no better time does this command prepare us to “Come out” of this time of isolation or quarantine. Come out he says to us to give glory to God and give thanks. “Come out” is the command to people hiding in fear. More broadly he says, “Come out” to anyone who, like Lazarus, has been given up for dead. “Come out” he says to those have lost the Spirit of life, of joy, and peace.

Finally, there is one more command, “Untie”, which echoes in the last instruction Jesus gives to us, his disciples. We will hear it again after Easter as he departs and commissions us to forgive. “Untie” is what we are told to do. Set people free. Cut away whatever keeps our brothers and sisters from really living in the joy of our faith. The baggage of our past so often keeps us from the fullness of life and destroys relationships that could wrap us love. Resentments, grudges, and shame wrap and tangle too many of us, and keep us from living the life we have been promised and hope for.

1 Sm 16:1, 6-13+ Psalm 23 + Ephesians 5:8-14 + John 9:1-41

At St. Peter the Apostle Church in Naples. FL Live Streamed

It was March 21, 1748. From the age of 11, he had been involved in slave trading. He was so coarse and cruel that he earned the name, “The Great Blasphemer.” His ship was being slammed by a raging storm, and he had lashed himself to the helm of that battered ship. In fear and desperation, he remembered the prayers of his Christian mother, and a prayer for deliverance was sucked out of him. Surviving the tempest, he abandoned the lucrative slave-trade and at age 39 and became a minister for the next 43 years. At the age of 82, writing in his diary on the anniversary of that stormy day, John Newton wrote a poem that years later would be set to music becoming the best-known Christian hymn, “Amazing Grace”. While some struggle with that harsh word, “wretch” in the text, I feel sure that John Newton chose it to describe himself in terms of his past. While some may never choose to describe themselves as “wretches” everyone of us formed by this Gospel today might well admit that we have been blind and we long to see, and the world we live in is blind as well.

There are such fascinating details and contrasts in this wonderful chapter of John’s Gospel. There are those Pharisees and leaders of the people who think they can see, but they don’t. They can’t see what is right in front them. They can’t see who it is that works theses signs and wonders much less, what they mean. They live in darkness preferring it to the Light of Christ. There are the man’s parents, who see what has happened, but do not understand. They just don’t want to get involved like so many in this world. Then there is a blind who can see, and like the woman in last Sunday’s Gospel, a personal encounter with Jesus Christ awakens in him more than just sight. He begins to understand, and John tells that he “worshiped” Jesus. In other words, the man born blind suddenly realizes he has been visited by God.

The woman at the well, this blind man, and all of us come to God by different paths, and we all struggle with some kind of blindness that keeps us from seeing as clearly as we may think. It is a kind of Spiritual Blindness that requires a great deal of humility that would allow us to understand and accept that we do not see as clearly as we might think. This kind of blindness affects our ability to address social issues and injustice, because we just don’t see the poor and fail to understand a system that keeps them that way. So, we become like the parents of the blind man. We just can’t be bothered, or we decide that getting involved may require some danger or risks. This spiritual blindness can sour personal relationships, and even affect the way we see a stranger or someone at the border fleeing violence and danger. We just don’t see the Christ in our midst. We can never presume that we have clear sight, and so we must always strive to gaze into the heart of people and things to see as God sees.

In this day, connections are important to us. We go crazy when the internet connection is bad or fails, this very connection that connects us right now. We are all feeling the strain of isolation, that is testing our connections with one another. Yet, in the end, it will be our connection with God that matters, and this disconnect we feel now right now might be for some a lot worse if the connection with God has been broken or ignored. Now, from home rather than from Church we continue our journey through Lent, and like the Hebrew people in the desert, we are hungry and long to eat the Bread of Life. For now, we must feed ourselves on the Word of God until that day when we will assemble here in thanksgiving to rejoice in the fullness of life and share the cup of salvation. For now, we pray, “Lord, heal our blindness so that we may see your guiding hand in these anxious times of fear and darkness. Lead us into the light of faith to rejoice even now in your goodness with a blessed hope that does not fail.”

Exodus 17, 3-7 + Psalm 95 + Romans 5, 2, 5-8 + John 4, 5-42

March 15, 2020 Never delivered at Mass

This weekend is a Maronite Parish Weekend

As I said in the column I write for some parish bulletins last week, I am not so sure that I would run into town and invite everyone to come out and meet someone who had just told me everything I ever did. Why would anyone do such a thing? Who would want everything they have ever done announced publicly? None the less, that’s what she did. Perhaps she felt as though she had nothing to lose since everyone probably knew it all anyway; or perhaps there was something else, and here is where we are drawn into this Gospel and drawn to this who knows everything we have ever done.

This woman is really the center-piece of this Gospel, and her experience itself is a Gospel. It is good news. For John in his Gospel, she is a model of a disciple’s experience of faith. In her encounter with Jesus, she confronts her own sinfulness and realizes her need for forgiveness. With that, she comes to realize the depth of God’s love for her, and with that, she changes from sinner to disciple who rushes to tell what she has found.

For years, I have my imagination has been stirred by a little detail that John puts in this Gospel when he tells us that she left her water-jar behind, I am fascinated and wonder about this and what it means. That water-jar was both something of her past, and part of her shame. Because of it and with it, she had keep coming back again and again to get more water, which was never enough. To me, it is also a kind of symbol of her position in live as a servant living without freedom and in a sense, enslaved to that water-jar, the well, and the need to keep coming every day after day. She left it. She had found freedom and “living water” from a new well, from the source if life-giving water, Jesus Christ. She not only found freedom, she found love that obviously she had not found with all the lovers that had come in and out of her life in her past. As with all of us who ever really find love, she found acceptance just as she was with all of her past known by the lover who didn’t shame her, pass judgement, or condemn.

Our best hope at this point in Lent is that we may have the same experience of standing before this one sent by God to set us free, to forgive, heal, and restore our dignity and our unity before the Father. For John, who is writing this Gospel after some time following the death of Jesus, he is surely reflecting upon what he has seen as the Gospel has been carried across all the boundaries of suspicion, distrust, hatred, and prejudice that the Jewish people had for Samaritans. All of that is over as John writes, telling us how this peaceful reconciliation of two so different peoples could and was accomplished. For Jesus, he is doing the will of the One who sent him sowing in Samaria a grain that will be harvested for eternal life. It all happened because Jesus was willing to sit and talk, eat and drink with someone who was perceived as an enemy.

This Gospel becomes then, an invitation to perhaps look differently upon those we consider enemies or those we would never think of sitting with and talking with much less eating and drinking. If it is the Father’s will that we all be one, God must be wondering when we are going to get started. John suggests that a good place to start would be to pay attention to and follow the example of Jesus Christ.

Genesis 12:1-4a + Psalm 33 + 2 Timothy 1:8b-10 + Matthew 17:1-9

7 March 2020

San Antonio Parish in Port Charlotte, FL Opening of Lenten Mission

This weekend opens a Parish Mission at San Antonio Parish in Port Charlotte

A lot of things happen on hills and mountains in the Gospels. We went up a mountain last week as Satan led Jesus to the high place. This week Jesus leads Peter, James and John up the same way. When Satan leads it is all about this world, it’s kingdoms and its glory. When Jesus leads it is not about this world, its power and its glory. It is about a vision of the kingdom to come after Jesus climbs another mountain. Those apostles will need to keep this vision when Jesus next climbs up a hill to die. These high places are for many peoples and cultures a place close to God, a meeting place. Think of Moses and remember what happened to him as his face became so bright that he had to wear a veil after meeting God there. Matthew surely did as he provides details intended to lead us to connect Moses with Jesus, the giver of the new law. And there is Elijah, the prophet of hope, who encountered God on a mountain as well.

All of this connects Jesus to the past, but Matthew would also have us connect Jesus to the future, the glory of the resurrection. When we get to Easter Sunday, Matthew will once again describe Jesus appearing to Mary Magdalene with clothes that are white as snow. Listen for that, and remember.

Abraham leads us deeper and further into this season when we set aside things that distract us from what is to come. Abraham receives a divine call, and he abandons everything that keeps him from God, heading into the unknown, guided only by the God he has been searching for. My friends, this season is our time to assess everything that might be keeping us from God, keeping us from heading into the unknown, and everything we have tried as a substitute for the God of Abraham, Moses, Elijah, and Jesus. In this place, in this church, we are again on a mountain, close to God. In this place, through the Sacrament we share, the vision of the Kingdom comes to us again as we look upon those around us. On this mountain we are nourished, strengthened and prepared for what is to come so that the disappointments, tragedies, and even the deaths we experience will not and cannot keep us from the Easter that awaits us all.

Like the apostles, we will come down, and all around us will be the suffering, the sick, the hungry and lonely. If we have seen the Lord in this place, and if we have listened to the Lord in this place, those who wait and long for the comfort only God can give will find it in us.

Joel 2, 12-18 + Psalm 51 + 2 Corinthians 5: 2—6,2 + Matthew 6,1-6, 16-18

1 March 2020 at St. William Churches in Naples, FL

The story that starts Lent for us is a tall tale to tell a deep truth. It’s not about a fruit tree or a snake. It’s about people thinking that they can do what God has already done. Their temptation is to be “like God.” The mistake is the thinking that they could do what God had already done, make them in God’s image. With that, the whole reality of sin is laid out for us. It’s always about us thinking or acting like God. The consequence is obvious, we end up with a distorted image of God, hiding from God and blaming one another.

Satan’s first words to Jesus in these verses from Matthew’s Gospel are carefully chosen: “If you are the Son of God….” The question forces Jesus to think about that. Another way of putting it would be to ask: “Who do you think you are?” That question, my friends, is at the root of every temptation from Eve with a serpent to Jesus in the desert and to every single one of us.  For that man and woman in Genesis, the problem is that they forgot that they were the created, not the creator. When the temptation comes for them to make themselves be like God, they fall for it thinking that they can do something God as already done. They fell into the trap of jealousy, being jealous of God, wanting God’s power.

Then comes the desert encounter with temptation. Jesus must figure out who he is as the Son of God, and what he’s doing here. Is he here for himself, or is here for us? This is the challenge that everyone of us faces: the core question: “Who do you think you are?” I have this almost frightening or at least still intimidating memory of my mother standing over me at some point of my childhood after being caught in some forbidden situation. Hands on hips, green eyes glaring, and through clenched teeth these words: “Young man, who do you think you are?” I feel certain that whatever she was mad about, my sister did it, not me! Maybe that same thing has happened to you. If not, you were cheated out of a significant experience. We have to remember who we are. We may not forget that we are children of God, that we are here to serve and care for one another, and that the gifts we have are for God’s glory and the lifting up of our brothers and sisters. When we forget that, temptation has a hold on us.

As this Gospel reveals, it is always going to be about power, power abused, and power used for one’s self, for one’s comfort and one’s own pleasure. It was not about stones, bread, rescue angels or who has the most kingdoms. It was about power abused. The failure to face this temptation affects us all from the greatest seats of power and authority to classrooms and offices. There is a kind of amnesia epidemic around. As children of God and communicants of this church, we have a moral compass that must guide what we say, what we do, and how live together. What is happening all around us is that the will to power has overwhelmed the words of Jesus. The power of truth is being trampled by a thirst for control and self-serving interest.

“Who do you think you are?” is the question raised by the Word of God today. First, we ask that of ourselves as method of self-examination. Then we ask that question of those who are to lead and teach, to govern and serve. When we do, our future will be more secure. Truth will prevail, and we will have a better chance at peace with ourselves and with God.

Ash Wednesday

Joel 2, 12-18 + Psalm 51 + 2 Corinthians 5: 2—6,2 + Matthew 6,1-6, 16-18

26 February 2020 At St. Peter and St. William Churches in Naples, FL

         There is some kind of rule we have all heard about that instructs us not to talk about politics or religion at a party or over dinner. As a frequent guest at the table of many friends. I find it curious that in the last eight or ten years, no one talks about politics over supper. In fact, no one talks about politics anywhere except to trusted friends who think and feel the way we do, and we are careful to sort out those who agree with us. Of course, inviting a priest to dinner does mean that some passing item in the news or some trivial question about religious customs might come up, but it’s always in passing, and never about anything troubling or challenging. If an issue about religion might even possibly cross over into politics, someone will politely and quickly change the subject. I find it a little odd that topics and issues so important to our lives together have suddenly become private matters that no one will talk about openly. It’s a little risky to ask someone if they are Independent, Democrat or Republican. But then, why ask? Anyone who really watches and listens to someone closely and pays attention to what they say or think is important could probably figure that out.

         It’s all a part of some new kind of privatization that has taken hold of us. This whole age of “Me first” is part of it. This whole way of thinking that my rights supersede your rights, and I can say anything I want to no matter how it might offend you is part of it. If you take offence, there must be something wrong with you. It can’t have anything to do with me, because I have a right to say and do anything if I feel like it. The consequence of this is just pushing us further and further from one another, tearing up loving families, and ruining wonderful relationships that once were light hearted, fun, and life-giving.

         We are about to do something that breaks that rule I mentioned a minute ago. We are going to publicly mark ourselves as sinners, and we’re going to go public about it. After Mass, if you go to the grocery, the bank, or anywhere else, people are going to see you and know something about you. Best of all, I hope and pray, you will see others marked in the same way. These ashes on our forehead – it’s no private matter. Neither is sin. The secret, or the taboo about private religion will be revealed. In a very real sense, the biggest secrets of our lives are going to become public. People will know. They will know you went to church on a Wednesday. The smart and the wise will know that in spite of all our efforts to cover it up and look good, we have sinned., and when you see another with the mark of sin on their face, you’ll know that you are not the only one, and that you are part of a people who are not afraid to admit it and are now committed to doing something about it.

         This is a public act, not something we do alone or in secret. In a world where no one seems able to accept and claim responsibility for what they have done or not done, this is unique! It is a public act that announces to anyone who looks at us that we know we are sinners, and we accept the responsibility for our actions and for what we have failed to do. On top of that, we have set ourselves on a forty-day program to right some of the wrong, to change what we have done and do something better. This is not about giving up chocolates, deserts, movies, or pop-corn. This is about sin and getting it out of our lives. It is about confronting that “”me-first” attitude that looks at others as though there here to serve us. It is about confronting and stopping whatever pushes us away from others and therefore from God.

         Take these ashes today, and take responsibility for what you have done. I will. Then, do something about it so that it does not continue, so that sin is no longer so powerful, and that finally the unity and peace that God so desires for us will be within reach.

Leviticus 19, 1-2 17-18 + Psalm 103 + 1 Corinthians 3, 16-23 + Matthew 5, 38-48

23 February 2020 at St. Peter & St. William Churches in Naples, FL

Retaliation is this world’s response to almost everything. We see it from playgrounds to Congress. It has left us paralyzed in every effort to seek justice, to care for the poor and oppressed, to protect human life, and discern the common good. In fact, too often these days, “the common good” has been reduced to my win and your loss. Too often the old “eye for an eye” is used as an excuse for finding a better way that brings a stop to offense. Those who rely on that excuse don’t seem to get it. That Old Testament response was a way of establishing some limit making the response proportionate to the offence. It simply meant that is someone put out one of your eyes, you could not take both of theirs. It was way of stopping excessive revenge in a pay-back kind of world. Jesus will have nothing of this, and he proposes for his followers a very radical reinterpretation of the Old Testament rule. He uses some interesting and slightly humorous examples to illustrate his proposition.

Think about this. How do you use your right hand to strike someone else on the right cheek? You would have to turn your hand over or stand upside down. The only other way is a backhanded slap, which in almost every society is more of an insult than a physical assault. It’s silly. If someone is taken to court and ordered to surrender their outer garment, the example suggests that the debtor should offer the inner garment as well, which means they would be standing naked in the court. This is more than silly, it is absurd! In the final example, a disciple should offer to carry a Roman soldier’s heavy pack for more than what was required. In fact, it was a Roman law that a soldier could not require someone to carry their pack more than a mile. Going further was an offence for the soldier. Offering to go further is absolute foolishness. You don’t have to, and puts the oppressing solder at risk. To put all of this another way: turn the other cheek to a bully; give all you have to those who don’t need it; or pay a traffic ticket when you only get a warning. This is what Jesus proposes to us who are his disciples. Remember that just last week, the Gospel insisted that just doing the minimum, just keeping the rule was not enough for disciples. The Scribes and Pharisees do that, and we have to go further.

Retaliation and revenge have no place in the heart and the lives of true disciples of Jesus Christ. There is no rationalizing or getting around what Jesus expects of us. To make it even harder, he concludes this instruction by presenting the alternative to revenge and retaliation: love. He’s not talking about romantic affection here. He’s talking about respect and something we call, benevolence, which means wishing for goodness. When we take our offenders or our enemies to prayer, we are becoming more perfect which is to say, more God-like and more holy. Reconciliation is a lot more god-like than retaliation. It simply gets down to the fact that God prefers reconciliation to retaliation all the time.

It seems to me there are two ways to take away something of what is revealed here. One is challenge and the other is comfort. The challenge is the revelation of God’s will, that we be holy and perfect. It requires a conviction that reconciliation is the only way to peace and that retaliation and revenge can only drive us further away from each other which cannot be the will of God. The other revelation here has to do directly with God and God’s relationship toward us. The comfort is that God does not use retaliation and revenge. The God revealed in Jesus Christ is God who does not punish those who do wrong, even those who betray and murder his only son. So, we walk away today with a challenge and with hope: a challenge to put retaliation and revenge out of bounds. This is not an option for us. There is a better way, a more perfect way, a more holy way, and it is the way of God. We leave here with hope that God is not waiting to punish us. God does not resent our failures and sin. God uses the power of love and respect to transform our lives when God’s will is revealed and sought seriously by his disciples.

Perhaps, as we approach this altar today, it is time to address and settle the disputes in our lives that have led to resentment and a desire for retaliation or revenge. We cannot lead a holy life with any of this in our hearts. It is totally incompatible with the presence of God. It drives God out of our lives and our hearts. The Word of God has spoken calling us to cherish our adversaries more than we cherish our grudges. We do that first by creating alternatives that express our reverence for the dignity of all God’s children. We need long thought and a lot of prayer to become creative, transforming holy images of our God.

The Gospel of nonviolent resistance is very serious — yet humorous to boot. This Gospel calls us to cherish our adversaries more than we cherish our grudges. We do that by not letting anyone get away with denigrating others, and creating alternatives that express reverence for the dignity of everybody involved. We need long thought and prayer to become creative, transformative, holy images of our God, and that is what will lead us to perfection.

16 February 2020

Sirach 15, 15-20 + Psalm 119 + 1 Corinthian 2, 2-10 + Matthew 5, 17-37

St. Peter the Apostle & St. William Churches in Naples, FL

We get a lot of instructions from Jesus today, part of his continued commentary on the Beatitudes which we might have heard on the Fourth Sunday of Ordinary Time had we not celebrated the Feast of the Purification two weekends past. Matthew is really clever with the way he starts this section, “Do not think that I have come to abolish the law, BUT.” That word, “but”, is a really clever way of teasing our expectations. It makes us stayed tuned for what is to follow. Yet, when he goes on, I’m left scratching my head over what it means to fulfill, and that is exactly where Matthew wants us to be today: wondering about what it means to fulfill the law.

Perhaps we might think about it this way. Most of us think that when we are obeying the law, whatever law it is, we are doing the right thing and doing what is expected. That is what the Scribes and Pharisees thought and taught; just keep the law. That is why they got so bent of shape when Jesus cured someone in a synagogue on the Sabbath. He broke two laws! He did some work on the sabbath, and he touched someone who was sick.

The conflict that gets in your face over this is whether or not just keeping the law is fulfilling the law, since the purpose of the law is to express the Will of God. What this Word of God calls into question is the minimalism of keeping the law when there are greater needs.  A law is fulfilled when we do more than the law requires. The fulfillment comes from recognizing that doing the minimum is not enough. It’s just enough to squeak by and not be accused of anything, certainly not being accused of any greatness.

The law says: “Do not steal.” Well, ok; I don’t take anything that isn’t mine. What greatness is there in that? How does that fulfill the law? How about not stealing, but at that the same time giving something away to someone who might steal because of their need? The law says: “Do not Kill.” Well, OK. It doesn’t look as though there is anyone who has murdered in here, but does that fulfill the law? How about giving life, or doing something that makes life more bearable for someone on the margins of life? Is it really God’s will that we just pass through this life on earth and never kill anyone? Is that all God asks of us? We know better.

Matthew knew and warns that in every religious community there are scribes and Pharisees, learned but self-serving people, and hypocrites whose external religious masks can hide an irreligious heart. We are a people called and taught to surpass the scribes and Pharisees. There is a call here to righteousness that is not achieved by just keeping the rules. There is only one Righteous One. It is God. In seeking righteousness, we are on a path to become like God. At the beginning of this chapter, Jesus revealed to us what God is like and how we might become like God – by practicing and living in Beatitude. When we become poor in spirit, meek, merciful, pure, and clean of heart, the law will be fulfilled, and there will be no more killing, no more infidelity, lust, divorce, lies, or broken promises. Best of all, we will be living without anger, and will be at peace with ourselves and with one another just as God intended.

9 February 2020

St. Peter the Apostle & St. William Churches in Naples, FL

Isaiah 58, 7-10 + Psalm 112 + 1 Corinthians 2, 1-5 + Matthew 5, 13-16

These verses follow immediately the Sermon on the Mount that provides us the Beatitudes, which describe a style of life that reflects the image of the one who made us. As Matthew has Jesus commenting further on the Beatitudes, Jesus calls us the salt of the earth with a warning that we can become so bland that we are unable to enhance anything. Then he calls us light like a city on a hill. This is a light that cannot be hidden. So, everything we do gives witness to our faith or the lack of it which is salt that has lost its flavor. We cannot hide. Everything we do, everything we say, every decision we make reveals our faith, and sadly sometimes it isn’t much like flat salt – no flavor. By itself, salt is useless. By choosing this image, Jesus confronts the greatest challenge to the Gospel, individualism. We are not here for ourselves. We are here to bring out the best in God’s creation. The bottom line to this is simple. Our lives must make a difference in this world, or there is no use, no purpose, no reason for us to take up space on this earth. People ought to know we are Catholic, not just by where we are at this moment, or by crucifixes or sacred images in our homes, but by the way we live, by the way of treat other people, and by the simple consequence of just knowing us. People who are “salt of the earth” are not just virtuous in themselves. They bring out the best in other people.

It all comes down to what we heard from old Simeon last week as he stood in the Temple holding the Christ Child and proclaiming him to be a light to the nations. Now, that Christ proclaims us to be that light. The question is whether or not we illumine this world or become nothing more than light pollution, which is defined this way: “the brightening of the night sky caused by street lights and other man-made sources, which has a disruptive effect on natural cycles and inhibits the observation of stars and planets.” There is a lot of bright light around these days, but it does not illuminate anything that matters. What good is a light that only shows people’s faults and shortcomings? Who needs a light that shines on their sinfulness? No wonder some people might prefer the darkness.

The light we become in Christ illumines this world. It brightens dark days and dark lives. It shines on grace and beauty. The light of Christ which we are called to be shines on kindness and hope. Think about it for a minute. No one looks directly at the sun which is the source of light in this world. But, because of the light from the sun we can see. We can see color, and beauty. We all know how dark, gray days bring us down after several of them a row, and how we long for light and the sun. What Jesus expects of us is exactly what the sun does after dark and cold winter days many of us know from up north. When we who are truly disciples, followers, and one with Jesus Christ come into a room it ought to brighten up and bring smiles and comfort, hope, and trust. We have no right to judge others, but we do have an obligation to examine ourselves and decide what we must do because we are salt and light.

2 February 2020 This homily was never delivered in liturgy, but simply prepared for this use while I am on vacation in France.

Malachi 3, 1-4 + Psalm 24 + Hebrews 2, 14-18 + Luke 2, 22-40

The Law for the Hebrew people (Leviticus 12) commanded that a woman who had given birth to a son should not approach the Tabernacle for 40 days; after which time she was to offer a sacrifice for her purification. By another law, every first-born son was to be considered as belonging to God, since the first-born sons had been spared in Egypt. They were to be redeemed by a small sum of money. With this historical context clear in our minds, we can dig deeper into what Luke is revealing to us in these verses today.

It is the first visit of Jesus to the Temple, and in Luke’s Gospel, there will be others. Think of it this way: on this first visit it would seem that the Temple sanctifies and redeems Jesus. On the last visit, it is Jesus who sanctifies and purifies the Temple as he proclaims it to be the House of God, House of Prayer, driving out money changers and others who made profit from the Temple. In some ways it seems odd that this one conceived without sin, who is Blessed among women would need to be purified, and that the one who has come to set us free from slavery to sin would himself need to be ransomed in this ritual way. But this odd arrangement of things is exactly what Luke wants to put before us shaking off preconceived ideas about how God should work and opening us to the new wonder of a Divine plan that does not match our human ways and expectations.

The hour has come for Emmanuel to take possession of his Temple. Two remarkable and memorable figures emerge from the commotion of that busy Temple. Mary and Joseph cannot have been the only ones observing the law that day. It was a busy place, a meeting place, a place of commerce and exchange as well as a place of sacrifice and prayer. We could get an impression from the later story that it was more about commerce and exchange than sacrifice and prayer. It had to have been noisy not just with the sounds of buyers and sellers, but with the animals themselves caged for purchase and eventual sacrifice. Out of all that comes these two, Simeon and Anna. They are for us representatives of the Old Testament, longing for and waiting for the Messiah, and they unite their voices to celebrate the happy coming of the child who will renew the face of the earth. What I find remarkable is that these old people whose eyes dimmed with age are able to see in this child what others cannot and will not see in the years to come.

Eighty-four-year-old Anna begins to speak about the child to everyone who was looking for the liberation of Jerusalem, and you wonder if anyone is listening to an old lady who is there every day. Then old Simeon steps up. Some traditions suggest that he was blind. Yet, he can see something no one else can see. He proclaims this child to be “the light and glory of his people.” Then, he gives back to Mary the child she is about to offer to the Lord. The two doves presented to the priest, who sacrifices them on the Altar, are the price of the ransom paid. The whole Law is satisfied. This child is set free now to proclaim liberty to captives, and sight to the blind.

My friends, today is the Feast for Light for those of us who wait in prayer and fasting. Some hide in the darkness because of shame or guilt. We do not want to admit the truth of our lives even to ourselves, let alone others. It is the things we have not done that often matter the most. Often, we live in a night of fear not knowing what will come next or how we can handle it. A sense of powerlessness lurks around us. A black hole of sorrow and grief can suck the life and light out of our world. There is the darkness of ignorance and confusion making us blind to our own goodness and identity as God’s children.

The light we proclaim like Simeon today reveals mercy and forgiveness in the shadow of guilt and shame, presence and courage in the night of fear, compassion and hope in the black holes of sorrow and loss, a way forward in the blindness of ignorance and confusion, and life in the darkness of death. The flame of God’s love consumes the darkness. It fills us, and it frees us to go in peace just as God promised. We have seen salvation, and Simeon’s song has become our song.