Light of All
Homily:
Lord, we pray for the preacher, for You know his sins are
great.
Grace, mercy and peace to you from God our Father and from
our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. Amen.
“A Light to reveal You to the nations, and the glory of Your
people Israel.”
40 days after the birth of the Christchild in Bethlehem of Judea,
Mary and Joseph bring the infant Jesus to the Temple in Jerusalem. In
accordance with the customs of the Jews and the commandments of the Law, this fulfills
both the ritual purification required of a new mother and the religious dedication
to God of every mother’s firstborn son.
They have little to offer, but the Law of Moses makes
provision for the poor; they sacrifice a pair of pigeons, as befits a family of
lesser economic means. So far so good; this is standard stuff at the Temple. But
then things take a twist, with the arrival on the scene of two aged prophets
who have rather a lot to say about this particular young babe and the family to
which He finds Himself born.
Simeon had been given a promise by God, that he would not
see death before he had seen the Lord’s Messiah, the long-expected Christ. For centuries
the faithful had watched and waited for the promised King of Kings, one like a Son
of Man descending to earth from Heaven. And now, guided by the Holy Spirit, the
prophet snatches up the Christchild and holds Him aloft, singing out the famous
song of Simeon, the Nunc Dimittis:
Now, Lord, You let Your
servant go in peace. Your Word has been fulfilled. My own eyes have seen the
salvation which You have prepared in the sight of every people: a Light to
reveal You to the nations, and the glory of Your people Israel.
This, mind you, is Simeon’s death song. He has lived long
enough to see with his eyes and hold in his hands the One for whom so many
generations have longed and prayed. Now he can depart in peace and in joy, with
God’s promise fulfilled both to Simeon and to all the peoples of the earth. “This
Child,” he tells Mary, “is destined for the falling and the rising of many, to
be a sign that will be opposed—and a sword will pierce your own soul too.” Simeon’s
work is done, but Mary’s has only just begun.
Then appears another prophet, Anna of Asher—one of the Lost Tribes
of Israel scattered out of the north—and in her great old age she announces to
all who will listen that this Child is hope fulfilled for all who look for the
redemption of Israel. This, I should note, is a hallmark of Luke’s Gospel,
always taking pains to pair together the male and the female as equal partners
in proclaiming the Kingdom.
Thus is fulfilled the promise of the prophets; that the Lord
whom you seek will come suddenly to His Temple, that the God of gods will be
seen in Zion; that the Creator Himself will be our King and Priest and Christ
and God.
40 days after Christmas Day, we, like Simeon and Anna before
us, celebrate Christ as the Light of the world and the glory of His people Israel.
In keeping with this, we bless candles for use both in corporate worship and for
home devotions. We remember the Spirit as holy fire, which forever burns but
never consumes. And the candles themselves serve as symbols of our Lord’s Incarnation:
the wax as His flesh, the flame His divinity, and the wick of His soul
connecting the two.
But I want to focus on that one line from Simeon’s song—“a Light
to reveal You to the nations, and the glory of Your people Israel”—because it
so ably and succinctly sums up the central mystery of Christian faith: namely,
the Incarnation; the paradox that the God we know in Jesus Christ is both
universal and particular, both transcendent and imminent, both God and Man. And
these are not two different gods, as though one were more real than the other,
but they are forever One and the same God, as is the Holy Spirit who eternally
binds the Father and the Son.
Here it might help to imagine orthodox Christianity on a
spectrum between two religious extremes. On one end, the far left, we have unitarian universalism. This is the belief that there is One God, One Truth, behind all
religions, and that each particular faith tradition is but one reflection of
one aspect of the infinite mystery of God. And this position has much to
commend it.
Unitarianism reminds us that, yes, there is One God who is Lord
and Creator of all peoples, all places, all things, and all worlds; that this God
is indeed infinite and transcendent and beyond any ideas or images we may make
of Him. And it grants us the humility to learn from other religions, other
faith traditions, who indeed have much to teach us—or at least much to remind
us of, which we have forgotten in our own life of faith together.
But the flipside to this is that if all religions are
equally right, so are all equally wrong. It says to the Buddhist, the Hindu,
the Muslim, the Jew, “Your faith is secretly exactly the same as mine; you’re
just too dumb to realize it.” And it puts Jesus on a level with every other
prophet, swami, rabbi, pastor, priest, and witchdoctor who’s ever existed, as
though there were a moral equivalency shared by them all. Thus is Jesus just
some dude, who mouthed off and got crucified. And God remains every bit as mercurial, mysterious, and
distant as ever, too far off to know or to care.
At the other extreme, on the far right, we have an
intolerant and inflexible fundamentalism, which believes that all answers to
every question can only be found in one infallible book, and that all other
religions—indeed, all other expressions of their own religion—are completely
corrupt, reprehensible, and damnable. There can be no truth other than their
truth, the truth that they control and that belongs to them alone—as though God
had only ever hung out with the same five guys, and happens to agree with their
every bigoted social and political opinion.
These are the fear-mongers who see Satan behind every
stranger, and who lack the basic humility necessary simply to learn and to grow
and to change. And they exist in every religion: Christianity, Islam, Judaism, Hinduism,
Buddhism, you name it. Their god is anything but universal, anything but the lord
of all. He is lord of a tiny group of angry, frightened, ignorant men; a wicked
little desert deity who picks one tribe and gives them leave to rape and kill
and rob the rest.
So which extreme is correct? Well, obviously, neither of
them—and yet both contain truths. It is true that God is the God of all, and
that there are reflections of truth, slivers of truth, in all serious
religious, spiritual, or philosophical endeavors. For indeed, we are promised
that if we seek then we shall find, if we ask it shall be given, if we knock the
door is opened. God does not ignore His children, any of His children. You will
find God in many religions, and even in irreligion.
Yet for God to interact at all with His Creation, He must engage
in the scandal of particularity. One can only enter into history, enter into the
story of humanity, in particular times and particular places, in particular
persons and particular peoples. As Christians, we believe that this
self-revelation of God reached its apex, its perfection, in the person of Jesus
Christ: a Mediterranean Jew who lived 2000 years ago, born in a particular town,
under a particular emperor, to die a particular death.
And this Man, Jesus, wasn’t just some prophet or priest or
king like all the rest. He is humanity perfected: a New Creation, a New Adam,
so open and transparent to the presence and the power of God that we simply could
not tell where His humanity ends and His divinity begins. The Christian may see God everywhere, but the way we see Him fully is Christ.
The God of all peoples, all religions, all faiths—the One
for whom not only Israel has longed, but for whom every wayward son of Adam and
daughter of Eve has yearned and prayed since the ancient Fall of our exiled
race—this God is now fully known as one of us, as the Man Jesus, as the
promised Christ. He is the fulfillment of every hope, the answer to every
prayer, the rock-solid, flesh-and-blood Incarnation of God’s grace and love and
life and light. And He is not just for us, but for all peoples, everywhere,
every when.
“A Light to reveal You to the nations, and the glory of Your
people Israel.” So go, dear Christians, from this place, and carry the Light of
Jesus Christ, in generosity and mercy and truth and love, everywhere you go, for
all the world to see.
In the Name of the Father and of the +Son and of the Holy Spirit.
Amen.
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