The Light Is the Way

Propers: The Presentation of Our Lord (Candlemas), AD 2022 C

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.”

The thing about light is that it does not exclusively, nor even primarily, reveal itself. Light reveals everything else, everything around us, where we are, who we are. When we have light, we can walk with confidence. We know things at a distance. We recognize friend from foe. We can even read, communicating across space and time, learning from those long dead. The written word is the afterlife of the voice.

In the religious and spiritual vocabulary of the human species, light represents knowledge, safety, learning, truth, and health—for light dispels not only ignorance and lies but also diseases as well. Light makes things make sense. In the depths of winter, when the days are short, we feel as though we have less: less freedom, less time. It isn’t so, strictly speaking. 24 hours are 24 hours. Yet the long days of summer feel like so much more, so much life. Light liberates.

Little wonder, then, that John starts off his Gospel with the famous proclamation:

In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. He was in the beginning with God; all things came into being through him, and without him not one thing came into being. What has come into being in him was life, and the life was the light of all people. The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness did not overcome it.

The Word of God is the mind of God: the logic, the sense, the reason of God; the purposefulness and value and meaning expressed throughout the length and breadth of Creation. Without the Word, the Logos, nothing would be possible. Mathematics would not be consistent. Our minds would have no correspondence to the world around us. Nothing would mean anything. But because of the Logos, because of God’s Word, reality is suffused with goodness and truth and beauty.

And this Logos, this Image of God in the mind of God, is who we know Christ is. He is the perfect expression of the Father: the Creator made part of Creation. He is the center which holds together the whole, the Adam whom we were meant to be. In Jesus, we see who God is. We see His love, His compassion, His power, His suffering. We see His conviction, His willingness to go all the way to hell and back, to save the entirety of this fallen, broken world and to bring each and every one of us home in Him.

In Jesus, God makes sense. And because God makes sense, everything else does too.

I don’t mean, of course, that we know everything. We have no monopoly on truth. But we do know the love of God. And knowing that, we have the faith that all things shall be saved. Every wrong at the last will be set right, impossible as that seems. And all the dead shall be raised to new and eternal life. What then have we to fear? If God if for us, who can be against us? We are free in the love of Jesus Christ to love as Christ loves us. When that is your center, everything else falls into place.

Our Gospel story this evening takes place 40 days after Jesus’ birth, and so we celebrate it this 40th day after Christmas Morning. In accordance with the laws of their time, Mary and Joseph have taken the child Jesus to the Temple in Jerusalem. And back then, mind you, there was only one Temple—at least in theory. That Temple was revered as the house of God on earth, the “thin place” where eternity broke into time and Heaven dwelt in the midst of the people.

They have come to consecrate Mary’s firstborn Son to the Lord in accordance with the Law. But as is so often the case with Jesus, there’s much more here than meets the eye. In the Christian understanding, this baby, this infant, is God in the flesh. And so they are taking the Lord to His Temple: the triumphal return of Yahweh to Mount Zion, center of Israelite identity and worship, the very heart of the Old Covenant.

And here the Holy Family encounters two unusual figures: the prophets Simeon and Anna, both aged, both wizened, both looking for the coming of the Christ and the redemption of their people Israel. The Spirit of God has given to Simeon a particular promise: that he will not see death before he sees the Lord’s Messiah. And having laid eyes now on the Christchild, he takes up the baby in his arms and blesses Him with a death-song:

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 last will and testament. Having witnessed the promise of God here fulfilled, the prophet can die now at peace, filled with joy. And we assume, I think, that he’s singing to God the Father above. But the child Himself is God—the Image of God, the Word of God, the Light of God—so Simeon is singing directly to the baby. “Now, Lord, you let your servant go in peace. My own eyes have seen.”

And this child of whom and to whom he sings will not only be the Messiah promised to Israel, the glory of His people, but also a Light to reveal God to the nations; that is, to all the peoples of the earth, of every time and clime, including us. When we want to know God, we look to Christ. When we want to see the promises of prophecy fulfilled, we look to Christ. And when we want to hold the fullness of all that God intends for us, we look to Christ. We hold Him in our arms.

Every society, every culture, every faith has longed for God, longed for the transcendent, for limitless Goodness and Beauty and Truth to come and fill our limitless need. And that’s what we know in Christ. He is our light; and in His light, we see light. Billions of people for thousands of years, across languages, cultures, and eras, have found God in this Man, and so can you. So can we all. “I believe in Christ,” wrote C.S. Lewis, “as I believe that the Sun has risen: not only because I see it, but because by it I see everything else.”

The path of Christ, the Way of Christ, will lead us all to God; for God Himself is Christ, and Christ Himself is the Way. I’m not saying that it’s easy. Christianity is a long and demanding road, ever circling back to reveal old things in new light. To walk the path of Jesus Christ is to commit yourself to death and resurrection every day. Yet even this is grace. Even this is God.

I don’t want you simply to believe in tradition, in doctrines and dogmas for their own supposed sakes. I want you, when you wonder—when you ask questions of God, of good and evil, of meaning and purpose and value, of past trauma and future hope—I want you to look to Jesus. Look to His Word and His Sacraments. Look to His Body and Blood. Look to His promises given to you in your Baptism and fulfilled upon that Cross. Hold Him up as the light of the world, and you will know God because you know Him.

It’s not the job of the Church to tell us where God is not. We don’t know where He’s not. He shows up where He will. But we do know for certain where God is. God is present for us in Jesus Christ. We’ve chased Him until He caught us. He is the light of the world, the glory of His people, and the reason behind it all. In His light, we see light. And having seen, we may all now go in peace.

In the Name of the Father and of the +Son and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.