Isaiah 61:10-62:3 NRSV text
Psalm 148 NRSV text
Galatians 4: 4-7 NRSV text
Luke 2: 22-40 NRSV text
Simeon was looking for ‘the consolation of Israel.’ What exactly does this mean? One thing is clear from our gospel passage: Simeon was waiting for the Messiah! And he’d waited a long time. The Messiah would be Israel’s ‘consolation’ in the sense that he would free Israel from Roman occupation. But it means more than someone sent by God to sort out the present difficulty. It was about the fulfilment of all God’s promises, and the final, definitive revelation of Yahweh as God of all the earth (see Psalm 148) and Israel as Yahweh’s choice possession (see Isaiah 61: 10-62:3). What God is about in Jesus is nothing less than the fulfilment of the divine purposes in creation, in the election of Israel and in all Yahweh’s long saving history with the people (cf Galatians 4: 4-7).
‘And now for something completely different’
In Luke’s gospel we are presented with the contrast between people’s expectations of Jesus and what they actually ‘get’ from God in Jesus. Jesus is God’s Big Surprise _ the divine ‘Ta Dah!’ that confounds expectations, blows people’s minds, turns their understanding of God on its head, and generally manages to get up every conceivable nose where there is any chance of doing Jesus any damage! Luke’s gospel forces us to re-think and re-understand God. God is not the God of the Purity System, as represented by the Temple cult and the teachers of the Law. Cultic obedience is not the fulfilment of the Law: love is. God, as God is revealed in Jesus, is motivated not by anger and the desire for judgment and condemnation, but by compassion, which is the heart of grace.
Law and grace
Luke presents Jesus’ ministry as a confrontation between two competing notions of God and God’s attitude to the world. He does this through the clashes Jesus has with the Pharisees. Again and again, the debate circles round and centres round the meaning of the dual commandment to love God and neighbour. Time and again, the Pharisees set it up so that there is a clash of obligations: to love God wholeheartedly requires choosing God over neighbour; Jesus, by contrast, reveals a God motivated by compassion and mercy, so that responding in love to one’s neighbour’s suffering is the means by which the command to love God is fulfilled (cf the Parable of the Good Samaritan).
We are not, however, to see Jesus as opposed to the Law. Jesus is the fulfilment of the Law and the Prophets – even though he doesn’t appear to be and even though he earns a reputation for living very loose to the Law. What Luke wants us to understand is that the grace shown by God in Jesus – which offends even John the Baptist – fulfils the Law because it demonstrates what God is like. That is why Luke has the account of the Emmaus Road journey at the conclusion of his gospel: Jesus demonstrates to Mr and Mrs Cleopas that all that has happened took place to fulfil the Law and the Prophets.
‘Born under the Law’ (Galatians 4:4-7)
Paul is on theologically similar territory in Galatians 4. Jesus is born ‘under the Law’, but in this case, to fulfil it on behalf of sinful humanity and thereby to free us from the ‘curse of the Law’. Paul’s argument in Galatians links in with his Second Adam Christology: we are all ‘in Adam’, who is the representative of the entire human race and who chose, on humanity’s behalf, to make a world outside of God’s purposes and commandments.
The consequence has been that we human beings have found ourselves with a Frankensteinian creation that has imprisoned us; moreover, we are on the wrong end of the Law and are thus condemned. It is not that the Law is bad; rather, sin prevents the Law from doing its work of ordering human living in order to mediate Life, and we end up instead as prisoners of the Law (3:23).
Paul here argues that Jesus is ‘born under the Law’ in order to redeem (buy back) those of us who are enslaved. How is that done? Adam, our first forebear, sold us into slavery; Jesus, the Second Adam, frees us from being slaves and, through the Spirit, makes us adopted children of God. We share in Jesus’ intimate Abba-relationship with God. But how? How does Jesus ‘rescue’ us? Paul’s Second Adam Christology means that, for him, Jesus’ response to God is representative for us all. Jesus is faithful to God. Jesus keeps the Law. And Jesus is representative because God raised Jesus from the dead. This was the extraordinary, shocking truth that Paul was confronted with on the Damascus Road. Jesus, who had died under the Law, had been raised by God. This meant that Jesus, alone of all humanity, had died without deserving death. Jesus, alone of all humanity, could be raised; the resurrection showed that he was sinless. Therefore, for Paul, his resurrection was the birth of a new humanity in Jesus. As many of us who are baptised into Jesus share in his dying to sin and rising to new life, just as we shared in the first Adam’s act of primal disobedience.
What makes Jesus unique – so much better than the First Adam – is that, unlike Adam, he was ‘born under the Law’. Adam predated the Law; Jesus is born under its reign and therefore all its condemnatory power. Jesus, unlike the First Adam, is obedient; Jesus, unlike the First Adam, shares our fallen humanity. Jesus is every bit as susceptible to living contrary to the will of God as we are, and is still without sin! That is why he becomes the firstborn of a new family – a family of God’s children.
The God who Saves (Isaiah 61:10-62:3)
Jesus’ name means ‘God saves!’ To be a child of God is, in Isaiah’s words, to be ‘clothed in the garments of salvation’(61:10). Note that today’s text from Isaiah is the same oracle that begins,
‘The Spirit of the Lord God is upon me, because the Lord has anointed me; he has sent me to bring good news to the oppressed, to bind up the broken-hearted, to proclaim liberty to the captives, and release to the prisoners’(Isaiah 61:1)
This is the text that Jesus uses in his sermon in Nazareth (in Luke’s gospel) when he sets out his stall. In its original context, Isaiah was announcing that there was life after Exile; that Yahweh would bring the people back to their land and they would be vindicated (62:1). ‘Vindication’ is explained in two different ways: firstly, the ‘nations’ will see it and marvel (vv 2-3); secondly, the very next line is a Hebrew parallelism: ‘…her salvation like a burning torch’.
It is important to remind ourselves at Christmas, when heaven is open and the skies are filled with angels that God’s salvation is for this world. We are not saved by being whisked off to heaven; we are saved by heaven coming down to earth. That is what Christmas affirms. Salvation is God visiting earth, not rescuing us from earth. Salvation in Isaiah’s time means return from Exile; in Jesus’ time, it meant something that dealt with Roman occupation. In our time, it means something that touches global warming, global poverty and the global market.
The Temple
Let’s return to the Temple. Something of momentous significance is happening here. The Temple is going to be the seat of the opposition to Jesus. Jesus will confront the Purity System that has its powerhouse in the Temple itself. He will cleanse the Temple. He will prophesy its destruction. He will, first, be destroyed by it.
Yet for all that, the Temple is God’s house. And in Luke’s gospel, it holds enormous symbolic significance. Luke begins his gospel in the Temple, in the Holy of Holies. This is where God is. For all that the Temple – like the Law – may be subverted and made to serve a different end than that intended by God, nevertheless it is God’s place. As we read the gospel, we will become aware of just how bitterly opposed the Temple system is to Jesus. Yet here, at the outset of the gospel, Jesus’ parents take him to the Temple. Jesus enters his Father’s house for the very first time. And the question is, will anyone recognise him?
Enter Simeon and Anna! Here are two old people very much in touch with the Spirit. They are those saints whose age speaks of wisdom, discernment and godliness. They represent the true worship of Yahweh – and recognise in Jesus the salvation of God. Look at Simeon’s pronouncement: Jesus is God’s salvation, prepared not only for the Jews but for the Gentiles as well. Jesus is the fulfilment of God’s plans for the world since creation (remember: Luke, unlike Jesus, traces Jesus’ ancestry from Adam).
Yet what Jesus will reveal will divide people. He will face them with a stark choice about the kind of God they believe in. Jesus will indeed be opposed – by all the authority vested in the Temple where they are standing! Jesus is God’s salvation – but not in an obvious, expected way.
Luke does something very interesting here with Simeon and Anna. In Luke’s gospel, as in the others, John the Baptist comes announcing that Jesus is the Messiah. Yet in Luke’s gospel, far more than in the others, John is presented as one who does not understand the grace of God that is shown in Jesus. Luke emphasises the judgmental, hellfire-and-damnation nature of John’s preaching. And in chapter 7, Luke has John in prison, about to die, wondering if he’s got it all wrong and whether Jesus was the One to whom he should point after all!
In other words, in Luke’s gospel, we cannot go to John the Baptist to hear the truth about Jesus and who he is! Instead, Luke places the true announcement of Jesus’ ministry and ‘the meaning of it all’ on the lips of these two old saints: Simeon and Anna. From them we learn that Christmas is all about God’s extraordinary, gracious, passionate love for the world. Christmas is the beginning of the greatest love story ever told.
Amen.
