Christmas 1 – 2020
Luke 2:22-40
Marian Free
In the name of our upside-down God who defies our expectations. Amen.
I can’t imagine that there is anyone for whom 2020 has turned out the way that they expected. Among our acquaintances there are at least six people who had made plans to celebrate their 60th birthdays in style only to have them overturned. One friend planned a cruise and had thought she’d be in Monte Carlo for her birthday. Instead, having spent two weeks off the coast of Perth on board the cruise liner, s celebrated turning 60 while in hotel quarantine.
No one, even in their wildest dreams, could have imagined a year like this in which plans have been
thwarted, career trajectories halted or even over-turned, and families separated for months at a time. Who could have envisaged silent airports, empty supermarket shelves, and more sanitiser than we’d ever have thought possible? Turning away families from aged care and hospitals would have been unthinkable a year ago and yet circumstances have dictated that in some places families have not been able to sit with the dying or to attend their funeral. In Queensland, we have been extraordinarily lucky and still our lives have been turned upside down by job losses, business closures and restrictions on who we can or cannot visit, where we can go and how we can worship.
For ten months we have lived in a topsy turvy world in which our expectations have been proven to be unrealistic and in which planning has been impossible. We have found ourselves to be at the mercy of a virus over which we have had no control.
Not having control might be a novel experience for us, but for many it is a state of life – for those living in war zones, for refugees, those living below the poverty line and those who livelihoods are at the mercy of the weather.
It is human to long for certainty, to hope that things will improve, to believe that there is a God who turn the situation around.
This longing is a characteristic of the prophetic books of the Old Testament, many of which were written during Israel’s time in exile. The Israelites yearn to return to their own land, to the way that things used to be and to having control over their destiny.
At the turn of the millennia, the time of Jesus, the Israelites are in the home country, but they have been under the dominion of foreign powers for centuries. Once again, they are vulnerable to the whims of another nation. They looked forward to a redeemer (the one promised by the prophets) to restore of the nation to its former glory – the Roman colonists defeated, Temple worship reestablished under the historic priesthood, the land fruitful and a descendant of David on the throne.
How differently things turned out. God’s redeemer did come among them, but in such a way that he was largely unnoticed and was completely unrecognisable. in fact, Jesus appearance was the reverse of everything that they had come to expect! There were no flashes of lightening, no violent upheavals of the heavens or of earth, no obvious trappings of authority – just the whimper of a child in an insignificant town, a human infant, not an omnipotent being, a powerless son of a carpenter not a member of a ruling family
No matter how many times one reads Simeon’s speech and the account of Anna, the language jars.
We would expect Simeon to say: “the rising and the fall” of many and to read that Anna prayed: “day and night” in the Temple. Those would be the usual figures of speech. What Simeon does say is “the fall and the raising” and Anna is said to pray “night and day”. This reversal of what we expect to hear turns out to be a sign what is to come. Jesus may be the “salvation prepared in sight of all peoples” and a “light to the Gentiles” but his life will play out in a very different way. He will be opposed instead of being welcomed. Instead of restoring the institutions of Israel, Jesus will be perceived to be undermining them. Rather than supporting and affirming those in positions of authority, Jesus will expose their hypocrisy and self-centredness and, as a consequence his life will be demanded of him.
Despite the longings and hopes of the Israelites, Jesus will not be an interventionist Saviour. He will not lead armies or expel the Romans. He will not bring down the corrupt priests who rule the Temple and control the Sanhedrin nor will he denounce tax-collectors, prostitutes and other sinners. From the start he will be a disappointment and he will fall before there is any rising as Simeon predicts. There will be suffering not triumph. Jesus will serve not govern and those with most to lose will seek to destroy him.
“Fall and rising”, “night and day” – the unusual phraseology of this passage alerts us to the fact that this story is not going to go the way we expected. From the beginning to the end of Jesus’ life, our upside-down God confounds, confronts and challenges expectations. Jesus does not, in any way, conform to the image of one who was to redeem Israel. He has not come to judge – not even the Romans and the collaborators. He is anything but powerful and influential and he undermines rather than upholds the religious establishment.
God, in Jesus is utterly at the service of the poor and the marginalised. God in Jesus models how to bring about change and transformation in others. God in Jesus is vulnerable to the fears and desires of those who do not want anything to stand between them and their craving for status and power.
In fact, Jesus’ life (and death) is a stark reminder that God is powerless against human greed, ambition and selfishness.
If the world is to change, we have to change. We have to cede our need for control, our desire for power and our yearning for material things. We have to acknowledge our own complicity in and responsibility for the inequities and injustices of this world and with Jesus align ourselves to the powerless, the vulnerable and marginalised. We must fall before we rise, experience night before day and, in immersing ourselves in the suffering of the world find the power that leads to the transformation of the world.
Tags: being in control, expectations, Simeon and Anna, Vulnerability
Swallowsrest 