Luke 2:22-32 “Revelations”

On the eighth day after Jesus was born, he was taken to the Temple for the customary rite of purification. Why would a baby need this purification ritual? What was it supposed to be about? I think that there is a great deal of confusion over what is being talked about when a child is brought for purification.

Recently Jared and I had a theological conversation going on. We challenged each other to watch the movie “Mary” that came out recently on Netflix. Thereafter we discussed what we liked and thought was authentic and biblical and what was not. For me, much of the movie was not keeping strictly to the biblical accounts, but on the other hand it got me thinking about a very curious happening that I had never considered before. It is a biblical quandary in a way: After the birth of Jesus, Herod (the not so great–as we heard on Christmas Eve) orders all the male children in Bethlehem to be slaughtered. This was to ease the fear he had that indeed a new King had come to replace him. Despite the fact that Jesus is a male child at the time, Mary and Joseph take him right up to Herod’s doorstep by taking him to the Temple for the rite of purification. That is like Daniel going into the Lion’s den. It reminded me that even though Jesus is still a baby, he is also God–with nothing to fear obviously.

Jesus at his birth is considered ritualistically unclean. It is not just because childbirth is messy. It is rather because anytime life is separated from life in the Hebrew understanding something impure has happened. This comes from the notion that God wants life to be WITH life. Any separation goes against this idea. For the first nine months of our days on this planet, we are literally one with our mothers—and brother if you are a twin like me! When we are born, the separation takes place that says that there are now two lives instead of one interconnected being. The rite of purification is to make the being connected back to the mother and the father through the Spirit of God, through prayer, through faith. It tries to reconnect spiritually the one life that has been separated. And, that is why the purification process is not just for the child but for the mother and father as well.

We tend today to separate physical and spiritual worlds. This is our European worldview. However, In Jesus’ time in the Middle East, the physical and spiritual realms were very much of the same matter. When a child left the physical protection of the mother’s womb, it also left the spiritual protection of the mother’s soul as well. When the cord is cut to separate the two physical lives, there is considered a spiritual severing also. This spiritual severing is what was deemed as sinful back then—sin being a spiritual disconnect.

I wonder what effect this rite of purification might have on Jesus the Son of God. Some theologians have argued that Jesus did not need to be purified—he was born sinless. Yet, remember what I just said that this rite was for the mother and father as well? I wonder that if at this moment when Jesus is in the temple for this rite that he is then connected to his mother Mary and father Joseph in a purely human fashion for the first time. I know that Jesus is the Son of God. Of that there is no doubt. In this moment of being presented and named in the Temple, Jesus is now spiritually and therefore physically recognized as Mary’s natural son. Jesus is officially named as part of the family and part of the Jewish faith community.

I also believe that Luke was trying to make a point when he mentions that Mary and Joseph made an offering in the Temple of two birds. The law as it is written in Leviticus 12, states that it is customary to offer a lamb—then only if the family cannot afford to offer a lamb, may they offer two doves or pigeons. The point is two-fold: they are offering in all humility what they could afford, and the Lamb of God Himself is also being presented in the Temple. Jesus will be the ultimate sacrifice. What more could be offered from a mother and father? What more could be offered from God? That is why Jesus is called the Lamb of God! He is the ultimate offering for our sins. Here the offering is presented to the Temple of God.

I am sure that the parents of Jesus offered the two pigeons. I bet you Jesus even spoke pidgin! Praise God, dakine!

Now, while all this was going on, there was an old man hanging around the Temple. He was a prophet. We have been learning all about the prophecies of Jesus before his birth, but here now is a prophet making a prophecy after Jesus’ birth. His name was Simeon. I imagine his having a long gray beard, a toothless grin, and wrinkled skin. He has been holding on to life because he has heard, as it was revealed to him through the Holy Spirit, that he would not die until he saw his savior, the Savior of the World, in the flesh.

I love the fact that Luke includes this story of Simeon in his Gospel. By the time that Luke is writing this, many of the first generation Christians were getting really old and some had already passed. This was a story of hope to hold on to life for the chance to see Jesus coming again.

Simeon, upon seeing the baby in Mary’s arms, comes over and takes the child from her. That must have been a little bit strange indeed for Mary. The toothless bearded man holding the baby looks deep into the eyes of Jesus. He recognizes that this is God incarnate. This is the Savior. He can be released from this life now! Praise God.

What exactly does this old man Simeon see? He states in his eloquent poem that follows, obviously inspired once more by the Holy Spirit, that he sees “Light for revelation” and “the glory of Israel.” The word here for “glory” in the Greek bespeaks “brilliance.” The old man is looking into this child’s eyes and sees the light and glory of God therein. All of the prophets we have heard about leading up to Christmas have stated that the Glory of God would be manifest in the Christ.

This Sunday is actually a very special day in the ancient Christian calendar. We had Advent last week. The Sunday afterwards is called “Candlemas.” It is like Christmas, but it traditionally has been recognized as the time when Christ’s light comes into the church. On Christmas Eve, we symbolically lit the Christ candle on the altar. So, this Sunday is the first Sunday of the new liturgical year wherein the light of Christ is present. Candlemas instead of Christmas!

The other liturgical reading for this Sunday is Isaiah, Chapter 60:19-21, “The sun shall no longer be your light by day, nor for brightness shall the moon give light to you by night; but the Lord will be your everlasting light, and your God will be your glory. Your sun shall no more go down, or your moon withdraw itself; for the Lord will be your everlasting light, and your days of mourning shall be ended. Your people shall all be righteous; they shall possess the land forever. They are the shoots that I planted, the work of my hands, so that I might be glorified.”

Do you remember the first thing that God created? From Genesis 1, “In the beginning when God created the heavens and the earth, the earth was a formless void and darkness covered the face of the deep, while the Spirit of God swept over the waters; then God said, ‘Let there be light.’ And, there was light.”

Do you recall what the heavenly kingdom will be like in the Book of Revelation? Chapter 21:22-23, “I saw no Temple in the city, for its temple is the Lord God the Almighty and the Lamb. And the city has no need of sun or moon to shine on it, for the glory of God is its light, and its lamp is the Lamb.”

Simeon looks into the eyes of this little baby Jesus and is able to see the light of Creation, the light of Revelation, the very Glory of the Almighty shining back into his soul. His glory is brighter than the moon. His glory is brighter than the sun itself. In this glory, Simeon sees His own salvation and the salvation of the world.

So many references in the Bible refer to the light and glory of God. The entire Gospel of John, for instance uses this reference over and over again. But, in the Book of Acts, is the reference to Saul on the Road to Damascus in Chapter 9. It says that Jesus came to him in flashes of light that left him completely blind. I wonder how it is that Simeon could look into the eyes of God to see the light and glory of Christ and still be able to see afterwards. Even Moses on Mount Sinai was admonished to look away from the visage of God.

When I was boy, my friends and I discovered that one could set off flashcubes by sticking a flat bladed screwdriver into the bottom slot to release the strike wires. Anybody here remember flashcubes? You used to stick them on a film camera to create a flash chemically because in olden days cameras did not have batteries! Is that coming back to you? Now I recall that we got so good at setting off flashcubes that we could set off all four sides at once. This would effectively melt the cube. It would also very much blind everybody for a minute or two. Really a stupid thing to do! But that is how I imagine the brilliance of Christ to be. Just blinding!

In complete darkness, we are easily blinded by the light. Yet, if we are already walking in the light, then the Glory of the Almighty will not blind us but rather give us the greater vision that is of God. From Matthew 5:14-16, “You are the light of the world. . . .let your light shine before others, so that others may see. . . .and give glory to God in heaven.”

I imagine that the light and glory that Simeon saw in the baby Jesus came into his soul and that his eyes were reflecting that light back out into the world. He was ready to see the light of heaven at that point. On this day of Candlemas, accept the light of Christ into your own soul and share it back out with a world living in darkness.

Amen