The Revelation of God’s Love

Today, known as the Feast of the Presentation of our Lord Jesus Christ in the Temple, we celebrate the purpose of God’s relationship with all people.  It is the revelation of God's saving love to Israel, to the whole world, and to us as we know it in the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus.  It is both a joyful and a dreadful moment.  It is a spirit of hope and expectation, of wonder and awe, and it is mixed with anxiety, anguish and dread.

This mixture of hope and expectation with anxiety and dread is stated at the end of the Hebrew Bible when the prophet Malachi speaks a word of anticipation.  Malachi’s message is a mixture of hope and anxiety.  "The messenger of the covenant in whom you delight - indeed, he is coming, says the Lord of hosts.  But who can endure the day of his coming, and who can stand when he appears?"

Then, in the gospel of Luke, Simeon, a righteous and devout man, and Anna, an elderly prophet, greet the young child Jesus who was brought to the temple by his parents.  Jesus’ parents brought their son to fulfill the laws for purification of his mother and the dedication of their first-born. 

As one commentator stated, Simeon, also an elderly person, had been "told he wouldn't die till he'd seen the Messiah with his own two eyes, and time was running out.  When the moment finally came, one look through his cataract lenses was all it took...." Simeon held the small child in his arms.  As he did so, he said, "Master, now you are dismissing your servant in peace, according to your word; for my eyes have seen your salvation."  The baby reached out to play with the fringes of his beard.  The parents were obviously pleased, "amazed at what was being said about" their baby, so Simeon "blessed them and said to his mother Mary, ‘This child is destined for the falling and rising of many in Israel, and to be a sign that will be opposed so that the inner thoughts of many will be revealed – and a sword will pierce your own soul too.’” 

Anna, a prophet from the tribe of Asher, also was in the temple and “began to praise God and to speak about the child to all who were looking for the redemption of Jerusalem.”  The people of Jerusalem had been suffering greatly under the oppressive rule of the Roman empire, and they were looking for positive and redeeming change.

One of the most deeply affecting mysteries of human life is the mystery of suffering, especially when innocent and good people are involved.  Anna and Simeon knew this, and Simeon’s words to Mary and the events of our own time thousands of years later will not allow us to forget how pain, anguish, suffering and death, are part of life's journey.

Why should young people be victims of abuse and neglect?  Why is it that those who suffer are the people whose lives have often enough already been marked by hardship and struggle?  Why should any human being be hated, taunted, inflicted with suffering, because of color, religion, race, ethnic background, or gender?

We ask these questions, and nowhere do we find satisfactory answers.  These forms of suffering simply should not be.  As I reflect on questions of human suffering and why bad things happen to good people, I find some of the insights of William Stringfellow to be helpful.  Stringfellow was an attorney, a lay theologian, and an Episcopalian who wrote extensively about death and life, about revelation and what it means to be faithful to the word of God.  In one of his books, An Ethic for Christians and other Aliens in a Strange Land, he has a chapter about resistance to death.  He writes:

"No violence is private.  On the contrary, violence is so dynamic, variegated, and pervasive that all violence must be regarded as essentially political.  Even apparently isolated or remote or unilateral violence inherently implicates every human, and every other creature…. The violence Jesus suffered on the Cross becomes the most notorious political event in all history....”

"Where is hope?", he asks. "The biblical response... is that hope is known only in the midst of coping with death…. Engagement in specific and incessant struggle against death's rule renders us human.  Resistance to death is the only way to live humanly..."

Simeon, as he held Jesus in his arms, was aware of the relationship between life and death.  He and many others were aware of the intermingling emotions of hope and awe with anguish and dread.  The time is dreadful.  Death in all of its forms must be overcome.  The purpose of Christ's life, death and resurrection, the purpose of God's incarnation, of the Word becoming human, was and is the revelation of God's saving love. 

Archbishop Desmond Tutu has said, “God loves us with a love that will not let us go, a love that loved us before we were created, a love that loves us now, a love that will love us forever, world without end.  A love that says of each single one of us: ‘I love you, you are precious and special to me, I love you as if you were the only human being on earth, I love you and there is nothing you can do to make me love you more because I already love you perfectly.’”

God’s love is about reconciling all people to God.  God was and is in Christ reconciling the world.  The ministry of reconciliation belongs to us; it is what we are called to do in every moment of human history.  In so doing, our hope and the focus of our lives is always on Christ, "a light for revelation to the Gentiles and for glory to your people."  Amen.