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An Eye for Salvation
Sermon by Cynthia A. Jarvis December 26, 2004, Presbyterian Church of Chestnut Hill Exodus 13:1-12; 13b-16 Luke 2:21-40
The question lingering in our heads--after the packages have been opened, the relatives entertained, the story retold and our prayers said--is a question that coincides with the question this child's birth posed to the first century world: what child is this, and what does his birth portend, not simply for us, but for all of humankind? Luke wants us to know the truth about this child...meaning he wants us to know so much more than mere facts. Events were handed on to us, says Luke, by those who were eyewitnesses, who saw in this child their salvation. That is what Luke wants us to see in this child as well, such that our lives forever will be changed by the sight. Therefore let us look through the eyes of one eyewitness, according to Luke, that our own eyes might see our salvation after the fact and rejoice! The eyes are the cataract encrusted eyes of Simeon, who had been looking all his life for the consolation of Israel. Amid a world blurred into shapes and ancient shadows, Simeon saw in this child the shape and direction of God's saving love for the sake of the whole world. What did he see? At first glance, he saw a child being brought to the temple by parents determined to bring him up according to Jewish law--or so it appeared at first glance. No less than five times Luke mentions the righteousness of Mary and Joseph in relation to the requirements of the law. By law, three ceremonies were to follow the birth of every male child. The first was circumcision, taking place on the eighth day from the child's birth. This was when the child received a name: "You shall call his name Jesus," said the Angel of the Lord, and so they did. Then forty days from the birth another rite was to take place: the mother's purification. Mary had been considered unclean since the night of Jesus' birth and so excluded from public worship. Her purification required the sacrifice of a lamb and a turtledove, says the Book of Leviticus, though the poor could substitute a second dove or pigeon for the lamb. "And they offered a sacrifice according to what is stated in the law of the Lord," records Luke who, in telling us this, means to tell us more. He tips us off to the fact that Mary and Joseph were poor, sacrificing "a pair of turtle doves or two young pigeons. " But Simeon's eyes surely noticed more than this. What did he see? What he saw was the absence of the third rite: the rite of redemption, a rite reserved for the firstborn son. Early in Israel's life, the custom of owing God the first fruits of the harvest and the firstborn of the womb necessitated some degree of redefinition if human sacrifice were to be ruled out of order. When God had passed over the firstborn sons of Israel (the doorposts being marked with the blood of a lamb to signify the homes whose firstborn were not to be killed), the Egyptians' firstborn sons provided the substitute. But as Israel ordered her own life in the wilderness, it became clear that the sacrifice of a lamb was one thing, but the sacrifice of a son was quite another. Therefore at some point, Israel devised an ingenious method of substitution for the firstborn son. They would consecrate a Levite, from the caste of minor clerics, dedicate him to the temple's service, and thereby exempt the firstborn son from God's claim upon his life. A minor problem arose, however, as there were 273 fewer qualified Levites than first-born males when this substitution was ratified. What to do? Well, no surprise to you, the elders decided money would do instead: five shekels per head would substitute for the substitute, giving the money "to Aaron and his sons as the redemption price for those who are in excess." This netted 1,365 shekels and thus the firstborn were spared the sacrifice! According to biblical scholars, Luke seems confused concerning these rites. He reports that Mary and Joseph bring Jesus to the temple to present him to the Lord, "(as it is written in the law of the Lord [he says in parentheses], 'Every firstborn male shall be designated as holy to the Lord,') and they offered a sacrifice according to what is stated in the law of the Lord, 'a pair of turtle doves or two young pigeons.'" But wait a minute! The birds are supposed to be for Mary's purification, not for the child's redemption from sacrifice. Did Luke simply confuse the Mosaic Law or was something critical missing--five shekels, to be exact. Without such an offering—a substitution of money for the child—the only conclusion to be drawn was that this first born son was destined for the falling and rising of many in Israel. "Guided by the Spirit," says Luke, "Simeon came into the temple; and when the parents brought in the child Jesus, to do for him what was customary under the law," Simeon must have noticed that there was no payment for a sacrificial substitute. In other words, here was the sacrifice, the one of whom Isaiah spoke: "wounded for our transgressions, bruised for our iniquities, upon him was the chastisement that made us whole, and by his stripes we are healed." Luke tells us from the beginning, if we have eyes to see, that in the end this child will be offered up as sacrifice, God's firstborn, upon the cross. This sacrifice will not be a sacrifice for God, as all other sacrifices have been, but a sacrifice by God for our sakes, that we might see our salvation. Or to put it as we did at the end of the Christmas Eve service, God loved the world in this way: that he sent the only Son into the world so that we might live through him…to be the expiation for our sins. In him, because he has come to us and lived among us and died for us, we are saved from our sin, saved from living our lives without God. Look, says Luke in the missed details of this story, and see the sacrifice, the incredible cost of such love…not to us…but to God. Once Simeon saw that Jesus was the one sent by God to be sacrificed for our salvation, he saw a second thing about the shape and direction of God's saving grace. What had been expected was a Messiah to redeem Israel. What Simeon saw was a Savior given to redeem the whole world: redeem Israel and God's people, but also the Gentiles, you and me. That is why, when Luke finally gets around to Jesus' lineage in the third chapter, he does not stop with Abraham as Matthew does. He continues Jesus' line all the way back to Adam. In this way, Luke is addressing the news of God’s salvation to the religiously pluralistic culture of the first century, leaving no one out of God’s saving grace. Still that world's religiously plural shadows continue to cast their darkness over our world some two thousand years later. "The Greek world," writes Eduard Schweizer, "was filled with an almost unimaginable hope, which had centered on August us…. Inscriptions refer to him as 'savior' of the entire human race, who 'fulfills and surpasses all prayers and transforms the world with his 'good news.'" Gentile religions of the time were filled with seekers of so-called spiritual truths. "Some found their savior in Isis, who undertook to emancipate them from the fatalistic dominion of the stars, others in Asclepias, the divine healer," says G. B. Caird. But Luke is saying, by way of Simeon's eyes: salvation looks like none of these gods or rulers, but looks like this child who was born in Bethlehem. In this vulnerable, eight-day-old child converge the hopes of the whole world, converge God and humankind, no one and no time left out: separation ended! Then Luke gives a final detail to the shape and direction of salvation by way of Simeon's eyewitness. To Mary Simeon whispers, "This child is destined…to be a sign that will be opposed…." The salvation this child was to bring would also bring a crisis to every life. Either he is our salvation or he is not. Either this is the truth or this is the greatest lie ever told. And in either case, whatever we have seen in him that has caused us to follow him, or whatever we have seen in him that has led us to run the other way, our lives will never again be the same. Three things, then, are clear to those who look at this child through the ancient eyes of Simeon: first and from the beginning, Simeon sees that this child was born to die for you--a terrible truth. Second, this child was born not just for you, but for the whole world--a salvation whose claim is scandalously inclusive as regards God's love and scandalously exclusive as regard's God's truth. Third, this is a child whom, to follow, is to dare the depth of human suffering and the height of human opposition. "Jesus precipitates the centrally important movement of one's life toward or away from God," writes Fred Craddock of Simeon's eyewitness, the movement of your life and mine on this day after Christmas day toward or away from God. "As much as we may wish to join the name of Jesus only to the positive, satisfying and blessed in life, the inescapable fact is that anyone who turns on light creates shadows….It is the reality which causes many to take up the task of preaching with great hesitation," Craddock goes on, "after all, who would casually become an accessory in the radical alteration of the lives of others. And, sad to say, this same deep realization may lie at the root of that preaching which avoids saying anything." What we forget about the particular kind of story told us by the gospel writers is that they are telling us the story in order that we will be changed, in order that our eyes will see and believe. What child will this be to us in the year ahead? Either we will turn toward him as those who have seen our salvation--have seen that our lives are meant to be lived in relation to God through him, or we will live our lives in the shadows and the shallows of life without him. "The Word could not be made Flesh," says Auden's Simeon, "until men had reached a state of absolute contradiction between clarity and despair in which they would have no choice but either to accept absolutely or reject absolutely….Wherefore, having seen Him, not in some prophetic vision of what might be, but with the eyes of our own weakness as to what actually is, we are bold to say that we have seen our salvation." May we, with the eyes of our own weakness, see…and by grace believe in him who has come to save us from life without God…and be changed. Thanks be to God. |