Readings (Year C):
Malachi 3:1-4
Psalm 24:7, 8, 9, 10
Hebrews 2:14-18
Luke 2:22-40 or 2:22-32
Reflection: Bring the light of Jesus
After the Christmas season ended with the celebration of Jesus’ baptism, as you would expect, our Sunday readings focus again on the adult Jesus and his ministry. But today, with Christmas forty days behind us, the church circles back to a scene connected with Jesus’ birth, his presentation in the temple. What is this about? And what challenges does this text hold for us? Let’s begin with that first question.
Presenting a newborn male to the priest was a religious obligation for Jewish families. The mother, who was considered ritually unclean after birthing a son, had to wait forty days until her purification was complete—after which parents presented their son to be consecrated to the Lord in a special way. Though Luke leaves out details of the ritual, he makes it clear that Jesus was born into a family of observant Jews. Like all pious Jews, Mary and Joseph awaited God’s deliverance. But they had not realized yet that their son was the deliverer, the long-awaited lord. What Malachi the prophet had foretold in today’s first reading, was now fulfilled in Jesus. God’s promised Messiah had finally come to redeem and save God’s people.
You would think that the priests and scribes, the religious elites of their day, who studied the scriptures and looked for signs of its fulfillment, would have been the first to recognize Jesus as Messiah. But—as always in the gospels—it’s the simple faith-filled women and men, like Simeon and Anna, with hearts open to the spirit’s promptings, who get it! So, like an expectant father who holds his newborn son in his arms for the first time, Simeon is overwhelmed with joy as he holds the Messiah in his arms. He has waited not nine months, but a lifetime. What a relief! You can hear it in the words he speaks to Mary and Jospeh. Jesus, the Messiah, the promised bearer of peace, light and salvation for all people has come; deliverance is here. But deliverance from what or from whom?
With few exceptions, every Jew would have said: from the oppressive rule of the Romans and the suffering they inflicted—the poverty, homelessness, slavery, the burdensome taxes that sent many to prison, the social inequities that allowed the well-fed rich of the day to step over the starving poor at their gates.
To those hoping for a political messiah who would deliver them from their oppressors, Jesus was a failure. His execution by the Romans was proof that he was no savior.
To many, the way Jesus lived and especially the way he died only re-enforces cynicism and despair. But to others, who welcome the way of life modeled by Jesus, a life rooted in self-emptying love, built on mercy and forgiveness, where the poor are blessed and the rich sent away empty, Jesus is a consolation and his death was not a humiliation but the ultimate expression of his love.
True, he did not eliminate the bad guys, or introduce regime change, or right every wrong in his society. Instead, he brought light to dark places and alleviated suffering, one place and one person at a time. Jesus modeled for all what it meant to be truly human so that by imitating him in love and service, the peace and the salvation he came to bring would continue.
Today in the face of so many social problems and injustices (poverty, homelessness, environmental disasters all arounds us, fires and floods), we can rail against leaders who promise to make life better, but fail to deliver, and we can give into cynicism and despair. Or, we can follow the way of Jesus, bringing light to dark places and alleviating suffering one person and one place at a time. In small acts of love and care for each other and for creation, we can extend his peace, light and salvation. We have a choice. We always have a choice.
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