A Sword will pierce your own soul too....
A sword will pierce your own soul, too....
The events we remember this evening place us very firmly at a crossroads – we have experienced the joy and wonder of Christmas, but we are now faced with a path leading towards an altogether different experience involving isolation, pain, suffering and death. This is not the comfortable feather duvet of faith which some people choose to hide within, but a faith that is altogether more uncomfortable, a faith which recognises God in the centre of the dark places of life, but who in the midst of that dark place holds out the light of hope.
During the past couple of weeks, as I have been living with Mary, Joseph and their baby, Simeon and Anna, thinking about this service tonight, another family kept coming into my mind.
I met this family one night in hospital – I had been called into the Special Care Baby Unit. A baby had been born, he had multiple problems, and was unlikely to survive for very long. There were other children in the family, and the outpouring of love for this tiny little person was palpable. They asked for David to be baptised and I gladly agreed. A large number of family members gathered – his parents, grandparents, bothers and sisters, aunts and uncles – all squeezed in the small room where David was in a cot with oxygen helping him to breath. The nurse gently lifted him out of his cot and into his mothers arms for the baptism. For a few moments, there was laughter, expressions of joy, wonder at this apparently perfect, beautiful little boy. But after the baptism, he was returned to his cot, and the reality of the problems he had smacked the family like a stone once more – this little boy would die – and a sword will pierce your own soul too.
Like David, the infant Jesus was at the centre of a religious ritual, taken to the temple by his parents. According to ancient Jewish custom, 40 days following birth, the first born male child of a family should be presented to God and dedicated to His service. However, the child could be redeemed by the offering of a gift, which varied according to the means of the family – for the poorest, the minimum was a pair of doves. Following childbirth, Mary would have been forbidden to visit the synagogue with other women, but now the time for purification and presentation had arrived. For most Jewish families, this would have been a time of great rejoicing and celebration, surrounded by family and friends, but not for Mary, Joseph and their baby. This poor, young family travelled alone to fulfil the requirements of their religion, no one around them to support or encourage. They travelled alone as she had travelled alone to Elizabeth just months earlier. I wonder what conversation, what joys and fears passed between them on their journey.
And then, when they reached the Temple, this wise old man, Simeon, did what most people failed to do and recognises in this small family group something far from the ordinary. He gently takes the baby from his mother, and speaks in those remarkable words we know as the Nunc Dimitus, words that have brought comfort and peace to people down the years at the end of each day and at the end of life. St. Luke tells us that the child’s mother and father were amazed at what was being said – and no wonder; if the experience months earlier wasn’t disconcerting enough, what on earth did this old man mean. And then those words – this child is destined for the falling and the 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. I can imagine an icy blast shooting down her spine. It is a bitter/sweet moment – for Simeons prophetic words speak of joy and hope, but also the isolation, turmoil and pain pointing us towards the passion and Easter. For now, Mary stands cradling her child in the safety of her arms, full of joy, hope and anticipation; but a time would come when she would stand, longing to cradle her son once more and take away his pain, but have instead to experience the unimaginable pain of watching her son suffer so cruelly and die.
And yet, and yet, that light of love and hope, shattered the darkness of Good Friday and heralded a bright new dawn of Easter
The feast of Candlemas leads us away from the joy and celebrations of the Christmas and Epiphany seasons and points us towards an altogether more challenging period.
But Luke concludes the story be telling us that when the rituals at the Temple had been completed, Mary, Joseph and their baby returned to their home in Nazareth and got on with the work of living, bringing up their baby and preparing him, as best they could, for whatever life had in store.
Similarly, I remember one of the occasions when I visited Sharron and David in the hospital in the days after his Baptism. Sharron was calmer and said that she was trying to focus on the practicalities – she had to learn how to feed her baby with a tube, how to care for his particular needs. She wanted to take David home so that get back to some semblance of family life for whatever time they had with him, preparing David and all her family for what was inevitably before them.
No matter what the joys or the sorrows, ultimately we too have to go back to our own homes, like Mary and Joseph, like Sharron, and get on with the business of living, trusting in the God who is with us; and cling on the knowledge that as the joy of Easter followed the pain of Good Friday, so the light of Christ’s love, tenderness and care will ultimately shine through into the dark places of our experience.
As we leave here tonight, we take with us the light of Christ’s love experienced in our worship, prayer and sacrament. But this blazing light of love is not ours to jealously guard. It is to be taken out of here and shared as widely as possible and especially with those who know only too well the dark places of life’s experience. For the wisdom of Simeon reminds us that our faith is not just about the comfortable issues of peace, light and love but equally about the darkness of pain and suffering – and if we don’t grasp that, then we haven’t understood.
Lesley McCormack, February 2nd, 2007
