Sermon - Christmas Takes Away Fear (12/27/2020)

Isaiah 61:10-62:3; Psalm 148; Galatians 4:4-7; Luke 2:22-40

Our gospel passage today is the delightful and strange story of the young Mary and Joseph bringing six-week-old Jesus to the Temple as part of the traditional post-childbirth purification ritual, where they meet two wonderfully odd senior citizens, Simeon and Anna, who both recognize who the baby Jesus is and are changed by this recognition.

How Simeon and Anna recognized who Jesus is, we are not told. Why only Simeon and Anna, and not anyone else in the Temple, recognized Jesus, we also are not told. But the text does tell us how Simeon and Anna were changed by their encounter with the baby Jesus, so that’s perhaps where we should focus.

The story tells us that Mary and Joseph had come to the Temple that day to perform the ritual of purification after childbirth.  According to Leviticus chapter 12, after a woman gives birth, 40 days after birth if the child is a boy, she is to present a purification sacrifice at the Temple of a sheep and a bird, or, if like Mary she is poor, two birds.

This ritual of animal sacrifice and purification after giving birth seems quite strange and foreign to us, although Mary and Joseph – and Simeon and Anna – would have perceived it as natural and the normal thing to do.  And I think it’s easy for us to understand that childbirth can be a moment of deep significance.  I have not been privileged to have the experience myself, but I know from talking to many mothers and fathers that holding and seeing their newborn child is a moment of profound emotion and often of spiritual significance.  The power of life to inspire awe and wonder and amazement is palpable in a way we rarely experience and find hard to describe.

But –especially in the days before modern medicine – childbirth was also an occasion for a powerful reminder of the presence of death.  In ancient times a shockingly large number of women died in childbirth, and even today there are many things that can go wrong in the process, and I know some of us here have experienced that.  And even in the best of circumstances, there is a lot of blood involved, and especially for ancient peoples the loss of blood provoked an intense sensation that the power of death must be very close.

The Jewish scholar Jacob Milgrom has written an excellent commentary on Leviticus that puts the Old Testament ritual of purification after childbirth in this context.  He explains how, in Old Testament law, anyone who was bleeding for whatever reason was considered impure until they had washed, and if the bleeding went on for more than a week, their impurity threatened the whole community.  It signified that the power of death is loose in the world.  And so when the flow of blood stopped and the power of death had come under control again, a special ritual of purification was felt to be necessary, not for the person – the person is made clean simply by washing – but for the community.

Because if the power of death is loose in the community, if uncontrolled death is out there, the fear is that the holy and living God might abandon us.  The sacrifice represents a reassertion of control over the power of death that otherwise risks driving God away.  The power of death is terrifying and needs to be put back in its place for God – who is holy and fully living – to continue to dwell among us.

There’s a story about the adult Jesus – we’ll read it from Mark next June – when he encounters a woman who had been hemorrhaging for 18 years. She touches Jesus without offering the purification sacrifice, indeed without the bleeding having stopped, and everybody panics. Why? Because she has let the power of death loose into the community, onto Jesus himself, and everyone perceives that as a danger.  Except for Jesus.  It doesn’t bother him.  Because he is not bothered by the fear of death. He is ready to confront all the powers of death and to take up the cross, because he is not afraid of death. In Jesus, God has taken on the whole human experience, including death, and so from now on the power of death cannot separate us from God.

The woman with the hemorrhage somehow perceived that it was OK for her to touch Jesus – that in the presence of Jesus she didn’t have to fear the power of death at work in her body – and Jesus tells her, “Your faith has made you well.” And this is, I think, what Simeon and Anna perceive in the baby Jesus.  Mary and Joseph have come to the Temple to offer the sacrifice that, in their culture, signifies that the power of death which present in the blood and the pain and the danger of childbirth, has now been safely been put away.  But Simeon and Anna have the faith to see that Christmas has now put away the fear of death forever.

Simeon, the gospel tells us, was “righteous and devout,” and was inspired with the faith that he would live to see the coming of the Messiah.  In other words, Simeon wasn’t worried that the power of death was going to drive God away from the people, as in the days of Noah when human violence caused God to unleash the flood, or in the days of the Exile when human faithlessness caused God to abandon the Temple and the people to their fate.  No, Simeon was confident that God was going to remain with the people no matter what, and that God’s fulfillment of the promises was close at hand.

When Simeon sees the baby Jesus, and holds him, and feels his presence, Simeon understands that God’s promise has been fulfilled.  Simeon perceives that the purpose of the purification ritual, the banishment of the power of death so God can safely remain with the people, has been accomplished by God.

Simeon knows that Jesus will be subject to the power of death – he says Jesus will reveal the hearts of many in Israel, and will be provoke opposition.  Simeon knows that there will be blood – he says to Mary, a sword will pierce your soul.  But Simeon has faith that this blood, this opposition, this death is not going to be alien to God, will not drive God away – this death will somehow bring God closer to us.  And so now, I, Simeon, can face my own coming death in peace.  Now that I have seen Christmas for myself – now that I have held Jesus in my hands – now that I have seen and touched the Word made flesh – now I know that I am safe in the hands of God and all shall be well and death has lost its power to change any of it.

Likewise, Anna, the prophetess, the 84 year-old prophetess, the homeless widow who lived in the Temple night and day.  She also came and saw Jesus, and was filled with praise to God and thanksgiving to God, and spoke about the child to everyone who was looking “for the redemption of Jerusalem,” in other words, to everyone concerned about the salvation of the community. She also had the faith to see that the person of Jesus is good news for anyone who is worried about the redemption of Jerusalem, for anyone who is anxious that God is going to abandon us to the powers of death and destruction, good news: God is here to stay, the powers of death will not defeat God, so give God praise and thanks.

For us who live in a time when the power of death is loose in the world, Simeon and Anna declare to us their faith that Christmas has now defeated the power of death forever.  Death and bloodshed have not ended; this is part of the human condition.  But now that, in Jesus, the human condition – including conflict and death – has been taken up into the life of God, we now can in faith learn to live with confidence that death cannot separate us from God and that God’s power of life will ultimately prevail.  This is the faith that makes for a truly merry Christmas.