How It Was From the Start
How It Was From the Start
Luke 2:21-38
As I’ve mentioned to you before, only two of our four Gospels contain stories about Jesus’ birth: Luke and Matthew. John starts with a deeply philosophical and theological statement about the word becoming flesh. In Mark, we just find ouselves in the wilderness with John the Baptist. The two Gospels that do have birth narratives tell different stories. Luke focusses on Joseph and Mary and offers us the Magnificat and the Shepherds. Matthew starts with Elizabeth and Zecchariah and introduces us to the wise men. In Matthew, Mary and Joseph flee to Egypt. In Luke, Mary and Joseph hang around Bethlehem for a while.
Each gospel writer has a different agenda. Mark, the first gospel written, is boiled down to help people who are struggling to survive persecution: “I’m just going to give you the basics, here.” In John, perhaps the last Gospel written, there is evidence of a theology and philosophy that has developed over time. John goes deep. Matthew and Luke are writing to an audience that was struggling with two things: the Jewish roots of Christianity, (How Jewish was Jesus and how Jewish do I have to be to follow him?), and a genuine dilemma: if Jesus was who we think he was, why was he so misunderstood? How could he be the Messiah and be rejected by so many people and be arrested and killed by the most religious people around?
Last week, we explored Matthew’s account of the days following Jesus’ birth, including the wise men run in with Herod, and their visit to Mary and the baby Jesus. When we left off, the wise men had been warned not to return to Herod. Mary and Joseph had been warned to flee, of all places, to Egypt, the very place from which the people’s earliest ancestors had fled slavery. If you read further, Herod then sends his troops on a rampage, killing first born sons. In Matthew, after Herod’s death, Mary and Joseph eventually return from Egypt and settle in Nazareth. They hide in the countryside because things are still not safe.
Matthew’s point is that from the moment Jesus was born, two things were happening: the least likely people were responding to him with acts of faith—strangers from the east who were following a star; and the “powers that be” were out to get Jesus and his parents and anyone else who dared to be in his company. To everyone who was troubled by why the powerful people would end up arresting Jesus and putting him to death, Matthew says, “They’d been plotting this from day one. Powerful people don’t like people who they think might take their power away.” To everyone who was bothered by the kind of people Jesus attracted—not the cool people but the outcasts and the foreigners and the overlooked and the ignored—Matthew says, “That, too, was happening from the beginning. All sorts of people don’t get it but a few actually do.
Luke takes us on a different journey. He tells us about a man who learns to listen (Joseph) and a woman who learns to speak up (Mary.) He tells us about common people—shepherds—who smelled uncommonly bad but who were nevertheless the honored guests at Jesus’ birth. Again, God works through the least likely people and the least likely people are the ones who recognize who he is. However, instead of fleeing to Egypt, in Luke’s Gospel, Mary and Joseph and the baby stay put. Instead of fleeing, they seem to fly under the radar. What do they do? They fulfill the law of Moses. At eight days, the baby is taken to the temple and officially named, “Jesus,” the name that Joseph had been given by the angel.
A few weeks later, they do what’s next on the list of the law’s requirements. They take their first born son to the temple for the rite of purification. The roots of the ritual rested in two ancient beliefs. On the one hand, from Eve on down, the male dominated culture had disparaged women as “unclean,” focussing on menstruation as God’s curse for Eve tempting Adam. (Leave it up to men who are unable to bear children to find a way to make the ability to bear a child a curse. Really guys?) So, Mary was going to the temple to be “purified,” which always makes me squirm.
On the other hand, something is going on with Jesus, too. If you remember the story of Abraham and Isaac, Abraham had waited forever to have a child with his wife, Sarah. (Sure, he’s already had a son with a slave but…that’s another story, I guess.). Anyway, Abraham and Sarah get to have a son, Isaac, whom they love in the way that you love a child when you’ve been waiting your whole life to have one. God, in the Hebrew Scriptures is a jealous God. “You shall have no other gods before me.” “You shall not worship idols.” Like many parents, Isaac, loves his beautiful son, maybe in the kind of way that draws God’s jealousy. The jealous God (my interpretation) says to Abraham, “I want you to sacrifice your child.”
It’s a totally horrifying scene, the kind of scene that must have scarred Isaac for life. (Honestly, it’s the kind of scene that makes me glad that I worship a loving God, not a jealous God.) Still, we are witnesses as Abraham takes Isaac up the hill, builds an altar and a pyre of wood and prepares to fulfill God’s order. God stops things at the last minute, which is better than the alternative, except it leaves most people still feeling a bit queasy. What if faith requires us to give up what we love most? We love our comforts in life. We love our friends and family? What if we have to let go of such things sometimes to do what God would have us do?
It’s safe to say that among the earliest followers of Christ, real sacrifices were being made. Saying, “Yes!” To being a follower of Christ was tearing families apart. Faith was dividing friends from friends. Faith was the reason that people were being arrested, and persecuted, and jailed and even killed. Faith was costly, in really concrete ways for these people.
When Jesus was born, though, such a cost would have only seemed like an abstraction. As a nod to Abraham, after people had their first son was they went to the temple under the pretense of being like Abraham, ready to sacrifice their son. However, everyone knew that this was never really going to happen. Instead, like Abraham, who ended up sacrificing a ram in Isaac’s place, they get to make a sacrifice of an animal at the temple. Show up. Do what you have to do. Dot the “I’s.” Cross the “t’s.” God’s happy. The temple makes a few bucks. You’re work is done here.
We shouldn’t miss Luke’s point though. This ritual for everyone else was just something everyone did. What we know is that there will be a day when Jesus will be sacrificed. Unlike the story of Isaac, nothing will stop this terrible thing from happening. This is such powerful foreshadowing.
We also need to notice that Joseph and Mary sacrifice two birds instead of a lamb. What does this mean? It’s simple. This is the accommodation that was made for poor people who couldn’t afford a lamb. Jesus was aligned with the poor all through his ministry. Luke’s audience would heard that from the start, Jesus and his parents were like them and knew the humiliation of being so poor that people made special accommodations. Presumably, with such a sacrifice, God was less pleased, the temple made less money, and you were just a little bit less acceptable.
Finally, when all is said and done and the law has been fulfilled and it seems like the day is over, things get interesting. A faithful old man who had been waiting his whole life to see the Messiah, which made even the religious authorities think he was a bit of a loon, comes up to Mary and Joseph and stares at their son. Luke tells us that this crazy guy is actually faithful and devout and full of the Holy Spirit which is funny because who really expects all that from a crazy guy, right? He takes Jesus in his arms and offers up a prayer of thanksgiving to God because God’s promise has been fulfilled: “This is the messiah.” Of course, this would be a lot more convincing if it wasn’t the local crazy guy yelling it. (And those who knew Jesus would laugh because they had seen a whole lot of seemingly crazy people turn out to be crazy for him!)
And again, we think, we’re done. Mary and Joseph fulfilled the law and did their due dilligence. They aligned themselves with the poor. They humored the crazy old man and made his day—and aren’t sentimental old men just the best (says the sentimental old man). “Our work is done here. Let’s go home…”
That’s when the crazy, sentimental old man has one more thing to say. He looks Mary in the eye as he his handing her child back to her and he says, “This child is going to stir up plenty of opposition. He’s going to make people uncomfortable and ask them to change. And, I’m sorry to say, he’s going to break your heart, too.” Imagine someone saying that to you about your child! The angels had told her about being the Prince of Peace and Emmanuel and all that good stuff. It was left to this crazy guy, Simeon, to tell Mary what the world would do to her son and what seeing that would do to her. (I always think of the “Pieta,” the statue of Mary with Jesus’ broken body in her arms.
And, again, we think, “That’s it,” but no. An old woman, a woman who was so faithful that she never left the temple, steps forward. She was famous for praying night and day, which made her seem a bit strange. Maybe she was one of those people who take this whole faith thing just a little too seriously. Anna takes one look at the child and begins to prophecy about who this child is and the work that he will do on God’s behalf for the redemption of Israel. Like Mary, herself, Anna is another woman who had been taught to remain silent who chooses instead to speak up. Imagine how the women who were hearing the Gospel would have resonated with Anna. Jesus empowered women and helped them find their voices. It turns out that was true from the start.
There’s a reason that we tell origin stories. George Washington cut down the cherry tree as a boy. The point, though, was that from the start he was a person of character. He could not tell a lie. Michael Jordan got cut from the basketball team in high school. The point, though, was that Jordan, from the start had an incredible work ethic. He didn’t let being cut defeat him. He just out worked everyone else from the start. What you see, when you look at a gifted or great person in their childhood are glimpses of what will distinguish them as an adult. They were who they were and things were the way they were from the start.
From the start, Jesus was raised in a faithful family, who made the effort to fulfill the law. From the start, Jesus was living in relative poverty, probably not as the poorest of the poor, but with limited means. From the start, the people who saw Jesus and recongnized who he was were not the cool people or the authorities. It was the people who were on the margins who saw him and understood. From the start, there was a sense that Jesus would not be ducking the sacrifice that was required.