That Crazy Old Man
That Crazy Old Man
Luke 2:23-35
One of the biggest struggles for people at the end of Jesus’ ministry was that, in so many ways, he wasn’t what people expected. (After all, isn’t it God’s job to do what we expect God to do?). Jesus wasn’t a trained rabbi or a religious authority. In fact, he was in trouble with those people from the start. Most people who heard him didn’t follow him. He ended up in trouble with the law. His “case” was reviewed by a host of authorities. And, when given the chance, the crowd—the people who were right there looking at him with their own two eyes—rejected him and chose, instead to free a common criminal—Barabus. The people expected a great king, a charismatic leader, someone who would make the nation great again. What kind of Messiah is that?
All of the four Gospels are written in order to reframe that story: he was the Messiah; we just missed it. Two of the four Gospels—Matthew and Luke—take a run at retelling the story by starting in Jesus’ infancy. Everything that we know about the events leading up to Jesus’ birth and the events following his birth come from those two Gospels.
So far, during Epiphany 2025, we have looked at what Matthew tells us. I’ll just point out a few of those things. First, instead of shepherds and angels and a barn and animals, Matthew tells us about foreigners—Magi who have followed a star. There are people who recognized who Jesus was. However, from the start, they were not the people who you would have expected to recognize him. Second, there was something familiar about how God was at work from the beginning. What’s going on seems a lot like what happened to the earliest ancestors in faith in fleeing from Egypt, only this time, the “good guys” are fleeing to Egypt. God is whispering to the faithful people to keep them safe. “If you think about it,” Matthew seems to suggest, “God didn’t do what we expected but God did things in the way God always does things if you look closely enough.” Finally, Matthew makes a simple point: “If you want to know why the authorities would be so opposed to Jesus, just consider how power makes people crazy. Jesus was a threat to their power and that mattered more than any Messiah.
This morning, we start to look at the Gospel of Luke, the other Gospel that tells the story of Jesus’ early days. However, Luke tells a totally different story. On the one hand, at Christmas time we rely heavily on Luke’s account because he gives us what we love—the angels, Mary and Joseph, the shepherds, “No room in the inn,” and the “little Lord Jesus, laying down his sweet head.” Almost everything that we love in our pageant comes from Luke, except for the occasional toucan that we might add to the tableau. On the other hand, there are no wise men, there is no mention of Herod or any massacre, there is no flight to Egypt. In fact, Luke tells us that the family eventually “returned” to Nazareth in Galilee because that’s where they had come from in the first place.
Let’s pause, just for a moment, on this last point. For Matthew, writing to a Jewish audience, one question to answer was why a Messiah would come from a “hick” place like Nazareth. Matthew’s answer was that the family ended up there to be safe from the powers that be. For Luke, who is writing good news to the poor and the overlooked and the ignored, it makes complete sense that, from the start, Jesus would be immersed in the world of people whom the rest of the nation would already have dismissed. As an infant, Jesus is immersed in the world of the people whom he would grow up to love and heal and teach.
As we make the turn from Matthew to Luke, though, I don’t want to pretend that somehow they are telling the same story. They are not! Nor can you lay them over the top of one another and say, “Well, even though they are telling the story differently they could actually fit.” I don’t think so. I think that what we have is two separate and distinct stories that we should allow to stand on their own. If we do, each account, on it’s own, can shed different light on how we think about Jesus, as an infant and as an adult.
So, Jesus was visited by Magi, pursued by a king, fled to Egypt and barely found a safe place to grow up in Nazareth…OR…here is Luke’s vision of that same time. You don’t have to pick one or the other. You do, though, have to let them speak for themselves.
Interestingly…and I do think this is really interesting… Luke, the Gospel that was written to the non-Jewish or Gentile audience, starts by showing us Joseph and Mary doing the kinds of things that faithful Jewish people would do. This gives me yet another chance to say something to you that I’ve said for a long time: Jesus was Jewish, through and through. Eight days after his birth, Joseph and Mary took him to the temple to be circumcized and named. At the temple, they named him Jesus, as they had been told to name him by the angels. This naming and circumcision ritual would have been something that everyone with a newborn son would have done. Luke’s audience would have heard about this and thought, “Yup, I remember when we did that, too!’
As our text unfolds, we see Joseph and Mary and Jesus going to the temple again. This visit would have had two purposes. First, every first born son was to be presented to God. What’s going on here? This ritual was grounded in the story of Abraham and Isaac. Abraham and his wife, Sarah, had finally been blessed by God with a son, very late in their lives. They adored their son! One day, God tells Abraham to sacrifice Isaac. Abraham takes his son up a mountain, builds an altar and prepares to sacrifice him. However, God stops him at the last minute and has Abraham sacrifice a ram instead. Now, families are being asked to recreate that moment, ritually. They are not going to sacrifice their son but, like Abraham, they are being asked to remember that they love God more.
(All I will say this morning is that I’m pretty sure that Isaac had to be dealing with PTSD for the rest of his life after that moment with his father and that Abraham had to be just a tad bit wary of God from then on, as well.)
Luke mentions that this was a purification ritual, as well. This “purification,” though, wasn’t about purifying the child. Rather, in Jewish tradition, it was the mother who needed to be purified. This is almost as troubling as the whole child “sacrifice” dimension to this day. These women have recently done the most amazing thing that a human being can do—give birth to another human being—and they need to be purified? Let me guess…yes…it was men who came up with that.
Now, I can’t help but react as a 21st century person to these ancient rituals. We’ve changed in how we think about child sacrifice—ritual or real. I’m pretty sure about that. At times, I think we’ve changed in how we think about women—maybe…on our good days?In any event, our 21st century reactions matter but they shouldn’t blind us to Luke’s point to his first century audience.
What would have struck Luke’s audience was that what was sacrificed on Jesus’ behalf were two birds. Animal sacrifices (which we should acknowledge would be horrifying in their own right today) were a huge fundraiser for the temple. The big ticket items would have been big animals that had been fed for a long time. The elite would have paid a heavy price to make that sacrifice. Two birds would have been the “out” for the poor. This would have been a gracious nod to the poor but it would also have been an open invitation to look down on them: “It seems they couldn’t even scrape together the shekels for a ‘real’ sacrifice.”
In this moment, Luke deals with one of the questions that would have been there during Jesus’ ministry and following his death and resurrection: if Jesus was the Messiah then why would he have been so poor? He was a homeless, itinerant preacher and healer who depended on the kindness of strangers to eat and have a place to stay. For all of history, people have expected that the holy people would be recognizable because God would bless them in visible, tangible ways that would mark their success. Why didn’t Jesus have an extra nice robe and a three bedroom ranch in Jerusalem? Why did he have to be so…well…poor?
Luke tells us that Jesus was exactly who God intended for him to be—aligned with the poor, the sick, the outcast and the rejected. He is not only sympathetic to them. He is one of them. Luke’s Gospel is not good news for the winners in this world. Luke’s Gospel is good news for those who desperately need some good news.
All of which brings us to Simeon. On the day when Joseph and Mary are doing exactly what any average person would have done—taking their newborn son to the temple and taking care of the purification right for Mary and giving money they really didn’t have to the temple—a guy—Simeon—spots them. Before that visit is over, Simeon would give Mary yet another thing to ponder in her heart.
Who was Simeon? He was nobody, at least to everyone around him. He was the crazy old guy who seemed like he was constantly either on his way to the temple or already there. He was the guy who would corner you at coffee hour. (They had coffee hour, then, too, right, with some Middle Eastern version of donut holes and cheese and crackers?) If he cornered you, he would have told you, “You know…God promised me that before I died I would see the Messiah!’ At that point, you would start desperately looking for some way to make a graceful exit. Most of the time though, you would have treated Simeon as if he was invisible. He was old. He was a little crazy. He didn’t matter. (How many older people still get treated that way today?)
Simeon is at the temple is at the temple when Mary and Joseph and the baby arrive. As someone who is never noticed, he notices this family, whom everyone is ignoring. He makes a bee line for them, and, I assume, in a way that must have made Mary flinch and Joseph clench his fists, Simeon takes the child in his arms. I don’t think this is a “look at that sweet old man holding a baby” moment. I think this is a moment with a touch of danger attached: “Oh God, the crazy guy is holding the child!”
Simeon says three things. First, this child is the one that I’ve been waiting my whole life to see. This is the one. Second, he says something surprising: this child is not going to be the Messiah that you’re expecting. Basically, the mere presence of this child is going to reveal a lot about a lot of people. Some will fall and some will rise because of him. Finally, Simeon looks Mary straight in the eye and says, “This child is going to grow up and break your heart.”
God works through common people like Joseph and Mary. God’s work and God’s presence is recognized by someone whom everyone else avoided and ignored. God is fully present among us, if only we have eyes to see…