I wonder if you’re familiar with fresh lychees? The fresh fruit is much more pleasant than the tinned variety. They are small fruit about the size of a walnut. On the outside is rough and robust skin, which might lead you think it wasn’t worth opening, but when one peels it, inside is a soft, white, juicy fruit with a perfectly delightful aroma and taste. The lychee is rough on the outside, yet the inside is so sensuous and so different. It’s a fruit of great contrast, presenting two quite different sides.
The account with which Luke presents us is also two-fold. It is a bitter-sweet tale in which there is both rejoicing over the coming of Christ the messiah, and yet there are also pointers to the cross that is to come, and to the pain that Jesus will undergo. Our story has two sides that are very different. Jesus the infant baby was already the saviour: he was already very special, but he was also to become the saviour as he grew up into his task and ministry.
Mary, the mother of Jesus, had gone to the Temple so that she could both present her first-born male child to YHWH, in accordance with the Israelite custom since the first Passover, so that she might be purified from the ritual uncleanliness of childbirth in accordance with the laws of Leviticus. A custom, incidentally, that is still offered in the Church of England’s Book of Common Prayer. Mary was sufficiently poor that she could only afford to make an offering of two birds, rather than the preferred sheep, arrived in the Temple to present her son to God and to receive her ritual purification. And what did she find when she arrived there? Not her expectation of priests and the business of the Temple, but Simeon, a blind old man who took the child in his arms, and Anna, eighty-four year old widow and prophet, who began praising God for the infant Jesus. A totally unexpected meeting: unexpected people in an unexpected place. So important was this encounter of Jesus with Simeon and Anna that Luke never describes the business for which Jesus and Mary were in the Temple. The purification and cleansing is seen off in just one sentence, and the rest of the passage is taken up with this encounter.
To Simeon and Anna this was more than just an encounter, it was a time of revelation. They were both very old and had led long lives of expectation. Now all of that was to be fulfilled. They had been waiting to see the Messiah, and now they had seen Jesus, the infant who was, and who was to become, their Saviour. To these two old people was revealed the hope of God for the world.
This revelation of God’s very self was a cause of great rejoicing. It is impossible for us to comprehend the strength of Simeon and Anna’s rejoicing. The joy of falling in love, the glory of God in the beauty of the world, the wonderful awareness of people who love and care for us: these joys cannot compare with the rejoicing of Simon and Anna when they saw their Saviour in the infant Jesus. They had lived long lives of expectation and that expectation was now completed. God had fulfilled their hope, their revelation was complete and their rejoicing was exceedingly great.
Simeon was so moved that he uttered his now famous words of praise: words so meaningful that they have become some of the best loved words in the liturgies of the Church. Lord, now lettest thou thy servant depart in peace…Simeon’s words are a celebration of the fulfilment of God’s promises. God had promised his people a Saviour and now this Saviour was here. The presentation of Christ in the Temple was very much a celebration of the fulfilment of God’s promises to God’s people, but also a celebration for sense of portent as the infant Jesus would grow into his role as Saviour and the inevitable journey to the cross that that would bring.
Our story does not end here. It is at this point that we stop thinking of the boy Jesus and turn our thoughts to the man Jesus. The promise has been fulfilled and we move from the cradle to the world. Since Christmas, through Epiphany, we have thought about the boy Jesus and what it means for God to give something of God’s very self to the world. Now it is time to move on and consider the grown up Jesus and the action of God in the world.
Simeon praised God for the glory of his coming to earth in this baby, but he did not stop there. His thoughts went on and he alluded to the pain and suffering that was to come for the grown up Jesus. Now Jesus was a babe in arms, but he was to become a person torn with anguish and torment, riddled with grieving. Simeon spoke of the sword that would pierce Jesus. The bleeding would be inescapable for Jesus, he could not avoid it. But along with that pain and suffering comes also the glory of Easter and the resurrection: truly the agony and the ecstasy, the victim and the victor.
In our story Luke shows us how Jesus was the Saviour and yet he was becoming the Saviour. By this God’s glory would be revealed and humanity would glorify God. In Jesus there was a promise of God’s glory: what it was and what it would become. Jesus brought glory to God as the Saviour and yet he was to bring ever more glory to God as he became the Saviour.
As Jesus both was and was becoming the saviour, in our own lives each us is both a child of God and becoming a child a of God. We are how we are as God made us, but we are not always what we were. Throughout life we change and grow and develop. We learn more of ourselves and discover new depths to our character. We encounter things we never knew about ourselves. Life isn’t always that simple, though. Sometimes our voyage of self-discovery brings pain as well as joy: often it can bring both, an inextricably linked mixture of both delight and hurt. This episode from the life of Jesus tells us of how Jesus was and how he was becoming. It challenges us to look at ourselves and see what we are and what we are becoming.
This can be dangerous, but it need not be. God made us how we are and how we are becoming. God knows us, better than we know ourselves, and God loves us. God loves us because of how we are, how God made us, not in spite of how we are. We are accepted by God and meant to love and live. We must also accept ourselves. Dora Greenwell’s hymn have some words that speak to us of God’s place for each of us as God’s people:
Thou bringest all again; with thee
is light, is space, is breadth and room
for each thing fair, beloved and free,
to have its hour of life and bloom.
Each heart’s deep instinct, unconfessed;
each lowly wish, each daring claim;
all, all, that life hath long repressed,
unfolds, undreading, blight or blame.
God accepts us, whoever we are, whenever we are, wherever we are, whatever we are, because as God’s creation we bring glory to God as we are and as we are becoming. God has made us all in many different ways and life is a journey of discovery as we see how God has made us and we meet the richness and diversity of ourselves. What could bring greater glory to God than a fulfilment of God’s promises to us in our creation ?
Today we celebrate a bitter-sweet, two sided, feast. We end our thinking of Jesus the boy and begin our thinking of Jesus the man: Jesus who was the Saviour and who was becoming the Saviour. This was a revelation of God’s very self to humanity, which was a cause of incomparable rejoicing. It was a fulfilment of God’s promises. Jesus would suffer great pain before he brought glory to God. In our lives we’re on a constant journey of becoming what God has made us to be. Although this can be both joyous and painful, if we accept ourselves as God made us, then our encounter with our own elaborate and beautiful selves will bring no greater glory to God.
Remember the lychee - its rough skin conceals a sensitive and beautiful interior made by God.
