Sermons from Saint Mark's
Entries by Andrew Ashcroft (32)
Four Elements
Andrew Ashcroft
My parents, in a nice haphazard sort of a way exposed me early on to the basic classical literature and ideas that they thought I needed to know. The raciness of some of the Greco-Roman myths was not lost on them, but they thought that perhaps the myths were not much more risqué than the stories that I was likely to encounter in the Scriptures (which is true) and besides, surely it was better to learn about the birds and bees from the Greeks and Romans than from the gossip and innuendo of schoolchildren or the pages of a magazine. My father, being a scientist at heart, thought that it wouldn't be a bad idea to learn about the classical version of science, and so he taught me about the four elements, of which the ancients thought that all material was composed: earth, air, fire and water. All the elements are present in us: the water in our bodies, the earthy fleshiness of us, the air in our lungs and the fire in our minds and hearts.
I did not long remain with the Greeks and Romans, but moved on into Norse mythology and on from there into the stories of other religions, and soon it became relatively clear to me, even to the mind of a child, that there are certain images and themes, certain fears and hopes that cross the lines of faith, culture, and history. The hero with a thousand faces, the primal fear of darkness, of drowning in deep waters, the panic of the woods at night, the fear of death, the gift and danger of fire, these are images and stories that continue with force and power in all ages and cultures and faiths.
I always feel as if the Great Vigil of Easter is that most fundamental of Christian services because it is composed of those basic images: new fire kindled, water in the font, earth over a tomb, and air coming back into the stilled lungs. And the stories that we recollect tonight, the stories of God's great salvation wrought over many long years are stories that are fundamentally about who we are, why we are the way we are, and how God interacts with us.
First, there is the story of creation. God separates the waters, and draws forth land from the waters. God sets the lights in the sky, the fiery sun and stars, and then out of the earth draws trees and creatures and finally sculpts humans out of the earth, filled with the breath of God. The first act of God that we comprehend and know is that God has created, and created order and brought waters, and fire, and earth and air into some kind of miraculous balance, and declared it good.
But, as has always been, and will be until our final healing, human hearts and minds were capable of darkening, and so the waters that were kept in check were poured out upon the earth, but even in his wrath and destruction, God did not abandon his creation, and saved the earth and air that were animals and humans, and wrote in the air of the sky with water the sign and symbol of his covenant.
Ages later, when his covenanted people, those in the long lineage of Noah and Abraham, were enslaved, God sent his servant Moses to free them and lead them from bondage. He went before them in fire and cloud, and parted the waters so that they could walk on dry earth, and protected and saved them.
And although again their hearts and minds were darkened, God fed them in the wilderness and gave them water from the rock. Though they were forced to walk the earth for forty years, yet still God protected and fed them, and at the last brought them into the Promised Land, where they were home.
Even there, even full of the knowledge of God's sustenance and graciousness, brought into the fullness of God's covenant with them, symbolized in the gift of land, their hearts and minds were darkened, and so God sent the prophets to call them repentance, and to declare to them the graciousness of God: the God who gives waters to the thirsty, and rain and snow upon the earth; the God who transforms the skeletal wreck of death into flesh, and breathes upon that flesh, and restores life to it.
Earth and air, water and fire; the great elements that are present tonight in their primal way, that have deep places in the human mind and experience, and that are the signs of God's action and presence in the world throughout the long record of the forging of God's salvation.
Lent began forty days ago, on Ash Wednesday, with the reminder that we are dust and to dust we shall return. As quickly as the grass withers, the air will leave our lungs for the last time, and our loved ones will take our bodies, and cover them with earth, and we will return to the ground from which we and all that lives has been drawn. And so the question of tonight, or perhaps of our lives is a simple one: If after lives of unending struggle against the darkness that constantly invades our human minds and hearts, those hearts will stop beating, and we—you and I—will go down to death , what does the little fire we have kindled together in this night matter?
What does it matter if God is evident in occasional moments, in fire, water, air and earth; where is our salvation?
The question is, “Can these bones live?” My bones and your bones.
Tonight matters because the Word became flesh, and dwelt among us. The Word became earth and air, was washed with the waters of Baptism and flamed with the fire of the Spirit. The God who is evident in the elements, who creates and sustains the creation, did not in the final peak of his salvation simply operate on the creation, on earth and air, fire and water, but became them. He tramped the earth of Palestine, and ate of the earth's bounty, he drank and sailed the waters, and breathed the wind blowing where it will. And his breathe ceased, and his body died, and he was laid under earth, like we all one day will be.
But the story doesn't end there. If it did, tonight might matter little. The air of his lungs dissipated, his flesh cold as the grave, the fire of his spirit extinguished; for three days there is silence. And yet he rises glorious. Here is the great reversal, not simply God's power acting again and again to save his people, and call Israel back and restore creation, but the death of death, the destruction of sinfulness, the freedom from bond and the restoration of our right humanity. For he carries us with him in his resurrection.
Since we have been baptized with Christ into his death, death no longer is terrible. Since we are the same earth and air as him, since we have been washed with the water of baptism, and burned with the fire of the Holy Spirit, the resurrection raises us up from the darkness and death of our lives and hearts and makes our humanity glorious; our flesh like until his own.
The Word became flesh, and gives of the things of earth to sustain us, wheat for bread, water for wine, the stuff of earth become the things of heaven, all of it changed, redeemed, restored, because Christ is risen.
And this is not mere rhetoric. The darkness of our hearts and minds is there still, the darkness of the world still evident all around us. But as the Word has become flesh, as the light of his fire has burned in the darkness, even so the darkness did not overcome it. Christ rises glorious, scattering matter about him like fire, his breathe is warm and moist, the dust of the tomb still on him, breaking the darkness around him. He comes into my darkness, into your darkness, the real inane darknesses in which we often find ourself, and he bids us rise, and follow him. Christ is arisen as he promised, death no longer has dominion; he is present to us always, and makes of our world an endless delight. He fills our mouths with laughter and fills the hungry with his own flesh and blood. Alleluia, alleluia. Christ is risen.
Preached by Fr. Andrew Ashcroft
The Great Vigil of Easter
3 April 2010
Saint Mark's Church, Philadelphia
Two brothers
There can be few stories that speak to us like the parable of the prodigal son, from the Scriptures this morning. Who cannot hear the story, and find our way into it through at least one character? Perhaps your way into the story is through the feelings of the father. Perhaps you feel those emotions that parent's experience during the struggles of their children to come to maturity. Perhaps, you see yourself through the father's assent to his son's demands, or through his welcome despite his son's foolishness, or through his pleading with the eldest son to come into the feast for the younger brother. Perhaps those are your ways into the parable this morning.
Or perhaps you find your way into the story through the younger son. Perhaps you have wandered in far off lands, living slightly wildly. Or perhaps, even if you haven't got to actually live as wildly as the younger son, perhaps you've really wanted to. Perhaps you feel the strictures of your current life and long, every once in a while, to break free of them, and to throw caution to the winds and to go a little crazy.
Or perhaps you resonate with the elder son, the responsible one, the one who is constantly doing the “right” thing, and telling everyone who will listen about it. Perhaps you have that sense of responsibility and resentment when it comes to your parents, your work, your parish or your life.
Or perhaps you fall into the silent camp – the character that we don't hear in the parable – the mother. Where is she, the wife of the gracious father, the mother of these two very different sons – dead perhaps, or more likely relegated to the fringe – where wives and mothers have generally been made to sit quietly? What is she saying, during this whole drama – what passes through her heart when her son is wandering and lost, or when her sons are at odds? How much is she agonizing about her husband's graciousness or her youngest son's maturity, or her elder son's sense of duty.
Most sermons, at least that I've heard about this passage, resonate around the father's generosity and grace, giving the younger son a portion of the estate in the first place (which he wasn't obligated to do, and certainly not before his death), and then welcoming him back despite his loose living and poor stewardship, which is, of course, all very interesting and good, (at least it is the first four times you've heard that sermon). There is a great deal to be made of the father figure, but generally, and perhaps this is not true of you, perhaps you are further along the way to becoming an actual Christian, I don't find myself resonating or sympathizing with the father figure. I am not gracious enough, I think, to feel the father's struggle to be gracious and forgiving to his offspring. No, if I'm in the story, I'm there as one of the two brothers, or more likely, as a blend of both – the officious one and the libertine, the repressed and the wanton, the dull and the interesting.
Both of those brothers are a blend in me, and although some days it seems as if one might win out over the other, often they are simply mixed and I'm left dependent on grace either way.
But isn't it interesting that if this is a parable about God's grace, it is also, or perhaps foremost a parable about the human response to grace, and the eldest son doesn't come off at all well. Which at first blush is hard to understand – except there is, in his tone when he speaks to his father, the hot worm of resentment. “Listen! For all these years I have been working like a slave for you, and I have never disobeyed your command; yet you have never given me even a young goat so that I might celebrate with my friends.” Which says a great deal about how the elder son wants to live, how he wants to be a little dissolute, how he has wanted to throw some wild parties but hasn't, and how he resents the younger brother for doing or being what he wants to do or be.
So the son who comes of the worst in the parable isn't the wild child, the black sheep, the morally dubious one – it is the resentful one, the perfectionist, the momma and daddy's boy – who wants fairness when it suits him, justice when it fits him and who doesn't need grace, or at least he doesn't think he needs it, because he is doing “the right thing.”
For some reason the elder brother, besides reminding me of my foibles as the oldest child, my passionate sense of justice (or is it just resentment?), my perfectionism (or is it just my need for control?), despite all that, for some reason, the elder brother always reminds me of the religious folk who have it all figured out. You probably know someone like this – who knows the way God thinks – or who know the way that everyone should live, or who know how the Scriptures should be read and interpreted. That person is always only too happy to share with you their knowledge and their certainty, if you give them the least bit of leeway. There is even, of course, a version of this which is Episcopalian, or rather there are several. Perhaps you recognize one or both of them: there is the certainty of the way things should be done (the sense that our way is the best way) and that somehow doing liturgy with a faux British accent, or decently and in due order is the way that God intended it. And lets sing “Jerusalem” while we are at it, to complete the image of Victorian schmaltz. The other version is the certainty that we have about the conflicts of our day. We live in a church of certainty about human sexuality, or about the role of women, indeed a church of two certainties, screaming at each other across a great divide. Aren't we great, we who are keeping to the true faith, or alternatively, we who are wonderfully progressive – look at us, and our the self-congratulation and the self- aggrandizement – and suddenly, ouch, I think I strained a muscle trying to pat myself on the back! Look at us, aren't we great?
And of course the moral, the seed at the heart of this parable is that we aren't great. Whether we are wanton, dissolute hedonists, or aren't but resent the lucky ones who are, we aren't good. The right actions for the wrong reasons are no better than the wrong actions for the honest reasons – in fact, they are perhaps worse, inasmuch as they make us sure of our superiority, our goodness, our correctness – for they remove us from that fundamental position of bowed head, and honest, bare humility – “I am no longer worthy to be called your son.”
The parable of the prodigal son is a parable obviously about grace, but it isn't so much about the abundance and mystery of grace, but rather about the reception of grace; the father is a strange mysterious character and his grace no less so, but our response to that grace, how that plays out in the dissolution or resentment of our lives, that is the focus of the parable and in the same way that the grace in our lives is mysterious, the way that we deny or accept that grace, is mysterious and we find ourselves daily somewhere between the older and younger brother, somewhere between the knowing and acceptance of our folly and the illusion of our arrival in a state of grace. Day in, day out that ever- changing window, between folly and illusion is the extent that we are open to God's grace – and there is nothing in the parable about our progressiveness or our traditionalism, about the way that we should behave, but only the reality that we have not yet arrived, and probably won't, this side of death.
The story ends here, with the father pleading with his elder son to come in to the feast. We don't know whether the son ends up coming to the party or not. If he is at all like me, the odds are about 50/50. He might have given in, and come to the feast and celebrated his brother's return, or he might have stayed outside, stewing in his own righteousness. Perhaps the story remains unfinished because we too are standing in the field, waiting to decide whether we are going into the feast, or living on in our resentment.
The word “feast” for some reason always makes me think Nordic thoughts: high halls, and huge sides of meat, and plenty of beer in the hands of large and jovial men. And somehow, in my mind, I imagine that the celebratory feast, at the end of this parable is taking place in a Norse hall.
I like to imagine that the doorway into the father's hall, where all the sounds of merriment are coming from, is a low doorway. The kind of doorway where one has to stoop down, and bow one's head to get in, and I like to think that going into that hall requires us to have, just for a moment, the posture of that younger son, penitent before his father. “I have sinned against heaven and before you; I am no longer worthy to be called your son.” The stiff necked, the certain righteous, can't get into the hall. And I pray that I, and all of us, may have the grace to bow our heads, and to know that we don't deserve to be called children, and that still our God welcomes us with open arms and rejoicing.
Preached by Fr. Andrew Ashcroft
Saint Mark's Church, Philadelphia
14 March 2010
Longing and desire
Somewhere near the heart of us is a wrenching longing. We experience it in different ways: as nostalgia, as homesickness, as restlessness, as grief and as mourning. Psychologists tell us that we learn to long from our birth, when we long for mother, to return to the warmth and comfort of the womb, and although we long in increasingly subtle ways, there is still the sense that we long interminably, desperately, at length – throughout our lives. From the beginning to our last breaths.
Sometimes we can put words to our longing – “love,” “friendship,” “beauty,” “home.” Sometimes it is a fundamentally ceaseless condition – a chronic desire that brooks no vocabulary – but perhaps a tune catches us, or a poem, or a sunset, and we know that ache which most haunts artists and those who are a little mad – that gives to the experience of life a poignance and depth, and which makes us restless to the end of our days.
I can never hear the Gospel from this morning without hearing in the words of Jesus a similar longing:
“Jerusalem, Jerusalem, the city that kills the prophets and stones those who are sent to it! How often have I desired to gather your children together as a hen gathers her brood under her wings, and you were not willing!” “How often have I desired to gather your children together...”
The words grab me somewhere in my guts and twist, and whisper of so much longing – the longing that brings us to the edge of tears. Jesus' deep longing for his people comes through his words. There are in his words hints of the longing of the Israelites for a homeland, for a city of their own in the midst of their enemies, and there are hints of Jesus' own longing for his people that he loves, longs for and wishes to embrace. And there also the deep sadness in that longing, for even as Jesus wishes to embrace his people, he knows that they will not embrace him back, and even as his people long for a Messiah, they will receive Jesus no more than they received the prophets.
The longing, and the sadness and the desire in Jesus' words is maternal, like a mother hen, Jesus longs for his people, desires to gather and protect them. “Jerusalem, Jerusalem” – the longing, the sadness and the desire. This seems, at first blush, a strange little reading for this second Sunday of Lent. Jesus predicts his own death and resurrection, albeit in indirect, riddle-like ways, he scolds Herod, he scolds Jerusalem, and reveals his longing and desire for his people, and that is about it. There is no ethical teaching, no parable, and so I wonder if the longing and desire of Jesus for Jerusalem is not the teaching we are supposed to glean from this reading. I think perhaps the longing of these two sentences is perhaps more important to our Lenten journey than knowing what is to come when Jesus arrives at Jerusalem.
In the midst of this Lenten time when we are mindful of our sinfulness and the degree to which we fail to love God and fail to walk according to his commands – in the midst of this purgative time, when we give up food, or drink, or television (as my household has), we do it because we need to be reminded that Lent is about longing and desire, about an emptiness and a void, a sense of homelessness and a sense of incompleteness. Lent is about longing and desire and the longing and desire of fasting, of purgation, of mourning and desolation bring us again hopefully into the hunger and desire that we have for God. Lent is about what is lacking in our lives, or what is present and distorts our lives. And the longing and
the desire that is somewhere near the very heart of us is a longing and desire for something absent, that we replace with other things: people, or work, or money, or power, or those other little idols. All of which are there to shield us from the ache and the longing that we have for God.
Because we are not, as a culture, very good at living in a place of hunger, of desire, and of longing. We tend to foreclose, to satiate, to substitute, to anesthetize, but Lent and the longing and desire of Lent ask us to simply wait, and hope; to wait in the slow ache and agony of longing and desire for that which we cannot fully name, but which we recognize when we come face to face with it, or recognized reflected in the mirror of creation, or of a human face, or in a quiet sorrow.
The hope of this Lenten place is two-fold. One hope is that if we sit in the longing desirous waiting of Lent for long enough, we might come to recognize that our waiting, our desire, our longing is a reflection of a far greater desire and longing – Jesus looking at Jerusalem and longing for the people whose Messiah he is, and God longing for us like a lover, a mother, the Creator who made us for companionship, in his own image, and whose longing and desire is an infinite echoing cry of which ours is a slight tiny version.
We long, in other words, because God longs. We desire because God desires, and sets in us a similar desire to that which cries out in the Godhead. And so our longing and our desire is not ours alone, but part of the great symphony of the creation, echoed by stars and stones, even haltingly by foolish people.
The other hope of that this Lenten place is not eternal, that we will not have to wait forever in the slow agony of unsatisfied desire, but that someday, we will obtain what we desire, we will seek and find, we will receive “far more than we can ask or imagine.” Someday, we will get home.
For God desires us far more than we desire in our own halting fashion. God longs to welcome us, God longs, in a very real way, to have us, to possess us. And so Lent is not a punishment, but a training, not a mortification without cause, but a fast wherein we learn to taste again the heavenly food and drink, and to recognize our longing for what it is, not about any earthly thing, but a longing for Eden, for walking in the Garden with God, for the Other by which and for which we were created.
“Jerusalem, Jerusalem, how I long to gather your children...”
Preached by Fr. Andrew Ashcroft
Saint Mark's Church, Philadelphia
28 February 2010
Awe and terror
I was reading recently a history of how people in different times and places have interacted and reacted to space, which may sound rather abstract but is actually quite fascinating. Throughout history, people have generally seemed to find a similar awe and amazement in different spaces. The magnificence of Chartres Cathedral has been experienced by people for 800 years without much reservation, but there are some notable exceptions. One of the most interesting examples of people responding very differently in a time and place was the response of people during the 18th century to the Alps. There was, apparently, no awe or astonishment at the beauty of the Matterhorn; instead people found the Alps rather terrifying, and the practice if one was forced to undergo the trial of crossing the Alps was to travel in a closed carriage so that one would not have to experience the terror of the Alps.
Which I would find incomprehensible except that I think those two emotions, awe and terror are not too far removed from each other, and perhaps go very much hand in hand.
Awe is one of the glories of human emotion – to feel astonished and overwhelmed by wonder at a glorious sunset over the ocean, or the space of a cathedral, or the silence of an old growth forest.
Beyond the awe that we feel at the natural world is the awe that we feel when we encounter the transcendent, indeed sometimes it is the glory of nature that leads us to that encounter with God. Encountering the mystery of the Divine is always awe inspiring, often unexpected, and it is not unusual to have a feeling of unworthiness, of smallness, even of terror in the face of the God who is wholly powerful and other. Like the Alps, we may encounter the majesty of God with terror, with a wish to withdraw and block out the vastness and majesty of that sight.
We have that sense of awe and of unworthiness expressed both in the reading from Isaiah and in the Gospel this morning. The prophet has a vision of the Lord glorious and enthroned and it is the kind of experience that leaves him blind and groping, deeply aware of his own unworthiness in the face of the heavenly court crying “Holy,” shaking the hinges of the Temple with their voices. “Woe is me!” he says, “for I am a man of unclean lips and live among a people of unclean lips; yet my eyes have seen the King, the Lord of hosts!”
Simon Peter has a similar experience in the Gospel. After a night of fruitless fishing, as he is washing his nets, Jesus gets into his boat to teach, and once he's finished teaching, he tells Peter to let down his nets on the other side of the boat. Despite how ridiculous the request is, Peter tries it, and ends up swamping both the boats with a massive catch of fish. And like the prophet, Peter is brought up short by an awareness of his own limitation and sinfulness. Falling to his knees he says “Go away from me, Lord, for I am a sinful man.”
However we encounter the Divine, it can be a sobering experience that brings home to us our finitude and our own very real lack of perfection, before a God whose worship shakes the doors of the Temple.
And that is not an inappropriate emotion – however much we encounter God in the small things of life, in quiet moments and kind words, or however much we encounter God in the person of Jesus, speaking to us through the Scriptures, God is both encountered in small things, and in the moments of glorious holiness and terror: worth of the adoration of seraphs, glorious and majestic.
It is, I suppose, out of fashion to speak about the overwhelming side of God. Generally we are told that this God is experienced by people as unapproachable, as too reminiscent of the sometimes difficult and judgmental images of God that some of us learned in childhood. Moreover, we are told that God enthroned as King is a difficult image, for most of us have no experience of kings and how can we possibly related to God as an extra-large monarch, with all the trappings of royalty?
Which I suppose is all true in a way, but is also somewhat sad, because if the God of glory and terror is downplayed, or fails to make it into our teaching, preaching and thinking about God, the awe tends to go away as well.
As, of course, does the framework for interacting with God's majesty and power. If you look at both passages that we hear read today, the goal of the vision of God's majesty or the power expressed by the God who is enfleshed is not to make us feel guilty or unworthy, although that might be an unintended effect, but because God simply IS. Powerful and infinite. I am that I am. Glorious, magnificent. Worthy of eye covering worship. Worthy of having the Temple filled with smoke, whether the choir likes it or not. Worthy of that perpetual chant of “Holy, Holy, Holy.”
And rather than our finitude and unworthiness being the occasion for God's wrath or judgment, in both these passages they are instead the beginning of our healing and calling.
The prophet finds himself cleansed and purified, and then when the God of terrible majesty asks for volunteers, the prophet finds himself offering to go “Here I am; send me!”
And rather than Jesus agreeing with Simon Peter that he is unworthy, Jesus simply tells him not to be afraid. We may encounter God's holiness with terror, but we do encounter it, and it changes us forever.
The majesty and wonder of the God of glory is not the terror of judgment. It is the awe that the God whose worship shakes the doors of the Temple, the hem of whose majestic robe fills the Temple, that same God also is available to us in quiet, is present with us in bread and wine, can compact the vastness of that robe down into the frame of a tiny child, and comes to us despite our sinfulness and foolishness, asking “Who shall I send?”
To encounter the God of majesty and power is to come to terms with our smallness before his glory, and our vocation to speak to the peoples, to fish for people, to work as God wills, despite our smallness and sinfulness. Not because we are cowed by his majesty or frightened at his glory, but because the vision of the God of glory brings up in us the deepest awe and wonder, and the will to worship God ceaselessly. “Holy, holy, holy.”
Preached by Fr. Andrew Ashcroft
Saint Mark's Church, Philadelphia
7 February 2010
Waiting in silence for God
Sometimes the Scriptures give us complex parables to untangle, or esoteric passages nearly illegible with the passage of time, and the preacher must perform feats of extreme hermeneutical acrobatics to come to some sort of explanation. Sometimes the Scriptures give us stories that are obvious, and it is the duty of the preacher to soften the hardness of the teaching, if only a little bit. And sometimes in the Scriptures, there is simply an image, so laden with symbolism and historical import that the preacher gets to simply hold the image up, and slowly turn it for all to see. Simeon, that old man of faith, waiting on God’s messiah and holding the infant Jesus is that kind of image: laden and poignant.
There is, all the way through the Hebrew Scriptures a kind of sad and silent waiting for God. God, the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, of Sarah, and Leah and Rachel, the God who chose his people, and made a covenant with them, and led them from exile and through the wilderness, and gave the law, that God, despite the years of prophets, judges and kings, that God is silent, and the people of Israel wait for God’s movement, for God’s salvation with a longing and a hunger of the deepest sort.
For it seems as if God has abandoned his people. As if he has left them, finally, to their idolatry and sinfulness. They couldn’t keep focused on God for the time it took Moses to climb the mountain to receive the law. How could they possibly keep God central to their lives, surrounded by other tribes, by distractions and by the cares of life lived now in the land that they had long awaited?
“Turn again to God” the prophets warned the people of Israel, and they did not. Again and again God sent prophets to call them home, and punished Israel with battle and exile, and begged, pleaded and thundered, and still the people of Israel, the chosen people, did not return, did not repent.
And so Jerusalem was overcome and the Temple was destroyed, most of her people were carried into exile, and what was perhaps worse than all of that was the terrible silence which descended, and God no longer spoke to his people. Even when he fought with them and punished them, God was at least speaking to them, but now a silence has come down, and there are no words from God, there are no messengers and no prophets.
And the people of Israel are left waiting, in silence. Waiting is something that they are good at, something that they have learned to do through the long years of their interaction with God. They waited in Egypt and they waited in the wilderness; they waited for a king, and then they waited for a decent king. They waited to come back from Babylon and now they are waiting to see what happens with the Roman Empire.
They are getting good at waiting, or at least resigned to waiting. And what they wait is the savior who is promised again and again through all their interactions with God, the one that can restore Israel again.
All of that is there in the background, as Simeon stands there in the Temple, holding a forty day old child. Simeon is an image of disparate pieces at the very moment of intersection, the place between the longing and waiting of the people of Israel throughout the years, and the advent of God’s savior and messiah, at the moment when prophesy moves from possible to actual and dreams turn into reality. He stands there, right on the cusp of waiting being transformed into joy, and longing coming to satiety, desire to completeness.
So laden is the moment, so poignant the vision of God’s salvation in the frame of a tiny child that Simeon bursts into song. It matters not that death is near, for God’s savior is here, and he has held him in his arms.
It is a glorious image and symbol, an old man and an infant, a man who has lived in hope for God’s action, and a child whose potential will shake the foundations of the world. And Simeon, death near him, breaks out in a song of praise to the God who has been silent for so long, but is now working: “Mine eyes have seen thy salvation which though has prepared for all the world to see, a light to enlighten the nations and the glory of your people Israel.”
And because he stands there, holding the savior of the world, an image and sign of God’s redemption, Simeon is a better answer to the questions about God’s silence and God’s absence, that constantly arise.
For those questions are constant from year to year and age to age. Where is God when his people are in bondage to a foreign empire? Where now is God in Haiti, where in Iraq? Why is God silent when the planet is being ravished, and millions live in abject poverty? Why is God absent when my life seems to be falling apart?
Simeon holding Jesus is far better than a theological or a philosophical answer to the question of God’s absence, in 1st century Palestine, or quake-ravished Haiti. The answer to our questions is cradled in an old man’s arms. The tiny child offers no theological answer, no philosophical defense of God’s absence and silence. All that he offers is himself, a tiny frame, a wisp of hair, and miniature fist.
Simeon doesn’t claim that this is God’s messiah. He does nothing except hold the child, and praise God. Nothing need be said, for God’s absence and God’s silence is not undone by human words, but by the child who is the savior of the world: into the silence of the world a word has been spoken and the Logos has come down to be God with us.
Preached by Fr. Andrew Ashcroft
2 February 2010
The Feast of the Presentation of Our Lord in the Temple: Candlemas
St. Mark's Church, Philadelphia