Heralding the New (Simeon's Song from Luke 2)

On the fireplace mantle of my parent’s home, shepherds, magi, a barn full of animals, and an angel hovering above, have attended the holy family these last few weeks. The Nativity set hails back to my mother’s time as a nurse in the early 1970s, a career she gave up when lo unto her, I was born. During her years there, my mother was given this nativity set made by some of the patients. It is one of her treasures in this life, and every year, the Nativity figurines appear in the wooden manger scene that my father built. Even though I do not get home very often for Christmas, I know without a doubt, the Nativity is there.

The Holy Family appears on fireplace mantles, windowsills, even underneath some household’s Christmas trees. Folk who would not consider themselves religious will have one. Perhaps it is just the cultural influence, but I wonder if the image strikes a primal chord within. The scene of Mary and Joseph and the baby Jesus reminds us of one facet of human life: family. That word “family” can be complicated, as not all household configurations are the same, not all families have good stories to tell. Somehow, thought, deep down, we are drawn to these figures of mother, father, and child. The Holy Family is holy, yet they are also like us, persons hewn in the same flesh as the rest of us, prone to suffering and joy, part of this world where one can know great success and great hardship.

While most of us just put out the Holy Family or Nativity sets and leave them there, there is one tradition that recalls the great difficulty of Mary and Joseph finding no immediate welcome or hospitality. For many Hispanic Christians, there is a grand tradition celebrated from December 16 to Christmas Eve, called Las Posadas, with each house in the neighborhood agreeing to be the host of each evening’s celebration. Each evening, adults, and children go through the neighborhood, carrying candles, little statues of Joseph guiding a donkey bearing the pregnant Mary, and the crowd sings of the Holy Family looking for a place. They go household to household, ritually turned away until they arrive at the host’s home, where they are welcomed inside.

The lack of hospitality in Bethlehem is one part of the many hardships endured by the Holy Family. The annunciation of Jesus’ birth to Mary is scandalous as Mary conceives the child out of wedlock and while most certainly a virgin. The hardship of travel to Bethlehem while pregnant, the annoyance of having to be compliant with a census demanded by the occupying Roman government, the frantic scramble to find a decent place to spend the night, and…oh no! Mary’s water just broke!

The scene at the Temple is passed over in the stories of Jesus’ birth. We focus on the manger and the shepherds, angels, and magi. Nevertheless, here again is a story that fits into the difficulties faced by this family. More travel is necessitated, this time to Jerusalem, to fulfill the baby’s ritual purification requirements. Mary and Joseph make their way to the Temple, a place where the people of God gave praise and sacrifice and class distinctions as pilgrims found themselves dealing with the commerce built up around the Temple. The choice of two turtledoves sounds quaint, given the Victorian era carol regarding what one gets over the twelve days of Christmas. The selection, however, gives a very clear indication of Mary and Joseph’s peasant status. These two birds were all they could manage to afford.

To be a peasant in the first century CE was to be one of the multitudes of people who eked out a living as artisans, carpenters, fishers, and day laborers. There was no middle class in Jesus’ day (might not be the same much longer in our day, for that matter), just the peasants, the very few who owned land, and the elite. If you could make a living, you were lucky. If you were a landowner, you were among the few.  If you were an elite, you lived the good life, standing on the backs of everyone else beneath you while helping Rome and its local government thugs to assure your comfort and status (at least for now).

Studying the gospels necessarily involves understanding that most of Jesus’ inner circle, the crowds hearing his teachings, the recipients of his miracles and healings, and the demonically possessed were from the peasantry of the day. Most of his conflicts came from those who were vested in keeping the Temple’s religious and economic interests or keeping Rome’s vice grip of power on Palestine, Jerusalem, and anywhere else that Rome decided it should have power.

We learn that the Holy Family is set in a scene not too far off from our own day, the one that perhaps we try to make go away this time of year. We want a reprieve from the bills, the worries about utility costs rising, the deadlines at work, the anxiety of not having a job or at least one that pays a livable wage, the doctor’s report that we didn’t want to hear, the bully that will still be there on the playground when school resumes after New Year’s. The Holy Family becomes that set of parents you know, struggling to make ends meet, hoping that they have enough to care for their newborn, even if they have to go with one less meal themselves.

Years ago when visiting Ireland, the train we were on loaded up its passengers, and there they were, not “the” Holy Family, but a young family with a little baby, settling into seats near us. The couple could not have been older than perhaps their early 20s, and the baby was not quite a toddler, content to sit on a little table between his parents. For the record, the baby was not a “tiny terror” baby: that child that you somehow get “blessed” to be with on a transatlantic flight, who bellows at high decibel shortly after takeoff and just before landing, or who keeps wondering all over a public event, getting agitated once the parent finally scoops the child up in arms. No, this baby knew he had a good deal. He was cute, and with every burble, every passenger playing “peek-a-boo” with him (myself included), the baby held court among his loyal subjects.

The train door opened, and a grizzled looking old man, postcard of Ireland perfect, came through the doorway, heading for the diner car just behind us. The guy looked like he was itching for a Guinness and some conversation about the latest football match and his scowl said do not stray him from his task. As he passed the young couple, he stopped in his tracks, and a slight smile creased his wrinkled face. With a long bony finger, he tickled the baby’s chin and the baby gurgled with glee.

The old man said, “Long life to thee. May ye walk the earth many years.” With that, off he went.

In the midst of the hubbub of life, in the struggles and challenges of the Holy Family, along comes this elder named Simeon. He spotted them across the courtyard, made his way to them, and as he beheld the infant Jesus; he could not help but burst into song.

Simeon is described as an elderly man who lived his long, long life “awaiting God to comfort Israel”. He has kept a deep and abiding sense of hope that God would provide for his people. The Greek word for “comfort” is “paraklesis”, which is to say that one has “a sense of an aid or help [that] one [can] lean on”. In another Gospel, Jesus tells his faithful that after He has returned to God, Jesus will send the Holy Spirit to be with them, calling the Spirit the “Paraclete”. Simeon has spent his life not worrying about how things are going, or when things will come crashing down. Simeon has learned to wait upon God.

Simeon is one of the many faithful folk you encounter while reading the Gospel of Luke. Luke tells us that there was once a father who embraced the prodigal, or God being like a woman who never stops looking for that lost coin. Earlier in the story, Mary sees great promise rather than personal scandal in having a firstborn child with no wedding ring yet. Throughout Luke, the many who eat at table with Jesus and are bedazzled or befuddled by a new worldview beckoning in an after-dinner parable.

The Gospel of Luke keeps tossing that word paraklesis here and there into the narrative, particularly as it relates to what people ought to be looking for. Jesus claims the rich, the select few “elite”, have to find their comfort. To Jesus, the poor comprised most of his audience, inner circle, and nearly anyone else around. He claims the poor have another sort of gold standard: the kingdom of God, a vision of the world that Jesus’ disciples have continued to seek, live out, and await for two millennia.

Simeon sees the world with its rough edges, undoubtedly the scars to prove it, just like you and me. He knows that Rome likes to keep control by peace-veiled fear, he knows the Temple itself has become less than what it was intended to be. He knows that this baby will be the great hope he is awaiting as well as one who will suffer mightily in bringing things about. Yet, Simeon knows that in the moment, as well as the beginning and the end, God has the last and abiding word