01 January 2012

Isaiah 61:10-62:3
Psalm 148
Galatians 4:4-7
Luke 2:22-40

In the Name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.

This past week while I was home visiting my mom and the rest of our sprawling family I read a Letter to the Editor in the Duluth News Tribune in which its writer lamented how quickly the secular, commercial world brings Christmas to a close. The author of the letter was reminding us, his readers, that Christmas begins the night of the 24^th of December and continues on until the Feast of the Epiphany on January 6^th. “Why are we so quick to bring this delightful season of peace and goodwill to so swift an end?” he asked, explaining that he loves the Twelve Days of Christmas, a time for relaxed celebration, when all the frenzy of preparation has passed. “Why can we not observe the fullness of Christmas? And oh, by the way,” the writer said in his last paragraph, “I am a Jew, and I love Christmas.”

Depending on which tradition you use to number the Twelve Days of Christmas, this is either the Seventh or Eighth Day of Christmas. Either way, the Gospel for this First Sunday after Christmas Day tells the story of how Mary and Joseph on the eighth day after the birth of Mary’s child, Jesus, brought him to the temple to be circumcised; and how, there in the temple, the Holy Family was greeted by old Simeon to whom it had been revealed that he would not see death before he had seen the Lord’s Messiah; and that, upon seeing the infant Jesus, Simeon sang a song – a song that the church has employed in its daily liturgies and at the burial of the dead for a dozen centuries or more. And in that song, the Nunc Dimittis, as it is called, Simeon proclaims for all to hear that Jesus is a “light to lighten the gentiles and the glory of God’s people, Israel,” the Jews. Here, in this child, sings Simeon, the Gentiles are grafted onto, adopted into, the people to whom, after freeing them from slavery, God had promised that they would be God’s people and that the Lord God would everlastingly be their god. It was Simeon’s song that declare all peoples, not just one people, but Jews and all Gentiles together – from now on – would be one Holy Family in and of the Living God.

It has been observed that the first and most enduring heresy of the church is that of anti-Semitism, the hatred for and persecution of the Jews (may the Lord God have mercy + upon us all). That the Church can have sung Simeon’s song at the same time as being the primary perpetrator of anti-Semitism is more than ample proof of the existence of evil, or if you will, of the existence of that something, that entity, which continually strives against the love of God. This Gospel story for today stands as a reminder that Jesus was a circumcised Jew, that Mary, the Mother of God, and Joseph her companion and Guardian of Our Lord, were remembered to be observant and devout Jews. And it is none other than St. Paul who reminds us Gentiles that though a rift has occurred within early Judaism and between Jews and Gentiles concerning Jesus, the Rabbi of Nazareth, and that some will not know Jesus as Messiah, there is “this mystery,” this sign of contradiction and opposition, says Paul: “All Israel, all the Jews, will be saved . . . for the gifts and the calling of God are irrevocable.” Why has it been so difficult for the Church to understand that “all” the Jews means all, that “irrevocable” means irrevocable – means that what God has promised, God will not un-promise.

And here we must publicly acknowledge and publicly repudiate the hideous, hateful, vile things said, written, and done by Martin Luther with regard to the Jews, the very people and kin of Jesus. Great teacher of grace, great theologian of the cross though Luther was, he was like all of us, a grievous sinner but one who like us, having received the irrevocable call and promise of God, is not outside the unmerited love of God for sinners.

This morning we have come to the Seventh (or Eighth) Day of Christmas and the Gospel is in our midst, the Gospel that proclaims God’s unmerited, un-screw-up-able love for all human kind, the Gospel that proclaims this promise: that every people, tribe, and nation are indeed God’s beloved and holy family. Unlike the commercial world, we are still in the midst of the true Christmas season, the stories of which are meant to continually surprise us – to surprise us that God chooses to reveal Messiah, the light to lighten the Gentiles and the glory of God’s people Israel, not to productive, wealthy, powerful people – the people the world sees as truly important and mattering – rather God chooses to reveal Messiah to outcast shepherds and to two elderly people, two church mice – and one of them, gasp, a woman – two incredibly elderly people who were utterly and foolishly dependant upon God’s providence, who could do nothing much other than pray – an activity upon which the so-called “real world” places little worth. We are still in the midst of Christmas, a season when we are reminded that in Jesus all our religious schemes are set askew – in Christmas we are reminded that in Jesus God comes down to us in order that we no more spend our days and our deeds trying to climb our way up some spiritual ladder to take heaven by storm and become like God. In this season we celebrate that in a diaper-wetting, breast-feeding baby God has come down to earth, to be one of us and to show us that True God for True God wills to die in order that God be known not as a god of vengeance but as the Only Loving, Forgiving God, the God who calls every tribe, every people, “God’s Holy Family.” In this season we are given the Christmas Gospel so that we be moved to acknowledge and celebrate that the call and the promise of the dying, rising, and ascended God – the God who is with us here in bread and wine – the call and promise of God are irrevocable – for the Jews and for all the Gentiles.

So – following the summons of that delightful Jewish gentleman from Duluth, who has so graciously risen above the great heresy of the Church to find something in this season to celebrate with the church, following his summons, let our gladness have no end. By the power and leading of the Holy Spirit that does indeed rest upon all of us, we do keep the fullness of this feast in which the peace and goodwill of God are made manifest in an infant that they be manifest in us all the days of our lives.