Holy Cross Monastery, West Park, NY
One theory is that the church had already preserved in the earliest liturgy these three songs which continue to be sung daily by millions, before Luke began his gospel account. I hope that’s true. I imagine Luke with three scraps of papyrus and an emerging story of where they came from. Perhaps he knew that these words were hot, burning coals which would set the world on fire. He would like us to feel the force and shock of these songs as he did - “who are they talking about?” And then Luke sets about writing. The anticipation is already forming a new vision of the world in a general great reversal embodied in the Savior - the mighty cast down, the lowly lifted up, fear removed, enemies gone, darkness dispelled, strangers welcomed, the world set right.
The recognition of salvation is already the gift of salvation itself. When our eyes see, it is a jubilant and joyful affair. It is also always at the same time seeing the unavoidable work of renunciation and defiance. Systems, patterns, relationships, beliefs are the things in need of saving - saving means a change from injustice, violence, exploitation, hatred, and abuse to the vindication and victory of God in honorable and respectful mutuality and neighborliness. In each of their songs, Mary, Zechariah, and Simeon unveil the nature and effect of the salvation that is coming.
The day appointed in the Law for the ritual cleansing and offering begins in the ordinary way, but this is no ordinary baby. Simeon will only, can only say these words once, to one child. His song contains all the inspiration and hope of the gospel. It uses the beautiful words that Luke will come to repeat; peace, salvation, light, glory. As with the Magnificat and Benedictus, the Nunc Dimittis would have us dare join in the hope that God is now acting. The vision, the dream of the way life could be fills us with the energetic desire to be a part of it. What is offered as possible is greater than the status quo. We are first inspired to change before we know much about what and how change will take place. Now, in the temple, Mary and Joseph are ready to ponder something more of the mystery of this child. That is why Simeon is not finished after the Nunc Dimittis. He blesses Mary and Joseph and the Baby, and, as if it is an afterthought, as if he thinks to himself, “Oh, right, one more little detail”, he ruins this tender and hopeful moment of joyful anticipation. “This child is destined for the falling and the rising of many in Israel, and to be a sign that will be opposed so that the inner thoughts of many will be revealed - and a sword will pierce your own soul too”, he says to Mary. This is Luke’s first foreshadowing that this salvation will not be as quick and painless as we want it to be. As Joel Green says in his commentary on Luke, “thus we gain sight of an ominous cloud, the first explicit manifestation of the reality that God’s purpose will not be universally supported, and the first candid portent that the narrative to follow will be a story of conflict.” What does mention of a sword, a weapon meant to harm or kill, doing in this tender scene of an innocent baby?
Simeon here has subverted the obvious implication of sword-piercing and turned it into a paradox. Salvation has not come in the form of vengeful wrath-enacting punishment on enemies. If that were the case, a real sword through not the soul, but the heart of Caesar or Herod or Pilate may be in order. Indeed that was the popular messianic expectation - real power is the ability to wield violence and impose control. But Christ will not come as a rival to Caesar using the same understanding and means of domination. Christ comes in love, not retribution, yet that love is experienced at times as a sword.
The metaphor of the sword is multi-faceted.
While the theological reading of Simeon’s sword reference refers to the conflict around Jesus within Israel, there is more to hear from this symbol. The spiritual reading points to an inner conflict within the heart of each person. The letter to the Hebrews uses the image of a sword to speak about the voice of God that is a piercing of illusions, an intolerance of duplicity and inner falsehood. “The word of God is something alive and active: it cuts more incisively than any two-edged sword: it can seek out the place where soul is divided from spirit, or joints from marrow; it can pass judgment on secret emotions and thoughts.” (Hebrews 4:12). This is not vengeful punishment, but the way love confronts the resistant and arrogant parts of us that isolate us from our deepest desire. Simeon is speaking to Mary’s unique vocation of soul-piercing transformation, but for Luke she is the archetypal disciple, so Simeon is speaking not just to her, but to all of us.
Teresa of Avila tells a story of a kind of sword-piercing love of God in her autobiography. An angel has visited, and she says,
“I saw in his hand a long spear of gold, and at the iron’s point there seemed to be a little fire. He appeared to me to be thrusting it at times into my heart and to pierce my very entrails; when he drew it out, he seemed to draw them out also, and to leave me all on fire with a great love of God. The pain was so great, that it made me moan; and yet so surpassing was the sweetness of this excessive pain, that I could not wish to be rid of it. The soul is satisfied now with nothing less than God.”
To be alive and awake, vulnerable and receptive is to be pierced - pierced by our sinfulness, pierced by God’s mercy and compassion, pierced by the needs of our neighbors, the pain and suffering of the world, its beauty and wonder. Tumult and pain mingle and mix from within glory and light.
Salvation is the entering into the sign of contradiction around us and within us. Glory is being given eyes to see reality and hearts to sigh and groan as the piercing truth reveals our minds and hearts; lighting them up, revealing their secrets. “A light for revelation to the Gentiles and for glory to your people Israel.” In his wonderful book, If Only We Could See: Mystical Vision and Social Transformation, Gary Commins writes,
“There are awakenings, openings, and epiphanies: a voice at midnight, calm in the kitchen, a piercing light, a penetrating darkness, a wrenching from our half-tied vision, and the most ordinary faith that enables us to see as clearly as the most profound mystical enlightenment.” Amen.
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