A bit of Luke...

One interesting bit still in Chapter One of Luke is Michael Card's commentary about the exchange between Gabriel and Mary:

Mary responds with a legitimate question, not a faithless one.  Not "How can I be sure?" but  "How can this be?"  She is a virgin.  It is a reasonable question.  And Gabriel is glad to give her a gentle and reasonable answer.  Using the most discrete language, he describes how the Holy Spirit will "come upon" her and the Most High will "overshadow" her.  He uses the same word used in the Greek Old Testament to describe the Spirit of God hovering over the face of the waters upon creation.  [emphasis mine]

I love words.  And I think that this is a totally cool word to learn about in the commentary.  I mean, you have the bridge theme here, with the ultimate connection between the Old Testament and the New, the shared moment of creation, especially if you consider that the life created in Mary is created in water.

As I wrote before, Michael Card points out in his discussion of hesed that there are five words that can be translated as mercy and that Luke is the one who uses all five.  Words matter.  Specificity matters.  And words connect us in ways that we might not understand, but they do nonetheless.

In the opening of Chapter Two, Michael Card unpacks all that is contained in the simple sentence:  "In those days a decree went out from Caesar Augustus that the whole empire should be registered" (Luke 2:1).  I'm not going to type up all the history, especially since it took me forever to follow the ties since Caesar Augustus was Gaius Octavius.  Two names, but the same person.  And Michael Card did not merely say that Gaius was the great nephew of Julius Caesar, but that his mother was the niece of Julius Caesar.  And in explaining, you have mention of Octavian, who is Octavius, but who became Caesar Augustus.

[I sure do wish we could stick with just one name when it comes to following folk in history.]

Just that sentence—I learned after plowing through the history—connotes a time of great upheaval and uncertainty.  But one little tidbit out of the history is that, with the establishment of the Roman Empire, Julius Caesar (Caesar Augustus' great uncle) was declared a god.  So, having adopted Gaius and bestowed upon him his great political and financial inheritance, Gaisus, now Caesar Augustus became a "son of god" and was the eventual founder of the "Roman Peace" (Pax Romana), ridding the sea lanes of pirates and establishing law and order throughout the empire.

What an interesting parallel to Jesus, the true Son of God, give that he was paranoid about lightening, a despicable tyrant, and as fanatically blood thirsty as Hitler or Mussolini.  All that an ever so much more in that single sentence because the first recipients of Luke knew immediately and intimately what such a statement meant.

Something else that caught my eye in Chapter Two:

You have the shepherds all excited and the angels singing, you have ebullient rejoicing on all sides, copious amounts of effusive adulation.  Yet there is Mary, quiet, "treasuring up all these things in her heart and meditating on them" (Luke 2:19).  Do you think she suspected, then, that the great and grand and mighty Messiah-the-King all were expecting was not going to be the Messiah who her son was going to be?

One of the questions Michael Card asks, then, is thinking of the eyewitness that provided that bit of insight.  Surely it was Mary, don't you think?

So, then, just a short while later, you have the contemplative Mary, with her newborn son, and Simeon tells her that her child "is destined to cause the fall and rise of many in Israel and to be a sign that will be opposed—and a sword will pierce your own soul— that the thoughts of many hearts may be revealed" (Luke 2:34-35).  What a prophecy to have spoken!

But before you can get to such shocking words, you hear Simeon sing the Nunc Dimittis.  Now, I confessed to my friend Mary that I have never really understood the enthusiasm for singing the Magnificat in the liturgy (especially since I always lose my place).  What I did not say to her, though, was that, for me, the wonder and awe and enthusiasm lies in the Nunc Dimittis.  How strange it is to me that before learning Lutheran liturgy, I did not understand, really, the breadth and depth of Luke 2:29-32. Now, if I could only hear one piece of the liturgy, as much as I adore the Agnus Dei, it would be the Nunc Dimittis, Divine Service Setting Three.

[Oh, how I miss it.]

Of all the commentary on Chapter Two, I think I would like to preserve here the bit about Simeon, with a bit of background:

Verses 21-24 might seem confusing if you don't take the time to untangle them.  We are looking at two separate occasions and three rituals.  Jesus' circumcism happens first, eight days after his birth.  At this time he would be named.  This is a parallel to the story of the naming of John in chapter 1.  Both babies had been named before they were born.

The second observance begins in verse 22.  Here we are looking at two separate rituals.  First comes the purification of Mary, which took place forty days after the birth of a son and would have taken place eighty days after the birth of a daughter.  The offering of the two pigeons was reserved for the poor (Lev 12:1-8).  The second ritual is the dedication of the firstborn (Ex 13:2-14).  Within the scope of six verses, the observance of the "law" is mentioned four times.  This is a picture of Mary and Joseph's exacting observance of the law.  Of the nine times the word "law" occurs in Luke's writing, five of them are contained in this passage.  It is a picture of a world that would, very soon, begin to pass away.

In this context Simeon steps forward.  It is a miracle in itself that they have met at this precise moment within the crowded, massive thirty-five-acre temple complex.  He too is a representative of the old world, the Old Testament world in which faith was expressed primarily by waithing for God to make good on his promises.  Simeon represents an important line in the world of faith.  Before Simeon, faith meant waiting.  After him, faith will mean following.  At this moment, the old world is meeting and embracing the new.

Luke describes Simeon in old-world terms.  He is "righteous and devout," waiting for "Israel's consolation."  But the Holy Spirit is also there, as he has been with the unborn John, Elizabeth, Zechariah and Mary.  The elderly man has received a promise:  he will not die until he has seen the Messiah.  Now, under the guidance of that same Spirit, he makes his way into the temple court at precisely the same moment that the child's parents arrive.

Taking the baby in his arms, Simeon sings a song. It is the last song he will sing.  It is the last song we will hear in Luke's Gospel.  It is a song that welcomes his death as a release and a dismissal.  But is also a song that welcomes the Light of revelation to the Gentiles, for whom Luke and Paul also cared so much.  What is rapidly becoming the norm in Luke happens next:  Mary and Joseph are amazed!

Simeon pronounces a berakah, or blessing, on the three of them.  Next he utters a prophecy, most of which he would rather have bitten his tongue than spoken.  The baby will cause many to rise and fall.  He will face opposition.  And then:  Mary's heart will be pierced by a sword.  This is an ominous prophecy of the pain she will endure watching her Son die on the cross—all of this Simeon whispers, so that the thoughts of many hearts would be revealed.

[The wordsmith nerd in me savored the double entendre in this sentence:  At this moment, the old world is meeting and embracing the new.]

I thought a lot about all the commentary on Mark talking about the massive temple complex, about the extraordinary statement Jesus made when he told the disciples that no two stones would remain atop each other.  I do not think, in all that description, the actual size was mentioned.  Thirty-five acres!

I thought about all the Jewishness of Matthew and, already, all the Gentile-ness in Luke.  Blended together paints such a poignant portrait of a savior come for all, a triune God who caused to pen the right words for the right audience so that the Gospel could be received by all.  The perfection of the Gospels.

But mostly I thought about Simeon's song, the waiting and the relief.  And how, in the liturgy, if sung, it is sung after believers, too, have seen Jesus, seen and taken in His very body and blood at the altar.  The double entendre remains.  The waiting for the promise and receiving, once more, the promise.  At the altar, the old world meets the new and the exacting Law is is ever fulfilled.  Sin is covered, washed away.  Forgiveness is bestowed.  Once again, the Messiah comes.

Such awe and wonder lies in the Nunc Dimittis.  The radical reversal.  The shedding of old orthodoxy.  Sung after sinners have received the consolation of the Gospel for the fear sin sows within.  Sung, to me, almost as a defiant reminder to the old Adam, seated once more in the pew, might already begin to doubt the hesed show just moments before at the rail.

In a strange way, could you not say that Simeon, and those who join him in song hereafter, are saying:  "Get behind me, Satan.  You've lost.  The Promise was fulfilled and is fulfilled and remains ever fulfilled."