Texts: Malachi 3:1-4; Hebrews 2:14-18; Luke 2:22-40
As I have mentioned in this morning's notes in the pewsheet, the first thing that might strike us about this story is that it has wandered into the wrong gospel. It has all the hallmark of St Matthew's scholarly and very Jewish approach. We would not have expected the more inclusive St Luke to be too fussed about this peculiarly Jewish ritual. Needless to say, Bible commentators have felled many trees and used up gallons of ink on this very question.
They've even come up with a sort of conspiracy theory. It goes like this. Look at the accounts in St Luke's gospel of the conception and birth of John the Baptist, and put them alongside St Luke's account of the conception and birth of Jesus, and what do we find? Remarkable parallels and one major omission, is the answer they're looking for.
There is, of course, no suggestion that John was conceived through the Holy Spirit in the same direct way as Jesus was; but his was also a miracle conception announced by a visiting angel. The angel chose the name to be given to the baby; and the whole event was celebrated in song and joyous wonder. On the eighth day the baby was named and circumcised, as was Jesus. At the end of St Luke's account, we read this: And the child grew and became strong in spirit, which, it is claimed, is simply a shortened version of what St Luke says about Jesus at the end of today's passage: And the child grew and became strong; he was filled with wisdom, and the grace of God was upon him.
So half the case is made out. There are clear parallels between the account of John's conception and birth, and Jesus' conception and birth. Now to the omission. Today we have this detailed account of Mary and Joseph taking the infant Jesus to the Temple on the fortieth day, as required by Jewish law. There were two elements to this ritual. First, the mother of a new baby needed to be rendered ritually clean after child-birth. Secondly, the first-born male child was to be consecrated to God. So clearly St Luke is showing that Mary and Joseph complied with the law in this regard.
But where is the parallel account of Zechariah and Elizabeth taking the infant John to the Temple on the fortieth day? Aha, say the conspiracy theorists, there is no such account; therefore this is a put-down of John and his parents. They did not follow the requirements of the Law – black mark for them.
All of which seems to me to be reading far too much into this omission. We have only to turn back to St Luke's account of the visit of the angel to Zechariah to have serious doubts about the plausibility of that theory. This is what the angel said of the baby to be born to Zechariah and Elizabeth: He will be a joy and delight to you, and many will rejoice because of his birth, for he will be great in the sight of the Lord. He is never to take wine or other fermented drink, and he will be filled with the Holy Spirit even from birth. Many of the people of Israel will he bring back to the Lord their God. And he will go before the Lord in the spirit and power of Elijah, to turn the hearts of the parents to their children and the disobedient to the wisdom of the righteous – to make ready a people prepared for the Lord.
If St Luke had wanted to put down John he would surely have been a little less fulsome in this part of the story. And throw in the fact that Zechariah is a priest in the Temple, the idea that he did not follow the law with his first-born child is most unlikely. More likely is that St Luke didn't include it because his story is about Jesus, not John.
So why did St Luke include this story, when none of the other gospel writers did? Perhaps because he wants to stress the humanity – and the normality - of Jesus. We know that the early Church had great difficulty in holding Jesus' humanity and his divinity in balance. Some tended to stress his humanity and play down his divinity. That approach is widespread today, of course. Others went the other way and stressed his divinity, sometimes to the point of dismissing his humanity as a façade, a sort of fleshy shell that the Son of God inhabited briefly while he was on earth.
In the birth narratives, the emphasis had been on the divine. God takes the initiative: God chooses Mary; God sends the angel; Mary becomes pregnant by the Holy Spirit, and so on. But in today's story St Luke changes the emphasis: he makes it clear in verse 22 that "Joseph and Mary" take Jesus to the Temple as required by the Law. (And notice that Joseph is named before Mary – he is acting as the human father, the head of the family, here.) They are not prompted to do so by an angel of the Lord, or by the Holy Spirit. Throughout the account St Luke repeats that what is going on here is the normal custom as required by the Law.
When the Holy Spirit gets a mention, it is in relation to the old prophetic figure, Simeon, not Joseph and Mary, and not, more surprisingly, Jesus. At no stage in this story does St Luke suggest that Jesus is filled with the Holy Spirit. For St Luke, the Spirit comes to Jesus at baptism, not birth. (Which may be another nail in the coffin of the conspiracy theorists, as John was filled with the Holy Spirit from birth!)
Perhaps this is why it does not seem to have occurred to St Luke that there is a bit of a theological problem at the heart of this story. It would certainly have occurred to St Matthew. We remember how, in St Matthew's account of Jesus' baptism, John initially balked at the idea of baptising Jesus. Why did Jesus need baptising for the forgiveness of sins when he himself was sinless? Today we might be tempted to ask, why does Jesus need to be consecrated to God when he himself is God? Perhaps, like St Luke, we should never let theology get in the way of a good story!
And this is a good story. It is beautifully constructed. All the key elements of the Jewish faith are here. The scene is the Temple, the House of God, the central place of the Jewish faith. The faithful Jewish couple are obeying the Torah, the Law handed down by God to Moses on Mount Sinai. Two prophetic figures, one expressly guided by the Holy Spirit, are in the Temple to greet them. Simeon speaks, recognising Jesus as the promised Messiah, and looking ahead to the consequences of his coming. Anna, a woman dedicated to a life of prayer, adds her own words, again seeing Jesus as the promised redeemer. It may well be significant that one is a man, the other a woman. Jesus is recognised by all humanity represented in this way.
What lessons are there in all this for us? First of all, of course, there are obvious links with our practice of infant baptism or our service of thanksgiving for the gift of a child. Without wanting to get into an argument about the practice of infant baptism, those who oppose the practice might want to ponder why it is okay to dedicate a new-born child to God but not okay to baptise it, which surely has much the same effect.
Beyond that it seems to me that in this story we are shown the importance of custom, practice, or tradition, however we might want to term it. Today we are inclined to give priority to anything new, and pooh-pooh the old established ways of doing something. We like to think of ourselves as free spirits, writing our own scripts as we go along. Perhaps we need to ponder why it was that when God did this amazing new thing that we call the incarnation, the Holy Family nevertheless were careful to observe the law and customs of the faith that had been worked out over many centuries.
I want to end this morning with a quick look at our second reading from the Letter to the Hebrews. Writing of the reasons for Jesus' coming in our flesh, the author says it was to "free those who all their lives were held in slavery by their fear of death". It seems to me that that is a profound thought that we might wish to take with us into Lent this year. If Jesus really has conquered death, if we now have no reason to fear death, then cannot we not take more risks in our dealings with other people than we customarily do? Are we not set free to love as he loves us?
To consecrate our lives more fully to God?
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