This
past week has been an eventful one. It began with the 75th
anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz. There was moving testimony from
those who lived through that terrible time. Never again, they said. But of course, it hasn’t been as simple as
that. Genocides continue to happen. Conflict continues to erupt. And those who
hoped that the founding of the state of Israel would at least give a secure and
peaceful home to those who had suffered so much have discovered that it is all
far more complicated than they had thought, as it was bound to be, in
hindsight.
In
our own nation too, some have rejoiced while others have mourned as Brexit day
dawned. We don’t know what the future holds, but the one thing we can be sure
of is that it won’t be simple, and that Brexit is far from “done”. We are just
at the beginning of a process which will take years to complete.
Human
beings don’t like complexity. We all long for simple solutions, for “happy ever
after endings”. The people Malachi was
prophesying to in our Old Testament reading were no different. His words
probably date from some time in the century after the Israelites had returned
from exile in Babylon. They’d been there seventy years, so when Cyrus, the king
of Persia, overthrew the Babylonians and sent them home, they were elated.
Their
prophets, Isaiah and Ezekiel, had told them God hadn’t forgotten them. Ezekiel had had a vision of the new
Jerusalem, and the new Temple that would replace the one the Babylonians had
destroyed. He saw the God coming back to
dwell in it. “The Glory of the God of Israel was coming from the east;” he said,
“the sound was like the sound of mighty
waters and the earth shone with his glory… As the glory of the Lord entered the
temple…the spirit lifted me up, and brought me into the inner court; and the
glory of the Lord filled the Temple.” (Ezekiel 43.1-5).
But
the hopes they’d had as they set out for home soon evaporated. The Temple they
rebuilt was a shadow of the one they’d lost. Many of the treasures that had filled it had
disappeared or been destroyed by the Babylonians, including the Ark of the Covenant, the box with
the Ten Commandments in it, which had symbolised the presence of God in their
midst. The splendour that Ezekiel had envisaged never really became a reality.
The glory days never arrived. They were still ruled over by other nations. Where
was the fulfilment of the prophecies of Ezekiel and Isaiah? “Is this it?” they are saying.
“Is this as good as it gets? Why doesn’t God pull his finger out and make us
great again?”
It
was against this backdrop that the idea of a Messiah really started to develop,
a leader who’d finish the work that the return from exile had started. That’s
what Malachi promises them. “The Lord
whom you seek will suddenly come to his temple.” he says. But there’s a
caveat, a warning, for them. This won’t be like some superhero swooping in from
the sky to magically make everything right from the outside. The change they
look for will start within them, and it will be painful and costly. Malachi
compares it to refining silver and gold, something that involves crushing rock
and heating it until the metal runs out. He compares it to fulling cloth, a
process in which the cloth is basically trampled on, beaten up, to make it
smooth and firm. There won’t be any
short cuts or opt outs. When God gets to work, don’t expect an easy ride, he
says.
If
they want God’s glory to be revealed in their midst, it will involve changing
the way they treat each other – living lives that are faithful and honest, not
oppressing the hired workers so they can get a cheap deal. It will mean caring
for the vulnerable , the widows and orphans, welcoming the strangers in their
midst. Living justly isn’t easy – it can be costly and threatening – that’s why
we so seldom achieve it. But we can’t
expect to shine with God’s glory if we won’t let him clear away the muck that
obscures it in us.
But
that’s not an easy thing to accept. We don’t want hard work or pain. We want a
superhero who will wave a magic wand over our troubles to make them go away.
Perhaps
that’s why, in our Gospel reading, only two people in the Temple spot the
moment when God actually does show up in their midst, when the Lord does indeed
“come to his Temple”, because anything less like a superhero is hard
to imagine. He is just a tiny, vulnerable baby.
When
Mary and Joseph brought Jesus to the Temple to make a sacrifice for him, they
were just doing what every new family did. It was laid down in the law. No
doubt there were many other people there doing the same. The Temple would have
busy, crowded , noisy. But in the midst of all of this hubbub, Simeon and Anna were
praying and watching, as they had done for years, asking the same old questions.
“Come on God. Where are you? When will
you act?”
We
don’t know what makes them notice this one little family among so many – there
is nothing to distinguish them. Maybe it is just that, after so many years of
prayer, they are tuned in to the voice of God’s Spirit. But somehow they know
that this is the moment, that the Lord has “suddenly
come to his Temple”, and it’s not at the head of an army, not in clouds of
glory from the sky. This Lord has no power; he can’t even talk. He seems to
have nothing to offer. He’s utterly dependent. But that means he’s also utterly
open to those around him. Babies can’t judge or discriminate. They have no
preconceptions. They take things, and people, as they are. They have to.
If
we are looking for God, this story tells us, this is where we are most likely
to find him, not amongst the powerful, but in those who who are needy and
vulnerable, not in times when everything is going well, but in the times when
we know it isn’t, not in tidy, simple solutions – which usually turn out not to
be solutions at all – but in mess and muddle and compromise.
It
goes against the grain, of course. As I said earlier, we don’t like complexity.
So Donald Trump and Benjamin Netanyahu
declare a peace plan for the Middle East, without actually involving the
Palestinians in the discussions – it’s easier that way. And both sides in the
Brexit debate convince themselves that if only those other people would think
like them it would all be fine. We shut our eyes to the mess, and try to
pretend that it isn’t there.
But
if we shut our eyes to the mess, to the powerlessness, to the complexity of
life, we shut our eyes to God, . We miss him in the crying baby, in the person
whose life is falling apart, in the situations we have given up for lost and
walked away from. We miss him in the places where we need him most. Ultimately,
this child in the Temple will end up nailed to a cross- “a
sword will pierce your own soul,” says Simeon to Mary. But that very act
will show us that even there, in the messiest, most helpless place possible,
God is present.
As
the letter to the Hebrews said, God, in Christ, became “like his brothers and sisters in every respect” because that was the only way he could
help us. He doesn’t offer a quick fix,
or a happy-ever-after magic wand to wave over our troubles; even if he did,
that wouldn’t really help us, because it’s not what we need. We need a saviour
who is where we are, who starts small, as small as a baby, if we’re truly to be
transformed.
I
read a book recently by the late Dutch theologian Henri Nouwen, and I’d like to
finish by telling you a story from it. In the mid 1980s, Nouwen gave up his
respected academic job at a university to live as part of a community with adults
with learning disabilities . He was
still in demand to give talks around the world, but the community made a
decision that whenever he travelled, he should be accompanied by one of the
learning disabled adults, so they could do the work together. That meant that,
on one trip to an academic conference in New York, Bill came along too. Bill
had a whale of a time in the swanky hotel where the conference was taking
place, and as Nouwen climbed up onto the platform to give his lecture, Bill got
up and joined him, pitching in now and then with comments of his own – after
all, they were supposed to be doing this together, he said. Later Bill did the rounds at the reception,
chatting to people enthusiastically, and in the morning at breakfast, he made
sure he’d said a proper goodbye to all the new friends he’d made, the learned
scholars who had come to the conference. “We did it together” said Bill to
Nouwen as they left. As Nouwen reflected on what had happened, he wrote
this:
In the past, I had always
given lectures, sermons, addresses, and speeches by myself. Often I had
wondered how much of what I had said would be remembered. Now it dawned on me that most
likely much of what I said would not be long remembered, but that Bill and I
doing it together would not easily be forgotten. I hoped and prayed that Jesus,
who had sent us out together and had been with us all during the journey, would
have become really present to those who had gathered in the Clarendon Hotel in
Crystal City.
Malachi
looked for a time when “the Lord would
suddenly come to his Temple,” when
God would show up and get to work. Simeon and Anna recognised that happening in
the shape of a tiny, helpless baby. Nouwen recognised it happening the openness and trust Bill showed to those
around him, which transformed an academic discussion into a place where true
friendships were made. I wonder where we
might recognise it in our lives this week, if we can find the courage to open our eyes to it?
Amen
Nouwen,
Henri J. M.. In the Name of Jesus: Reflections on Christian Leadership . The
Crossroad Publishing Company. Kindle Edition.
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