| Essential 100 -- Simeon | | Date Created: Mar 23, 2005, 07:09 AM |
53 — Wednesday March 23 — Luke 2:1-40
So, okay, I forgot this angelic couplet when I said yesterday that they speak in prose. Maybe you use prose when you've got something specific to say to someone in particular and the poetry is used only when characters are speaking to God or speaking about God to no one in particular. The Bible often portrays people in such situations, but angels tend to appear only when they have specific messages for specific people. In that case it wouldn't be that angels don't speak in poetry but just that their poetry tends to only come into the story rarely, since it's really the story of how salvation came to us human beings.
Anyway... that's not really what I wanted to write about. The booklet's author focuses on the middle story: the overwhelmed parents and ordinary shepherds and how they are used by God.
But it's the character of Simeon that interests me this morning. No miraculous transformation from ordinary bloke to God-struck evangelist here -- he's been righteous and devout and in touch with Holy Spirit for years.
It's so easy for us to focus on those members of God's chosen people who got it wrong, who couldn't recognize Messiah; how about this guy? In all likelihood, he's waiting for a Judas Maccabee-style guerilla fighter who will kick Roman butt. Jesus' real character and real mission are going to be as much a surprise to him as anyone else.
Yet he has the grace and insight to recognize God at work in this unpromising little tableau of parents and child. Joseph and Mary don't look promising material. Even though it was a horribly inconvenient time, they submitted to Roman authority on the matter of the census and now here they were in Jerusalem submitting to ritual law. This is no family of rebel warriors.
Fortunate Simeon; he somehow recognizes in Jesus the consolation of Israel and is willing to let go of his specific loading of that in favour of God's initiative and plans.
I want to be more like that, too. |
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