When Thinking of Christmas, Don’t Forget Simeon’s Sword
Painting by Andrey Shishkin Permission: Personal use CC BY-NC 4.0 License
https://paintingvalley.com/simeon-painting#simeon-painting-9.jpg
For the discussion material for our small group meeting at our house, I chose five Christmas poems by poets ranging from Shakespeare contemporary Ben Jonson to C.S. Lewis, along with the passages from Matthew and Luke that give the poems their context.
What struck us all was the range of responses to the Christmas story even among poets who wished to honor it. Which led us to see that the Bible itself has more than one understanding—not contradictory, but drastically different in tone and implication.
How do Christians today think of this defining event in human history—God joining his creation?
Three different conceptions of Christmas among believers come quickly to mind:
The “Joy to the World” Christmas, which rightly sees the Incarnation as great good news for all, not just for Jews.
The “Hallelujah Chorus” Christmas, which rightly emphasizes the Messiah’s power, authority, and divine offices.
The “Away in a Manger” Christmas, which dwells on innocence and vulnerability and warm feelings (and is the most prone to sentimentality).
One of our poems, T.S. Eliot’s “A Song for Simeon,” reminded us of a fourth possibility, just as biblical as the others. Simeon in Luke 2 is an old man who has been promised by the Holy Spirit that he will not die until he sees the Messiah. But he has waited a long, long time. Waited in patient obedience, doing the things a believer in Yahweh is expected to do. He is tired. He wants to die.
When Jesus at the age of eight days is presented to him for circumcision, Simeon, under the guidance of the Holy Spirit, realizes (in the deepest senses of the word “realize”) that he is beholding the Messiah. (Perhaps some of you have had a similar “realization” in your life.) It must have weakened his knees.
Simeon’s understanding of the significance of what he is experiencing is profound. It is the best of news (“my eyes have seen thy salvation”), but also the worst of news. It tells him that his own release from this life is imminent, which he greatly desires (“let thy servant depart in peace”). It tells him that both Israel and the entire world are being blessed (“A light to lighten the Gentiles, and the glory of thy people Israel”). But it also tells him that the arrival of the Messiah ushers in a time – both in the short run and the long – that bodes discord and suffering: “the fall and rising of many,” “a sign which shall be resisted,” and “a sword which will pierce” Mary’s heart.
All of this will be fulfilled in Herod’s Slaughter of the Innocents, and in Mary’s watching her son be crucified, and perhaps even in the destruction of Jerusalem (and the Temple in which Simeon stands) by the Romans in A.D. 70. But it will continue to be fulfilled over the centuries and down to our present day. In his poem, Eliot has Simeon say to the infant, “They shall praise Thee and suffer in every generation/ With glory and derision.”
That “They” is somewhat ambiguous. It may refer to all humans—some of whom will accept the Messiah and some of whom will mock him. Or it may refer to people of faith alone, whose lives will be a source of praise for the messiah, or, alas, a source of derision.
This passage from Luke, and Eliot’s poem, remind me how contrarian and offensive the gospel is to the systems under which we live today (and which we often support ourselves). It is also a reminder that things may not go well for us in the not too distant future (in America and the western world, as has long been the case elsewhere): some of it for failing to be what Christians should be, and some of it for being exactly what Christians should be.
Simeon may be the first Christian. (Mary and Joseph seem to not quite understand as yet the true significance of their new child.) He teaches us the hard lesson that we must often wait—beyond our endurance it may seem—for the Lord to show us what we long to see. His also is a warning not to be sentimental about God and the Incarnation. The latter truly means joy to the world; and it means the arrival of Emmanuel, God among us; but it also means the awakening of the Herods of the world, and the uneasy realization that “the thoughts of many hearts will be revealed.”
[For wonderful images of this scene, do an internet search for “painting, Simeon” and see what artists have found in this story. I especially commend two different painting, reputed to be of Simeon, by Andrey Shiskin, a contemporary Russian artist. Study the faces.]