Reading Luke Together #12 – Her Pierced Heart
One of the Bible’s most poignant moments gets skipped over too often. We get Jesus born, that story winding up in Luke 2:20, and we might dwell briefly on the magi/wise men, although usually we press them back into the saga of Jesus being born – even though they showed up later. We break for Christmas and New Year’s; and then, if we’re tracking Jesus’ story further, he’s grown, getting baptized and tempted and commencing his ministry of teaching and healing.
Mary and Joseph were devout Jews, so they did as all Jewish parents did: they made their way to Jerusalem – about 12 miles – for Mary’s “purification” (Luke 2:21-24). Why would she, of all mothers, need to be purified?! She fulfilled the law, as Jesus did when grown, seeking to be as pure and holy as possible in God’s eyes – perhaps akin to the way Jesus, God in the flesh, holiest of the holy, submitted to Baptism. Also fulfilling God’s law, they offered up a couple of sacrificial birds on the altar. Those “two turtledoves” made it into the eighteenth century carol, “The Twelve Days of Christmas.”
Then came the hard part. Mary and Joseph delivered their son to the priest for circumcision, which for them was a non-negotiable act of obedience and devotion to God. I wonder if Mary felt her first pangs of separation when she handed her infant son over to a priest she’d never met, and if she shivered a bit when she heard his outcry when the knife cut into his flawless flesh. Blood was shed. A sign of things to come.
Seemingly by chance, Mary and Joseph bumped into an old man named Simeon, and then a woman named Anna who had been a widow for decades (Luke 2:25-38). The aged inevitably turn and gaze at an infant, as if the chances to glimpse such precious beauty are numbered – as George Eliot noted when telling us about the reclusive miser, Silas Marner, discovering a little girl in his home after losing all his gold: “We older human beings feel a certain awe in the presence of a little child, such as we feel before some quiet majesty or beauty in earth or sky.”
Simeon, “upright and devout,” was “waiting for the consolation of Israel” (Luke 2:25). Some mystical disclosure had come to this man – that he would not die before seeing the Messiah. Mary, again, handed over her child, this time to Simeon. His prayer over the child must have struck Mary and Joseph dumb. “Now let your servant depart in peace,” for this Messiah (even in infancy) had come as “a light for revelation to the Gentiles, and glory for Israel.” We often speak hyperbolically of a newborn, but this is over the top, outrageous, either divinely inspired or sheer craziness. Such a lovely hope though, that because of this child we might depart in peace. No wonder monks and nuns chant these words each night.
Would that Simeon had stopped right there. But then, in somber tones, he spoke directly to Mary: “Behold, he is set for the fall and rise of many in Israel… A sword will pass through your own soul.” These densely framed words require much thought; we can be sure Mary “pondered” them. Her little boy’s destiny involves the “fall and rise” of God’s people. We usually speak of the “rise and fall” of, let’s say, the Roman Empire, a British dynasty, or a famous politician. With Jesus, everything gets turned upside down. With Jesus, you fall before you rise, you get emptied of your own goodness before you are filled with the mercy, you lose your life to gain your life – and the same happens with God’s church, rising like a phoenix only after suffering the worst persecution.
The pattern will be Jesus’ own. He will fall, flagellated by the soldiers, then beneath his own cross, and finally crushed by death itself, only then to rise, and to reign. This fall will indeed pierce Mary’s heart. Simeon was right: she would barely be able to stand at the foot of the cross, trying to avert her gaze from the sight of the lifeblood she had given him draining out of his precious, pure body. But she had to watch, and love, and grieve. Whose heart was more crushed than hers? Who felt the piercing of the nails and the spear more than his mother? Who, even after his resurrection and ascension, felt the pangs of missing him more than his holy mother?