Who Knows?

Amongst the bustle, the crowds, the noises, few people notice just one more young  poor couple with a new born baby. Quietly unannounced, the Messiah long foretold by the prophets and long hoped for by a nation slips unnoticed into the holiest place in the country, faithfully following the ways that the Lord laid down in years past with Moses and now honoured by this young couple for the Messiah whom they bear and who, all unseen by those around them, have gone through so much for the baby’s sake already.  Un-noticed except for two people;  it is two singular yet unimportant people, devout and faithful, who recognise this baby for who he is. One of them might be thought cursed, having lost her husband so young and having been widowed for so long. Anna must have been a tough old person. Both Simon and Anna are described as being faithful – Simeon the righteous and devout,  Anna the pray-er and fast-er. It is not the priests, the Levites, the holiest tribe of Israel who do so. “He came to his own and his own knew him not.” Perhaps Malachi’s warning that the priests themselves were to undergo purification so that they might offer worthy worship had a foreknowledge of how far they had fallen so that they were unable to discern the infant Messiah in their midst now. The sacrifice offered is that of the poor: the law of Moses dictated that a lamb be offered for the burnt-offering alongside a turtle-dove or pigeon for a sin-offering but “if she cannot afford a sheep she shall take two turtle-doves or two pigeons” (Leviticus 12:8). The sacrifice for the birth of the Son of God is that of the poor.  Just what is God playing at? There should be armies of angels, singing praises to God and leaving everyone in no doubt who Jesus was and what was happening. There should be the hosts of heaven accompanying him in all their glory, giving honour to the Messiah come at last. The sacrifice offered on behalf of the Son of God should be riches beyond price, animals of the finest breed,  the best of the best of the best. Where was the glory? Where was the power? Just what  is this kingdom and this king about?  The lessons begun at Christmas continue apace. The life begun in such lowly surroundings, with such unexpected participants – shepherds, the tag-end of society and the Magi, practitioners of strange and un-Jewish arts –continues with strangely un-messianic character. It is time we realised that the script we have for the Messiah –power and justice and might, according to human conceptions – is nowhere near the script that God is working from. This Messiah, this kingdom of God that we are invited to find and to bear witness to is something else altogether.  The values of this world are being turned on their heads – or rather, it is that God is turning back upright the values that mankind first turned upside down way back in Eden. As early disciples wrote to Jewish Christians, God had to become human in order to free us from our fear of death, of finality. Becoming human, he faced the same suffering and temptation that we do in order to live through it and become the first perfect offering back to God on our behalf. Christ is become the proper priest for God’s people ‘bringing offerings in righteousness’ as Malachi describes it or as the merciful and faithful high priest written of by early Christian disciples. Truly, through this act God shows that, whatever the politicians and bankers might do, He and we are all in it together. Our calling is to show others the glory of this participation.

Tim Dawe, Treasurer of St. Chad’s Church.