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| Deacon Annie Watson ARCWP, second from left Father Daniel, Pastor |
“Never Underestimate Small Bundles of Joy”
Luke 2:22-40
December 28, 2014
Deacon Annie Watson, ARCWP
His parents are doing
everything right. The Law says he is to be circumcised on the eighth day.
Check. The Law says the new mother needs to go and make a postpartum sacrifice
so that she can be declared ritually clean after giving childbirth. Check. The
Law also says every first born son is to be consecrated to God. Check.
On their way in to
the Temple, however, they are interrupted by a man named Simeon. Can you
imagine a total stranger walking up to you and demanding to hold your baby? After
all, who would harm a baby?
We are not as
trusting with our babies today as people have been in the past. In the BBC television
series, Call the Midwife, mostly
impoverished women in a 1950s London eastside neighborhood turn to midwives and
nuns to help them bring their babies into the world.
The expecting mothers
arrive at the convent’s clinic for prenatal care. Surprisingly to modern
viewers, they often leave their other children, even toddlers, outside the
clinic, unsupervised. The toddlers sit in their baby carriages unattended.
Today we would call Child Protective Services if someone did this.
We live in a world of
distrust when it comes to our babies and children. Because of this, my special
needs daughter, Megan, doesn’t understand why she can’t pick up babies in
public places like grocery stores or restaurants. Megan is fascinated with
babies. She is instinctively drawn to them and sees all of them as beautiful,
even the ones who resemble Winston Churchill.
What happens in the
Temple is strange to us. And yet Mary and Joseph do not even flinch. Simeon
takes the baby Jesus in his arms and basically says, “Now I can die. I’ve seen
the Messiah.” If this happened today, we would think the person is mentally
ill, and we certainly wouldn’t allow him to grab our baby in the first place!
But these were
different times with different expectations. Simeon, and then, a minute or two
later, an elderly widow named Anna, were looking
for something. The Holy Spirit had opened their eyes to the possibility
that the Messiah of God, God’s anointed one, was in their presence. They had
learned to pay attention to detail, to the smallest
detail. And what they saw was as plain as the nose on their faces: the face
of the Messiah in a small bundle of joy.
For modern readers,
this story has no ring of truth to it at all. We can’t just look at babies and
know what the future holds for them. So maybe there is more to this story than
meets the eye. Maybe there are deeper messages here that we too can see if we
also pay attention to the smallest details.
The first detail is
this: do everything right. Remember
what I said at the beginning. Mary and Joseph are doing everything right. They
are following the Law. These are
Jewish laws, of course. They don’t directly apply to our tradition, and yet
what we can take away from this is the importance of being true to our
tradition.
Because you and I are
hoping to one day gain acceptance and even validation within the larger
Catholic community, it is important, I believe, to be as true to our tradition
as we possibly can. If we want to continue to call ourselves Catholics, then we
should be Catholics.
That doesn’t mean we
can’t be critical of Catholicism when Catholicism falls short—in fact, the best
way to be effective in one’s criticism of a religious tradition is to be part
of it. No one can stand outside of a tradition and critique it in a way that
matters to anyone else.
So, no matter how
much we are, or aren’t, accepted or validated within the larger Catholic
community, let’s do everything right.
A second small detail
I see in this story is that the Gospel writer, Luke, provides gender balance to the story. I see this
in two places. First, I see gender balance in the fact that both the male baby
Jesus and his mother Mary are
required to seek purification according to the Law of Moses.
Second, notice that a
man, Simeon, and a woman, Anna, are the ones who see something special in Jesus.
Notice also that Simeon is simply called a “man,” whereas Anna, a widow, is referred
to as a “prophet.” Is this Luke’s “sneaky” way of validating women in ministry?
Is this Luke’s way of introducing his readers to the principle of
inclusiveness?
A third minor detail
I see is the one that is as plain as the nose on our faces. If Captain Obvious
were reading this story, he would say, “Obviously, this story teaches us that
we should never underestimate little
bundles of joy.”
Do you recall the
parable of the mustard seed? Today’s story is that parable fleshed out.
Sometimes something very small and insignificant becomes larger than life.
That’s Jesus in a nutshell, or in this case, a mustard seed.
Luke confirms this
when he writes, “The child grew in size and strength. He was filled with
wisdom, and the grace of God was with him.” Just like the mustard seed grew to
become a great tree.
What is just as
obvious to me is that this is also true about this community. For now, you are
a little bundle of joy, doing everything right, and you are doing so with a
sense of inclusiveness and grace. Those of us who are here, who are intimate
with the community, see the potential and promise. Like Simeon and Anna, we are
open to the possibility that something wonderful is happening right in front of
our noses.
And yes, just as
Simeon predicted that this baby would grow up and become a source of
consternation for some, you and I seem to be in that same vein.
The fourth and final
little detail I see in this story is faithfulness.
So far in Luke’s Gospel, everyone has been faithful. Mary is faithful in terms
of her unexpected pregnancy. Zechariah and Elizabeth, the parents of John the
Baptist, are faithful. The shepherds in the field are faithful. Everyone is
faithful.
Now Mary and Joseph
faithfully fulfill their responsibilities, and Simeon and Anna—well, as one
writer puts it, their “faithfulness takes the cake.” It’s not like they had the
proclamations of the angels to rely upon! They just kept their eyes open, day
after day, perhaps checking out every baby that came through the doors of the
Temple, waiting to be enlightened and inspired. Can we be as faithful in our
setting?
And what does this
faithfulness look like? It looks like keeping our eyes open to the smallest of
details. Check. It looks like doing everything right, staying true to our
tradition. Check. It looks like being passionate about our commitment to
inclusiveness. Check. It looks like learning to never underestimate the smallest
bundles of joy. Check.
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