Ezekiel 43.27-44.4, Psalm 48; 1 Corinthians 1.13; Luke 2.22-40

God our creator, who in the beginning commanded the light to shine out of darkness: we pray that the light of the glorious gospel of Christ may dispel the darkness of ignorance and unbelief, shine into the hearts of all your people,
and reveal the knowledge of your glory in the face of Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.

IN ABOUT 573 BC, 25 years after he and some of his compatriots were taken into exile, the prophet Ezekiel was transported to Jerusalem in a vision (Ezekiel 40.1-2). In the course of this experience, the Lord revealed to him in great detail the dimensions of the Temple that was to be built in place of the structure destroyed by Babylonians.

The final element of this revelation was a set of measurements for the holiest part of the building. It was to be set apart “to make a separation between the holy and the common” (Ezekiel 42.20). After that, the glory of the Lord, which had dramatically left the Temple (Ezekiel 10), returned, and the prophet was lifted up in the spirit to see how it filled the whole of the inner court (Ezekiel 43.4).

Further ceremonial instructions followed for the consecration of the altar, after a week of purification. One part of the Temple, the sanctuary, was never to be entered except by “the Prince”, a term denoting a secular ruler (Ezekiel 44.1-3). Another vision of the Lord’s glory left Ezekiel prostrated in awe (Ezekiel 44.4).

When the glory of the Lord came to the Temple that succeeded the Temple of Ezekiel’s vision half a millennium later, the scene was less exotic. In fact, there would have been no particular reason for anyone present that day to take special notice of a couple with their baby son, making the regulation offering after a birth (Leviticus 12.8).

The couple themselves might simply have gone home to Nazareth as a newly constituted family to resume life in their familiar community, had the Holy Spirit not directed a quieter prophetic figure than Ezekiel to go to the Temple. So it was that Simeon met Mary, Joseph, and Jesus (Luke 2.27).

The words that Simeon spoke as he held the baby confirm a reality even more real than the promise of the earlier vision. The glory of God has not only come into the Temple: it is visible and tangible, and it puts itself into human hands (Luke 2.28-32).

In fact, it is a glory so reticent that it chooses to deprive itself of the power of speech. “Infant”, we might remember, derives from the Latin infans — “not able to speak”; but the powerful future embodied in the child has its troubling side.

When Simeon turns from praising God to addressing Mary, he offers a picture that could only have disturbed a new mother —- tainted by division, upheaval, conflict, and personal pain (Luke 2.34-35).

Extraordinary things will happen when people meet Jesus. Not all of them will point obviously to the presence of God’s glory in the world.

Even before his birth, his unborn cousin “leaped” in Elizabeth’s womb as their mothers met (Luke 1.41). He would go on, as a 12-year-old, to confound the scribes in the Temple he had first entered as a baby (Luke 2.46-47).

Simeon’s oracles invite us to read the signs, to be communities of interpretation, alert to what we see and hear, and prepared to see and hear things differently, even when they are uncomfortable.

Several years ago, I was part of a guided visit to Cefalù Cathedral, in Sicily, led by an archaeologist who knew every stone of the building. As we approached the apse mosaic, he pointed out the relationship of the central image of Christ Pantocrator to the apostolic figures surrounding it.

The apostles have their books closed, and their scrolls are rolled up. Christ raises his right hand, palm facing out, second and third fingers raised and slightly crooked. This was not a blessing, the guide explained. It was the gesture in classical rhetoric of directing the audience to be silent: Christ is the ultimate interpreter.

The encircling inscription reads: “Factus homo factor hominis factique redemptor. Iudico corporeus corpora corda Deus,” “Made man, maker of man, and redeemer of what I made, I judge bodies and hearts as God made flesh.”

As the Church keeps the feast of the Presentation — known to the Eastern Church as the Meeting — its Christmas wonder at a speechless baby gives way to awe at the light of the nations (Luke 2.32), shining in judgement and love “into the hearts of all God’s people” (collect of the day).