Luke 2:25-32 (Matins)
Hebrews 7:7-17
Luke 2:22-40

Contra Verba, Contra Mundum

Abram left Ur of the Chaldees, that greatest city of the third millennium. Moses left the cities of Egypt, that greatest empire of its time. Jesus would be reared far from Jerusalem, that poisonous atmosphere of Babylonian-Persian religion. For in those fevered streets and that in that concentration of fleshly living, city-dwellers could neither see nor hear God save in brief glimpses or in fragments of sound. In our own time, Bells Labs, attaining eleven Nobel Prizes and five Turing Awards, had to leave New York because of that city's electro-magnetic fields and airborne industrial particulates. For its researchers aspired to see and hear the heavens. (On that note, Arno Penzias, Nobel laureate in Physics, told me that the opening verses of Genesis as "a precise though poetic description of Big Bang Theory," which his work had confirmed.)

As Wordsworth wrote, "the world is too much with us." And we shall never see God so long as we are fixed on worldly things. Several thousand years later, this principle still applies: we must extricate ourselves from the tentacles of the world — throw away our televisions, turn off our radios, and use the internet only prudently — else our inner gaze cannot escape the enemy. We cannot help but fix our minds and thoughts always on the evil one, contemplating the things of the evil one, who rules this world (Jn 12:31, 2 Cor 4:4, Eph 2:2). In fact, this principle applies with a ferocity hitherto unknown, amplified many times over by this age's technologies, which hasten the spiritual death of humankind.

Like John the Baptist, we must depart to a wilderness. We must emulate "the man from Eden," who wore only natural clothes, ate a kind of manna made from honey and wheat, refused inebriating drink, and who saw with particular clarity and pained sensitivity the monstrous life of man-without-God. The Forerunner emulated Jesus Who Was and Is Eden. The element natural to Jesus of Nazareth is Paradise, and He inaugurated His three-year ministry with one word: Metanoeite! which means, "Turn back! You are going the wrong way!" and immediately added, "the Kingdom of Heaven has drawn near." The Kingdom of Heaven, the Bosom of Abraham, the Groves of Eden .... these are all phrases that mean the same thing: union with God. And every other path will lead you to "the resurrection of condemnation" (Jn 5:29).

Today, we celebrate a nascent word about God and the estranged world. St. Simeon's prophecy is dense with meaning:

The Greek word Simeon uttered was αντιλεγόμενον / antilegómenon: that is, anti-legomonon, which means, "speaking against" — literally, contra-diction.

Nearly all English translations, which render this as "will be spoken against," suggest Jesus becoming a "byword," that people will "speak unkindly" about Him. But the primary meaning of the word is "flat contradiction." Have you heard the flinty rebuke of Jesus sprinkled throughout the Gospels? He does not mince words. He does not look for euphemisms or soft ways to couch meaning. His words are bold, and they cut to the quick:

Do you feel it piercing you? Do you feel the sharp sword of God's Discernment pinning you down? I do.

Yet our God and King and Maker constantly faced contradiction. As St. John declared in his Prologue,

Indeed, the world opposed the Advent of God and opposes it still. But to contradict God is to bring upon oneself Divine Judgment, which is the final Contradiction: the "Last Word."

To stand before "the Discerner of the thoughts and intents of heart" is always already to come into His piercing judgment. In the words of an ancient prayer, perhaps dating to the first or second century,

With those words do you feel the nakedness that I feel?

Yet, the world is out of joint and has been since the first disobedience in Eden. And when that crooked world stands before the perfect lineaments of Heaven, here is a most awful place — a place of hurricanes and tornadoes and unbearable velocities. For the world will never square with the perfection and goodness of Heaven, nor can changeless Heaven bend itself to accommodate the unredeemed world. And when Heaven came to earth, the Lord Jesus looked out upon all that He had made and inescapably discerned all with the perfect and good vision of God. With exquisite pain He brokenness all around Him everywhere He went. And sensing this perfection and goodness and sensing His piercing vision and therefore judgment, the proud could only respond with insolence and impertinence and worse: ripping out pieces of His beard, placing a mocking crown of thorns upon His Sacred Head, and spitting upon His incommensurably Holy Person.

Contradiction — the word contains within it the meaning Meeting place between Man and God. Indeed, as I listened to Sr. Mary Anne read our Epistle lesson (Heb 7:17), I heard that Jesus arises from a priesthood that is internally contradicted. I heard that Moses is contradiction (Moses said nothing about priesthood arising from Judah). Surrounding Jesus are contradictions .... contradictions of the Law, contradictions of our expectations. Jesus arises from contradiction. The Meeting place between man and God is a most dangerous place. So let us keep silence. Let us reverently bow in awe at the words of the Prophet. With the Advent of God, the Son has cut through the particulate air that chokes the spirit. He has summoned us to depart from the irradiating buzz of our technologies. He has called us away, all of us, that we might breathe wholesome air and pray beneath crystalline night skies. He has called us to a desert place no different from the ones to which He called Abraham, Moses, and St. John the Forerunner. Let us there draw a circle beneath Heaven and dedicate it and consecrate it and protect it. For this is His will — that we inhabit and guard a little outpost of the Kingdom of Heaven. For His words from the beginning are spoken with the same urgency as He first spoke them:

All else is a deadly waste of our time. And our time, at this late hour, must not be wasted. For when He calls, He expects a reply. Therefore, say your prayers, greet your guardian angel, live in godly simplicity, and have a heart for the poor and the homeless. For this there is mirth in Heaven.

In the Name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Ghost.