Reading The Lectionary: The Servant Submits

These are actually the readings for Wednesday, but I started a day late, and dedicated myself to finishing what I started.

Isaiah 50:4-9a

The servant submits to suffering

The Lord GOD has given me a trained tongue, that I may know how to sustain the weary with a word. Morning by morning he wakens, wakens my ear to listen as those who are taught.

The Lord GOD has opened my ear, and I was not rebellious; I did not turn backward.

I gave my back to those who struck me and my cheeks to those who pulled out the beard; I did not hide my face from insult and spitting.

The Lord GOD helps me; therefore I have not been disgraced; therefore I have set my face like flint, and I know that I shall not be put to shame;

he who vindicates me is near. Who will contend with me? Let us stand in court together. Who are my adversaries? Let them confront me.

It is the Lord GOD who helps me; who will declare me guilty?

The language here echoes the scenes where God, through a prophet, demands Israel enter the metaphorical courtroom and put their case against God for allowing the Exile. But there God puts God’s self above human concerns, not because God is aloof, but because God is righteous, and has been (and remains) faithful to the covenant, while Israel has not. Here, however, the prophet is faithful to God; and despite the brutality of the Exile, remains so. And again, the prophet identifies with Israel; or at least presents an object lesson for how Israel should behave.

The prophet submits to calumny, but the prophet is not shamed. Our Anglo-Saxon (for one) culture teaches that we cannot accept shame; we must fight back to reclaim our “dignity.” Trump is the worst and most extreme example of this:

Trump says MAGA should boycott Bruce Springsteen concerts. pic.twitter.com/yHE8Sc5dLA

— Ron Filipkowski (@RonFilipkowski) April 2, 2026

All because Springsteen was interviewed on Fox News and didn’t have kind things to say about Trump. Isaiah presents the opposite example to Israel.  And here is the other difference between biblical Israel and our modern concept of the nation state. 

Biblical Israel exists as a lineage, the children of Abraham. One is born into it (but it is not “birthright citizenship”). Israel exists because of the covenant, so it is corporate rather than wholly individual. The nation state is corporate, but it is composed of individuals bound to a common purpose; but not bound by a covenant with God established by ancestry. So you can’t read the moral obligation laid on Israel as one that can be laid on a nation state. Niebuhr was right about that; individuals can be moral, nations cannot. An individual can sacrifice their life for a moral purpose. A nation’s obligation is to preserve and protect the nation, which is the individuals of that nation (I speak of democracies, obviously). That’s the irreducible friction we have with Isaiah, and the nation of Israel he addresses. We cannot think in terms of individual and nation being equally obligated to an ethic, because while the individual may be a suffering servant, one whose faith is in God and whose resolve is in the assurance of the justice of God, the nation state cannot do likewise, or demand that its citizens do. Even the Israel Isaiah addresses, doesn’t want to do that. The tension between what God requires, and what biblical Israel, or we modern individuals, will do, is real; and irresolvable. “Israel” still means “struggles with God.”

 Psalm 70

Be pleased, O God, to deliver me

Be pleased, O God, to deliver me. O LORD, make haste to help me!

Let those be put to shame and confusion who seek my life. Let those be turned back and brought to dishonor who desire to hurt me.

Let those who say, "Aha, Aha!" turn back because of their shame.

Let all who seek you rejoice and be glad in you. Let those who love your salvation say evermore, "God is great!"

But I am poor and needy; hasten to me, O God! You are my help and my deliverer; O LORD, do not delay!

Hebrews 12:1-3

Look to Jesus, who endured the cross

Therefore, since we are surrounded by so great a cloud of witnesses, let us also lay aside every weight and the sin that clings so closely, and let us run with perseverance the race that is set before us,

looking to Jesus the pioneer and perfecter of faith, who for the sake of the joy that was set before him endured the cross, disregarding its shame, and has taken his seat at the right hand of the throne of God.

Consider him who endured such hostility against himself from sinners, so that you may not grow weary or lose heart.

Isaiah wants Israel to follow the example he preaches, even if he doesn’t embody (like some of the prophets, Hosea most notably, did) everything he teaches. The letter to the Hebrews wants to teach that lesson to individuals, mostly to the children of Abraham. It presents Christ as an example to follow, not unlike Paul did. That example is one of faithfulness, and humility. “Lord, when did we see you?,” the line from the closing parable of Matthew’s gospel, is present here. Paul recalls Abraham at Mamre, and tells us we, too, may show hospitality to angels unaware. The letter to the Hebrews echoes Isaiah’s suffering servant as our role model. Matthew tells us when we are a servant to anyone who is the least among us, we are a servant to God. And that is all that’s required of us: to follow the commandment, to love one another.

John 13:21-32

Jesus foretells his betrayal

After saying this Jesus was troubled in spirit and declared, "Very truly, I tell you, one of you will betray me."

The disciples looked at one another, uncertain of whom he was speaking.

One of his disciples--the one whom Jesus loved--was reclining close to his heart;

Simon Peter therefore motioned to him to ask Jesus of whom he was speaking.

So while reclining next to Jesus, he asked him, "Lord, who is it?"

Jesus answered, "It is the one to whom I give this piece of bread when I have dipped it in the dish." So when he had dipped the piece of bread, he gave it to Judas son of Simon Iscariot.

After he received the piece of bread, Satan entered into him. Jesus said to him, "Do quickly what you are going to do."

Now no one knew why he said this to him.

Some thought that, because Judas had the common purse, Jesus was telling him, "Buy what we need for the festival," or that he should give something to the poor.

So, after receiving the piece of bread, he immediately went out. And it was night.

When he had gone out, Jesus said, "Now the Son of Man has been glorified, and God has been glorified in him.

If God has been glorified in him, God will also glorify him in himself and will glorify him at once.

Jesus is worried, again. Sometime earlier, as we are reading it, Jesus has just worried, openly, about his impending crucifixion and, after some enigmatic words about light and darkness, he slips away into darkness. Or at least to where he can’t be seen. Now here he is, back again, the night before the end, the last night, and he’s worried again.

Well; he is only human.

And then Judas slips wordlessly into the night. Now it is Judas who disappears from sight into darkness. Light and shadow; hidden and revealed. The seed hides life that is only revealed when the seed is hidden.

“Reclining at table,” by the way, is literal. It’s the way people sat in 1at century Palestine. They didn’t “sit up to the table,” as my elders all instructed me, knees bent and feet beneath the groaning board in the soup and fish, as Bertie Wooster would say. They reclined, legs perpendicular to the table, propped on an elbow. And they ate with their fingers. Probably with pita bread, it occurs to me. Probably not the fat, airy loaves we think of as bread. Probably not at the time of the Passover.

I don’t know, and don’t presume, but I wonder if the original “last supper” shared something with the Seder. That meal is more ritualistic, but the ritual may have more to do with the diaspora after the destruction of the Temple. All four gospels were written after 70 C.E, but the rabbinical Judaism we are familiar with, rooted by and large in the work of the Pharisees, didn’t spring full blown into existence in 71. Passover observance would have been at the Temple. It’s why the crowds and the money changers were there, and why Jesus was, too. It’s also why the cleansing of the Temple upset Pilate enough to order the crucifixion of the rabble rouser to quell any thoughts of challenging the Pax Romana during the festival celebrating the exodus of Israel from bondage and oppression. So it probably wasn’t a Seder meal. But the bread was probably closer to unleavened than not.

Pita is raised by the way it’s formed and baked, not by the amount of yeast in it. It’s speculative, but these minor speculations enrich the story for me. After all, our primary image of this iconic meal is an Italian Renaissance one, with all 13 persons (probably where triskadekaphobia originated) on one side of the table, seated in chairs and facing the viewer who stares through the fourth wall. We take the details for granted, and miss the reality. Does it matter what kind of bread it was? No. But if it refocuses our attention, makes us start over and look anew, the challenge has served its purpose.

You’ll nothing much happens here. The action, in John, came earlier, with the sacrament that wasn’t. The meal here is shown only in the bread handed to Judas (and how Johannine is that act? Mark, the oldest gospel, has Jesus tell his disciples that the one who dips his bread in the bowl with Jesus, is the betrayer. But Mark doesn’t describe Judas doing that thereafter, so maybe Judas has been doing it all night, and nobody really noticed. But John’s Jesus is always in charge, and hands the fatal sign to Judas after dipping it in the oil. “This is my body,” indeed; and he hands it over to his betrayer.) Again, the servant accepts his fate.

The Crucified God. The power of powerlessness. Death, be not proud.

But then, neither should any of us.

Reading The Lectionary: “For Your Sake, Not For Mine”

Isaiah 49:1-7

The servant brings light to the nations

Listen to me, O coastlands; pay attention, you peoples from far away! The LORD called me before I was born; while I was in my mother's womb he named me.

He made my mouth like a sharp sword; in the shadow of his hand he hid me; he made me a polished arrow; in his quiver he hid me away.

And he said to me, "You are my servant, Israel, in whom I will be glorified."

But I said, "I have labored in vain; I have spent my strength for nothing and vanity; yet surely my cause is with the LORD and my reward with my God."

And now the LORD says, who formed me in the womb to be his servant, to bring Jacob back to him, and that Israel might be gathered to him, for I am honored in the sight of the LORD, and my God has become my strength-

he says, "It is too light a thing that you should be my servant to raise up the tribes of Jacob and to restore the survivors of Israel; I will give you as a light to the nations, that my salvation may reach to the end of the earth."

Thus says the LORD, the Redeemer of Israel and his Holy One, to one deeply despised, abhorred by the nations, the slave of rulers, "Kings shall see and stand up; princes, and they shall prostrate themselves, because of the LORD, who is faithful, the Holy One of Israel, who has chosen you."

Is God speaking to the prophet, or to Israel? Yes. I mean, what is the distinction? Israel is the children of Abraham, the children of Abraham are Israel. Israel will be a light to the nations, Isaiah will be a light to the nations. The individual is of the people. The people are of the individual. It’s not a concept we can grasp in our post-Enlightenment, post-Romantic world. For us, there is the individual; and there is the mass. One can be rational; the other can be nothing but irrational. One can be ethical; the other cannot. But Isaiah says the people can be as ethical as the individual.

This is not a concept we can grasp, we if the post-Enlightenment and post-Romantic eras. And I don’t think we should. We are too democratic (small “d”) now to not make “individual” our primary source of identity. I’m just pointing out Isaiah saw things differently; everyone did “back then.” And our baseline weltanschauung would be as alien and incomprehensible to them, as theirs is to us.

You have to be careful how you read these things. Isaiah wasn’t talking to you. But you can still listen. You just have to be careful about what you hear.

Isaiah crosses between himself, the prophet of Israel, and Israel, the children of Abraham. The prophet has a relationship with God; from the womb, he says. The metaphor applies to Israel as well, formed in the metaphorical womb by the covenant with Abraham, sustained by the salvific history of Israel (attend an Easter Vigil service; or come back here on Easter Sunday, and you’ll find a review of that story). The prophet means to mingle the two, to make individual and national history co-terminous, the better to explain the word of the Lord.

And now the LORD says, who formed me in the womb to be his servant, to bring Jacob back to him, and that Israel might be gathered to him, for I am honored in the sight of the LORD, and my God has become my strength- 

he says, "It is too light a thing that you should be my servant to raise up the tribes of Jacob and to restore the survivors of Israel; I will give you as a light to the nations, that my salvation may reach to the end of the earth." 

Thus says the LORD, the Redeemer of Israel and his Holy One, to one deeply despised, abhorred by the nations, the slave of rulers, "Kings shall see and stand up; princes, and they shall prostrate themselves, because of the LORD, who is faithful, the Holy One of Israel, who has chosen you."

Israel; and Isaiah; and their purpose. Deeply despised; abhorred by nations; once again the slave of rulers; chosen by the Creator. To be a light to the nations.

The power of powerlessness.

  

Psalm 71:1-14

From my mother's womb you have been my strength

In you, O LORD, I take refuge; let me never be put to shame.

In your righteousness deliver me and rescue me; incline your ear to me and save me.

Be to me a rock of refuge, a strong fortress to save me, for you are my rock and my fortress.

Rescue me, O my God, from the hand of the wicked, from the grasp of the unjust and cruel.

For you, O Lord, are my hope, my trust, O LORD, from my youth.

From my birth I have leaned upon you, my protector since my mother's womb. My praise is continually of you.

I have been like a portent to many, but you are my strong refuge.

My mouth is filled with your praise and with your glory all day long.

Do not cast me off in the time of old age; do not forsake me when my strength is spent.

For my enemies speak concerning me, and those who watch for my life consult together.

They say, "Pursue and seize that person whom God has forsaken, for there is no one to deliver."

O God, do not be far from me; O my God, make haste to help me!

Let my accusers be put to shame and consumed; let those who seek to hurt me be covered with scorn and disgrace.

But I will hope continually and will praise you yet more and more.

Again: the song of the individual; the song of the children of Abraham. Which is which? Can’t it be both/and? 

Israel/the Psalmist forsaken? Or the Psalmist/Israel redeemed? By the power of God; which is powerlessness.

1 Corinthians 1:18-31

Christ crucified, the wisdom and power of God

For the message about the cross is foolishness to those who are perishing, but to us who are being saved it is the power of God.

For it is written, "I will destroy the wisdom of the wise, and the discernment of the discerning I will thwart."

Where is the one who is wise? Where is the scholar? Where is the debater of this age? Has not God made foolish the wisdom of the world?

For since, in the wisdom of God, the world did not know God through wisdom, God decided, through the foolishness of the proclamation, to save those who believe.

For Jews ask for signs and Greeks desire wisdom,

but we proclaim Christ crucified, a stumbling block to Jews and foolishness to gentiles,

but to those who are the called, both Jews and Greeks, Christ the power of God and the wisdom of God.

For God's foolishness is wiser than human wisdom, and God's weakness is stronger than human strength.

Consider your own call, brothers and sisters: not many of you were wise by human standards, not many were powerful, not many were of noble birth.

But God chose what is foolish in the world to shame the wise; God chose what is weak in the world to shame the strong;

God chose what is low and despised in the world, things that are not, to abolish things that are,

so that no one might boast in the presence of God.

In contrast, God is why you are in Christ Jesus, who became for us wisdom from God, and righteousness and sanctification and redemption,

in order that, as it is written, "Let the one who boasts, boast in the Lord."

What is Christ crucified, except powerlessness? What is  foolishness, except powerlessness? What is wisdom, except powerlessness? What is God, except powerlessness? 

Which is not weakness, but true power.

But God chose what is foolish in the world to shame the wise; God chose what is weak in the world to shame the strong; 

God chose what is low and despised in the world, things that are not, to abolish things that are, 

so that no one might boast in the presence of God. 

In contrast, God is why you are in Christ Jesus, who became for us wisdom from God, and righteousness and sanctification and redemption,

in order that, as it is written, "Let the one who boasts, boast in the Lord."

And where’s the power in that?

Precisely.

John 12:20-36

Jesus speaks of his death

Now among those who went up to worship at the festival were some Greeks.

They came to Philip, who was from Bethsaida in Galilee, and said to him, "Sir, we wish to see Jesus."

Philip went and told Andrew, then Andrew and Philip went and told Jesus.

Jesus answered them, "The hour has come for the Son of Man to be glorified.

Very truly, I tell you, unless a grain of wheat falls into the earth and dies, it remains just a single grain, but if it dies it bears much fruit.

Those who love their life lose it, and those who hate their life in this world will keep it for eternal life.

Whoever serves me must follow me, and where I am, there will my servant be also. Whoever serves me, the Father will honor.

"Now my soul is troubled. And what should I say: 'Father, save me from this hour'? No, it is for this reason that I have come to this hour.

Father, glorify your name." Then a voice came from heaven, "I have glorified it, and I will glorify it again."

The crowd standing there heard it and said that it was thunder. Others said, "An angel has spoken to him."

Jesus answered, "This voice has come for your sake, not for mine.

Now is the judgment of this world; now the ruler of this world will be driven out.

And I, when I am lifted up from the earth, will draw all people to myself."

He said this to indicate the kind of death he was to die.

The crowd answered him, "We have heard from the law that the Messiah remains forever. How can you say that the Son of Man must be lifted up? Who is this Son of Man?"

Jesus said to them, "The light is in you for a little longer. Walk while you have the light, so that the darkness may not overtake you. If you walk in the darkness, you do not know where you are going.

While you have the light, believe in the light, so that you may become children of light." After Jesus had said this, he departed and hid from them.

John's Jesus is always the human struggling with the divine. You can read John as making Jesus simply God among mortals; but sometimes, he’s just a mortal trying to speak for God. John's Jesus is always the human struggling with the divine. You can read John as making Jesus simply God among mortals; but sometimes, he’s just a mortal trying to speak for God. Here, right talks in metaphor about a seed dying in order to produce more life (it is, admittedly, an almost incorrect analogy), but then he goes human: 

"Now my soul is troubled. And what should I say: 'Father, save me from this hour'? No, it is for this reason that I have come to this hour.

Derrida asked: “My death, is it possible?” That question has gone suddenly from abstract to concrete for Jesus. Even John’s divine Jesus is troubled by the truth of mortality. He realizes his death is finally not only possible, but imminent. And like the Psalmist, he turns to God:

Father, glorify your name." Then a voice came from heaven, "I have glorified it, and I will glorify it again." 

The crowd standing there heard it and said that it was thunder. Others said, "An angel has spoken to him." 

Jesus answered, "This voice has come for your sake, not for mine. 

One of the most interesting passages in the gospels: some hear thunder; some hear the voice of an angel. But no hears what is said. And Jesus says: “That wasn’t for me, that was for you.”

Jesus is God. Jesus is human. And everyone’s hearing without listening. Maybe God could make them listen? But then what would they hear? 

After all, he doesn’t explain. The narrator tells us Jesus is talking about the death he will die. So at least we know. But Jesus can’t explain to the crowd. He talks in metaphors about light and darkness and then…runs for the darkness? For the moment, at least, they don’t know where he’s going. 

It’s another very human moment for John’s Jesus: desperately seeking the power of powerlessness. 

Reading The Lectionary In Holy Week

Isaiah 42:1-9

The servant of God brings justice

Here is my servant, whom I uphold, my chosen, in whom my soul delights; I have put my spirit upon him; he will bring forth justice to the nations.

He will not cry out or lift up his voice or make it heard in the street;

a bruised reed he will not break, and a dimly burning wick he will not quench; he will faithfully bring forth justice.

He will not grow faint or be crushed until he has established justice in the earth, and the coastlands wait for his teaching.

Thus says God, the LORD, who created the heavens and stretched them out, who spread out the earth and what comes from it, who gives breath to the people upon it and spirit to those who walk in it:

I am the LORD; I have called you in righteousness; I have taken you by the hand and kept you; I have given you as a covenant to the people, a light to the nations,

to open the eyes that are blind, to bring out the prisoners from the dungeon, from the prison those who sit in darkness.

I am the LORD; that is my name; my glory I give to no other, nor my praise to idols.

See, the former things have come to pass, and new things I now declare; before they spring forth, I tell you of them.

So I’m inspired to review the daily lectionary for Holy Week. This is actually Monday’s readings, but there’s a theme here, so I want to start with it even though it’s a day late. 

What Isaiah describes here is what I call the power of powerlessness. God, in God’s own telling, is supreme:

Thus says God, the LORD, who created the heavens and stretched them out, who spread out the earth and what comes from it, who gives breath to the people upon it and spirit to those who walk in it: 

And has a covenant with the children of Abraham:

I am the LORD; I have called you in righteousness; I have taken you by the hand and kept you; I have given you as a covenant to the people, a light to the nations, 

That covenant has a purpose, which is not just to make Israel a nation:

to open the eyes that are blind, to bring out the prisoners from the dungeon, from the prison those who sit in darkness. 

To bring, in other words, God’s salvation to the world. The blind, the prisoner; that’s literal, not some metaphorical pseudo-spiritual “miserable sinner that I am”/Amazing Grace” sense. Real blindness; real imprisonment; in the dungeons, where the forgotten languish. If the light doesn’t reach them, what’s the point of it?

And how will this happen? By works of power and physical dominance? No. By powerlessness:

Here is my servant, whom I uphold, my chosen, in whom my soul delights; I have put my spirit upon him; he will bring forth justice to the nations. 

He will not cry out or lift up his voice or make it heard in the street; 

a bruised reed he will not break, and a dimly burning wick he will not quench; he will faithfully bring forth justice. 

The spirit of God is a cry for justice, but it is not a fight, a clarion call “Aux armes, les citoyens!” God’s justice comes peacefully, quietly; relentlessly.

He will not grow faint or be crushed until he has established justice in the earth, and the coastlands wait for his teaching. 

Because the spirit of God is faith, is trust, is patience. “All shall be well, and all shall be well, and all manner of thing shall be well.” When the fire and the rose 🔥🌹are one? No; in God’s time. Have faith; hold fast to trust; be patient. And you will behold the power of powerlessness.

Psalm 36:5-11

Refuge under the shadow of your wings

Your steadfast love, O LORD, extends to the heavens, your faithfulness to the clouds.

Your righteousness is like the mighty mountains; your judgments are like the great deep; you save humans and animals alike, O LORD.

How precious is your steadfast love, O God! All people may take refuge in the shadow of your wings.

They feast on the abundance of your house, and you give them drink from the river of your delights.

For with you is the fountain of life; in your light we see light.

O continue your steadfast love to those who know you and your salvation to the upright of heart!

Do not let the foot of the arrogant tread on me, or the hand of the wicked drive me away.

The psalm is a prayer of faith and trust. It is more for the heart than the mind; although the two are not separate, not apart from each other. But we’ll leave the psalm today as a heartfelt prayer, a cri de couer.

Hebrews 9:11-15

The blood of Christ redeems for eternal life

But when Christ came as a high priest of the good things that have come, then through the greater and more perfect tent (not made with hands, that is, not of this creation),

he entered once for all into the holy place, not with the blood of goats and calves, but with his own blood, thus obtaining eternal redemption.

For if the blood of goats and bulls and the sprinkling of the ashes of a heifer sanctifies those who have been defiled so that their flesh is purified,

how much more will the blood of Christ, who through the eternal Spirit offered himself without blemish to God, purify our conscience from dead works to worship the living God!

For this reason he is the mediator of a new covenant, so that those who are called may receive the promised eternal inheritance, because a death has occurred that redeems them from the transgressions under the first covenant.

I’m going to start with the second verse there, because I’m more interested in elucidation than exegesis. I just want to point out a few points of interest, places where I think misunderstanding can intrude. 

So when scripture uses the metaphor of the tent, it’s a reference to the Exodus, to the years in the desert, to the time before the Temple in Jerusalem. But the real issue is here:

… then through the greater and more perfect tent (not made with hands, that is, not of this creation), 

Which might be misread as a dichotomy between Jesus (homoiousias/homoousias) (holy; good) and creation (fallen; bad). That’s a reading from several centuries later. The letter to the Hebrews is merely upholding the understanding that, while God is Creator, what is created is neither homoousias nor homoiousias with God; but Jesus is. Take that from it, and you’ll be fine.

As for the blood…well, connect the idea of fluids to the anointing story from John, the last of four in the gospels; and the only story, besides the crucifixion, that show up in all four gospels (and before you object, no, Mark does not have a resurrection; only an empty tomb. The longer ending is much later than the original ending.)

John 12:1-11

Mary of Bethany anoints Jesus

Six days before the Passover Jesus came to Bethany, the home of Lazarus, whom he had raised from the dead.

There they gave a dinner for him. Martha served, and Lazarus was one of those reclining with him.

Mary took a pound of costly perfume made of pure nard, anointed Jesus's feet, and wiped them with her hair. The house was filled with the fragrance of the perfume.

But Judas Iscariot, one of his disciples (the one who was about to betray him), said,

"Why was this perfume not sold for three hundred denarii and the money given to the poor?"

(He said this not because he cared about the poor but because he was a thief; he kept the common purse and used to steal what was put into it.)

Jesus said, "Leave her alone. She bought it so that she might keep it for the day of my burial.

You always have the poor with you, but you do not always have me."

When the great crowd of the Jews learned that he was there, they came not only because of Jesus but also to see Lazarus, whom he had raised from the dead.

So the chief priests planned to put Lazarus to death as well,

since it was on account of him that many of the Jews were deserting and were believing in Jesus.

This is where things get tedious, because the anointing stories absolutely fascinate me. This is almost the only time a story in the synoptics shows up in John, and owes so much to Luke, the only gospel closer in chronological time, to our time; save John’s. I’ve got the Scholars version at hand, so I’m going to cheat and use that one now:

Six days before Passover Jesus came to Bethany, where Lazarus lived, the one Jesus had brought back from the dead.  There they gave a dinner for him; Martha did the servince and Lazarus was one of those who ate with him. Mary brought a pound of expensive lotion and anointed Jesus' feet and wiped them with her hair. And the house was filled with the lotion's fragrance.  Judas Iscariot, the disciple who was going to turn him in, says, "Why wasn't this lotion sold? It would bring a year's wages, and the proceeds could have been given to the poor. (He didn't say this because he cared about the poor, but becasue he was a thief.  He was in charge of hte common purse and now and again wouild pilfer money from it.)

"Let her alone," Jesus said.  "Let her keep it for the time I am to be enbalmed.  There will always be poor around; but I won't always be around.

--John 12:1-8, SV

So that's it:  8 verses and done.  But the scene in John’s gospel is Bethany. Lazarus, a character in a parable in Luke (the only other time the name appears in the gospels), is now the dead brother of Mary (Lazarus dies in the parable, too). Lazarus has been raised from the dead, which is why the chief priests are upset (actually the Romans killed Jesus, but the surest way to be the next on a cross was to hint that execution was in any way unjust. Much safer to blame Judean religious authority.). Now the time is the days before Passover; and Jesus, he does in Mark and Matthew, refers to the act as a foreshadowing of his death.  But two very important elements have shifted, perhaps through Luke's lens:  now the perfume goes on Jesus' feet, and again, a woman wipes his feet with her hair.  Only this time the woman is named, so perhaps now we can tell this story "in remembrance of her," at least in the modern understanding of "remembrance."

It's interesting, the similiarities between this story and the stories in Matthew and Mark.  There aren't that many commonalities between John and the Synoptics.  John the Baptizer plays an important role in the gospels of Mark and Matthew, a role that reaches its zenith in Luke's gospel, where he begins with the appearance of Gabriel to John's father, Zechariah. In John's gospel the Baptizer appears as a bystander, someone who literally comments on Jesus as Jesus walks by.  No one in John's gospel gets to share center stage, however briefly, with Jesus.  John's gospel has no Sermon on the Mount (Luke)/Plain (Matthew), and precious few parables.  In the synoptics, Jesus' miracles are "acts of power" (dunamis) in the original Greek; in John's version they are "signs"  (semeia). So the resurrection of Lazarus is a "sign" of Jesus' authority and power, and it is precisely that sign which leads to the crucifixion:

When the huge crowd of Judeans found out he was there, they came not only because of Jesus but also to see Lazarus, the one he had brought back from the dead.  so the ranking priests planned to put Lazarus to death, too, since because of him many of the Judeans were defecting and believing in Jesus.

John 12:9-11, SV

The "sign" of Lazarus was costing the priests their power; at least in John's narrative.  I’ve mentioned before that the cleansing of the Temple seems to have been the historical impetus for the crucifixion.  That occurs just before Passover, a time of tension in Roman occupied Jerusalem.  John includes that story, in a few verses in chapter 2, almost immediately after the first "sign" at the wedding in Cana:

It was almost time for the Jewish Passover celebration, so Jesus went up to Jerusalem.  In the temple precincts he came upon people selling oxen and sheep and doves, and bankers were doing business there too.  He made a whip out of rope and drove them all out of the temple area, sheep, goats, oxen, and all; then he knocked over the bankers' tables, and set their coin flying.  And to the dove merchants he said, "Get these birds out of here! How dare you use my Father's house as apublic market."

(His disciples were reminded of the words of scripture: "Zeal for your house is eating me alive.")

John 2:13-17, SV

It's worth pointing out here, as a side bar, that merchants in the temple weren't necessarily evil.  Temple sacrifice was the point of coming to the Temple during Passover, and most travelers couldn't bring animals with them for the ritual.  They bought animals as they were able to afford:  from doves to ox.  Coins given to the Temple also couldn't bear the image of Caesar, both because humans are made in the image of God (and no images of God can be created), and because Caesar declared himself a "son of God," or divine in his rule over the empire. So the coins of Rome had to be exchanged at Temple for coins acceptable in the Temple.  The problem with both practices, from Jesus' point of view, is that they exploited the poor (like Jesus).  The cost of a dove was already a sacrifice for the poor traveler to Jerusalem coming to the Temple to worship the God of Abraham who taught Israel to think first of the care of the poor.  The exchange rate on Temple coins made money for the banker, and cost the poor, especially, a great deal.  Jesus' objection, in other words, is not pious;  he objects to the economic exploitation of people like him, the very people the God of Abraham professes to identify with.  So you can see why he's pissed off. You can also see why Pilate was worried. We don’t countenance these kinds of complaints today: especially if they are made in the name of Jesus.

Pilate's palace overlooked the Temple.  I mean, directly overlooked.  From the walls of the governor’s palace, Pilate could look down into the open areas of the Temple. Turmoil in the Temple during Passover, the high holiday of the Judeans (Jews is a bit of an anachronism during the time of Pilate), the "first of months" for the children of Abraham , is not conducive to the Pax Romana. It's a time of high political tension for Rome, which tolerated diverse religious beliefs, but not diverse political beliefs.  And Passover was as political as it was religious, so....

Back to Jesus:  the cost of the perfume Mary uses doesn't bother him.  There's no contradiction here; just a contrast.  And a consistency that keeps this version of the anointing at Bethany in line with those of Matthew and Mark.  Luke's is still the outlier (no perfume; only the woman’s tears; an outrageously erotic presentation in Luke’s day); but that outlier finds echoes in John's version.

First, note that the disciples appear in the story in Mark and Matthew, but not in Luke.  And John, who likes to tell more concrete stories (the better to ground his long, abstract discourses by Jesus.  As one of my professors in seminary pointed out, John's Jesus sucks all the air out of the upper room.  Chapter 13 of John begins that event, with Jesus washing the feet of his disciples.  Chapter 18 begins with Jesus finally going to the garden, although he's barely there before Judas shows up to betray him.  The chapters in between are almost all a monologue by Jesus.), replaces Simon the leper/Pharisee with Lazarus (the better to connect the resurrection of Lazarus in chapter 11 to the plot against Jesus in chapter 12) and "the disciples" with Judas Iscariot.  John's character of Judas is the one we all think of as the betrayer, the Iago to Jesus' Othello (except Jesus is not nearly so naive about Judas, especially in John's gospel), the Judas familiar to us from "JCS" (except, again, John's Judas doesn't really have any redeeming virtues).  So Judas is clearly the antagonist in this little story; he is even a hypocrite, because he doesn't care about the poor or whether the mony would go to them.  He's just, in modern parlance, a "troll."

And Jesus' response is equally blunt.  It also lends itself most easily to the dismissal of concern for the poor I've heard from too many professed Christians:  that the poor will always be with us.  It's usually said as if that's not only a fact of life, but the desire of God that some be poor.  As punishment; as part of God's "plan"?  The reason scarcely matters.  The excuse for ignoring them and denying any responsibility for them, is all that matters.

In some ways the Johannine version of this story is the most attenuated, and it suffers from that loss of detail.  John is less concerned with this story than with incorporating it into his narrative because, like the crucifixion, it is a part of the story of the Nazarene that cannot be excluded.  Curiously, it is John's gospel that gives us the long discourse between Pilate and Jesus, the back and forth between the Governor of Judea and a peasant rabble-rouser (which makes it, historically, a highly unlikely event.  Imagine your governor bandying words in public, before TV cameras, with a condemned prisoner just before his execution.)  We owe a lot of what we think about the story of Jesus to John's embellishments.  But in the anointing story John reduces the events to a bare minimum:  now the woman is named:  Mary, the sister to Martha and to Lazarus.  So she is in her brother's home, and yet still serving Jesus at table.  An attenuated scandal since Jesus is above such matters, and the focus stays on him in John's version.  Do you see this woman? Well, don't; she really doesn't matter.  Even the detail of drying his feet with her hair, which now can be a sign of love and honor for what Jesus has done (resurrected her brother Lazarus), but which would also be scandalous (it's still a first century lap dance; and imagine it happening today.  Washing someone's feet is intimate enough.  Drying them with your own long hair?).  John steps over that quickly by shifting attention to Judas, and in the most negative way possible.  Jesus dismisses the whole thing, using it as a foreshadowing of his death.  He doesn't even acknowledge what she's done, or why, except to dismissively say she should save the perfume for his burial preparations.

So the story comes from Mark to Matthew, almost unaltered; and then undergoes a radical transformation in Luke.  Some of those physical changes make it to John's version, but John seems ready almost to discard it, as it's not a "sign" pointing to who Jesus is or what his authority is, and it's not a "teachable moment" allowing Jesus to talk on and on and on about the nature of God and humanity.  For John it's a narrative transition point between the more important story of Lazarus (a "sign" if ever there was one; and, in John’s narrative, the prefiguring of Jesus’ resurrection) and the movement of the story into Jerusalem and the "upper room" (the remainder of chapter 12 is Jesus again talking about the concept of "signs" and the narrative moving toward the foot-washing of chapter 13 and the captive audience of the disciples Jesus then lectures for five chapters. Some of this we’ll get to). It's like John knows he can't leave this story out, but doesn't really think much of it, himself.  It's a pebble in his narrative shoe that he drops off as soon as he is able.

What, then, do we get from all of this?  This simple story was so important to the gospel writers they all included it (the canonical gospels, I mean; not the non-canonical ones).  Luke alters it dramatically.  From his "Special Luke" source?  From his own interests in the story of Jesus of Nazareth?  For whatever reason, he puts it through a blender, changing time and place and persons, leaving out the disciples and followers so thoroughly it is obvious the woman with the jar is a stranger to everyone else in that room.  There's a reason Luke goes immediately from his anointing story to a catalogue of the women traveling with Jesus.  It may be one of them is the woman in the room, since they provide for Jesus' ministry out of their own resources, and undoubtedly the perfume, even if it didn't cost a year's wages, was very expensive.  Luke is drawing a line underneath the woman's identity, the fact she was a stranger before she entered the room; and the enticing possibility that she is a stranger no more, because Jesus told her she had shown great trust, and that trust had saved her.  Matthew and Mark intimate the woman is one of the group; and maybe that's why Luke says the women had resources to fund the ministry when offerings weren't enough.  Matthew and Mark make it clear this is an anointing:  the perfume goes on the head, like the oil on the head of the king, or as in Psalm 133:

{A Song of degrees of David.} Behold, how good and how pleasant it is for brethren to dwell together in unity!

2It is like the precious ointment upon the head, that ran down upon the beard, even Aaron's beard: that went down to the skirts of his garments;

3As the dew of Hermon, and as the dew that descended upon the mountains of Zion: for there the LORD commanded the blessing, even life for evermore.

That is an anointing.  Luke shifts not only time and place (not Bethany; and far earlier than the fateful Passover events) and location (feet, not head).  Is it even an anointing anymore?  John restores (follows?) tradition, by calling the act an anointing, but Mary aims for the feet, not the head.  And in Mary we finally identify a woman (although no one tells that story in memory of her) and a reason for her gratitude (her brother has been restored to life).  John also includes a lovely, concrete detail: "And the house was filled with the lotion's fragrance."  A metaphor?  Or merely a physical detail about the nature of perfume?  Either way it's wiped aside by the actions of Judas and the blunt retort of Jesus.  None of this really interests John; but what's always been interesting to me is why John includes this story; and why he shifts to location to Jesus' feet, even as he keeps up with the tradition of the house being in Bethany, and the disciples (well, Judas) being present.

In "JCS," the anointing story turns into the emotional heart of the story.  Immediately after Judas' lament "Heaven on their minds" we meet the disciples with "What's the Buzz?"  And among them is Mary Magdalene and the women (as a backing chorus) who sing "Let me try to cool down your face a bit", which allows Judas back in with "Strange Thing, Mystifying":

It seems to me a strange thing, mystifying

That a man like you can waste his time on women of her kind.

Yes, I can understand that she amuses,

But to let her kiss you, stroke your hair, is hardly in your line.

It's not that I object to her profession,

But she doesn't fit in well with what you teach and say.

It doesn't help us if you're inconsistent.

They only need a small excuse to put us all away.

That's John crossed with Luke.  The objection is in Judas' mouth; but the objection itself, however obliquely expressed, is that of Simon the Pharisee.  Jesus has already accepted Mary's attention:

Mary, ooh, that is good

How you prattle through your supper,

Where and when and who and how

She alone has tried to give me, 

what I need right here and now.

Which sounds more like Luke than anybody.  This story recurs with the famous love song "I Don't Know How To Love Him."  Again Mary soothes Jesus, upset by the events of the march into Jerusalem (Simon Zealotes tells Jesus to use this power for glory), the cleansing of the Temple ("My Temple should be a house of prayer!/But you have made it a den of thieves!") and the followers ("Christ you know I love you/Did you see I waved?/I believe in you and God/so tell me that I'm saved!") and the beggars and diseased ("See my eyes, I can hardly see/See my legs, I can hardly walk/See my purse, I'm a poor, poor man/See my toungue I can hardly talk") to whom Jesus finally screams "HEAL YOURSELVES!"  And then Mary is back, offering "Myrrh for your hot forehead/calm you and anoint you" as she soothes him to sleep, and then sings her song of confused, bewildered love.  It isn't the song of the woman in Luke's version of the anointing; but it could be ours, if we examine that story carefully, if we take what Luke gives us, seriously.

And here's an interesting thing from the rock opera, too.  Judas says, in the first song, that Jesus has begun to matter more than the things he says.  This is an old discussion in Christianity.  The earliest gospels were likely "sayings" gospels.  Some of those are conjectural:  "Q" is thought to have been a collection of sayings of Jesus.  There's also presumably a "signs" gospel behind John's version.  The Gospel of Thomas is the most famous extant example of these kinds of gospels.  And it’s arguable, especially after the crucifixion, especially today, that Christians honor Jesus more in who he was than in what he taught.  Judas, in other words, is on to something.  Gallup reports that church attendance in America is declining, and thinks this marks something in American cultural history.  Perhaps; or perhaps it just marks a new social willingness to admit you don't go to church anymore.  The decline in attendance has been obvious to pastors and churches for more than half a century now.  Gallup thinks it’s discovered something but, again, the world is just catching up to the church.  And still we're a long way from the early 20th century.  This fight between who Jesus was, and what Jesus said (and which matters more) is a very old one, in other words; and if the latter is starting to prevail over the former (not to its extinguishment, but with a renewed emphasis on the latter above the former), perhaps that's all to the good.  Perhaps that's even the Holy Spirit (Luke) at work.  Perhaps we should let that fragrance fill the house (John).

Luke's story is, in my understanding, a powerful story about grace and salvation, forgiveness and redemption.  We want things to be earned, especially something as important as grace and acceptance (acceptance often includes some manner of forgiveness), but we want these blessings purchased with some coin.  For me that coin should be as small as possible, a mere mite, because surely I am deserving of forgiveness and grace, especially if I can't possibly pay for it.  For you, however?  Well, I'm not sure I want you getting something for nothing.  That seems unfair.  Maybe if you were to show a little love, you'd be deserving.  But to be deserving and to show some love, surely you have to have some prompting to respond to.  So would it work like this?

"I walked into your house and you didn't offer me water for my feet; yet she has washed my feet with her tears and dried them with her hair. You didn't offer me a kiss, but she hasn't stopped kissing my feet since I arrived. You didn't anoint my head with oil, but she has anointed my feet with myrrh. For this reason, I tell you, her sins, many as they are, have been forgiven, as this outpouring of her love shows. But the one who is forgiven little shows little love."

But that's an ouroboros, a Moebius strip; it doesn't seem to have a beginning or an end, and if you walk along it, it has only one surface.  There's no way in, no point at which you can begin your payment for that grace.  How do you earn it, then?

Precisely.  Begin there.

On what condition does goodness exist beyond all calculation? On the condition that goodness forget itself, that the movement be a movement of the gift that renounces itself, hence a movement of infinite love. Only infinite love can renounce itself and, in order to become finite, become incarnated in order to love the other, to love the other as a finite other. This gift of infinite love comes from someone and is addressed to someone; responsibility demands irreplaceable singularity.

Jacques Derrida, The Gift of Death, tr. David Wills (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1995), pp. 50-51.

These conflicts and disputes among you, where do they come from? Do they not come from your own cravings that are at war within you? You want something and do not have it, so you commit murder. And you covet something and cannot obtain it; so you engage in disputes and conflicts. You do not have because you do not ask. You ask and do not receive, because you ask wrongly, in order to spend what you get on your pleasures. Adulterers! Do you now know that friendship with the world is enmity with God? Therefore whoever wishes to be a friend of the world becomes an enemy of God. Or do you suppose that it is for nothing that the scripture says, "God yearns jealously for the spirit that he has made to dwell in us"? But he gives all the more grace; therefore it says, "God opposes the proud, but gives grace to the humble."

James 4:1-6

I am reading (Simone Weil's) essays as a part of my Lenten reading...She says that we "...must experience every day, both in the spirit and the flesh, the pains and humiliations of poverty...and further we must do something which is harder than enduring in poverty, we must renounce all compensations: in our contacts with the people around us we must sincerely practice the humility of a naturalized citizen in the country which has received us."

I keep reminding the young people who come to work with us that they are not naturalized citizens...They are not really poor. We are always foreigners to the poor. So we have to make up for it by "renouncing all compensations..."

Dorothy Day, from The Dorothy Day Book, p. 11. 

A Reminder That It Is Palm Sunday

While addressing tens of thousands in St. Peter’s Square in Vatican City on Palm Sunday, the start of the Holy Week leading to Easter, Pope Leo XIV said that God rejects the prayers of leaders who start wars and have “hands full of blood,” clearly directed at the ongoing conflict… pic.twitter.com/2QoAHzNyZz

— OSINTdefender (@sentdefender) March 29, 2026

While addressing tens of thousands in St. Peter’s Square in Vatican City on Palm Sunday, the start of the Holy Week leading to Easter, Pope Leo XIV said that God rejects the prayers of leaders who start wars and have “hands full of blood,” clearly directed at the ongoing conflict in the Middle East. “This is our God: Jesus, King of Peace, who rejects war, whom no one can use to justify war,” Pope Leo said. sunshine. “(Jesus) does not listen to the prayers of those who wage war, but rejects them, saying: Even though you make many prayers, I will not listen: your hands are full of blood,” he added citing the Bible.

“(Jesus) did not arm himself, or defend himself, or fight any war,” Pope Leo said. “He revealed the gentle face of God, who always rejects violence. Rather than saving himself, he allowed himself to be nailed to the cross.” https://t.co/maEZRUirC2

— OSINTdefender (@sentdefender) March 29, 2026

The power of powerlessness. 

Being A Pope Francis

In a world of Jeffery Epsteins and Steve Bannons be a Pope Francis https://t.co/MYmRbvhDe2

— Mike Madrid (@madrid_mike) February 14, 2026

I would amend this slightly. We don’t live in a world of Epsteins and Bannons. They would like us to think we do; as they would like to be. But the truth is duller, and more comforting.

Nobody had heard of Jeffrey Epstein before Q made the Epstein files a force to be reckoned with. There’s no mistake that Epstein was a monster. He was mysteriously rich, and knew how to ingratiate himself to rich people (and steal from them, it strongly appears).  But what power did he have, that money didn’t give him?

That’s not a small thing,  and I’m not being glib. But for all his wealth and contacts, Epstein was not a mover or a shaker. He had contacts with many people, famous and behind the scenes, and he cultivated influence. To what end? He died in a jail cell which he was unlikely to leave again, except for another one. His name is now anathema, his memory a curse, his associations with anyone making them pariahs. This is a power, extending beyond death, but hardly one that others envy. If this is a world of Epsteins, why is his almost as despised as Hitler’s?

And Bannon? Bannon is a toady no one knew until Trump ran for office. In the record left behind, Epstein wasn’t too interested in the plan to attack Pope Francis through a spurious documentary. It was proposed while Epstein was imprisoned for the last time; he had other things on his mind. Bannon wanted Epstein to produce it (and provide the money). No one ever accused Bannon of being able to read the room. Or of being independently important, or powerful.

This is not a world of Epsteins and Bannons; it is a world much more closely aligned with Pope Francis. Bannons and Epsteins think they run the world because they associate with people with money; very large amounts of money. These people all think money makes the world go ‘round. And who can doubt it? Except the people with all the money are more convinced of their power and authority and importance, than the vast majority of the world which doesn’t have that money. Money is power, but it is not in any sense the only power, or even the ultimate power. The real power in this world is what Francis represented, the reason Bannon reacted so strongly to Francis, and why he wanted to ruin Francis in scandal if he could (he couldn’t). What Francis knew was the power of powerlessness.

And that’s what Bannon is really afraid of.

Because what Epstein (and in many ways, Francis) is that, if we give the people with the most money the most power, why are we doing that?

Epstein victim Virginia Giuffre: “I was trafficked to a lot of types of different men — billionaires, royalty… he used me as a form of blackmail so these people would owe him favors.” pic.twitter.com/vuiExb6NRP

— The Tennessee Holler (@TheTNHoller) February 15, 2026

If the elite are that rotten, why do we tolerate them as powerful and elite? What are we tolerating, and why are we tolerating it? Far more dangerous questions than Francis led us to ask. Or are they? Take three stories from the gospels seriously, treat them as important, and where does the value system of money = power, stand?

The three I mean are Matthew’s parable of the sheep and the goats: “Lord, when did see you?” Luke’s beatitudes: “Congratulations, you poor!” And John’s sacrament that wasn’t, when John replaces the communion of Mark, Matthew, Luke and Paul, with Jesus playing servant to his disciples, and washing their feet. Serving the least among us are when we serve God. The poorest among us (the least also? Is that the measure?) will have God’s domain. And the first of all is literally the last and servant of all.

Pope Francis powerfully represented that ideal, that teaching, that spirit. No wonder Bannon was afraid.

It’s not a world of Bannons and Epsteins; and that’s what scares them the most. That the power they put so much importance in, isn’t that powerful after all. There is a greater power, and it is expressed in powerlessness.

Third Thursday of Advent 2025

Matthew 11:2-11 

The forerunner of Christ 

11:2 When John heard in prison what the Messiah was doing, he sent word by his disciples 

11:3 and said to him, "Are you the one who is to come, or are we to wait for another?" 

11:4 Jesus answered them, "Go and tell John what you hear and see: 

11:5 the blind receive their sight, the lame walk, those with a skin disease are cleansed, the deaf hear, the dead are raised, and the poor have good news brought to them. 

11:6 And blessed is anyone who takes no offense at me." 

11:7 As they went away, Jesus began to speak to the crowds about John: "What did you go out into the wilderness to look at? A reed shaken by the wind? 

11:8 What, then, did you go out to see? Someone dressed in soft robes? Look, those who wear soft robes are in royal palaces. 

11:9 What, then, did you go out to see? A prophet? Yes, I tell you, and more than a prophet. 

11:10 This is the one about whom it is written, 'See, I am sending my messenger ahead of you, who will prepare your way before you.' 

11:11 "Truly I tell you, among those born of women no one has arisen greater than John the Baptist, yet the least in the kingdom of heaven is greater than he. 

It's reversals all the way down. And the apocalypse of the eschaton. All in a few verses. 

I’m at risk of overstating the concept of the reversal. It’s supposed to be reserved for cosmic, or at least nation changing events, like Isaiah’s holy mountain vision, or Ezekiel’s vision of the valley of dry bones, or God’s throne chariot. But the reversal of individual physical conditions is exactly what Isaiah promised from God, and Jesus throws in the foundational principle of the basileia tou theou for good measure: the first shall be last, and the first of all last and servant of all. 

And for the cherry on the sundae, this is Jesus’ way of saying: “Fuck this shit.”

Look at verse 5. Jesus tells the disciples of John that everything is being undone, that God’s justice is being brought to the broken, the marginalized, the discarded and rejected. Lepers are healed, the blind see, the deaf hear. People literally blamed for their conditions and cast aside as “unclean,” are the first to receive God’s good news. Not the “blessed,” not the “worthy,” not the rich or the “best and the brightest,” but the invisible, the ptochoi, the ones with nothing and with no worth in society.

Fuck this shit. Time to do something about it. And then Jesus asks why they went to the wilderness to see John, and Isaiah is evoked again. What was a guy in the wilderness worth to society, after all? Isaiah tells his audience to give hope to the broken as a way of preparing them for the restoration that is to come. Jesus tells them “You went out to see a prophet of God,” which is to say someone speaking God’s truth. Now see that truth in action. But the truth is not a triumph; it’s a paradox. It’s that paradox we celebrate every year at Christmas.

In Luke’s nativity, the angels tell the shepherds “This will be a sign to you. You will find a baby wrapped in swaddling clothes, lying in a manger.” Not much of a sign of identification. Kind of like saying “You will find a newborn at the maternity ward, in the nursery.” But that’s not the “sign.” The sign is that the savior, is a helpless child. The sign is the paradox: “God with us”starts out as helpless and in need of others, as all of us. And what was John preaching, except that we need to take care of each other? In Matthew!s story, that child faces danger from the government from the beginning. The Holy Family has to flee into Egypt to escape Herod’s massacre. When they come back after Herod’s death, they return to Nazareth, not Bethlehem, just to be sure it’s safe. God is powerless. God is at risk. From the beginning, we face the paradox of the power of powerlessness. And now the adult Jesus is telling us the least in the basileia tou theou is greater than John.

Because the first will be last, and the last first, and the first of all, the last and servant of all. Thanks be to God, because otherwise the basileia tou theou would just be the old world order over again, and what’s the point of that?

What’s the point of going to the wilderness, or going to the manger, if the world is already going to be there, its order and authority just reaffirmed? Surely a revelation is at hand! But it can’t be a revelation that the new boss is the same as the old boss; because what revelation is that? Fuck this shit! Where’s the justice? Where’s Mary’s vision?

Without the paradox, what’s the point?

But with the paradox? Ah! Thanks be to God for that!

Palm Sunday Evening

 

The preacher on television this morning recounted the atonement theory of Christian salvation right down to the last dotted "i" and crossed "t".  I wasn't having it, but I was in the other room anyway.  The Lovely Wife asked me what I thought, and I ended up handing her my copy of Paul Among Jews and Gentiles,  by Krister Stendahl.

I still owe you all a post on Stendahl.  I'll get back to it in Holy Week.  Pinky swear.

Anyway, the idea that God is too holy for humankind, and humankind too sinful for God, is not a universal one nor even a core Christian belief.  Julian or Norwich had visions of Jesus who told her "all shall be well, and all shall be well, and all manner of thing shall be well."  Hardly the harrowing of souls at the end of time.  In my own church's traditions, German immigrants came here and set up orphanagaes and a hospital and a mental care facility and a place for river workers on the Mississippi to go at the end of the journey, rather than to bars and bordellos.  The preacher assured me that faith alone (sola fides, as Luther put it) would save us, and that works were not a path to salvation.  The old Protestant complaint about indulgences, which were pretty much dead by Luther's time, anyway. To put it bluntly, nowhere in the gospels (well, John, but that's why I'm not fond of John), so nowhere in the synoptics, does Jesus say "No one comes to the Father except through me."  John was fighting with the Hebrews, later Jews, in the early 2nd century.  It was a family fight.  Jesus in the synoptics stresses "works," as in caring for the sick and the helpless (women and children in a patriarchal society), and taking care of each other.  "The first of all will be last and servant of all."  The power of powerlessness.  Works without faith is dead; but so is faith without works.  The preacher emphasized evangelism, as in telling people "about Jesus" in order to save their souls.  My German spiritual ancestors let their deeds speak for them.  No translation into English needed.

Which brings me around to "Jesus Christ Superstar," still a major subject in my faith history.  A personal one; don't worry yourself with it.  The great controversy about “JCS” when it was released was that it treated Jesus as human. An ironic complaint, given that Holy Week is the church’s annual remembrance that the Christ was Jesus: was arrested, whipped, tortured, and executed in one of the most brutal and inhumane ways ever devised. And then died. Yes, “executed” incorporates “died,” but Christians have to remind themselves of that. They aren’t uniformly good at it.

The tenor of the times, the reason, I’d argue, for the controversy, is contained in the title song, sung by Judas just after the whipping and just before the crucifixion ends the opera. The repeated chorus says “Don’t you get me wrong/I only want to know.” The song is addressed to God, who supposedly would be offended by such questions. Ironic, that, since theologians and church leaders and Biblical scholars have been asking such questions for 2000 years. But among congregations and “ordinary people”? The status quo of religious belief is to be preserved at all costs. God knew what God was doing 2000 years ago, and don’t question it now.

“O that you would come down!” Yeah, nobody was reading that part of Isaiah to me in high school. AFAIK, I first read it in seminary a good 20 years later. It wasn’t pointed out to me before seminary how many times people question God in the scriptures, or how many times God demands they question God. Judas’ questions and proviso seemed pretty sensible to me. It would take me another 10 years out of seminary to realize the problem with Judas’ situation in “JCS” was not that God intended Judas to be damned for all time (we get that through Calvin, actually. Or rather, through mixing Calvinism (which ain’t all Calvin all the time) and Greek fatalism (via Greek tragedy). It’s a bad combination.), but the doctrine of the atonement that says Jesus had to die. I think now even Paul would at least mutter “You stupid Galatians” over that one.

Pauline theology was that Jesus became divine because of his absolute faith in God, and at the time of the resurrection. After death, in other words. It’s no coincidence Paul has virtually nothing to say about the life of Jesus (or his sayings). That alone poses a problem for the gospel writers, who don’t want to leave the reveal to the end. Mark manages it (no nativity story, and no encounters with Jesus after finding the empty tomb), but Matthew and Luke and John push the godhood in Jesus of Nazareth back further and further, and the nature of the man qua man becomes more difficult to interpret. The atonement theory, Christ was born to die on the cross, was meant to be a solution to that problem.  Jesus had to be human to die, but God in order to atone. But the central conflict of “JCS,” that Judas was born to play his role in making the crucifixion happen, raises a new problem. Do we thank Judas for his timely betrayal? Or damn him for all time? And what kind of salvation scheme is this, anyway? One that depends on a particular person being damned so the rest of us can step over him like a bridge to our salvation?

Thank you, Judas?

I should not be understood by this to be denying the mystery of the Holy Trinity. I’m not going Unitarian on you. I just think the atonement theory has outlived its usefulness, because the truth is, we are always struggling to understand ourselves and God and the revelation not just of God but of the creation and our own humanity. Theories change, in other words. That doesn’t mean God does, anymore than the universe does because our theories about it change. But we do, and what and how we understand does. God does change, in fact, even as we do. But mutatis mutandis, we remain who we are.

Consider it another mystery.

But JCS is mired in the atonement Christ, and caught in that theory is the human Jesus of Nazareth. The value of this is that it reminds us the Easter morning we take as an inevitability was impossible to even imagine during the original (un)Holy Week. Part of the purpose of Holy Week is this remembrance, and the effort to live it over again as if we don’t know the outcome. Palm Sunday and Passion Sunday used to follow each other in the last weeks of Lent, opening Holy Week by remembering the crucifixion, which itself is observed on Good Friday. Good Friday itself was actually the beginning of Triduum, and the Easter Vigil which lasted until Easter morning. Sunrise services on Easter were an echo of the Great Vigil (the other vigil on the liturgical calendar was Christmas Eve, the remnant of which is the midnight service that welcomes the birth of the Christchild. One vigil sits up with the dead and the mourners; the other waits with the expectant parents). 

The Great Vigil was a service of four services, recapitulating the salvation history of scripture (I haven’t abandoned soteriology, just relocated it). They are: a service of light (Christ as light of the world); a service of water (Christ as water of life, and recalling baptismal vows); a service of the word (Christ as logos); and a service of bread and wine (Christ as the Eucharist).I used this service as my Easter service, starting in a dark worship space and introducing light, and then music. The scriptures began with the Exodus story, ending with the resurrection story. The service ran from darkness to light to baptism remembered to a joyful Eucharist.

JCS is about the week before the victory was known or expected. It's not presented as a great celebration, despite the Hosannas of Palm Sunday in the beginning of the second act. Judas reflects the Pauline theology: Jesus is not God before Easter morning. “You’ve started to believe/the things they say of you/You really do believe/This talk of God is true.” And a twist on Paul, who seldom mentions what Jesus said: “You’ve begun to matter more than the things you say.” I often think of that line when I’m in the presence of people who emphasize salvation over servanthood.

The enemies of Jesus don’t see him as God; they see him as human. All too human, and dangerous for it. And here is where JCS clearly follows the gospels, rather than history. It’s unlikely the religious authorities (it’s anachronism to even label them “Jewish” at the time if Jesus, even though John uses the term some 75 years after the first Easter Sunday) were upset enough by Jesus of Nazareth to want him dead. Crucifixion was a Roman form of execution, reserved for political prisoners, the greatest threat to the Pax Romana. Pilate probably executed Jesus without a second thought. In fact, he was removed as governor of Judea because he crucified too many, too freely, even for Rome. Most of the gospel stories of Pilate dithering or arguing with Jesus or washing his hands in public, or even agonizing over the decision to execute Jesus, are pure invention. The gospel writers wrote that so Rome would not look harshly on them.  They weren't that sure about their resurrection.  Jesus was executed for being the guy who caused so much trouble in the Temple the week before Passover. It took a while to identify him, but when they did, Pilate didn’t need priests and Sadducees asking to rid them of this troublesome prophet. He probably didn’t care what they thought in the first place.

Whether that took place on "Palm Sunday," Christians commemorate it on this day. It is the beginning of the darkest week on the liturgical calendar, one traditionally concluding with a music-less service of word and prayer on Good Friday, with the church draped in funereal black.  At least, that's the way I used to do it.  In the Episcopal practice, the altar was cleared of all adornment and paraments, and ritually washed.  All in silence.  It is not a celebration in any sense of the word.  Some churches leave the sanctuary open on Holy Saturday, for vigils and silent prayer.

The gospel writers cared what Rome thought, though, they blamed their enemies: local religious leaders who were opposed to their religious movement. Rome had the power to do to them what it did to Jesus. Even Herod couldn’t do that. As I say, they weren't that assured of their own resurrections.  Who can blame them?  They were only human.

But JCS reminds us Jesus was human. Luke says he sweated blood in Gethsemane. He was truly afraid of death, the Synoptics agree. JCS presents this as part of God’s plan, as John does, but I think that lets us off the hook. We killed Jesus. People like us. Human beings. JCS hits this, too. It’s the chorus, literally the Greek chorus of a tragedy, the voice of the people affected by the decisions of the tragic hero, who demand Jesus’ death. This I find more likely. What Jesus says becomes a burden. First shall be last? The first of all shall be last and servant of all? The sheep are the ones who served others, the goats are the ones who served only themselves? And the sheep are ushered into the presence, the goats left out where there is wailing and gnashing of teeth? No wonder salvation is about "letting Jesus into your heart.” No wonder that matters more than the things Jesus said. It’s so much easier on us.

JCS reminds us that Holy Week, especially, was about Jesus being fully human. And that we are fully human, too. Capable of the humanity of Mary Magdalene (Yvonne Elliman was justly praised for her love song in the opera, but her brief passage gently rebuking Peter for denying Jesus literally throbs with sorrow, confusion, and heartbreak. Her character represents all the women who are Jesus’ disciples in the gospels. That portrayal is very true to the gospel stories.), as well as the blunt cruelty of the crowd demanding Jesus’ head.

Who killed Jesus? We did. Why was Jesus resurrected? In spite of us. What should we do about it? Do justice, love mercy, and walk humbly with our God. And love one another, as Jesus loved us . Because, after all, Jesus was one of us, too.

What’s So Funny About Peace, Love, and Understanding?

“There is eternal life,” said Campbell, the senator who rebuked Rev. Harrison earlier this month. “And if we don’t expose or introduce our children and others to that, when they die they’ll have one birth and two deaths. Because they will know nothing about the afterlife, the eternity with God. But exposing them or introducing them to Ten Commandments, prayer – it asks other questions and they then have a choice in their future: Two births and one death.”

So, I’ve been spending a lot of time down the wormhole of nostalgia watching “Ghost in the Shell” movies. (Always something deliciously ironic about Japanese anime taking its title from a critique of Descartes’ dualism, which most people think is meant to properly describe Descartes’ dualism.) It’s all about computers and AI and the usual fiction about AI trying to take over the world. In fact, I think most of the GitS movies/tv episodes turn on that plot.  There’s almost always a “sentient” AI that goes rogue and fundamentally misunderstands human society. And it’s that gap between knowledge (what we’ve reduced to “data,” a true reductio ad absurdum), and understanding.

Let me illustrate my point this way: the rogue AI, having acquired all data, wants to exist, or experience humanity, or something. Or it could be a human hacker, wanting to straighten everyone else out, but small difference in the stories. There’s seldom real malice, but there is real disruption/danger in how they pursue their ends. Oddly, with all that data, they never manage to come up with a workable solution that doesn’t involve coercion (that’s the danger always present to give the narrative a conflict, otherwise it would just be a rather tedious lecture series (and, like most pretentious fiction, especially science fiction, a really bad set of lectures). The “innocence” of the antagonists are that they aren’t malicious; but the problem is, they have too much power, and that makes them dangerous.

But the unstated, unacknowledged problem is, they have data, but they seeking understanding. And understanding, not to put too fine a point on it, is a  Human thing.  Humans have to seek it, and often in these stories AI does too, without realizing it.

In fictional portrayals, AI can know, but it cannot understand; and that’s always the problem. I think that’s true of AI IRL, but that’s a subjective opinion, not a well researched and empirical one. What I’ve seen of AI use on the web, chat AI responses sound like understanding, but they are really just collections of words according to English vocabulary and syntax. Children can use words correctly without understanding. My daughter, when she was about 5, decided to show off for her grandparents (who were visiting), and, as the Lovely Wife and I sat watching “The X-Files,” the Golden Child walked into the room and asked in a loud voice: “WHAT THE HELL ARE YOU WATCHING?” She thought it was funny, and it was. But she didn’t, at the time, understand why.

Knowledge is one thing. She knew the words, even the syntax. What she didn’t understand was when, and when not, to ask that question. (To thus day her ringtone on my phone is the title song of that show.)

So the AI in GitS goes through elaborate machinations based on elaborate exposition (I like that kind of thing, but that’s me), to establish the motive for their actions. Now, it’s Japanese (one thing I like about; world shaking events happen in Japan, not Europe or the Americas), but the “ghost” is a real aspect of the characters; or at least they talk about it, in contrast to their techno “cyber brains.” AI has no “ghost.” Only humans do.  It’s a very Western reference to a “soul,” in other words. Which is what Descartes was on about.

And what occurs to me, over and over, is that if these sentient AI’s have consumed the data on the web (always presented metaphorically as a vast, deep, and  infinite sea), how are they so ignorant of the basileia tou theou? I mean, GitS never gets explicitly religious, be that Buddhism or Taoism, or Christianity, for that matter. So I’m not criticizing the reach of the fictional universe, I’m just pointing out there are descriptions of utopia (yes, I know: “no place”) available. But those concepts require understanding.

Just like the title of the series. Descartes was not, in his dualism, trying to describe a “ghost in the machine.” That is a criticism lodged against him much later. Most of us don’t understand that. We repeat the line and think we understand dualism a la Descartes (and so can simply dismiss it), when we don’t understand that we don’t understand at all. 

And what does this have to do with that quote above? That’s a Texas state senator talking. The Lege is in session in Austin, and some there want to get more Xianity (but not “religion!” Just Xianity) in Texas public schools for the express purpose of saving souls, because church attendance is in decline. Now we can sidebar about how some churches are more Xianity than others. That Senator undoubtedly would make common cause with Catholics on abortion (no, not all them; I understand that), while still thinking they are doomed to damnation because the RC is the Whore of Babylon. He’s probably convinced my UCC is the devil’s handmaid, and everyone in it needs to be saved. Two things about this; his attitude explains why I’ve rejected traditional Christian soteriology; and it reflects an understanding that could read the scriptures every day and NEVER come up with the understanding of the basileia tou theou that I have.

Forget the soteriology stuff; I was going to go there once upon a time, but now it impinges here the same way the other example does: he reads the scriptures in a framework I don’t anymore (and never fully did), and understands his soteriology as the whole point of it. But I read the scriptures and understands that the point of the gospels is that that the way to contentment and , yes, world peace, and the way to follow the will of God, is through the first being last and the last first, and the first of all being last and servant of all. I see quite clearly that if you want the world to be a better place, you seek first the basileia tou theou. And then you aren’t worried about him to force salvation from hellfire and damnation on public schoolchildren, because your only power is powerlessness. And if you understand that, how do you force that understanding on anyone?

Indeed, how do you force understanding at all, about anything? I spent 20 years (!) lecturing and trying to make students understand. I couldn’t do it for them, and I couldn’t make them do it. I could lead the horse to water, but I couldn’t make him think.

Now do you understand?

So how will AI ever understand? Acquiring all knowledge didn’t make Faust understand. The Preacher (Ecclesiastes), acquired knowledge, but understood (correctly),  that his pursuit was vanity and chasing after emptiness. I think I understand the gospels correctly; but so does that state senator (he also understands the First Amendment, and the purpose of public schools, incorrectly). How does he read the same words I do, and understand them so differently? Because, like the eunuch in Acts, he reads without understanding until someone explains scripture to him. And then it’s all about who does the explaining.

The last set of episodes of GisT I watched revolved around Orwell’s 1984. But the character who reads it and later models the world (or tries to) on it, says early on that he doesn’t understand it. And clearly, he doesn’t. He uses the terms: “Big Brother,” “doublethink,” “Ministry of Love,” even “Room 101.” But he doesn’t use them the way the novel did.  He creates a utopia, not a nightmare. But he does it through the technology of the fictional premise of GisT, and uses that to create a fiction that allows his utopia. Whether that’s an improvement, or not, is left to the audience. But without understanding, you can misunderstand a lot.

And that’s almost always the problem.

Fourth Monday of Advent 2024

THERE was in the days of Herod, the king of Judaea, a certain priest named Zacharias, of the course of Abia: and his wife was of the daughters of Aaron, and her name was Elisabeth. 6 And they were both righteous before God, walking in all the commandments and ordinances of the Lord blameless. 7 And they had no child, because that Elisabeth was barren, and they both were now well stricken in years.

8 And it came to pass, that while he executed the priest's office before God in the order of his course,

9 According to the custom of the priest's office, his lot was to burn incense when he went into the temple of the Lord. 10 And the whole multitude of the people were praying without at the time of incense. 11 And there appeared unto him an angel of the Lord standing on the right side of the altar of incense. 12 And when Zacharias saw him, he was troubled, and fear fell upon him. 13 But the angel said unto him, Fear not, Zacharias: for thy prayer is heard; and thy wife Elisabeth shall bear thee a son, and thou shalt call his name John. 14 And thou shalt have joy and gladness; and many shall rejoice at his birth. 15 For he shall be great in the sight of the Lord, and shall drink neither wine nor strong drink; and he shall be filled with the Holy Ghost, even from his mother's womb. 16 And many of the children of Israel shall he turn to the Lord their God. 17 And he shall go before him in the spirit and power of Elias, to turn the hearts of the fathers to the children, and the disobedient to the wisdom of the just; to make ready a people prepared for the Lord.

18 And Zacharias said unto the angel, Whereby shall I know this? for I am an old man, and my wife well stricken in years. 19 And the angel answering said unto him, I am Gabriel, that stand in the presence of God; and am sent to speak unto thee, and to shew thee these glad tidings. 20 And, behold, thou shalt be dumb, and not able to speak, until the day that these things shall be performed, because thou believest not my words, which shall be fulfilled in their season.

21 And the people waited for Zacharias, and marvelled that he tarried so long in the temple. 22 And when he came out, he could not speak unto them: and they perceived that he had seen a vision in the temple: for he beckoned unto them, and remained speechless. 23 And it came to pass, that, as soon as the days of his ministration were accomplished, he departed to his own house.

24 And after those days his wife Elisabeth conceived, and hid herself five months, saying, 25 Thus hath the Lord dealt with me in the days wherein he looked on me, to take away my reproach among men.

26 And in the sixth month the angel Gabriel was sent from God unto a city of Galilee, named Nazareth, 27 To a virgin espoused to a man whose name was Joseph, of the house of David; and the virgin's name was Mary. 28 And the angel came in unto her, and said, Hail, thou that art highly favoured, the Lord is with thee: blessed art thou among women. 29 And when she saw him, she was troubled at his saying, and cast in her mind what manner of salutation this should be. 30 And the angel said unto her, Fear not, Mary: for thou hast found favour with God. 31 And, behold, thou shalt conceive in thy womb, and bring forth a son, and shalt call his name JESUS. 32 He shall be great, and shall be called the Son of the Highest: and the Lord God shall give unto him the throne of his father David: 33 And he shall reign over the house of Jacob for ever; and of his kingdom there shall be no end. 34 Then said Mary unto the angel, How shall this be, seeing I know not a man? 35 And the angel answered and said unto her, The Holy Ghost shall come upon thee, and the power of the Highest shall overshadow thee: therefore also that holy thing which shall be born of thee shall be called the Son of God. 36 And, behold, thy cousin Elisabeth, she hath also conceived a son in her old age: and this is the sixth month with her, who was called barren. 37 For with God nothing shall be impossible. 38 And Mary said, Behold the handmaid of the Lord; be it unto me according to thy word. And the angel departed from her.

39 And Mary arose in those days, and went into the hill country with haste, into a city of Juda; 40 And entered into the house of Zacharias, and saluted Elisabeth. 41 And it came to pass, that, when Elisabeth heard the salutation of Mary, the babe leaped in her womb; and Elisabeth was filled with the Holy Ghost: 42 And she spake out with a loud voice, and said, Blessed art thou among women, and blessed is the fruit of thy womb. 43 And whence is this to me, that the mother of my Lord should come to me? 44 For, lo, as soon as the voice of thy salutation sounded in mine ears, the babe leaped in my womb for joy. 45 And blessed is she that believed: for there shall be a performance of those things which were told her from the Lord.

And Mary said, My soul doth magnify the Lord,

47 And my spirit hath rejoiced in God my Saviour.

48 For he hath regarded the low estate of his handmaiden: for, behold, from henceforth all generations shall call me blessed.

49 For he that is mighty hath done to me great things; and holy is his name.

50 And his mercy is on them that fear him from generation to generation.

51 He hath shewed strength with his arm; he hath scattered the proud in the imagination of their hearts.

52 He hath put down the mighty from their seats, and exalted them of low degree.

53 He hath filled the hungry with good things; and the rich he hath sent empty away.

54 He hath holpen his servant Israel, in remembrance of his mercy;

55 As he spake to our fathers, to Abraham, and to his seed for ever.

And Mary abode with her about three months, and returned to her own house.

57 Now Elisabeth's full time came that she should be delivered; and she brought forth a son. 58 And her neighbours and her cousins heard how the Lord had shewed great mercy upon her; and they rejoiced with her.

59 And it came to pass, that on the eighth day they came to circumcise the child; and they called him Zacharias, after the name of his father. 60 And his mother answered and said, Not so; but he shall be called John. 61 And they said unto her, There is none of thy kindred that is called by this name. 62 And they made signs to his father, how he would have him called. 63 And he asked for a writing table, and wrote, saying, His name is John. And they marvelled all. 64 And his mouth was opened immediately, and his tongue loosed, and he spake, and praised God. 65 And fear came on all that dwelt round about them: and all these sayings were noised abroad throughout all the hill country of Judaea. 66 And all they that heard them laid them up in their hearts, saying, What manner of child shall this be! And the hand of the Lord was with him.

67 And his father Zacharias was filled with the Holy Ghost, and prophesied, saying

Blessed be the Lord God of Israel; for he hath visited and redeemed his people,

69 And hath raised up an horn of salvation for us in the house of his servant David;

70 As he spake by the mouth of his holy prophets, which have been since the world began:

71 That we should be saved from our enemies, and from the hand of all that hate us;

72 To perform the mercy promised to our fathers, and to remember his holy covenant;

73 The oath which he sware to our father Abraham,

74 That he would grant unto us, that we being delivered out of the hand of our enemies might serve him without fear,

75 In holiness and righteousness before him, all the days of our life.

76 And thou, child, shalt be called the prophet of the Highest: for thou shalt go before the face of the Lord to prepare his ways;

77 To give knowledge of salvation unto his people by the remission of their sins,

78 Through the tender mercy of our God; whereby the dayspring from on high hath visited us,

79 To give light to them that sit in darkness and in the shadow of death, to guide our feet into the way of peace.

And the child grew, and waxed strong in spirit, and was in the deserts till the day of his shewing unto Israel.

And it came to pass in those days, that there went out a decree from Caesar Augustus that all the world should be taxed. 2 (And this taxing was first made when Cyrenius was governor of Syria.) 3 And all went to be taxed, every one into his own city. 4 And Joseph also went up from Galilee, out of the city of Nazareth, into Judaea, unto the city of David, which is called Bethlehem; (because he was of the house and lineage of David:) 5 To be taxed with Mary his espoused wife, being great with child. 6 And so it was, that, while they were there, the days were accomplished that she should be delivered. 7 And she brought forth her firstborn son, and wrapped him in swaddling clothes, and laid
him in a manger; because there was no room for them in the inn.

8 And there were in the same country shepherds abiding in the field, keeping watch over their flock by night. 9 And, lo, the angel of the Lord came upon them, and the glory of the Lord shone round about them: and they were sore afraid.

And the angel said unto them, Fear not: for, behold, I bring you good tidings of great joy, which shall be to all people. 11 For unto you is born this day in the city of David a Saviour, which is Christ the Lord. 12 And this shall be a sign unto you; Ye shall find the babe wrapped in swaddling clothes, lying in a manger.

And suddenly there was with the angel a multitude of the heavenly host praising God, and saying,

Glory to God in the highest, and on earth peace, good will toward men.

And it came to pass, as the angels were gone away from them into heaven, the shepherds said one to another, Let us now go even unto Bethlehem, and see this thing which is come to pass, which the Lord hath made known unto us. 16 And they came with haste, and found Mary, and Joseph, and the babe lying in a manger. 17 And when they had seen it, they made known abroad the saying which was told them concerning this child. 18 And all they that heard it wondered at those things which were told them by the shepherds. 19 But Mary kept all these things, and pondered them in her heart. 20 And the shepherds returned, glorifying and praising God for all the things that they had heard and seen, as it was told unto them.

21 And when eight days were accomplished for the circumcising of the child, his name was called JESUS, which was so named of the angel before he was conceived in the womb.

22 And when the days of her purification according to the law of Moses were accomplished, they brought him to Jerusalem, to present him to the Lord; 23 (As it is written in the law of the LORD, Every male that openeth the womb shall be called holy to the Lord;) 24 And to offer a sacrifice according to that which is said in the law of the Lord, A pair of turtledoves, or two young pigeons.

25 And, behold, there was a man in Jerusalem, whose name was Simeon; and the same man was just and devout, waiting for the consolation of Israel: and the Holy Ghost was upon him. 26 And it was revealed unto him by the Holy Ghost, that he should not see death, before he had seen the Lord's Christ. 27 And he came by the Spirit into the temple: and when the parents brought in the child Jesus, to do for him after the custom of the law, 28 Then took he him up in his arms, and blessed God, and said,

Lord, now lettest thou thy servant depart in peace, according to thy word:

30 For mine eyes have seen thy salvation,

31 Which thou hast prepared before the face of all people;

32 A light to lighten the Gentiles, and the glory of thy people Israel.

And Joseph and his mother marvelled at those things which were spoken of him. 34 And Simeon blessed them, and said unto Mary his mother, Behold, this child is set for the fall and rising again of many in Israel; and for a sign which shall be spoken against; 35 (Yea, a sword shall pierce through thy own soul also,) that the thoughts of many hearts may be revealed.

36 And there was one Anna, a prophetess, the daughter of Phanuel, of the tribe of Aser: she was of a great age, and had lived with an husband seven years from her virginity; 37 And she was a widow of about fourscore and four years, which departed not from the temple, but served God with fastings and prayers night and day. 38 And she coming in that instant gave thanks likewise unto the Lord, and spake of him to all them that looked for redemption in Jerusalem.

39 And when they had performed all things according to the law of the Lord, they returned into Galilee, to their own city Nazareth. 40 And the child grew, and waxed strong in spirit, filled with wisdom: and the grace of God was upon him.

[I would post the Scholar's Version of Luke's first two chapters if only to blow the cobwebs off the familiar words, or to present a clearer text than Early Modern English (the language of the King James Version) provides.  But I didn't have to type this one from scratch, and the beauty of the KJV is on its best display in the many songs Luke puts in his nativity story.  So muddle past the "holpens" and the spellings and archaisms as best you can.]

Matthew's nativity begins with the genealogy of Jesus of Nazareth, an important history for the children of Abraham (not yet the "Jews" in Matthew's day) since the Exile, the other great defining historical event in Hebraic history, after the Exodus from Egypt.   Luke's story ends with it, although I didn't post it here.  This indicates either that the writer of Luke knew Matthew's gospel, or at least the "Special Matthew" that writer got his/her nativity from; or the idea of a genealogy of Jesus was already so widespread even the Gentiles "Luke" wrote for expected it to be a part of the story.  That they expected a nativity story is obvious.  That a nativity story would be more of a Gentile than Hebrew expectation perhaps needs to be noted.  Egyptian pharaohs marked their birthdays because they were gods; Roman emperors marked their accession to power, and became, by the time of Julius Caesar, divi filius, "son of god."  There is a great deal that is radical here, in both nativity stories; claims of humanity and divinity which mix like oil and water.  But where Matthew puts his story squarely in Abrahamic history, starting with the genealogy and continuing outward to the gentile Magi, Luke starts the story outside the Holy Family, and moves slowly towards them.  Jesus' place in the world is through extended family, not through extended ancestry.

The story starts with Zacharias, a priest doing his priestly duties in the Holy of Holies.  It's helpful to understand this is an inner sanctum of a Temple laid out in three "layers."  There's the outer public area, where the adult Jesus will overturn the tables of the money-changers during Passover; there's an inner courtyard where only men may enter (a very exclusive boy's club), and then the inner room to that which only priests can enter on certain days.  Whether this is one of those days is doubtful; Luke's grasp of Hebraic liturgy and ceremony is not strong; but when the priest entered the holiest of places, where God might possibly appear, a rope would be tied to his ankle, in order to drag him out if the presence of God should strike him dead.  God is so wholly other that when God appears in creation, creation trembles:  winds blow, the earth shakes, bushes catch fire but don't burn; that kind of thing.   Only the greatest of prophets can face God and live:  Moses does it twice (the bush, and atop Sinai), Ezekiel does it once, in a vision; Elijah does it once, as well.  Zacharias gets the next best thing:  an angel, which word we get from the Greek for "messenger" (we turned it into a winged being providing protection to children).  A messenger here doesn't mean an errand boy, but more of a modern ambassador, a person with authority and robed in the power of the ruler.  To speak to an angel is to speak to God, but to survive the experience; the angel is God's representative, but not so holy and wholly other as to be a danger to mortal existence.

Still, Zacharias, the priest, the man, the representative of authority coming down from God to the people, makes a fatal error.  He doubts.  There are four stories of woman facing infertility and receiving the blessing of a child from God in the Hebrew Scriptures; three of them involve direct communications with the mother, two involve communication with God by the father, in none of them does the father or mother doubt the promise of God, or even question it.  The closest is Sarah, who laughs at such good news; which is why she names her son Isaac, the one who brings laughter.  Zacharias stands apart, and for his doubt he is silenced until his son is named.

The silence is significant because everyone in Luke's nativity story sings when they hear good news.  Mary's Magnificat is a response to her cousin's joyful greeting; the angels sing to the shepherd at the good news that Christ is born; Simeon sings out at the revelation that the savior he has waited to see has been shown to him.  Luke's gospel is probably the reason we have so many Christmas songs (or probably not, but it's a lovely idea).  It's certainly the reason we think angels have wings; but we'll get back to that.

So Zacharias leaves the temple unable to speak, and that's a sign to everyone else that something significant has happened.  It's also a sign that Gabriel's words are true. and that everything else predicted in this story will happen.  This is a story as much about the future as it is about the past.  But then, the scriptural stories of promises of children are always stories about the future, not the past.  There are echoes here of those stories:  in Genesis 16 Sarah laughs at the idea she would finally have a child, and wonders if it can be true.  In Judges 13 Manoah asks the angel of God for the angel's name, but doesn't get it:  "Why do you ask my name? It is beyond understanding," is the answer, a perfectly Hebraic answer where even the name of God is withheld.  Gabriel gives his name to Zacharias as evidence of his authority, and also so we will know the same messenger appears to Mary (as the angel in Judges appeared first to his wife, and then to Manoah).  Mary echoes Hannah in 1 Samuel:  when she is praying for a child at the Temple, Eli the priest thinks she is drunk.  When she pours out her heart to him, he realizes his error and tells her:  "Go in peace, and may the God of Israel grant you what you have asked of him."  Hannah responds:  "May your servant find favor in your eyes."

But Mary is not an old woman hoping still to have a child; she is a young woman who has not "known a man."  And she is braver than Zacharias: "And when Zacharias saw him, he was troubled, and fear fell upon him."  But Mary is not afraid, just concerned:  "Fear not, Mary," says Gabriel; but she is just disturbed at why she should be announced as blessed among women.  Mary is not afraid; Mary is humble.  We can confuse this with the expected subservience of women, then and to some extent still, now.  But Mary is properly humble before God; her response is "How is this going to happen?", not "That's impossible!"  In that difference we already see the raising up and casting down that she will sing about to her cousin Elizabeth.  And when the angel announces the future, declares what is to come, Mary responds almost with the words of Hannah:  "Behold the handmaid of the Lord; be it unto me according to thy word."

Are those the words of a strong woman?  Or words of groveling submission?  It really isn't for me to say.  

The last speaker was ANDREA, a young married woman, and now OSCAR, her young husband breaks in:  "God is selfish because he wants us to be his slaves. He wants our submission. Just him.  I don't see why Mary has to call herself a slave. We should be free!  Why just him?  That's selfishness."

ALEJANDRO, who is a bachelor:  "We have to be slaves of God, not of men."

Another young man:  "God is love.  To be a slave of love is to be free because God doesn't make us slaves.  He's the only thing we should be slaves of, love.  And then we don't make slaves of others.'

ALEJANDRO'S MOTHER says:  "To be a slave of God is to serve others.  That slavery is liberation."

I said that it's true that this selfish God Oscar spoke about does exist.  And it's a God invented by people.  People have often invented a god in their own image and likeness - not the true God, but idols, and those religions are alienating, an opium of the people.  But the God of the Bible does not teach religion, but rather he urges Moses to take Israel out of Egypt, where the Jews were working as slaves, He led them from colonialism to liberty.  And later God ordered that among those people no one could hold another as a slave, because they had been freed by him and belonged only to him, which means they were free...

The words of the "last speaker" referred to there are these:

in the words of a woman named Andrea, "[Mary] recognizes liberation.... We have to do the same thing.  Liberation is from sin, that is, from selfishness, from injustice, from misery, from ignorance - from everything that's oppressive.  That liberation is in our wombs too, it seems to me."   Especially intriguing for our study is these "uneducated" and "unofficial" interpreters' grasp of nuance, even in their most revolutionary ideas. In a discussion about whether "the proud" automatically equates to "the rich," some argue that even a poor person can become "an exploiter in his heart" if she or he years to be rich and acts in a correspondingly exploitative manner.  Others regard God's humbling of the arrogant, rich, and powerful; the exploiters must be liberated,according to Solentiname resident Olivia, "from their wealth.  Because they're more slaves than we are."

I mention this because there is a lively discussion still to be had about Luke's story, about Mary's words, and I don't want to offer my exegesis as the last word, or even an authoritative word, on how to understand them.  Is Mary's humility proper, or improper; a sign of strength, or a sign of weakness?  That should be a lively discussion.  What is interesting is that Mary's acceptance prompts Gabriel to tell her more, as if to prove his word is true and can be trusted.  We learn it has been six months or more since Zacharias saw Gabriel in the Temple, and that the future he promises Mary is confirmed in the future he promised to Zacharias.  But it's also the mention of Elizabeth that sends Mary to see her cousin, and that carries the story forward as now the journeys of this nativity story begin.

This first journey is a voluntary one, in strong contrast to the later journey to Bethlehem.  Like that story, it involves staying at the house of a family member, so in the narrative this trip foreshadows the more famous one.  But it also prompts the first spontaneous overflow of powerful emotions, which doesn't happen to result in a song, but it certainly prompts one.  This first journey also marks the first appearance of Luke's idea of "Holy Spirit."

And it came to pass, that, when Elisabeth heard the salutation of Mary, the babe leaped in her womb; and Elisabeth was filled with the Holy Ghost: 42 And she spake out with a loud voice, and said, Blessed art thou among women, and blessed is the fruit of thy womb. 43 And whence is this to me, that the mother of my Lord should come to me? 44 For, lo, as soon as the voice of thy salutation sounded in mine ears, the babe leaped in my womb for joy. 45 And blessed is she that believed: for there shall be a performance of those things which were told her from the Lord.

That idea of the Holy Ghost is important here, because it gives Elizabeth knowledge she couldn't otherwise have had.  She underlines the blessing on Mary who, unlike Elizabeth's husband, believed.  But how would she know that, except for the inspiration of the Holy Spirit?  See it as a theological or religious element if you will; it is at least a narrative device for Luke to underline what Sojourner Truth divined so many centuries later:

"That man say we can't have as much rights as a man 'cause Christ wasn't a woman.  Where did your Christ come from?  From God and a woman.  Man had nothing to do with it."

Because you will notice so far we have four characters in this story, and of the three mortals only one is male; and he whiffed it.  Mary and Elizabeth carry the weight here, and carry it effortlessly.  And in another foreshadowing of the stay in Bethlehem, Mary stays with Elizabeth for three months; or until just about the time Elizabeth's son is born.  But to skip to that is to race past the first significant song in Luke's gospel.

I have to intrude here because, after reading this story in Luke on and off for nearly six decades, I noticed something new in it. “Holy Spirit” is one of Luke’s near-inventions (or a revelation to him, if you prefer). What I’d overlooked for so long is that the Holy Spirit makes an appearance earlier than I realized. Gabriel tells Zacharias that his son, John, will be filled with the Holy Spirit from birth. That wasn’t the surprise, to me. It was that Luke was so clearly foreshadowing the next appearance of Gabriel, in the annunciation to Mary. When Mary asks “How can this be?”, Gabriel explains that Jesus will be born if the Holy Spirit. Luke is connecting the two men as closely as possible, and setting his readers up to understand this new concept as both inspirational (in Elizabeth when she greets Mary; in Mary’s response to Elizabeth’s greeting; in Zacharias singing the Benedictus, and Simeon the Nunc Dimmitus), in the life and teachings of John the Baptizer (Luke 3); and generative (the conception of the Christchild).

Which brings us back to Mary’s song, already (I hope) in context. I'll start that discussion by quoting myself; at length, as it turns out:

Quite a lot to claim on just the word of an angel; a lot of expectation for her child. But she doesn’t speak in the future tense; she sings about the present. She praise what God has done, not what God will do; she focuses on the fulfillment of the promise, not a new expectation.

And everything is shattered: thrones, wealth, worthiness; all mean nothing. Hunger and low estate are reversed, power and arrogance are defeated. All without firing a shot. All without anything yet having really happened. How can this be?

One other thing: this is not a political statement. This is not about a greater power than all others on earth, overwhelming what we know and wiping it out. If reason is really going to save us from ourselves, it can only do so by overpowering emotions; it will only do so when we all finally and fully think alike, and praise the same things, and damn the same things, and there is no deviation. It will only finally rule supreme when human emotion is wiped out, and desires and wants are expunged. Reason will only finally be our best and highest ruler when everyone is a slave and no one thinks unlike the rest, and the philosopher kings take their rightful place, and we all learn to bounce our ball in sequence on the coldly perfect planet of Camazotz.

The Magnificat is not a political song. It is not the Maccabees taking on Rome and precipating the slaughter of Jerusalem in 70 C.E. It is not the Pax Romana that finally fell, never to rise again. It is not the plea of the Populists, of New Deal Democrats, the Yippies, or the Green Party. The Magnificat is not about what will be, but about what is.

It is not about resistance, about plans to rule and overpower, either malicious or benign. It understands implicitly: there is no power without resistance. It is not a song of resistance, or a song of prediction.

It is a song of now. 

That's one interpretation, and I stand by it.  There are others, such as to point out how this song fits the context of Luke's story.  Mary starts with praise of God by God working through Mary:  "My soul magnifies the Lord."  Which still could be a political statement, as Dom Crossan and Jonathan Reed pointed out:

On the one hand, "lord" was a polite term usable by slave to master or disciple to teacher. On the other, "the Lord" meant the emperor himself. 

To speak of God as "Lord" is to speak as a handmaiden; or it is to jump right past the emperor; to declare this Lord will pull down the mighty from their seats, is to predict political chaos and the destruction of the Pax Romana.  Or it is to declare the vision of streams in the desert and every valley filled and every high place made low, that all might see the glory of the Lord.  But notice first how much it is a praise of God, and a thanksgiving for blessings already received, for Mary and for the children of Abraham.  And then she explains why she is praising God:  not just for what God has done, but for what God is going to do.  Notice how each prediction is balanced, how each declaration of what God will do declares justice and restoration of order:

He hath shewed strength with his arm; he hath scattered the proud in the imagination of their hearts.

God shows strength, but that strength scatters the proud "in the imagination of their hearts."  The proud imagine themselves mighty and dreadful; but even in the safehold of their imaginations God scatters them.

He hath put down the mighty from their seats, and exalted them of low degree.

Here are the valleys raised and the mountains lowered; and this theme will be a major one throughout Luke's narrative.

He hath filled the hungry with good things; and the rich he hath sent empty away.

Or, as Jesus will say a bit later in Luke's gospel:

Congratulations, you hungry!
You will have a feast.

Damn you rich!
You already have your consolation!

But for now Luke puts all the power in the hands of women. The story returns to Elizabeth after Mary leaves. Her delivery brings the blessings of the community to her, recognizing her blessing from God. And she's in charge when it comes time to name the baby. When she says the boy will be named John, Zacharias writes his agreement and that finally frees his tongue. Mary and Elizabeth have their agency; Zacharias has to learn his lesson.

Like Mary's Magnificat, [Zacharias'] Benedictus is a doxology and a prophecy, a truth-telling, about the present and the future.  As befits a priest, he recalls the covenant history starting with Abraham, connecting the child yet to be born (Mary's) to the genealogy yet to be given (waiting in Luke's narrative until after the nativity story is over).  Mary's Magnificat is about revolution; the Benedictus is about salvation; fittingly, about blessings.  And again, to quote myself:

And as soon as Zecharias fulfills the word of the Lord as spoken by the angel, he can speak again, and he sings. We call that one the Benedictus, because the Latin version begins: “Benedictus Dominus, Deus Israel.” Mary’s song praises what God will do; Zecharias' song praises what God has done. Together they tie up the strands of history, past and future, and make them one moving knot through the present, but all of time connected through that knot, through the moving present. Ironically, Zechariah’s song also does one more thing, in a way Luke never could have foreseen or intended. It ends with the one use of the word “epiphany” in all the Gospels.

The word means “revelation,” but it also means “light, illumination.” Epiphanai, sings Zecharias: Epiphanai tois en skotei kai skia thanatou kathamenois: light to those in darkness and in death’s shadow. Epiphanai: light, to show us the way. And so the Christmas stories connect again, through music.

That connection is, specifically, with Matthew's story of the Magi, celebrated by the church as the Epiphany.  But hold on to that image of the knot of past and future moving as the present through history; Luke will make much use of it before the nativity story is through.

Now we get to the most famous part of the nativity stories and, again, we get it wrong. We condense the timeline so much we have Joseph and Mary arrive in Bethlehem in the day, and she gives birth that night. As Luke actually tells it, they spend several days before she gives birth.  And she lays the baby in the manger because the house is full, not because the holy family is in a stable. Stables are a northern European structure from many centuries later.

We hasten Mary's pregnancy the better to heighten the narrative tension and prove the world a cruel and harsh place, inimical to the savior; and ignore our role in making the world that way.  It doesn't happen that Mary is forced to a stable to give birth while animals look on, and it doesn't happen that she is in labor even as Joseph tries in vain to find a place to stay.  We invented that part to make their plight worse than even Luke says it is, to overlook the power of the government in forcing the family on this journey, to overlook a system that makes Mary and Joseph poor ("Carpenter" meant one step up from beggar, not a journeyman tradesman with a union card.  Jesus' father is no better off than the fishermen he will recruit later; he recruits them because he's one of them, he grew up as poor as they live.).  We want the story to be a bit crueler so we can tell ourselves we'd have taken better care of them if we'd been there; but we don't now.   Brueghel and Auden are our corrective.  Luke sets up the obstacles to our comfort; over the centuries we've done our best to flatten them out.

Joseph appears for the first time in this narrative, and he has no role in it except "husband."  His role here is social:  to make Mary and Jesus legitimate.  Mary still takes center stage; where she is silent in Matthew's telling, she is the actor in Luke's.  More reversals, because the angels never speak to Joseph, but they go out to the hills where the shepherds are awake (!) and sing to them.

The thing about shepherds is, they aren't the pale and idyllic figures of later Romantic literature (some 1800 years later!).  They are outlaws, bikers, people on the fringe of a society that has a very large and broad fringe (imagine a funnel with a point at the top for the Emperor, a very attenuated reach up to the Emperor, and a very, very broad base out of all proportion to the peak.  It's a system of patronage, where wealth concentrates at the top and trickles down to the bottom, a bottom where the majority live, and where very little wealth trickles down.  On the far edge of that bottom, you find the shepherds.).  They stink, and they steal.  You can't brand sheep, and if a few more come home with you than you left with, that's to your benefit.  They live outside town, they aren't welcome among polite company, they have their own rules of behavior and they scare most people, the way working class workers do to this day.  If such a thing were known then, they would be migrant immigrant labor.  This is who the angels sing to; this is who comes to see Mary's baby.

Luke is dealing in social-economic concepts we've all but lost today.  The shepherds aren't comic figures from medieval mystery plays (the ones we turned into Christmas pageants with children in bathrobes and a few live animals); they aren't the unsullied pure hearts of the Romantics.  They make the carpenter Joseph look rich; their business practices would shame Micheal Cohen and Donald Trump.  But they are invited; they get the news first:

8 And there were in the same country shepherds abiding in the field, keeping watch over their flock by night. 9 And, lo, the angel of the Lord came upon them, and the glory of the Lord shone round about them: and they were sore afraid.

And the angel said unto them, Fear not: for, behold, I bring you good tidings of great joy, which shall be to all people. 11 For unto you is born this day in the city of David a Saviour, which is Christ the Lord. 12 And this shall be a sign unto you; Ye shall find the babe wrapped in swaddling clothes, lying in a manger.

And suddenly there was with the angel a multitude of the heavenly host praising God, and saying,

Glory to God in the highest, and on earth peace, good will toward men.

Again, the first thing the angels do is reassure.  Maybe they have learned from Mary; maybe they expect better of priests like Zacharias.  But they tell the shepherds not to be afraid, and they tell them the sign:  a babe wrapped in swaddling clothes, lying in a manger.  Someone like them, in other words; a child of poverty, born to peasants, the Savior, the Anointed One, the Christ, the Lord.  And there's that word again; it can hardly mean "master" this time, not when applied to a peasant's baby swaddled in a feeding trough.  It has to be political; and we forget, too, so many millennia later, how dangerous that claim would be.  But Herod doesn't hear it, nor does Caesar; only shepherds hear, and then they hear the gloria:

Gloria in excelsis Deo!

We know that much of it, from the Vulgate, in the Latin of St. Jerome.  The rest, again, we interpret to our own purposes.  I read a comment recently that garbled the rest of that line, limiting it to "men of goodwill" by turning it around and making it come out backwards.  Men of good will, of course, meant people who agreed with the speaker.  Luke's gospel, as much as Matthew's, tries to destroy boundaries beginning with the nativity; we work as hard as we can to replace them.  God is funny like that; some consider it proof God is not us.  Some pay no attention; boundaries are a great comfort.

The blessing is, of course, the Christmas wish:  peace on earth, good will toward men.  Toward men because the good will comes from Heaven, and God is not human.  It is a wish, a blessing, a sign that God is active in history, a wish that we would be active, too.

As an aside, this part of the story is probably where we get the idea that angels have wings; how else could they be in the sky?  Of such small features are mighty theories made.

So the shepherds show up, and see the child, and are convinced by what the angels told them and what they found; and it is Mary who stores all this in her heart.  Joseph?  He's a cipher.  And while the shepherds praise God and start spreading the evangel, the good news, of what they have heard and seen, they don't get a song.  There is a fourth song coming, but it will be by another named individual.  In the meantime, no one listens to the talk of shepherds, at least no one with political or temporal power, so there is no danger to the child, and the story moves on to his presentation at the Temple.  This occasions another journey, though we seldom notice it.  Time passes and the scene shifts to Jerusalem, the setting for the conclusion of the nativity story, and the final song, a song again inspired by the activity of God.

This journey to Jerusalem is not a minor narrative point; it is a counterbalance to the decree of the census.  This journey, like the one to Bethlehem, is required of the Holy Family; but this journey is in accordance with the laws of the God of Abraham, not the whims and needs of Caesar (who is only doing it to assess taxes, another burden on the poor by the rich).  God uses the census to have Jesus born in the city of David; God's law brings the Holy Family to Jerusalem so they can be a blessing to, and receive a blessing from, Simeon; and so Mary can get one more thing to store in her heart:

And, behold, there was a man in Jerusalem, whose name was Simeon; and the same man was just and devout, waiting for the consolation of Israel: and the Holy Ghost was upon him. 26 And it was revealed unto him by the Holy Ghost, that he should not see death, before he had seen the Lord's Christ. 27 And he came by the Spirit into the temple: and when the parents brought in the child Jesus, to do for him after the custom of the law, 28 Then took he him up in his arms, and blessed God, and said,

Lord, now lettest thou thy servant depart in peace, according to thy word:

30 For mine eyes have seen thy salvation,

31 Which thou hast prepared before the face of all people;

32 A light to lighten the Gentiles, and the glory of thy people Israel.

And Joseph and his mother marvelled at those things which were spoken of him. 34 And Simeon blessed them, and said unto Mary his mother, Behold, this child is set for the fall and rising again of many in Israel; and for a sign which shall be spoken against; 35 (Yea, a sword shall pierce through thy own soul also,) that the thoughts of many hearts may be revealed.

36 And there was one Anna, a prophetess, the daughter of Phanuel, of the tribe of Aser: she was of a great age, and had lived with an husband seven years from her virginity; 37 And she was a widow of about fourscore and four years, which departed not from the temple, but served God with fastings and prayers night and day. 38 And she coming in that instant gave thanks likewise unto the Lord, and spake of him to all them that looked for redemption in Jerusalem.

For the second time the Holy Spirit is the in spiritus, the inspiration, for song; and again, the Holy Ghost inspires a man.  Simeon bookends Zacharias, offering a doxology to God and another prophecy about the child, as well as a second prophecy to the mother, this time (and for the first time in Luke's narrative) with a dark warning, also to Mary.  Joseph wonders, as his wife does, but Mary gets all the messages.  This is not a slight against Joseph but more of Isaiah's streams in the desert, of low places raised up and high places brought low.  The image of streams in the desert is life where apparently all is lifeless (Elizabeth's pregnancy); the handmaiden of the Lord is blessed among women, and women are just as important as men (Anna seems almost the afterthought here, but she is a prophetess and given a lineage, just like Zacharias as the beginning (Simeon is simply "just and devout")).  And it is Anna who, like the shepherds, spreads the evangel, the good news of the child.  God uses the most marginalized to spread the message of the angels, just as God chose the most marginalized to be the Holy Family.  Luke's nativity ends with the years of Jesus' childhood passed over, years left to others to fill in with infancy gospels about what Jesus did before Luke's story takes up again.

Luke's gospel emphasizes the poverty, the fringe of society, the powerlessness of the Holy Family.  That's in Matthew's story, too, but we overlook the danger that forces them to flee to Egypt, stay several years there, and then return not to Bethlehem, but to Nazareth so they can remain incognito.  Luke's story doesn't draw the attention of Herod or any rulers; who listens to shepherds, then or now?  These two nativity stories are diptychs, each telling the same story in only slightly different ways.  Matthew emphasizes the light to the nations and the threat to world power; Luke emphasizes the poverty and the redemption that comes from the fringes toward the center.  Both stories ultimately affirm the same theme:  glory to God in the highest and on earth peace, good will toward men.  Not that we have that yet; but we have the faith (trust) that it will come.