A Gospel Prelude

Gospel: Luke 2: 36-40

The infancy narratives of Jesus provide us with a fitting introduction to the larger Gospel themes that will come to mark the public life of Jesus.  We encountered God revealing the Word to two women who will bring forth the Word and his herald into the world, in the midst of doubting men.  At the manger we find the arrival of the Word revealed to poor lowly shepherds and unnamed Magi from the east who come to bring gifts.  Today, we find the Word revealed to a poor widow named Anna who recognizes and accepts this revelation.

By contrast, we find the noteworthy and powerful of the world conspiring against the Word from the very beginning.  We find opposition from the professional religious class who take part in the conspiracy.  Yet, we see the providential hand of God at work protecting the Word by guiding Joseph and the Magi  away from the web of entrapment that these powers of the world created for destruction.  The Word becomes a refugee  and returns to a humble life in Nazareth.

This same dynamic persists to our very day.  We will find the Word among us not among the powerful of the world, not among the professional religious class.  We will find the Word among us amid the poor and lowly, the refugee and foreigner, the meek and humble.  For this is where we found the Word on earth from his birth to his death.