February 2, 2020

Possibly the truest love story that I have ever read is a novel called The Road by the author Cormac McCarthy. The Road was published in 2006 to plenty of critical acclaim, even making it onto Oprah’s Book Club. I don’t know what Cormac McCarthy would say about my description of The Road as a “love story,” but if you know anything at all about the plot, you know it is not a warm and fuzzy story. It’s a story about the journey of a father and son, and the setting is a post-apocalyptic America, in the wake of some extraordinary disaster about which we know nothing. The earth is scorched, ash falls like snow from the sky, and civilization has collapsed. Gangs of heavily-armed men roam the land, seizing whatever food, weapons, and people that they can. It’s a bleak shadow of a world in which there is not one shred of hope. A bold choice for Oprah’s Book Club, perhaps; but Oprah chose right. The Road is a beautiful story—a love story, probably the truest one I’ve ever read.

The book is about the journey of an unnamed father and son from their home somewhere in the north along a road that takes them south. It’s not just a story about survival; it’s a story of the father’s unceasing care for his child, doing all that he can to preserve the boy’s innocence in the midst of total ruin and destruction. There’s a moment in the story when the father wakes in the woods in the early morning and reaches out to his son, lying asleep right next to him, and he contemplates the journey they will undertake. And there’s a line that Cormac McCarthy writes from the father’s voice that gets right to the heart of the story. Here’s the line:

“He knew only that the child was his warrant. He said: If he is not the word of God, God never spoke.”

As if the life of his child was proof that God had not completely abandoned the world.

When the infant Jesus was brought into the temple, it was as though there was once again proof that God had not completely abandoned the world. Because for the Jews living in first-century Palestine, under Roman occupation, the world looked pretty bleak. A foreign power with foreign gods dominates the land, and installs a puppet king, Herod the Great, to rule over the people. So when we hear in the Gospel that “there was a man… whose name was Simeon,” “righteous and devout,” who was “looking forward to the consolation of Israel,” we should hear the estrangement, the desperation ringing in those words. He’s an aged man, and he knows that he won’t die before he sees the Lord’s Messiah—he knows it. Even though all else seems like ruin and destruction. He sees the child in the temple and takes him in his arms, and gazes into his eyes, and starts singing a love song that he can’t hold back, because if this child was not the word of God, then God never spoke.

In his song, Simeon sings that he has now seen God’s salvation, prepared for all people. Simeon sings that he has seen the light—not just any light, but “a Light to enlighten the nations,” and the glory of God’s people, Israel. And this lullaby song must have lingered with Jesus as he grew up and grew in wisdom, because by the time he is fully grown, he claims this identity as his own. He says,

“I am the light of the world. Whoever follows me will not walk in darkness, but will have the light of life.”

The Light of the world, who scatters the darkness. The Word of God, spoken for our salvation.

Simeon’s song is just as much for us now as it was for him then. Even though we are not residents of first-century Palestine, nor survivors wandering about in a post-apocalyptic America, we know what it’s like to be a people who exist in darkness, in a world where complex systems of power and control always seem to win out over those striving after justice and peace. We know the extent of the darkness. But we also know that in the midst of that darkness a Light has shined—and the darkness will not overcome it. Christ is the Light, and he has overcome the world, even if it seems very much the opposite. And just as Christ is our light, so too are we called to be a light to one another, and to the world.

It’s fitting, then, that the feast of the Presentation also came to be called Candlemas—the Mass of Candles, the day when the church blesses its candles and reminds us that every candle in church is a sign of Christ’s light among us; even more, that all light everywhere is a sign of the Light who shines in the darkness, eternally. Lights can burn out, but the light of Christ never will. No matter what.

May we be drawn to Christ like moths to a flame—being not destroyed, but purified. For he is like a refiner’s fire and like fullers’ soap, and he will heal us with his light. If we dare to draw near to it. Or if, by the grace of God, someone else leads us there. May Christ who is our Light present us to the Father by the power of the Spirit, as a holy and living sacrifice, to the glory of God. Amen.