Pierced
“And a sword will pierce your own soul too.” The words of the aged prophet, Simeon, spoken to Mary, the mother of Jesus, and found in Luke 2:35, are meant to prepare the readers of his gospel for the tragedy of the rejection of God’s King and His Kingdom.
As we follow the story through Luke, we see this rejection unfold.
Jesus is rejected by the good people of Nazareth where he grew up. (They tried to throw him off the cliff at the edge of the town.)
He is hounded by the religious leaders, who begin early on to plot his death.
At one point in his ministry, his mother and brothers come to take him home, worried that he has “lost his senses.” (That’s worth some time pondering and meditating.)
In the courtyard of Pilate, who finds in Jesus, no-fault, he is condemned to the shouts of the people, “Crucify him!”
At Golgotha, the place of the skull, the place of death, he is crucified, as he listens to the jeers of Israel’s finest, the religious leaders responsible for shepherding God’s people - “He saved others; let him save himself if he is God’s Messiah, the Chosen One.”
And Mary witnessed all these things.
We are so familiar with the story of Jesus that I think we are somewhat desensitized to the deep tragedy portrayed by the gospel writers. It’s the story of a good man, a godly man, God’s only Son, both human and divine, who came to establish a kingdom of peace, justice, and goodwill for all. But this man and all he promised was rejected in the most vicious and violent way.
As I shared in yesterday’s post, Simeon’s prophecy to Mary in the temple at Jerusalem is meant to draw us in and prepare us for the tragic events to follow.
Who isn’t touched deeply by the lifetime of sorrow experienced by the mother of a suffering child? The prophet Isaiah tells us that Jesus was a “man of sorrows, and acquainted with grief.”
Simeon’s words paint the picture of a sword piercing Mary’s soul - the seat of her emotions and intellect, the whole of her being. And the word for sword that he uses describes not the smaller swords used by Roman soldiers but a large sword, one that normally required two hands to wield it.
Unlike our Roman Catholic and Greek Orthodox brothers and sisters, we Protestants don’t venerate Mary. But I wonder, sometimes, if, in our rejection of this understanding of Mary, we don’t go too far.
I’m reminded of a story I heard years ago about a twelve-year-old boy who received his first Bible. It was filled with pictures and, as he thumbed through the pages of his new Bible, this tender-hearted young boy came across a picture of Jesus on the cross. The blood and sweat, together with the agony on the face of Jesus, touched this young boy deeply, and he cried out. His mother came to see what was the matter, but when she asked her son what was wrong, all he could do through his tears was point to the picture in his Bible. In an attempt to comfort her son his mother put her arm around him and said, “Son, it’s just a picture; it never really happened.”
As disciples of Jesus, we live our lives in the light of both the sorrow of his crucifixion and the promise that comes through his resurrection. Out of the deepest sorrow, God brought to us the promise of His kingdom to come. And as we wrestle with the heartbreak and pain of a broken world, we rejoice in the hope that our deepest sorrows will be turned to joy through his resurrection and Second Coming.
In Christ,
Dan
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