This will be the first Sunday after Christmas. The season of Christmas is the shortest season of the year. Sometimes there are two Sundays after Christmas, but never three. It only has how many days? That’s right, twelve!!! Good job! At the end of the season, there is the day of Epiphany, sometimes called Three Kings Day. It is the day when we celebrate the magi (wise men, not to be confused with wise guys), coming to honor Jesus, the new king of the world.
It is a tumble dry kind of time where one is always a little uncertain of where one is spatially located. I got caught in a dryer one day, and so I know whereof I speak. If the temperature had been set on high, I would have been nicely roasted by the time the clothes came out, but fortunately the person was just trying to get some wrinkles out. But, let me tell you, if you want a topsy-turvy experience, take a ride in the dryer someday. (Really, I don’t recommend it.)
Now where was I? … Oh yes, topsy-turvy world. Charles Dickens captures that topsy-turviness in his account of A Christmas Carol, with Scrooge flitting around between the past, present, and future, and yet that is not quite what happens during the Christmas season either. H. G. Wells tried to capture the hazardous vicissitudes of time travel when he wrote The Time Machine, but as fascinating as that tale is, it is too despairing and hopeless for the season of Christmas.
Kurt Vonnegut can be somewhat helpful with Billy Pilgrim (Sirens of Titan and Slaughterhouse 5) being unstuck in time, but his worship of God the Utterly Indifferent, fails to capture the celebration of the season. “So it goes.” Back to the Future does a good job of demonstrating what happens when one tries to change history, but here again, the story line fails because it is too self-serving, and then there are all of those hideous sequels that have to be suffered.
No, none of these really captures the tumble dry, topsy-turviness of Christmas and much of the liturgical calendar. Last Sunday, we learned that Jesus was conceived and was to be born. Sunday night, we heard that Jesus was born. Monday, we read of Jesus’ participation in creation (just a few years previous), and now this week in Luke 2:22-40 we jump forty days after Jesus is born (a text that properly belongs to February 2, most popularly known as Groundhog’s Day, but liturgically known as Candlemas, the almost halfway point of winter). It is no wonder that we can’t keep a decent timeline of the events surrounding the life and times of Jesus let alone an accurate timeline of what is happening in the rest of the Bible.
Still, Sunday after Sunday, we come to our own little time travel capsule called the sanctuary to worship and experience the topsy-turvy world of our liturgical year. Advent begins the liturgical year which does not coincide with our solar calendar. (Even our solar calendar doesn’t line up with the earth’s orbit around the sun, but that’s another conversation.) We sit through time running backward through the four weeks of Advent, from the little apocalypse at the end of Jesus’ ministry, to John baptizing at the river Jordan two weeks running, and then Mary discovering and celebrating that she is pregnant. Now, in Christmas we bounce along experiencing Jesus’ birth and some early life events—his presentation and Mary’s purification at the temple, the slaughter of the children, and Jesus’ time in the temple when he was twelve).
Then we get to Epiphany when Jesus is a baby/toddler again. The next Sunday, Baptism of our Lord, gets us to the beginning of his public ministry at approximately age 30, and we end the season with the Transfiguration near the end of Jesus’ ministry. There are times in our time travel capsule when time skips forward leaving parts of Jesus’ ministry untold. Other times, time slows down, and we spend weeks concerning ourselves with Jesus being the bread of life.
From Epiphany to the final Sunday after Pentecost time is like an accordion. Sometimes Epiphany time is expanding and the time after Pentecost is contracting. At other times, Epiphany is contracted, and the season of Pentecost expands. (One only hopes that one doesn’t get his nose whiskers caught in the ribs of the bellows.) Regardless, the goal posts of Epiphany always remain in place, the length of Lent is constant, and Easter continues to be the great new creation week of weeks. It is a lot for a mouse to ponder.
Reflecting on the Jewishness of Joseph and Mary (see Lev. 12, the time for purification of a woman who has given birth) and the temple practices of the day (see Lk. 2, Simeon’s song and Anna’s proclamation) presents a time of reverence. How can one hear the words of Simeon’s song and not feel a sense of awe at his faith? “Now let your servant go in peace, Lord. Your word has been fulfilled. My eyes have seen your salvation which you have prepared in the presence of every nation. A light to reveal you to the nations and the glory of your people Israel.”
This newly married couple has already gone through their own topsy-turvy relations with angels, shepherds, and one another. Now they come to do what is right by the law, and some old codger takes their child from them and pronounces him to be what they have only suspected. And if that isn’t enough, the oracle spoken by this old codger includes, “This child is destined for the falling and the rising of many in Israel and to be a sign that will be opposed so that the inner thoughts of many will be [exposed]. And a sword will pierce your own soul too.”
These are dire and dour words for a young mother whose child is claimed for such great hope. This is just a little more of that tumble dry topsy-turviness that follows with the problems of keeping up with the time travel world of the liturgical calendar.
Still, to me, a blind mouse, I can only sit and wonder what it might feel like to know that vision of salvation. The words awesome and humbling, amazement and terror, fear and trembling, all come to mind as I imagine this young family’s journey in the tumble dry topsy-turvy world of spiritual time displacement. Mary and Joseph return to their home in Nazareth where we are told, “The child grew and became strong, filled with wisdom and the favor of God.”—one last time-jump or maybe just time stretch. (hmmm)
Your pal,
Nicodemus,
Editor, Theologian, Counsellor, Mouse
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