Poem/ Reflection for Feast of Presentation of Our Lord February2, 2020
St. Andrew’s Episcopal Church, Nags Head, N.C. Thomas E. Wilson Supply Clergy
Simeon and Anna Bless
Last week I was reading the Lecture on December
10, 2019 by the recipient of the 2019 Nobel Peace Prize, the Prime Minister of
Ethiopia, Abiy
Ahmed Ali, “Forging A Durable Peace in the Horn of Africa”. He is a product of
an Ethiopian Christian Mother and a Muslim father which enabled him the
understanding to work with people who have differences in their lives. He had
been a young soldier in war and had spent the rest of his life working for
peace. He said: “I am
inspired by a Biblical Scripture which reads: “Blessed are the peacemakers, for
they shall be called the children of God.” Equally I am also inspired by a Holy
Quran verse which reads: “Humanity is but a single Brotherhood. So, make peace
with your Brethren.”
He said:
I believe that peace is an affair of the
heart. Peace is a labor of love. Sustaining peace is hard work. Yet, we must
cherish and nurture it. It takes a few to make war, but it takes a village and
a nation to build peace.
For me,
nurturing peace is like planting and growing trees. Just like trees need water
and good soil to grow, peace requires unwavering commitment, infinite patience,
and goodwill to cultivate and harvest its dividends. Peace requires good faith
to blossom into prosperity, security, and opportunity.
In the
same manner that trees absorb carbon dioxide to give us life and oxygen, peace
has the capacity to absorb the suspicion and doubt that may cloud our
relationships. In return, it gives back hope for the future, confidence in
ourselves, and faith in humanity.
This
humanity I speak of, is within all of us. We can cultivate and share it with
others if we choose to remove our masks of pride and arrogance. When our love
for humanity outgrows our appreciation of human vanity then the world will know
peace.
On December 10, 1952 Albert Schweitzer was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize In his Nobel lecture, called "The Problem of Peace," he said: "What really matters is that we should all of us realize that we are guilty of inhumanity. The horror of this realization should shake us out of our lethargy so that we can direct our hopes and our intentions to the coming of an era in which war will have no place."
When we fully understand our own human brokenness, then, and only then, can we work toward healing. In the same fashion is it only when we understand our own blessedness then and only then, can we have hope.
The Gospel lesson we have for today, Jesus as an infant is taken by his parents to the Temple in Jerusalem on their way back to Nazareth to offer a sacrifice of Thanksgiving for Jesus’ birth. At that Temple there were two old people who lived on the Temple grounds. Remember their country was under the rule of a tyrant and he was under the rule of another tyrant. They came to the Temple to be free and look deeply into their own hearts and the heart of others. They would bless those in whom they saw peace and blessedness, while praying for healing for those in whom they saw the rise of inhumanity. They had not come to the Temple to get away from the world but to change the world.
There is a line from the play Fiddler On The Roof where the Rabbi in this Jewish town in 19th century Russia is asked if there was a blessing for the Tsar. Tsars regularly promoted pogroms to make life difficult to those who were not Russian Orthodox Christians. It is always the case that tyrants want to control the religious minds, inclinations and imaginations of their subjects so they would worship the leaders of the state instead of the creator of the universe. The Rabbi thinks a moment and answers, “May the Lord, blessed be He, bless and keep the Tsar (pause) far way from here!”
At the Temple Anna and Simeon look deeply into the eyes of Jesus and his parents and they see the inclination to spread peace and to heal inhumanity. They pronounce benedictions over Jesus and his parents, but this is not a Pollyanna, one size fits all, blessing. The word benediction comes from the Latin- bene = good and diction = speech. The good words are said to give encouragement to stay on God’s path of Peace and Healing in the journeys in the world. Prayerful words have power that stem from those who bless and from the One from whom all blessings and healings come.
I think Luke remembers these people in this story to remind us who would encounter the Risen Christ to follow their work of looking into the souls of people and bless them in their journey toward Peace and healing for the souls of those who are enraptured by designs of inhumanity.
A couple weeks ago, I talked with the children in our Pre-school and I talked to them about Simeon and Anna and how they blessed the baby Jesus and his parents. I gave them an assignment that they would go home and bless someone in their home. They told me of their brothers and sisters and pets and who and when they would bless them. As they left the chapel, I knelt and looked in the eye of each child as they walked out, I held their face, telling them by the name written on their nametag “Bless you”.
Like Simeon and Anna, I live in Holy Space, like all of us do. Like Simeon and Anna, I am an older person, like some of us are. How are each of you like Simeon and Anna?
How would the world be changed if we all stopped and blessed someone or prayed for their healing, even our enemies? What would happen if like Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed Ali, we knew that it takes a village and a world to make peace? Why don’t you try being a part of that village and world this week making peace by blessing and healing? Maybe it will not change them but I promise you, it will change you.
Simeon and Anna Bless
Open our eyes O Lord, that we might bless,
because with open eyes, we see your hand,
shaping a full being, not a mirage in sand,
but a gift to broken worlds saying “Yes!”
Benediction means speaking good words,
not recitations of ritual with flowery cant,
passed on for centuries with catchy chant,
but joy song as a dawn is greeted by birds.
“Yes”, we'll say, when seeing God's hope
underneath outward personas, and between,
Holy Space where lives an uncounted gene,
unknown to a mere geneticist's microscope
“Yes”, live into the miracle that you are,
you, who come from dust of the first star.
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