Besides constituting the gospel reading on the feast of the Presentation (February 2), this Lucan narrative serves as the gospel for the Sunday in the octave of Christmas. The liturgical instinct is correct: the presentation scene is an intrinsic part and, indeed, the climax of the Lucan infancy narrative.
Although the Lucan story line is very different from that of the Matthean nativity scene, thematically the two stories are remarkably similar. In both Gospels the christological “good news” that Jesus is the Son of God has been attached to the conception and birth of Jesus; this good news is proclaimed by celestial intervention to a group who were not present (by a star to magi, or by an angel to shepherds); they come to Bethlehem to believe and worship; at the end they are removed from the scene, and they go back to whence they came.
Does the thematic parallel between Matthew and Luke stop with the departure of the magi and of the shepherds, or does it continue into the next scene (the second part of chapter 2 in each Gospel), that is, into the aftermath of the magi and shepherd scenes? For Matthew this aftermath involves the attempt of the wicked King Herod to kill the child Jesus, his slaughter of the male infants, the flight to Egypt, and the return after the king’s death—a story clearly patterned on the attempt of the wicked Pharaoh to kill the baby Moses, and on the return of Israel from Egypt under Moses. Luke’s account of the peaceful presentation of Jesus in the Jerusalem Temple where he is greeted by Simeon and Anna is obviously a very different story in content and tone,1 and is modeled on Hannah’s (Anna’s) presentation of the boy Samuel in the shrine at Shiloh where he was accepted by the priest Eli (1 Sam 1–2). Yet, if one understands that the Matthean story is a passion narrative shifted to the infancy, with the king, the chief priests and the scribes aligned against Jesus (Matt 2:4; 26:27), seeking to kill him, it is noteworthy that Luke too introduces into the presentation a theme of opposition to Jesus and of persecution. Simeon identifies Jesus as a sign to be contradicted, set for the fall of many in Israel, and as the occasion for a sword passing through the soul (Luke 2:34-35). Thus again, despite the different story lines, each evangelist uses the aftermath of the birth to introduce the same passion and suffering motif. Neither is satisfied to terminate the nativity on a totally positive note with the acceptance of Jesus by magi and shepherds. Opposition must also be depicted or predicted; for that is the history of the good news as the two evangelists know it, writing some fifty years after the death of Jesus. By some the good news has been accepted, and they have come and worshiped; but by others it has been rejected and vigorously opposed, and their rejection has produced a division in Israel.
Having compared Luke to Matthew, let us turn now to reflect upon the particular message of Luke’s account of the presentation (2:22-40). In discussing the nativity itself (2:1-20), I pointed out that, in order to get Joseph and Mary from Nazareth to Bethlehem, Luke had introduced the motif of the census, and that his information about the census posed severe historical problems. Similarly here, in order to get the family from Bethlehem to Jerusalem, Luke introduces the motifs of the purification and presentation, and once again this introduction presents historical difficulties. Luke seems to be confused about two different religious customs.2 The first custom was that of the purification of the mother at the sanctuary (Temple) after the birth of a child, a purification at which she offered two young pigeons or doves (Lev 12:1-8). The second custom was that of the presentation of the first male child to the Lord, and the paying at the sanctuary of the sum of five shekels to buy him back. Imprecisely Luke seems to think that both parents needed to be purified (“their purification” in 2:22), that the child needed to be brought to Jerusalem to be presented to the Lord (2:22b-23), and that the offering of two young pigeons was related to the presentation (2:24 in sequence to 2:22b). For our purposes here let us leave aside these minor confusions3 in order to concentrate on Luke’s theological outlook.
It is clearly the presentation that captures Luke’s interest since he never mentions the purification after the initial verse of the scene (2:22a). He stresses that this action in the Jerusalem Temple was according to the Law of the Lord which he mentions five times (2:22, 23, 24, 27, 39). Previously (2:21) Luke told us that Jesus was circumcised on the eighth day; now at another temporal interval (“when the time came”) the parents obey the laws of purification and presentation. In his narrative of the census of Quirinius Luke portrayed Jesus’ parents as obedient to a Roman edict which caused many Jews to revolt;4 here he shows them obedient to the demands of Jewish religious custom. In his origins Jesus was an offense neither to Rome nor to Israel. By the time that Luke writes his Gospel the Jewish leaders have rejected Jesus; but Luke insists that Jesus did not reject Judaism.
As Jesus is presented in the Temple in fulfillment of the Law, he is met by Simeon and Anna, two characters who could have stepped out of the pages of the OT. Luke identifies Anna as a prophetess (2:36), and he has Simeon moved by the Spirit5 to utter a prophecy about Jesus’ future (2:34-35). Thus, added to the Law is the element of prophecy; “the Law and the prophets,” as Luke describes the heritage of Israel,6 come together to establish a context for the beginning of Jesus’ career. And this takes place in the court of the Temple during the observance of a cultic duty, so that the Temple cult joins the context established by the Law and the prophets.
At an earlier level of composition it is likely that the Lucan infancy narrative came to an end with this scene in the Jerusalem Temple7 and so was a narrative with an almost perfect inclusion or correspondence between beginning and end. The narrative had begun with the description of an upright and pious man and woman, Zechariah and Elizabeth (1:5-7) and with the proclamation in the Temple of the good news about John the Baptist. In the original plan the narrative came to a close in the courts of the same Temple with another pious pair, Simeon and Anna, proclaiming the good news about Jesus (2:38). Just as Zechariah was filled with the Holy Spirit to utter the Benedictus in honor of John the Baptist, the prophet of the Most High (1:67, 76), so Simeon is filled with the Holy Spirit (2:25, 26, 27) to utter the Nunc Dimittis in praise of Jesus, the Son of the Most High (1:32). The woman Elizabeth reacted to the good news about John the Baptist by thanking God that he had dealt with her thus (1:24-25); and when she gave birth to the child, the good news reached her neighbors (1:57-58). Similarly the woman Anna “gave thanks to God and spoke about the child [Jesus] to all those waiting for the redemption of Jerusalem” (2:38).
The key to this remarkable parallelism between Zechariah/Elizabeth and Simeon/Anna is the fact that both pairs have their biblical foreshadowing in the dramatis personae of the story of the birth of Samuel. Zechariah and Elizabeth were patterned by Luke on the model of Samuel’s parents, Elkanah and Hannah (Anna), who yearned for a child and had their prayer granted while praying in the sanctuary. Ultimately they presented that child Samuel to the Lord (1 Sam 1:25), and there at the sanctuary was the aged high priest Eli,8 as well as women who served at the entrance.9 Eli blessed the parents of Samuel for having presented their son to the Lord (1 Sam 2:20), even as Simeon blessed Jesus’ parents. Afterwards the parents of Samuel returned to their home (1 Sam 2:20), even as Luke 2:39 tells us that the parents of Jesus, “when they had finished all their duties according to the Law of the Lord, returned to Galilee.” We are assured twice that Samuel grew in stature and favor with God and men (1 Sam 2:21, 26), even as Luke tells us that Jesus grew and became strong, filled with wisdom and favored by God (2:40).10 And so Luke, who began his infancy narrative by portraying the birth of John the Baptist in the light of a Samuel background, closes the infancy narrative by portraying the birth of Jesus against the same background.
In order to pursue further the Lucan theology of the scene, we need to concentrate upon the words uttered by Simeon as he embraces the child Jesus in the Temple court. To him are attributed two poetic oracles: first, the Nunc Dimittis in verses 29-32; second, the oracle concerning the sign to be contradicted in verses 34-35. In introducing each oracle Luke mentions a blessing by Simeon (28, 34). A critical study of the history of composition suggests that, like the other three canticles in the infancy narrative (Magnificat, Benedictus, Gloria in Excelsis),11 the Nunc Dimittis was added by Luke to an already extant narrative about Simeon—if it were to be omitted, that narrative would make perfect sense with verse 27 leading directly into verse 34. Be that as it may, our interest is in the final form of the scene where the oracle of the Nunc Dimittis is Simeon’s blessing of God, while the second oracle is a blessing upon the parents and especially upon Mary.
The first oracle, the Nunc Dimittis, is spoken by one who has been “waiting for the consolation of Israel” (2:25).12 This picture of one in Jerusalem waiting for consolation echoes the language of the second and third parts of Isaiah. In the Septuagint, Deutero-Isaiah (40:1) opens with the words: “Console, console my people, says your God; speak, priests, to the heart of Jerusalem, for her time of humiliation has been filled out.” In Isaiah 66:12-13, a Septuagint passage which speaks of the glory of the Gentiles, we hear: “As one whom a mother consoles, so also shall I console you; and you will be consoled in Jerusalem.” If the Lucan presentation of Simeon has Isaian background, it is not surprising that Simeon’s Nunc Dimittis echoes the same background. Let us recall its message:
“Mighty Master, now you may let your servant depart
in peace, since you kept your word.
For my eyes have seen this salvation
that you made ready in the sight of all peoples:
a light to be a revelation to the Gentiles
and to be a glory for your people Israel.”
The themes of seeing salvation, the sight of all the peoples, a light to the Gentiles, and glory for Israel constitute almost a pastiche13 from passages like Isaiah 40:3; 42:6; 46:13; 49:6; 52:9-10.
Theologically it is striking that the universalism of Deutero-Isaiah has been brought over into the infancy narrative. In the previous scene Luke’s view was narrower, for it was proclaimed to the shepherds that the good news of the birth of the Messiah was meant for the whole people of Israel (2:10-11). But now we hear of a salvation made ready “in the sight of all peoples”—a salvation that is “to the Gentiles” as well as “for your people Israel.” Simeon can depart in peace because the consolation of Israel which he awaited has come, and this consolation of Israel has proved to be a revelation to the Gentiles as well. In introducing the Gentiles into the presentation scene, Luke once more agrees with Matthew whose interest in the Gentiles was evident in the story of the magi from the East. Luke speaks of “a light to be a revelation to the Gentiles”; Matthew (2:2) spoke of a star which the magi saw at its rising. True, Matthew showed that Jesus meant salvation for the obedient in Israel, since the angel promised Joseph that the child would “save his people from their sins” (Matt 1:21). But in the dramatis personae, with the important exception of Joseph, Matthew’s infancy narrative concentrated on Jews who were hostile to Jesus. On the other hand, Luke has hitherto been concentrating on obedient Jews, like Zechariah, Elizabeth, the shepherds, and Simeon. Now, having mentioned Gentiles, he turns in the words of Simeon’s second oracle to the many in Israel who will be disobedient.
This second oracle, the sign to be contradicted, is much less general than the Nunc Dimittis, which like the other canticles could refer to the work of Jesus at any time in his career. (Indeed, the reference to an accomplished salvation may once have been directed to the cross and resurrection before Luke adapted the canticles and added them here.) But the second oracle of Simeon, which was probably originally composed as part of the infancy narrative is strongly futuristic and quite appropriate to a child whose work had not yet begun:
“Behold, he is set for the fall and rise of many in Israel
and for a sign to be contradicted—
indeed, a sword will pass through your own soul—
so that the inmost thoughts of many may be revealed.”
The language is poetic and symbolic but also deliberate. Luke wrote “the fall and rise”; and the emphasis belongs on “fall,” as we see from the second line with its reference to “a sign to be contradicted,” and from the fourth line, for in the NT “inmost thoughts” (dialogismoi) are always pejorative. At the end of his life Simeon holds in his arms a child who is just beginning life. Simeon’s eyes have peered into the distance and seen the salvation that the child will offer to the Gentiles and Israel alike; but, true prophet that he is, he has also seen rejection and catastrophe. Alas, the majority of Israel will reject Jesus. Of course, from Luke’s viewpoint this rejection is no longer future; he knows what has happened in the course of apostolic preaching. Luke ends his story of Jesus and of the church when Paul comes to Rome, the capital of the Gentile empire. There he accepts the truth of Isaiah’s prediction that this people (the Jews) would never understand. Paul’s last words emphasize “that the salvation of God has been sent to the Gentiles; they will listen” (Acts 28:28).
The really obscure line in Simeon’s second oracle is addressed to Mary: “A sword will pass through your own soul.” Patristic interpretations of the sword run the gamut from doubt through calumnious rejection to violent death—interpretations invalidated by the fact that Luke gives us no evidence of Mary’s doubting or of her being calumniated as an unfaithful wife (contrast Matt 1:18-19) or of her dying violently. But if we smile at the lack of method in such ancient suggestions, we should recognize that a similar defect is present in the most frequent current Catholic interpretation of the line, namely, that the sword of sorrow passed through Mary’s soul when she stood at the foot of the cross and saw her son die. This suggestion violates an elementary canon of interpretation: the self-intelligibility of a writing. In the Lucan description of the crucifixion Mary is never mentioned as present, and the women who had followed Jesus from Galilee are portrayed as standing at a distance (23:49). The scene in which the mother of Jesus stands at the foot of the cross is found only in John (19:25-27); it involves “the disciple whom Jesus loved,” a figure who appears in no other Gospel;14 and so there is not the slightest reason to suspect that Luke’s audience would have known of the scene. The key to “A sword will pass through your own soul” should lie in Luke’s own Gospel, not in John’s Gospel.
The language of the statement has its closest OT parallel in Ezekiel 14:17 where we are told that by way of judgment the Lord may say, “Let a sword pass through the land so that I may cut off man and beast.” Evidently this was a well-remembered oracle, for it is quoted in the Sibylline Oracles (III, 316) to describe the invasion of Egypt by Antiochus Epiphanes (ca. 170 B.C.): “For a sword will pass through the midst of you.” The image is of a selective sword of judgment, destroying some and sparing others, a sword of discrimination and not merely of punishment. This OT background is perfectly in harmony with the rest of Simeon’s second oracle in Luke where the child is set for the fall and rise of many in Israel. Simeon proclaims that a discriminating judgment will come upon Israel and that it will touch Mary too, as an individual Israelite.
Is there a scene in Luke’s Gospel that can show how? Yes—the one scene in the Synoptic tradition where she appears in the public ministry.15 It is the scene where the mother and brothers come seeking Jesus, only to have him reply that his eschatological family, established by the proclamation of the kingdom, consists not in physical relationship but in a relationship of obedience to the will of the Father. Clearly it is a discriminatory scene putting the demands of God above the privilege of human relationship. (It is Jesus’ application to his own situation of the truth that he proclaimed for all: “Do you think that I have come to bring peace on the earth? No, I tell you, rather division; for henceforth in the one house they will be divided … father against son and son against father, mother against daughter and daughter against mother.”16) In the Marcan form of the discriminatory scene (Mark 3:31-35), Mary fares poorly; for she and the brothers, standing outside, are sharply contrasted with the family of disciples surrounding Jesus inside.17 But in Luke’s form (8:19-21) Mary emerges as part of the eschatological family of Jesus: “My mother and my brothers are those who hear the word of God and do it” (see Acts 1:14). Mary has had to meet the same discriminatory demand as all others. If in Luke’s view she has emerged successfully as part of the family of disciples, it was not because of a physical claim upon Jesus.
The interest that Luke shows in Mary’s fate in Simeon’s second oracle is consonant with the interest in Mary that he showed in 2:19. In the previous chapter where I discussed that verse, I pointed out that the idea that Mary “kept with concern all these events, interpreting them in her heart” had no implication that she was the eyewitness source for Luke’s infancy narrative. Rather, since Mary was the only adult in the infancy narrative who would last into the public ministry and even into the church (Acts 1:14), Luke was hinting that later on she would discover the real meaning of all the marvelous happenings associated with Bethlehem. Through Simeon’s oracle Luke tells us that part of this discovery will be that she too has to face the judgment implied in Jesus’ proclamation. However, since Luke has already shown Mary as doing the will of God at the time of the annunciation (1:38), he suggests here that she will be a positive exception to the generally negative reaction in Israel which is the subject of Simeon’s prophecy. For her Jesus will not be a sign to be contradicted but a sign to be affirmed.
If I were to draw a practical conclusion for Mariology from this interpretation of the sword of decision that passes through Mary’s soul, it would be that Mary’s greatness stems from the way she made that decision to become a disciple by hearing God’s word and doing it. Her decision enabled God to make her “blessed among women” (1:42). A popular piety has suggested prayer to Mary on the grounds that surely Jesus listens to his mother. This stress on physical motherhood is a misunderstanding both of the Gospel and of her greatness. The physical fact of motherhood gave her no special status according to the values Jesus preached. If she is remembered as a mother in the Christian community, it is not only because her womb bore Jesus and her breasts nourished him (11:27); rather it is because she believed the Lord’s word in a way that gave her a preeminent membership in his true family of disciples (1:41; 8:21).
1 From the viewpoint of history, the two infancy narratives are quite irreconcilable at this point without an extraordinary use of imagination.
2 It is worth repeating that Vatican Council II (Dogmatic Constitution Dei Verbum on Divine Revelation, III, 11) states that the Scriptures teach without error the truth intended by God for the sake of our salvation. Exactitude about Jewish customs would scarcely come under this category of inerrancy.
3 Their presence, however, militates against the supposition that Luke got the birth story from Mary. Mary would have known the customs; Luke, a Gentile convert (and perhaps a proselyte to Judaism), would have only a book knowledge of them.
4 The Quirinius census provoked the rebellion of Judas the Galilean which was the beginning of the Zealot movement against Roman rule in Judea, as we saw in the previous chapter.
5 Even as Luke mentions “the Law” three times in the consecutive verses 22, 23, 24, so he mentions the Spirit three times in the consecutive verses 25, 26, 27. It is the same prophetic Spirit which moved Zechariah (1:67).
6 Luke 16:16; 24:27; Acts 13:15; 24:14; 26:22; 28:23.
7 There are good reasons for supposing two stages of composition, in the second of which Luke would have added the canticles and the story of Jesus at age twelve—all of which are quite detachable. I shall show in the next chapter how that story, which is of another literary genre (similar to the hidden-life stories we find in the apocrypha), is quite independent of what has gone before and implies that the parents had no previous indication of Jesus’ true identity (2:48-50). The original ending of the infancy narrative was 2:39-40; when Luke added the story of the boy Jesus, he had to repeat the information in that ending by supplying a second ending in 2:51-52—the idea of growth or progress at Nazareth was needed to serve as a transition to the ministry.
8 Eli, Zechariah, and Simeon were all old men; Eli and Zechariah were high priest and priest respectively; but the Protevangelium of James (8:3; 24:3-4) made a high priest of Zechariah and made Simeon his successor to make the parallelism perfect for second-century Christians.
9 The picture of these women in 1 Samuel 2:22 is not favorable, but in the Septuagint and in the Aramaic Targums of Exodus 38:8 (the only other reference to them) we are told that they fasted and prayed at the sanctuary. This may account for Luke’s description of Anna who in the Temple courts “day and night worshiped God, fasting and praying” (2:37).
10 Also 2:52. The fact that there are two growth statements in reference to Jesus (note 7 above) has an antecedent in the two Samuel growth statements.
11 A collection of Jewish Christian hymns may be posited as Luke’s source for the four canticles—a collection which may have had its distant origin in the early post-pentecostal Jerusalem community which (like Simeon and Anna) was remembered as “day by day attending the Temple” and “praising God” (Acts 2:46-47).
12 Notice the parallel expression for Anna’s audience: “Those waiting for the redemption of Jerusalem” (2:38).
13 The cento or pastiche technique of composition is a mark of the other three Lucan canticles and is characteristic of the hymnology of early Judaism, as visible in the Dead Sea Scrolls Hodayoth (hymns of praise).
14 Compare, for instance, John 20:2-10 (which has the Beloved Disciple accompany Peter to the tomb) and Luke 24:12 (where only Peter is mentioned).
15 Mark 3:31-35; Matthew 12:46-50; Luke 8:19-21.
16 Luke 12:51-53—it is interesting that in the Matthean form of that saying, which may represent better the “Q” original, Jesus says: “I have not come to bring peace but a sword” (Matt 10:34-36). Was this the origin of the sword imagery in Simeon’s oracle? Yet the Greek word for “sword” in Matthew 10:34 differs from the word in Luke 2:35.
17 In the Marcan context the scene is preceded by the notice that “his own” had set out to seize Jesus because they thought he was beside himself (3:21). Evidently Mark associated Mary and the brothers with “his own” and judged that they did not understand Jesus; indeed in 6:4 he describes Jesus as a prophet who is not honored “among his own relatives and in his own house.” Luke omits all these negative references to Mary. For further information, see R. E. Brown et al., Mary in the New Testament (New York: Paulist, 1978), 51–61, 164–70.