Though the whole world belonged to the Lord present everywhere, the Jerusalem Temple was the prime earthly dwelling of the Lord and place of divine-human encounter. Mary and Joseph are shown going to the Temple for the rituals around childbirth. In Israelite thinking, the firstborn belonged to the Lord, and Jesus must be “redeemed” by a gift acknowledging God’s role. His mother, Mary, must be present to be purified as the result of the birth. To approach God after birth, the mother had to be purified of all traces of sex and death, for death and its remedy, sexuality, were so foreign to God that no trace of either could be brought into God’s presence. (So the reason for the Purification was not that sexuality itself made one impure.)
Two other people were in the Temple that day, old Simeon and old Anna, waiting for the “the consolation of Israel” and “the redemption of Israel.” Already in the Presentation of Jesus, the design of God is taking hold. For the “consolation of Israel” and “your salvation” was what Isaiah proclaimed, “Console, console, my people, says your God. For the Lord consoles his people and shows mercy to his afflicted” (49:13).
Jesus will soon leave childhood behind and begin his public ministry with his baptism and temptation in the wilderness. His ministry will get fully underway in the synagogue at Nazareth where he makes his own the words of the Isaian servant: “The spirit of the Lord is upon me, because he has anointed me to preach good news to the poor.” Jesus will be rejected by his townspeople, and that rejection will be repeated elsewhere. Toward the end of his public life, Jesus will return to the Temple, there to engage in a final drama. He will die and be raised from the dead. That drama will change the location of God’s presence for Christians. Jesus will become the place of encounter between God and human beings. To him they will go to be instructed, to offer themselves, and to enjoy fellowship at his table. Though other places for meeting God are not replaced, the Presence of God now is in the person of Jesus.
In this scene, we see Isaiah’s promise and the opening reading from Malachi fulfilled. Note how the prophecies are fulfilled in Luke’s Gospel, not literally or mechanically, but in a strange, even ironic, way. Jesus comes to the Temple as an infant, not a triumphant king; he is carried by his mother, not riding a royal beast. Instead of vital cheering crowds, an old man and an old woman greet him. They know the Scriptures and how God works, and thus recognize this infant as son of God and bringer of peace. They are models for us today.
By Richard Clifford, S.J. former President of the Weston Jesuit School of Theology and Founding Dean of the Boston College Clough School of Theology and Ministry