The Sword of the Lord

In the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit.
I owe my job to the vicar of St Mary’s. Not the present vicar, I should add, but to his predecessor but seventy. In 1326 Adam de Brome, who is buried just over there, persuaded the king to found a new college, just over there. And this year Oriel College is celebrating its 700th anniversary.

In turn, in a sense, the vicar of St Mary’s owes his job to Oriel. Until 1878 fellows of the college would take turns being vicar, and now the college helps the Church to appoint one. The special relationship that continues to exist between St Mary’s and Oriel is one that the College appreciates enormously. I am grateful for the vicar’s invitation to preach here this morning.

Adam de Brome gave his college the same dedication as his church. It is ‘The House of the Blessed Mary the Virgin in Oxford, commonly known as Oriel College’; and its feast day is today, Candlemas, because it’s the only Marian feast that always falls during the University Term: the Presentation of Christ in the Temple is also the Purification of the Virgin.

St Luke, in his Gospel, wants to direct our attention towards the infant Christ. Simeon takes him in his arms and praises God, ‘My eyes have seen your salvation.’ Anna too ‘began to praise God and to speak about the child’. His parents, we’re told, ‘were amazed at what was being said about him.’ The passage centres on Jesus, clearly, but I would like, as a fellow of Oriel, to say something about his mother.

When Simeon blesses the parents, he addresses a few words specifically to Mary. Literally he says: ‘Behold, this [child] is set for the fall and rise of many in Israel and for a sign that is spoken against. And a sword will pass through your own soul so that thoughts from many hearts will be revealed.’

These lines are more irregular than the familiar poetry of the Magnificat or Nunc Dimittis. Rather than praising God for what he has already done, they prophesy the future, not only the child’s future but his mother’s future too. Simeon predicts that a sword will pass through Mary’s own soul.

What a thing to say to a new mother! Simeon presumably hadn’t attended many baby showers, but then again, there is nothing saccharin about God’s salvation. Jesus, we know, will be ‘spoken against’; because of him some people will fall and some will rise. His salvation comes with judgment and, sadly, many will reject and oppose him.
On the face of it, Simeon might seem to be warning Mary about the suffering she will experience on account of her son. We imagine the Mater Dolorosa, whose sorrows included the flight into Egypt, losing her child on pilgrimage, witnessing him carrying the cross and, above all, his crucifixion and burial. The thirteenth-century hymn Stabat Mater interprets the sword this way:

At the Cross her station keeping,
Stood the mournful Mother weeping,
Close to Jesus to the last: /
Through her heart, his sorrow sharing,
All his bitter anguish bearing,
now at length the sword has pass’d.

The problem is that only in St John’s Gospel does Mary stand at the foot of the Cross. St Luke tells us that women were there ‘beating their breasts and wailing for him,’ but he does not say that Mary was one of them. It’s not likely that we need to draw on information Luke does not provide in order to understand how the sword prophecy is fulfilled. After all, Luke’s original readers might not have had access to other gospels. There is more going on here than maternal suffering.

The phrase ‘a sword shall pass through the midst of you’ appears in the Sibylline Oracles to describe the invasion of Egypt by Antiochus IV Epiphanes in the second century B.C. That suggests violence. But the phrase also appears in the prophet Ezekiel, where God says he will send a sword through the land. Why? To sort out the faithful from the faithless. God tells Ezekiel that some people have taken idols into their hearts, but he is going to ‘take hold of the hearts of the house of Israel.’ 

Ultimately the sword discerns, it exposes. Thus, in Luke, ‘thoughts from many hearts will be revealed.’ The word used here for ‘thoughts’ is dialogismoi, and for Luke those thoughts are always negative: ‘Who is this blasphemer who forgives sins? Can we accuse him of healing on the Sabbath? Which of us disciples is the greatest? Why do doubts arise in your hearts?’ The sword in question, God’s sword, is going to drive scepticism and hostility towards Jesus out into the open.

And here’s the surprise: that sword will pass through Mary’s soul. Do you see? Simeon is telling Mary that her own thoughts are going to be tested. Yes, she’s the handmaid of the Lord. Yes, she said, ‘be it unto me according to thy word.’ But her journey doesn’t end with a baby boy. Mary was amazed at what was being said about her son. She will see greater things yet. Will her amazement turn to faith or will it turn to doubt when the child grows up? What will she ultimately come to think about him?

Our picture of Mary may require adjustment. For Luke she is the model disciple, but that doesn’t mean she had it sorted from the start. It means that her heart was exposed and tested. She too would rise or fall depending on how she responds – and continues to respond – to Jesus. How else could she be the exemplar of discipleship, for your discipleship and for mine?

And the sword did indeed pass through Mary’s soul, and she was found faithful. Luke tells us, after the Ascension, that Mary the mother of Jesus devoted herself to prayer along with the other disciples – the prophecy fulfilled.
But not all of it. For Simeon says that ‘thoughts from many hearts will be revealed,’ not just Mary’s. Sooner or later God will force each and every one of us out into the open. It’s not clear whether Simeon is saying that Jesus or possibly Mary herself will be the means by which God does that. She is, after all, the model disciple. Whether we identify with her response to Jesus goes hand in hand with what we make of Jesus himself. Are we prepared to follow him like she followed him?

I wonder if that question cuts into you like it cuts into me? ‘The word of God is living and active and sharper than any two-edged sword, piercing until it divides soul from spirit, joints from marrow; it is able to judge the thoughts and intentions of the heart. And before [God] no creature is hidden, but all are naked and laid bare to the eyes of the one to whom we must render an account.’ 

We need only consider Ezekiel. There, it is the people who come to listen to God that God says he will test. It’s the people sitting in church, people like you and me.

‘You honour me with your lips, says the Lord,’ but tell me, where are your hearts?  What idols are taking you away from me this morning? What iniquities are causing you stumble? Is it your wealth or your work, a relationship perhaps, or your reputation? Are you too comfortable, too addicted, too busy? Maybe you fear the future? Are you anxious over the past? I want your heart, says God. Why are you estranged from me?

From each of us he demands an answer. What’s yours? When we get to the end of our lives, how will we explain the obsessions that kept us from being truly wholehearted disciples? For, surely, wholeheartedness is what we long for: ‘Create in me a pure heart, O God, and renew a right spirit within me!’ 

The Christ who was presented in the Temple is the same Christ who purified the Virgin. We burn candles, but he is like a refiner’s fire, to purify a people.

So let us, with Mary, anticipate what is coming to us. Maybe you can already feel his sword at work, pinpointing things in your heart: things that must be addressed; thing holding you back; things that have to go. And, however costly, whatever sorrows, whatever sacrifices there may be, in the end – in the end – ‘you shall know that it was not without cause that I did all that I have done, says the Lord God.’ 

In the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit.