Love's Refining Fire: Reflections on the Presentation of Jesus and the Border

The following is the homily I shared this morning:

The Presentation of Jesus (February 2, 2020)

Malachi 3:1-4; Hebrews 2:14-18; Luke 2:22-40

In today’s Gospel reading, we hear that when Mary and Joseph took Jesus to Jerusalem to present him at the Temple, Simeon, guided by the Holy Spirit, took the month-old Jesus from Mary and Joseph’s arms. Holding Jesus, he praised God and declared that he was holding in his hands salvation, “a light of revelation,” the Messiah. I wonder what it was like for Simeon to hold the embodiment of Love. Did he feel giddy? Maybe. He was an old man, who had been told by the Holy Spirit that he wouldn’t die until he saw the Messiah. When he met Jesus, he proclaimed that now he could die in peace. There is no mention whether Simeon told anyone about his encounter.

We also hear about Anna, an 84-year-old prophet, who had spent most of her life worshipping, fasting, and praying in the Temple. She also recognized Love present in this tiny babe. Unlike Simeon, Anna didn’t simply rest in the joy of her witness, but instead spread the news to any who would listen. Anna is one of many women who spread the good news of Jesus.

I want to be like both Simeon and Anna. Like Simeon, I hope I recognize when I am in the presence of the Divine. I actually think this happens in every moment, but I often don’t notice. And like Anna, I hope that when I do recognize the presence of the Divine, I share the experience, spreading joy, hope, and love.

As I’ve read and re-read these stories, my mind keeps wandering to the U.S.-Mexico border. I remember the families seeking asylum that I met while doing human rights accompaniment in September on the Mexico side; they were waiting to present themselves to U.S. Customs and Border Protection. They had made many sacrifices, leaving their homes and journeying from Cuba, Venezuela, Honduras, or other parts of Mexico. Everyone I met was hopeful that officers would recognize their circumstances and allow them into the U.S., perhaps giving them a chance for purification, like Mary and Joseph sought at the Temple, and a place where they could find new life.

In order to protect migrants, human right accompaniers didn’t take pictures of their faces.

I think in particular of a little girl named Zoad- a round-faced, thin little Black girl, about 4 years old, with burn scars on her shoulder and neck. Zoad radiated light, much like I imagine the infant Jesus did in the Temple. I met Zoad on a Saturday morning, when she confidently and trustingly approached me and asked my name. The morning I met this open-hearted child, I also met her mother, who had been beaten the night before by the man they’d been travelling with. Over the next few days, I watched as Zoad’s big eyes turned with concern toward her sometimes crying, one-black-eyed, bandaged-eyebrow mother. Whether Zoad was watching her mother, talking to me, gently encouraging other children to play, or coaching them through puzzle-working, Zoad glowed. This bright and resilient child shone so brightly, despite what she witnessed happen to her mother, despite whatever she experienced before and during the journey from Honduras. She was, for me, “a light of revelation.”

In the Gospel Simeon recognized Jesus’ light and also stated that he would be “the downfall and rise of many.” Pondering how pure Love can lead to someone’s downfall, I am reminded of people who don’t see radiance, resilience, and love when they look at migrant children like Zoad, but rather feel fear and perceive threat, just as some feared and felt threatened by Jesus. In closing themselves off, they deny themselves the possibility of the refining, purifying fire of Love that Malachi describes. When people voice their anger, their masked fear, we see the “secret thoughts of many laid bare.” Their rejection leads not only to personal, but collective downfall.

At the same time there are people like Anna, who see Zoad’s and other migrants’ light and share it by telling their stories. They enter the fire of refining Love, “enabl[ing] them[selves] to make offerings to God in righteousness.” Purified by Love, they meet buses coming from McAllen, TX, make bags of food to ease the journey for migrants, organize legal clinics, collect diapers, rice and beans, offer hospitality and a safe place of respite, make calls to state and federal officials, risk arrest and go to jail because, even in jail, they are free to live in Love. Their love raises us.

Then my thoughts return to those whose fear enslaves them to the point of rejecting Jesus, in the being of Zoad and so many other Black and Brown bodies. I am deeply disturbed by the destructive actions that are carried out as a result of cold fear. As I am able, I speak out and take action to reduce harm while also working to change the systems that promote and support fear-based destruction. At the same time, I will not condemn people acting from their fear. In all truth, sometimes I’m one of them, though my fear may manifest in different ways.

I am learning that my condemnation of people is not helpful. I strive to remember that within them, even if not apparent to me, is the same divine light as the one I saw in Zoad, the one Simeon recognized in an infant child in the Temple. My condemnation does not heal, but only further alienates and harms; it takes us farther from the refining fire of Love, not closer.

When I find myself angry at what I see, I return to questions one of my Nonviolent Communication teachers offered: How much pain would I have to be in to cause that level of harm to others? How alienated would I have to be from my own divine nature and that of others, to act in such a destructive way? Answering these questions doesn’t change my acts of protest, but it does change my center of gravity when I do them, moving from head to heart to the core of my being. Those questions are Love’s refining fire that burns away my anger to uncover the grief that moves me to compassion: more vulnerable, more connecting, slower to move than the fuel of my anger. Slower and more deliberate.

This purifying might allow me to approach the revealed “secret thoughts”- my own and those of others- with greater care, so that I can attempt to call in rather than call out. This purifying might help me to follow Jesus instead of succumbing to anger that tempts me to act from a place that is less than Love. I use the word “might” deliberately. I say these things with the full knowledge that I forget them as easily as I say them now…when I am hurt or tired or angry or hungry or hangry. And I want to do better. I want to practice holding Love so close, as Simeon did Jesus, so often, that it becomes second nature, my default, so that while I’m alive I can proclaim the good news through my words and actions like Anna and, when it is my time, like Simeon, I will be able to die in peace.