Come Out

Luke 2:22-40

December 28, 2014

This passage from Luke, and the one that comes immediately after it, are often taken together and called the “coming of age” story. It functions that way if for no other reason than these are the only canonical stories about Jesus’ life between the infancy narratives in Luke and Matthew and the bulk of the gospel stories of Jesus’ ministry. This is all we have, then, of “Jesus: the lost years.”

The young child, Jesus, is brought to Jerusalem as a babe in arms for a rite that establishes the religious cred of his parents. Mary and Joseph are faithful and pious, and presenting Jesus at the temple underscores this point – whether or not it actually happened. This, like so much in these stories from early in Jesus’ life, gives us truth whether or not it gives us history.

Thus it is with Simeon – the righteous and devout man who proclaims Jesus as messiah without any evidence beyond a young child in his arms. Likewise, the prophet Anna, who similarly praises God on account of this child.

These stories pronounce the significance of Jesus – nations will rise and fall on his account. The only narrative we have to establish this prior to Jesus’ adult ministry comes next in Luke. It’s the famous story of the 12-year-old running away from his parents in order to wow the religious authorities with the depth of his understanding of the stories of his people.

Through these two brief stories in the second chapter of Luke – the same chapter that opens with “In those days a decree went out from Emperor Augustus …” – we get all that we’re going to of Jesus coming of age.

These brief tales also combine to give us the story of Jesus’ coming out, as it were. His identify is established – by others and by his own actions – and the titles begin to swirl around him: messiah, redeemer, savior.

Coming out stories are always significant, and they always operate on multiple levels. They certainly have personal significance as we establish our identities. They clearly have family significance, as well, for all kinds of more or less obvious reasons. They also have social significance, as we establish our identities for the broader network of friends and relationships in our communities.

The late Harvey Milk, for example, constantly encouraged his gay and lesbian friends to come out in public. He noted always the political significance, reminding people of the consequences in elections: “if they know they know one of us they vote with us,” he regularly said.

It matters how others view us. Our public identities influence so much around us, often without us understanding it much at all. From time to time, for example, I’ll be out and about while wearing clerical garb. It rarely fails to amaze me the responses I get, especially when I get off my motorcycle wearing the collar.

Not a single thing is different about me. I am the same smart-ass with our without this collar. I know, at a deep, deep level, that, as my homiletics professor was fond of reminding us, “reverend is a noun naming a position not an adjective describing the person who holds it.”

Yet, when I am “out” in public, as it were, it influences social circles and shapes social relationships – not always in pleasant or comfortable ways, to be sure.

The point is, though, to be “out.” To claim the essential parts of one’s identity, and to live lives of integrity, of wholeness, such that your various “comings out” seldom shock and rarely even surprise those who know you well.

In other words, I hope that no one who knows me well is surprised to find out that I am a follower of Jesus. I hope my life reflects my faith. I hope that is true in the big and public parts of my life, as well as in the private moments.

To be sure, I know this is a vain hope. I know it is not always true. I also know that the deepest part of my faith is that which rests on the assurance that God so loved the world, that God bent low to become one with us not in the life of a powerful, beautiful, successful, meritorious one, but rather in the life of a baby, born in a stable, to an unwed mother in a backwater town.

Such a God makes room in the divine heart for such a one as me. Thus I’ll come out as a follower of the one whose life, death, and resurrection point me in the direction of the divine in this world.

Further than that, I’ll quote Harvey Milk again, and say simply, “come out, come out, wherever you are!”

Try it. For New Years. Come out as a follower of Jesus, and invite others to join us here as seekers of God’s amazing, inclusive grace and love. As Simeon understood, so much is riding on such acts as these. Amen.