Metonymy (Luke 2:22 - 40)

     Mary’s life hadn’t been ... right ... since the night the angel had appeared—out of the starry blue—and scared her half to death, telling her that in spite of her virginity, she was going to bear a child. And if that wasn’t weird enough, her child would be the long-promised heir to the house of David, with all that entailed. Finally, the angel told her what to name this promised child, she was to call him Jesus, and in her native Aramaic, she knew what that meant.

     And in the ensuing months, just when she’d decided that her dream had been just that—a dream, perhaps caused by something she’d eaten, more gravy than the babe—something else strange, if not downright spooky, would happen. First of all, despite her expectations, Joseph had married her anyway, instead of dismissing her as had been his right; it seemed he’d had a nocturnal visit himself. Second, there was all that stuff at Elizabeth’s house, when her child had leapt in the womb in joy and celebration just at the nearness of her own. Finally, at the birth itself, a whole bunch of shepherds, of all people, had shown up at the manger-side claiming they were sent there by their own batch angels.

     And now, on Joseph’s and her obligatory, post-partum trip to Jerusalem, two—count ‘em two—old ones had started up out of their prophetic dreams to recognize her infant. She’d heard about them before: both of them were well-respected devotees of Judaism, well known around the Temple grounds. Simeon was a dreamer of dreams, a man upon whom the Holy Spirit had come to rest, and Anna ... well, what could you say about Anna? She was older than the hills, older than anyone around there could even remember, she’d outlived her husband by decades, and spent all her days around the Temple, praying, worshiping God and getting in the way of the Temple functionaries.

     They were archetypes of the Jewish mystical experience: a pious old man, to whom the Spirit had appeared, and a prophetic old woman in the tradition of the Delphi Oracle and all the female seers who had come before. Although both spent a lot of time at the Temple, they rarely saw one another: Simeon was always in the men’s courtyard while Anna was restricted to the women’s. And both of them, as was the way with such folk, were slightly mad.

     These were the people who confronted the young couple as they came to the Temple to present their child, as required by the Law. And as Simeon approached, for a moment Mary saw the Angel Gabriel, towering over her, just for a moment, and then it was just the old man again, rheumy eyes alight with a fanatic glow, a faintly musty odor preceding his approach. What she didn’t know was that Simeon had been told by the Spirit in a dream that he‘d see the Messiah before he died, and that’s what he sang about: “now you’re dismissing your servant according to your word. My eyes have seen your salvation, prepared in the presence of all your people, a light to reveal to the Gentiles and for glory to your people Israel.”

     And she was astonished at this outburst, and a little embarrassed—there were people around, after all—but mot of all she was awed: wasn’t this just what the others had said? And now he pinned her with his eyes, and spoke directly to her, saying that her little boy would be the cause of the rise and fall of many in the land of Israel, and of many a revealed heart, and of a sword through her own very soul. And she shivered at that last—well, who wouldn’t have?—and it was as if a goose had trampled all over her grave.

     After that, Anna was petty anticlimactic, to tell you the truth, she came and praised God, throwing up her bony old arms and reaching for the sky, and she began to tell their story to anyone who’d stand still enough to listen. But Mary’s mind lingered on the old man—she didn’t see him, where had he gone? She wanted to question him, to ask him what he had meant when he’d said he’d seen the salvation of the Lord? Had he meant Jesus? He looked like just a little baby to her ... and what kind of salvation had he meant? Physical salvation, salvation from the oppressive Roman rule? Or something more subtle, something more internal, more esoteric? Throughout her stay in Jerusalem, through the presentation of her son to the powers that be and their hard trip back to Nazareth, she turned these things over and over in her mind. If you were of a poetic bent, you might even say that she pondered them in her heart.

     What did Simeon mean when he said that his eyes had seen the salvation that God had sent? Did he mean mystically, as in a waking dream, metaphorically, as if this bringing of the Christ-child to the Temple, into the heart of the Jewish religion, symbolized bringing salvation to Gods people? Or did he mean, very particularly, the physical child Jesus of Nazareth? Likely, a little of all of the above.

     There’s a figure of speech that is beloved of college English teachers everywhere called metonymy. According to Wikipedia, which has as good a definition as any, it’s “a figure of speech in which a thing or concept is referred to by the name of something closely associated with that thing or concept.” For example, crown—a thing a monarch wears—is often used to speak of the monarch her-or-himself, as in the crown did this, or the crown decided that. Giving somebody a hand refers to helping someone, not literally giving somebody your hand, which is really bloody and besides: it’s illegal in many jurisdictions.

     And that’s what’s going on here: salvation is a metonym for the Christ child. Through some spirit-given, mystical intuition, Simeon realizes that salvation is what the babe represents, at least to him . . . Of course, he’s not the only one who uses metonymy to refer to Christ ... in Galatians, Paul writes to Christ as faith: “now that faith has come,” he writes, meaning Christ, “we are no longer subject to a disciplinarian,” and in his first letter to the Corinthians, he calls Christ “the power and wisdom of God.”

     The thing is, metonyms are often overloaded: the word crown can refer to the queen herself, or to the royal apparatus, or the office of the monarch as a whole. Giving somebody a hand can mean helping her or applauding her performance. And I think Christ is the ultimate overloaded metonym, the ultimate closely-packed symbol. If he’d thought of it, Simeon might well have sung about that too: my eyes have seen your faith, which you have prepared for all the people ... my eyes have seen your justice, which you have prepared for all the people ... my eyes have seen your love, which you have prepared for all the people.

     You see, that’s the thing about the incarnation, which we celebrate at this time of year. We often think of it simply as Jesus being God made flesh, who dwelt among us, of God walking, for a little while, in human form, but along with that, along with incarnating—somehow—the divine person, he incarnated God’s qualities as well. He was the embodiment, the in-matter-ment, the enfleshment of God’s grace, God’s peace, God’s compassion, God’s hope.

     So as we stand and sing Simeon’s song, in these days of miracles and wonderment, of violence and virtue , of uncertainty and division, let’s remember our own overloaded symbolism ... what God has incarnated in God’s son, but equally important, what God has incarnated in us.. Amen.