The Salutation [Christmas 1; St. Luke 2:33-40]

LISTEN TO THE AUDIO HERE.

Merry 5^th day of Christmass in which we ponder our Lord’s words from His Gospel, saying:

“Behold, this child is appointed for the fall and rising of many in Israel, and for a sign that is opposed (and a sword will pierce through your own soul also), so that thoughts from many hearts may be revealed.”

What we hear from St. Simeon, today, is that the physical affects the spiritual word, for he tells us that and sign and a sword will pierce St. Mary’s very being all in order that thoughts and hearts be revealed. The physical reveals the spiritual. What you do with your body affects your soul. What your soul is like, is acted out by your body.

In one of my favorite Bible passages, Isaiah in chapter 1 speaks God’s Word on this very same idea when He says, “Come now, let us reason together, says the Lord”(v.18). This is a revolutionary way to do religion. That God would not just talk with His creatures, but negotiate and dialog with them is heretofore unheard of.

In every other religion, the gods tell you what to do and for obvious reasons. They are gods so they should know better, so who better to go to for advice? Men are puny, what about their lives would interest a god? So we are told to consult the oracle or go to the temple and wait for an answer or, when the gods do speak, they simply say, “You need to figure it out on your own” effectively making their existence useless!

The one, true God does tell us what to do and also does so for the obvious reason of Him knowing better than us. But God takes the next step that no god in his right mind would dare, that of allowing human opinion in His operations. Prayer changes things, yes, but this is a bit deeper than prayer.

Our Divine Service gives us this example and teaching. In the Salutation, “The Lord be with you and with your spirit”, we have the pastor who is God’s man and the congregation of God dialoging. The Salutation is there to bring Scripture to life. In it the pastor and the congregation confess that they do this Service together.

The Salutation marks this new action of the Divine Service—the sacramental action, where God meets us in His life-giving Word. It is not addressed to God but to the people and is a reciprocal prayer of the pastor for the people and of the congregation for its pastor before they together offer their prayers to God. It serves as a constant reminder of the pastoral relationship. For this reason, this phrase and its response has sometimes been called “the little ordination.”

“The Lord be with you” is a familiar greeting in both the Old and New Testaments. For example, when Boaz came from Bethlehem he said to the harvesters, “The Lord be with you,” and they answered, “The Lord bless you” (Ruth 2:4). The angel of the Lord appeared to Gideon and said, “The Lord is with you” (Judges 6:12). When the angel Gabriel appeared to the virgin Mary, he said, “The Lord is with you” (Luke 1:28). St. Paul used the phrase in his benedictions, “The Lord be with you all” (2 Thess 3:16) and, “May the Lord be with your spirit” (2 Tim 4:22).

The congregation’s response, “And with your spirit,” is a request that the Holy Spirit be with the pastor as he proclaims the Word as the mouthpiece of Christ. And so, particularly before sacramental acts such as the reading of the Word or the administration of Holy Communion, we have the Salutation and response. The phrase finally became embedded in the early Christian liturgies as a significant responsive introduction to sacramental parts of the Divine Service.

All of this because God is speaking to us, conversing with us, dialoging with us, and changing things with us. The dialog of men alone is unbelief and violence. When Jesus tries to reveal the Bread of Heaven in the feeding of the 5000, the disciples thought Jesus was angry for them for not having bread themselves (Mt. 16:7).

When Jesus asked if baptism was from men or heaven, the chief priests dialoged among themselves and could not answer at all, because they believed none of it (Mt. 21:25). The Pharisees dialoged with themselves and determined that only God could forgive sins, even though God was standing right in front of them (Lk. 5:21) and thought that if they just kill the Son, the inheritance would be theirs (Lk. 20:14) and that its better that one man die rather than a whole nation perish (Jn. 11:50).

In Christ, God sends the dialog; the spiritual sends the physical. Moses was sent to Pharaoh, in God’s stead, to dialog, Ex. 6:27, because the dialog of God does not lead to confusion or more questions. It leads to reconciliation. Jesus says in Mt. 5:24 “So if you are offering your gift at the altar and there remember that your brother has something against you, leave your gift there before the altar and go. First [dialog with] your brother, and then come and offer your gift.”

This is the conversation that God wants to have with His creatures: that you are included, that you are not forgotten, that you have a place in the plan. Reconciliation and salvation are God’s plan and what He wants to reason together with us about. In other words, He wants to talk about His Son’s work.

In Isa. 63 He says, “Who is this who comes from Edom, in crimsoned garments from Bozrah, he who is splendid in his apparel, marching in the greatness of his strength? “It is I, [dialoging] in righteousness, mighty to save” (v.1).

His son’s work of dialog that leads to salvation is the Divine Service in a nutshell. In Christ, God has been made man so that now man’s words are God’s words. Now, a greeting from a man is a greeting from God. A salutation of “The Lord be with you” is now God speaking to us and we can’t help but respond, “And with Thy Spirit”.

Because of the Incarnation, we can’t even just say a simple “hello” to each other anymore. The plain greeting just seems so insignificant when placed next to the knowledge of God’s Plan of sacramental Salvation. So, we wish each other the highest blessing that has been given to us, that the Lord would be with all of us, even in such a seemingly mundane setting as another Sunday at Church.

Yet, whenever this greeting is given, we know that the mundane is promoted to the holy. When the pastor wishes upon us the Lord’s Presence, we respond in kind, answering him that we are listening and prying for him saying, “And with your Spirit”.

St. Mary must now resign herself to the fact that her spiritual religion just became completely physical in her Son and accept that a sword will pierce her own soul. This must be, because spear and nail and thorn will pierce her Son in order to redeem her and all her race from sin and death, so that the holy conversation between God and men can commence in His righteousness.