“This child is destined to cause the falling and rising of many in Israel, and to be a sign that will be spoken against, so that the thoughts of many hearts will be revealed.”
- from Luke 2:34-35
 
On the tail end of the Christmas season and as we start to look forward to 2018, today’s passage is a helpful and challenging reminder that Jesus’ coming creates change: falling and rising, debate, and revelation. What does all this mean?
 
In the presence of Jesus the ordinary power structures of the world get flipped on their head. Mary celebrated this in the Magnificat in Luke 1 (her epic song of rejoicing when she found out she would be the mother of our Savior) and Simeon reaffirms it in today’s passage. The humble and meek receive opportunities ordinarily closed to them. The proud and loud, the movers and the shakers, those who are always in charge of everything find their place taken from them. Our coping mechanisms and strategies for managing the world have to adapt to the presence of God with us in a new way.
 
This disruption of power is never comfortable. As Paolo Freire mapped out in his Pedagogy of the Oppressed both the powerful and the disempowered have learned over time to live with the status quo and will resist change instinctively, even if the change brings both parties greater freedom and dignity. The religious authorities who longed for Israel’s freedom would become some of Jesus’ fiercest opponents. The crowds would betray him. Even his own disciples would abandon him.
 
But, in the end, we see God clearly on display. We see God’s compassion and mercy, his grace and love, his justice and his righteousness. We see all of this with blinding clarity when we look at Jesus. He reveals God to us and, as a result, reveals ourselves to us; for it isn’t until our eyes have seen God as he really is that we can see ourselves for who we really are.
 
Our prayer for 2018 is that we would experience the presence of Jesus and the healthy and positive disruption that he brings, change for the better to bring about the good. Would you pray that Jesus would open your heart to experience the change he wants to bring into your life in this next year?