This Child is set for the fall,
and for the resurrection of many in Israel.
—St. Luke ii. 34.
These words of to-day's Gospel, my dear brethren, have, perhaps, a strange sound to us at this joyful Christmas season. It seems strange that holy Simeon should have said that the blessed Infant whom he held in his arms, and who had come to save the world, should have been set for the fall of many of even his own chosen people.
And yet we know that his coming was actually the occasion of the fall not merely of many but of far the greater part of that chosen people of Israel. However strange Simeon's prophecy may seem, we see that it was a true one. Up to that time the Jewish people were God's true church on earth; now almost all of them are wanderers outside of it, rejecting the true Messias whom their fathers crucified, and either vainly looking for one who will never come or ceasing in despair to look for any Messias at all. Instead of Christ's coming having been the means of salvation for them, it has really been the occasion of their fall from the grace which they had before.
But though we know that it has been so, it may still seem strange that it should have been so. One would think that the Saviour, who is our joy, our pride, and our glory, would have been theirs too, and even more theirs than ours, having been born of their own nation, a Jew of the royal line of David. But if we consider the matter a little we shall see that it was natural enough that it should turn out as it did; and we shall see, moreover, that there is a good deal of danger that, as they fell from grace when Christ was presented to them, so we may do the same.
For we shall, if we think, find out the reason why they fell, which is the reason why we may fall too. They were looking for a Saviour, indeed, but not for such a Saviour as actually came. They were looking for one who would redeem them from their subjection to the Roman Empire; who would make their nation what it had been in the days gone by; who would make them an independent and powerful people; who would give them the greatness and glory of this world. So when he did not fulfil their expectation, when he came not with earthly splendor but in poverty and suffering, they were scandalized. It was only his miracles which made them hesitate; and when he would work miracles no longer, when he would not save himself from the cruel and ignominious death of the cross, they rejected him with the horrible imprecation, "His Blood be upon us and upon our children."
Yes, my brethren, the cross was their scandal, and the cross is likely to be our scandal, too, for we have the same fallen human nature as they. "We preach Christ crucified," says St. Paul, "unto the Jews indeed a stumbling-block, and unto the Gentiles foolishness"; and it is a good deal the same with us Christians now.
We feel glad, indeed, when Christmas comes; but I am afraid that if we had been living at the time of the first Christmas we should not have been much more likely to rejoice at the birth of our Lord than his own people were at that time. Christmas now is very pleasant, with its festivity, its amusements, its giving and receiving of presents; but there is not much of the cross in this. The original Christmas, with its cold, its poverty, and its humiliation, was quite a different thing.
It is right for us to rejoice at Christmas; but perhaps we should not rejoice if we remembered that our Lord came to bring into the world the cross not only for himself but also for us too. That is the scandal for us now. We can see what the Jews could not, that it was right that he should suffer; but we cannot see that it is right that we should suffer too—that what holy Simeon said to his Blessed Mother is true for each one of us: "Thy own soul a sword shall pierce." So in this way, even now, "this Divine Child," with his cross in his hand for a Christmas present to us, "is set for the fall of many in Israel." We are too apt to shrink away when he urges us to accept it for his sake.