The passage from the Holy Apostles Convent translation, which we used this morning in our Liturgy, was "a sign of contradiction."

From the beginning of time, the challenge of humankind has been to receive the "good information." When I established a program at Bell Labs that reached out to (what I called) the "forgotten black colleges," the colleges no one had ever heard of, I had a very simple goal. I knew from my experience that the the line which separated people who were successful from people who were not successful turned out to be only a few words, some golden information, which directed people to see things this and not that way, the right way and not the wrong way. This is the advantage of having a good teacher, someone who really understands the subject, has the power to reveal the right way of thinking about things. But if you do not hear that "right way," how will you get there? How will you succeed?

This has been true throughout history — to hear those few, golden words that will change everything. For it turns out we had been walking in a fog, not really understanding, at the very least, wasting our time, and, at the worst, putting ourselves in danger, or headed down a path of interminable "un-success." For example, two words, "round world," changed the history of navigation and exploration forever. Two words, "New World," which could be reached by a short voyage off to the west, would change the course of empires dispossessing millions of people from Cape Horn to the Arctic Circle. Two words, "solar system," discovered by Copernicus and confirmed by Galileo through the study of tides, dismissed a whole universe, even theologies, going back to 6 B.C.

Only a word or two can change everything. This is often the way of truth: few words, profound consequences.

Two men, famously "men of few words," appeared among us revealing the greatest truths. The first one said nearly nothing. His appearance, his personal manner, the food he ate, the scent about him ..... revealed much: he was, impossibly, the Man from Eden. His natural garb, his gracious speech, his trenchant words, his diet of manna (enkris), his dwelling place of silences in harmony with a natural order, all pointed to his personal "counter-culture." He had set his face against the world by doing and saying nothing. There was nothing of the city, nothing of civilization, only life with God. He was fragrant of the morning of the earth, fresh, pristine, uncorrupted.

He spoke one word: Metanoiete! And what little else he said was to confirm this Divine message: "Turn around! Make a U-turn! You are going in the wrong direction!" And the people believed him. All the people of the Levant left off what they were doing to come near to him (Mk 1:5, Mt 3:5, Lu 1:67-80). They believed him, for who would know the right directions better than the Man from Eden?

Then it turned out, he was not the One. He was the Forerunner, the herald who preceded the One. And this One, as befits a dread sovereign, was mostly silent:

We might well ask, "How could such incommensurable greatness, the King of Heaven and Earth, be hid?" This was the master question posed by the Gospel of St. Mark. We have only a handful of words attributed to Him during the course of three decades. This morning we hear that He was favored of God, that He grew strong. But He says nothing. Then, He begins His royal progress of three years. His herald precedes him, uttering a single word. And then He inaugurates His ministry by repeating that self-same word: Metanoiete! (Mk 1:15). Jesus speaks.

The King's Forerunner was born in "the summer of life" at the Summer Solstice. The Great King, would be born at the end of life, in the dead of winter, at the Winter Solstice. The Forerunner would be announced by an angel, and later the Holy Spirit:

That is, he will oppose the enemies of God. He will speak against. He will contra-dict.

The Great King would be announced by hosts of angels then revealed by a prophet, Simeon, who says

Spoken against .... the word Simeon actually uttered was αντιλεγόμενον / antilegomenon:

meaning, "against speaking," literally,

This English translation "will be spoken against" has the sense of "He will become a byword." or "People will talk about him." But that is not what the passage means: it means, flat contradiction (as the Holy Apostles Convent translation renders it). The world will oppose the Advent of God. But to contradict God is to stand in the place of Divine Judgment and Final Contradiction.

What is more, God does not stand idly by watching His children head off a cliff. He contradicts. His word is blunt:

Or to use the military command,

☦

This is the big picture from the sweep of history. But let us go down to ground level now and enter the Temple. We see Simeon holding the Child Jesus. Beside him sits the prophetess Hannah, who looks on with electrified surmise. His Mother and stepfather have brought Jesus to Mt. Zion to honor an imperative taught by God:

Through the faithfulness of His earthly parents, Jesus will enter a covenant with God. His circumcision is not merely to mark Him as God's own; it is an everlasting pledge of holiness. He shall "be called holy."

We have devoted many reflections meditating on that luminous word, holiness. Today, let us say briefly that, there can be no holiness without integrity. You know the word integrity. It means that every part of you fits with every other part of you. There are no odd pieces. There are no extra parts left over after you have assembled the engine. There is one noble whole — think of the phrase "made whole" or the word wholesome.

The failure of integrity is .... fragmented, disjointed, incoherent, unwholesome. To be holy, every part of us must participate in God's holiness, which is our original state. Indeed, this goodness is the first state of all things that God created.

The unholy is expressed in "double lives," "unwholesome secrets," and "desecration," which is to defile of the sacred.

Now, we might be comforted sitting in the ballpark seeing the poster that reads,

remembering that God loves the world and that He sent His Son to save us. But we are mistaken to believe that nothing is required of us, that we are to be rescued, swept into Heaven as if on a cushion of Divine air. But that is not what salvation means in the New Testament. Salvation (soteria) means to "remove the debris from our our paths" .... "to clear out the clutter" .... picturing our path to the Kingdom of Heaven. And what is this clutter? It is our complacency, our self-indulgence, and moral compromises without end.

Today in the Temple, the Holy One appears before two holy prophets. They can see and feel, even breathe in His pure and sacred character. He is Holiness itself. And they know, by this same measure, His every glance, His every gesture, His every word will be a Sign of Contradiction.

It cannot be otherwise. The world is implacably opposed to God. Jesus has said, "'I have not come to judge the world!'" (Jn 12:47). Now is not the time for everyone to get in line before the Great Judgment Seat of Christ! No, it is the world that has judged God. The world is implacably opposed to God. God's glance, therefore, is irretrievably a contradiction.

He must by his Holy Nature be a Sign of Contradiction against the world and its ways — flatly, bluntly, without compromise .... as will His Forerunner. There will no room for winking or looking the other way. Holiness is one way and never two.

The two ways are ways of the Deuce, the Deceiver, the Father of Lies. We call this double-dealing, two-faced life, and double-crossed. We want both-and but we must remember the mind of Eve when she thought there might be more than the everything she already had.

It has been rightly said that the Scriptures are not the story of a faithful people, but of a faithful God. And in His faithfulness, God contradicts,

God says very little, That is the way with the Great Ones. We must pay attention, therefore, to His every syllable. One Divine tone can be the difference between arriving home safely or walking off a cliff in our fog, in our darkness, in our many intoxications.

And if God speaks (and He most assuredly does speak), and no one pays any heed, then what is that? It is a gaggle of men and women who say so many, many words and in the end will reveal how confused they are when all has been lost and they demand, "How could God (if there is a God) have let this happen?!" or "So if this is world God made, then I will have no part of it!"

How true! In the end, one phrase, which is right and just: no part of it or in it. And the eternal absence of God is also spoken trenchantly: it is one word.

The character of a great soul is silence. The revered prophet St. Simeon comprehends the little life in his arms with one word:

And our answer to this Child's master question,

will settle the matter of our own eternal destinations. For to meet with God is always already the place of judgment and the decisive crossroads of human history.

So let our words also be few. Let us be circumspect. Jesus would teach us to hold our peace:

This morning we go to meet Him in the Temple. He is inescapably the Sign of Contradiction, of perfect justice and perfect mercy. He is the Way and the Truth and the Life   (Jn 14:6). He is the Savior of the world. We do well to praise Him, to please Him, to come before Him bearing gifts. And perhaps no offering will gratify Him more than than a single syllable: "Yes .... my Lord and my God."

In the Name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit. Amen.