St. Aidan’s Episcopal Church
Fourth Sunday after The Epiphany
The Presentation of Our Lord
Malachi 3:1-4
Psalm 84
Hebrews 2:14-18
Luke 2:22-40
Just as You Are
You have probably noticed an extra candle glowing on our Altar today. It’s a special candle, poured especially for today….the day known in the Church as Candlemas. We don’t hear too much about Candlemas, since it arrives on February 2nd, 40 days after Christmas. So it doesn’t always land on a Sunday and it often slips past us. Some Orthodox churches might hold a candlelit Mass of the Candles. The congregation brings all their old candles to burn during the service, and new candles are lit in celebration, bringing light into the world, just as Simeon suggests that the birth of Jesus brought light to enlighten the nations. There is also a more secular tradition which surrounds Candlemas, which I will share with you. Traditions has it that Candlemas marks the time when you really should take down your Christmas decorations! In fact, custom says that whatever decorations you don’t take down on January 5th, the Eve of Epiphany, you have to leave them up until Candlemas. That’s one reason that I love Candlemas!
Candlemas is one rite that is observed in the Church, just like many of our other rites we observe throughout the liturgical year.
However, whether or not it lands on a Sunday, Candlemas is an important metaphor for the Light of the World, the arrival of Our Lord, brought as a child to the temple in Jerusalem by his parents, Mary and Joseph.
Being faithful and law abiding, Mary and Joseph have come to the temple in Jerusalem so that Mary might be purified, as was the custom 40 days after childbirth. It was one of the rites o the Temple, just as we understand rites in the Church today, such as coming to church to celebrate Christ’s birth on Christmas Eve, or coming to pay our respects on Good Friday, or for some churches perhaps, Candlemas.
They came just as they were….a simple carpenter, his young wife and their baby. They made their way through the crowded streets with their infant child, and we can imagine the noise of the city, the bustling markets, the dust and voices laughing, arguing, the air filled with the scents of animals and incense surrounding them and filling their sense as they walked.
They came like any other law-abiding new parents would have come. It was time. They couldn’t afford the most expensive offering to offer the Temple for their special rites, but they brought what they could afford: a pair of birds.
Mary and Joseph had their own history around the conception and birth of Jesus and they knew Jesus was special, but they didn’t think of themselves as exempt from the norms of their day. They just came as they were, as was the custom, to present Jesus to the Temple authorities and to offer him to the Lord.
They weren’t sure what to expect, because Jesus was their first child and they had never presented an infant to the priests in the Temple before. So, they were probably taken aback when, one after the other, two complete strangers approached them. One was Simeon, who seemed kind and faithful, as if filled with the Holy Spirit, and Mary and Joseph trusted him to hold Jesus. Simeon knew at once that this was the one he had been waiting for, the Messiah at last….the one told to him by the Holy Spirit that he would see before his death, and he utters his famous words, “Lord, you now have set your servant free, to go in peace as you have promised….” But he warned Mary that one day a “sword of sorrow will pierce your soul.” Like every young mother, we wish there could be a way that she would never have had to hear these words….but yet, looking back at Jesus’ lifewe know, as did Simeon who prophesied into the future, that this would come to pass. Marywould know that pain.
Someone else came to the side of the young parents, so that she could take a very close look at the infant Jesus. She was a very old and deeply devout widow, named Anna and, like Simeon, she was filled with the Holy Spirit, and she, too, knew of God’s promise that God would come among God’s people. Anna probably led a quiet and contemplative life, praying constantly and rarely leaving the Temple Yet once she saw Jesus, she was filled with the Good News of God’s promise fulfilled and praised God for Jesus and she told everyone she saw about the arrival of the One come to redeem all God’s people.
Mary and Joseph were amazed at hearing all this and all Luke tells us about what happened after they after received Simeon’s blessing and prophesy of what was to come, and witnessed Anna’s joy and jubilation, is that they simply returned home to family life. And, as Luke tells it, Jesus grew and became strong, filled with wisdom; and the favor of God was upon him.
It’s an auspicious day to consider…the day Jesus came to be presented before the Lord. When the Light to enlighten the nations was recognized by those who had been waiting for the day when they would see the prophesy fulfilled. Simeon and Anna had probably seen scores of baby boys presented at the Temple, but this one was different, and they knew it.
Simeon and Anna saw a promise fulfilled……the light of hope, the light of redemption for God’s people. They had seen God.
We know that they were right and so the candles of Candlemas glow with that recognition….that the Light of the World came into being and was acknowledged.
And yet, for all this, we might have some mixed feelings about the day. Mary and Joseph heard some hard truths from Simeon, For all the wonder of Emmanuel, God with us, Simeon’s words must have echoed in their hearts and minds, “"This child is destined for the falling and the rising of many in Israel, and to be a sign that will be opposed so that the inner thoughts of many will be revealed.” His additional somber words to Mary must have been something they talked about, thought about and prayed about..
It must have been exhilarating and exciting and a bit confusing to experience the greetings from Simeon and Anna, as they recognized the Prophet Malachi’s promise has come to pass, “ The Lord whom you seek will suddenly come to his temple.”
But the words carry painful truths. Their child is destined for glory but is also destined for great suffering and pain. Mary sensed the truth of this, and did what any other mother would probably do, she did her best to stay strong and not let her fears get in the way of the need for Jesus to grow wise and strong himself. Mary knew her destiny, too, and there was no turning back.
As they made their way back through the streets of Jerusalem, one wonders about their conversation. They had experienced gladness and yet that great joy was inevitably intertwined with dread. As they made their way back through the streets with their little child, the city was far to busy to know of the burden the young parents now carried with them ….that blessing and that dread.
This scene, which happened two thousand years ago, could be a story of today.
Mary and Joseph heard truths that day, that they would rather not have heard. Sometimes we hear truths in our own lives, or about our lives, or about our family or our community, or our nation, we would rather not hear. Often, we’d rather not hear the truth at all, or just want to stick our heads in the sand up to our necks and hope that when we emerge, all will be well. The problem is, that the truth is the truth, and we carry our truths with us for the rest of our lives, whether we confess them or not. Sometimes, it is someone else who has to point them out for us.
The rush of the city is familiar to us, and we know how easily we can become focused on whatever it is in the moment that needs our attention. We spend most of our time moving from task to task, taking little notice of what is happening around us. We hardly look left or right in our lives in the day to day, rushing, as we do, to fulfill the world’s expectations of us. We get lost in our own story. And then, suddenly, something happens that jolts us back into a truth about ourselves. Maybe we have chosen to ignore it, or simply didn’t want to know about it at all. Perhaps the truth comes from a stranger, or perhaps a friend. Perhaps it is a kindly word, or it might be difficult to hear. But it is truth and serves to remind us that we are not called to live only in our own personal story, allowing it to unfold according to our self-absorption.
We are all part of a much larger story, that reaches far beyond ourselves alone…..a story that embraces a vast range of human emotions, situations, circumstances: love, hate, kindness and cruelty, and all sorts of dualities that contain joy or sorrow deep within them. The world will draw us into its story, no matter how much we try to avoid it. And sometimes, our souls will be pierced by the sword of circumstance beyond our control.
In a way, as faithful Christians, we must have the courage to follow Jesus into the Temple in order to discover our own truth. We each enter bearing our own gifts…each seeking God’s call to us. Who will the Holy Spirit use to deliver the message of our truth to us…who will be your Simeon and your Anna.
Mary and Joseph went to the Temple and to the synagogue to learn their truths and to learn how to deal with them. We go to church, to Bible study, to special lessons in order discover God’s truths revealed to us. We go out amid other groups, we take a stand on a particular issue that we feel called by God to address.
In all these we expose our truths, we become vulnerable and we risk our ideas and perspectives, knowing that, however noble they may be, they risk clashing severely with the ideas and perspectives of others, who must either be very wise or could be very frightening strangers. We live in a world of real time positioning, so we become even more vulnerable than humankind has ever been. In our era of social media, and the increasing isolation that it propels, it becomes harder and harder to discover our truths and more difficult to find a safe place in which to face them.
Regardless of where it is we go to find our truths, to family, to church, in the solitude of our own rooms, as we ponder and pray, listening to the still small voice within, we must go, we must enter in, or we will never encounter our Simeon or our Anna. The Simeon’s and the Anna’s will not know that we even exist and we will never see the truth of ourselves reflected in their eyes, unless we have the courage to be open enough to let our truth be revealed to us.
In the surface, this day seems like a simple, happy episode in the early life of Christ, and yet this Day of our Lord’s Presentation in the Temple is a complicated day, holding as it does, its blessings and burdens and its particular message. It is a day of counter-cultural dualities: joy and pain, elation and suffering, and, like the city streets of Jerusalem and in the streets of this city and the cities of the world, all hold opportunities filled with life, promise, beauty and danger, wonders and disturbance, attention and distraction, excitement and boredom, and in the midst of it all, the opportunity for us to keep the faith that God is present among it all.
We follow in the footsteps of Mary and Joseph, and jostle our way to the Temple. We must allow our hearts to be made vulnerable and yes, to be pierced by our truth, because that is the way to life.
Let us light the candles to celebrate Our Lord as we enter and let us recall the words to that wonderful hymn…“Just as I am….Yea all I need, in Thee to find, O Lamb of God, I come, I come.” Apt words for this day, because it’s a day of moving forward a little closer to God, just as we are, in all our simplicity and our complication. It’s a day of arrival, just as we are, a day that shifts everything just a little, so that we can sense a difference in who we are, and where we are going from this day forward. It is a day when we see and feel the Holy Spirit working in us, to bring us closer and closer to the truths in our lives.
As we enter the Temple of our life, just as we are, who will we find there? Who will find us? Maybe someone who is a stranger will capture our attention, come before us, and maybe our story will never be the same again.
End
Written to the Glory of God
E. J. R. Culver+
February 2, 2020