Last Wednesday was when the Church traditionally celebrates the
Presentation of Christ in the Temple, which is the story we heard in
our Gospel reading today. Many churches actually celebrated this last Sunday, but I only discovered that too late, too late....
Until recently, Christian women
in many denominations would be “churched” about six weeks after
giving birth –
either at a special service, or as a special
prayer said in the main service, to give thanks for a safe delivery
and so on.
It seems to have died out now, largely, I think,
because the service was not transferred to the modern prayer books,
and arguably because childbirth is so very much safer than it
used to be.
Shame, really –
it would be a lovely thing to
happen whenever someone appeared in church with a new baby!
Imagine
bringing your newborn baby to the front to be introduced to the
church, and a prayer said over you – perhaps over both parents, if
both are to be involved in the child’s upbringing – in
thanksgiving for a safe delivery.
I think it would be lovely,
and it would in no way detract from the importance of the child’s
baptism a few weeks or months later.
For Jewish women,
though, the ritual was also about purification.
They would,
traditionally, go to be purified forty days after giving birth.
I
am not totally sure what the process involved,
but fairly
certainly Mary would have had a ritual bath before going to the
Temple to make her thanksgiving,
and to present the baby.
The
text says Mary and Joseph took a pair of pigeons to sacrifice
–
interesting note that, because that's what you took if you
were poor;
richer people sacrificed a sheep.
And if you
were really, really poor and couldn't even afford a pair of pigeons,
I believe you were allowed to take some flour.
But for Mary and
Joseph, it was a pair of pigeons.
And they present the
baby –
they would, I think, have done this for any child,
not
just because Jesus was special.
And then it all gets a bit
surreal, with the old man and the old woman coming up and making
prophecies over the child, and so on.
Actually, the whole
story is a bit surreal, really.
After all, St Matthew tells us
that the Holy Family fled Bethlehem and went to Egypt to avoid
Herod's minions,
but according to Luke, they're just going home
to Nazareth –
a little delayed, after the census, to allow
Mary and the baby time to become strong enough to travel,
but
six weeks old is six weeks old,
and it makes the perfect time
for a visit to the Temple.
The accounts are definitely
contradictory just here,
but I don't think that really matters
too much –
after all, truth isn't necessarily a matter of
historical accuracy.
Come to that, I don't suppose Simeon
really burst into song,
any more than Mary or Zechariah.
Luke
has put words into their mouths,
rather like Shakespeare does
to the kings and queens of British history.
Henry the Fifth is
unlikely to have said “This day is called the Feast of Crispian”
and so on,
or “Once more unto the breach, dear friends, once
more”,
but he probably rallied the troops with a sentiment of
some kind,
and it is the same here.
Zechariah, Mary and
Simeon probably didn't say those actual words that Luke gives them,
but they probably did express that sort of sentiment.
Although
I often wonder why it is that when Jesus reappears as a young man,
nobody recognises him.
We don't hear of an elderly shepherd
hobbling up to him and saying “Ah, I remember how the angels sang
when you were born!”
But perhaps it is as well –
it
means he had a loving, private, sensible childhood.
Which, I
think, is partly why we see so very little of him as a child,
just
that glimpse of him as a rather precocious adolescent in the
Temple.
He needed to grow up in peace and security and love,
without the dreadfulness of who he was and why he had come hanging
over him.
But on this very first visit to the Temple,
he
can't do more than smile and maybe vocalise a bit.
It is Simeon
we are really more concerned with.
His song, which the Church
calls the Nunc Dimittis,
after the first two words of it in
Latin, is really the centre of today's reading.
He is saying
that now, at last, he has seen God's salvation, and is happy to
die.
The baby will be “a light to lighten the Gentiles, and
the glory of God's people Israel.”
“A light to lighten
the Gentiles”.
This is why another name for this festival is
Candlemas.
Candlemas.
In some churches, candles are blessed
for use throughout the year,
but as we are no longer dependent
on candles as a light source, it might be more to the point to bless
our stock of light bulbs!
Because what it's about is Jesus as
the Light of the World.
A light to lighten the Gentiles,
certainly,
but look how John's Gospel picks up and runs with
that.
“The Word was the source of life,and this life brought
light to people.
The light shines in the darkness, and the
darkness has never put it out.”
And John's Gospel reports
Jesus as having said:
“I am the light of the world.
Whoever
follows me will have the light of life and will never walk in
darkness.”
Jesus is the Light of the World,
and
that's part of what we are celebrating today.
We rather take
light for granted, here in the West, don't we?
We are so used to
being able to flick on a switch and it's light
that we forget
how dark it can be.
On the rare occasions we have a power-cut,
it feels really, really dark.
Even though we have an good
emergency lantern and, of course, torches on our phones.
And
candles, come to that –
I make sure we have a supply of
emergency candles, just in case.
Not that a candle
provides very much light, of course –
you can't see to read by
it very well, or sew,
or any of the things people did before
television and social media,
or, come to that, before houses
were lit by electricity.
But even a candle can dispel the
darkness.
Even the faintest, most flickering light means it
isn't completely dark –
you can see, even if only a
little.
And sometimes for us the Light of the World is like that
–
a candle in the distance, a faint, flickering light that we
hardly dare believe isn't our eyes just wanting to see.
But
sometimes, of course, wonderfully, as I'm sure you've experienced,
it's like flicking on a light switch to illuminate the whole
room.
Sometimes God's presence is overwhelmingly bright and
light.
And other times not.
This time of year
is half way between the winter solstice and the spring equinox.
It's
not spring yet, but the days are noticeably longer than they were at
the start of the year.
There are daffodils and early rhubarb in
the shops,
and the bulbs are beginning to pierce through the
ground.
The first snowdrops will be out any day now.
In the
country, the hazel trees are showing their catkins,
and if you
look closely at the trees,
you can see where the leaves are
going to be in just a few weeks.
We hope.
Candlemas
is one of those days we say predict the weather –
like St
Swithun's Day in July, when if it rains, it's going to go on raining
for the next six weeks.
Only at Candlemas it's the opposite –
if
it's a lovely day, then winter isn't over yet,
but if it's
horrible, Spring is definitely on the way.
The Americans call it
“Groundhog Day”, same principle –
if the groundhog sees
his shadow, meaning if the sun is out, winter hasn't finished by any
manner of means,
but if he can't, if the sun isn't shining,
then maybe it is.
So it's a funny time of year, still
winter, but with a promise of spring.
And isn't that a good
picture of our Christian lives?
We still see the atrocities, the
horror of terrorist attacks,
the pandemic that doesn’t go
away,
the government that breaks its own rules
the worry
about the tension between Russia and Ukraine.
We still see that
we, too, can be pretty awful when we set our minds to it, simply
because we are human.
We know that there are places inside us
we'd really rather not look at.
We know, too, that when God’s
light shines into those dark places, we have to look at them, like it
or not!
And yet that light cleans and heals and forgives, as
well as exposes.
It is definitely winter, and yet, and yet,
there is the promise of spring.
There is still light.
It
might be only the flickering light of a candle in another room, or it
might be the full-on fluorescent light of an overwhelming experience
of God's presence, but there is still light.
The infant
Jesus was brought to the Temple, and was proclaimed the Light to
Lighten the Gentiles.
But, of course, that's not all –
we
too have that light inside us;
you remember Jesus reminded us
not to keep it under a basket, but to allow it to be seen.
And
again, the strength and quality of our light will vary, due to time
and circumstances, and possibly even whether we slept well last night
or what we had for breakfast.
Sometimes it will be dim and
flickering, and other times we will be alight with the flame of God's
presence within us.
It's largely outwith our control, although
of course, by the means of grace and so on we can help ourselves come
nearer to God.
But it isn't something we can force or struggle
with –
we just need to relax and allow God to shine through
us.
Jesus is the Light of the World, and if we follow Him, we
will have the light of life and will never walk in darkness.
We
will, not we should, or we must, or we ought to.
We will. Be it
never so faint and flickering, we will have the light of life.
Amen.
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