The Presentation of Christ in the Temple

 

This Sunday is one when the Church traditionally celebrates the Presentation of Christ in the Temple, which is the story we heard in our Gospel reading today.

It wasn’t supposed to be special or rather, no more special than it would be for any family bringing their first-born to the Temple.
The first and best of everything belonged to God, you see, so the tradition was for parents to “redeem” their six-week-old baby by either paying a small sum of money or sacrificing a pair of pigeons.
Prayers were said, and Elijah was invoked.
This was the tradition.

And then Mary, Joseph and the baby would return to Nazareth and get on with their lives, probably in a bustling, multi-family household with aunts and uncles and cousins, and, in due course, brothers and sisters for Jesus.

Because the Bible takes it for granted that lives were lived far more in community than they are nowadays, we tend to think of the Holy Family living in a splendid bubble of isolation.
We tend to think of them as travelling alone –
just Mary, Joseph and the donkey –
but of course they would have gone to Bethlehem with a group of other travellers;
it wasn’t safe, else.
And realistically, the manger would have been on the step separating the animal part of the house from the human part,
and there would probably have been a great many women,
mostly relations, helping Mary with the birth and afterwards.
We don’t think of animals as sharing living-space with humans, as we only do that with our pets,
but of course the cattle and horses or donkeys would have helped keep the house warm in the winter, and was the norm back in the day.

So, anyway, they go to the Temple, just like any other family.
But 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 also 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.
Sometimes when we are travelling in our motor home, we park up in a town or village where they switch the street lights off at midnight, or even in a place where there are no streetlights, and it can get very dark indeed.
As, indeed, it can here on the rare occasions we have a power cut.
We end up relying on an emergency lantern, or on the torches on our phones, but very often we light a candle.

Candles don’t provide 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.
Although back in the day, you had what were called Tilly lamps if you didn’t have electricity –

[The Swan Whisperer] remembers them from his earliest childhood, and remembers the poles to carry the electric cables being erected.
It must have made a huge difference.
We always had electricity at home, but I remember visiting a cottage which was lit by gas.
And in our earliest camping days, before we had the mobile home, we used to be lit by torches or a Calor-gas lantern.
And it made it very difficult to do much after dark – there were no backlit tablets back in the day!

But even a candle, a tea-light, 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 daffodils are even out in some parks, although in my local park, Windmill Gardens, they are still only in bud.
The first snowdrops are out – I’ve not seen them myself, but friends have posted pictures on social media.

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.
In one of my favourite books, a character says she likes February because it is light enough to go for a walk after tea.
The days are definitely getting lighter, slowly but surely – last week [The Swan Whisperer] and I and one of our grandsons went for a walk at about 4:30 and it was definitely still light-ish, even at the end of our walk.

And tomorrow I have to go to the dentist at 5:00 pm, which I am not looking forward to,

but I hope that I’ll be able to walk up there in, if not full daylight, at least twilight.

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.
Maybe I hope it will be cold and wet tomorrow and I’ll have to go to the dentist on the bus….

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 mass deportations in America, the shootings of innocent people by ICE agents, the wars and insurrections in too many parts of the world to name.
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.
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.