The Presentation of Christ in the Temple.

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.

Reassurance

Today's first reading in the New International Version reads, in part:

“He will stand and shepherd his flock
    in the strength of the Lord,
    in the majesty of the name of the Lord his God.
And they will live securely, for then his greatness
    will reach to the ends of the earth.
And he will be our peace
    when the Assyrians invade our land”

The Good News version phrases it slightly differently,
and the various translations seem almost equally divided as to whether there is a full stop after “He will be our peace,”
and the next sentence starting “When the Assyrians invade our land”,
or the phrasing that says that when the Assyrians invade our land,
He will be our peace.
Which is more true to the original Hebrew I don’t know;
I do know that I prefer the second version!

And I find that prophecy strangely comforting in these dark days!

“He will stand and shepherd his flock in the strength of the Lord,
in the majesty of the name of the Lord his God.”
“And he will be our peace when the Assyrians invade our land.”

However, as we all know, a text without a context is a pretext, so rather than just taking the words as a lovely Christmas prophecy –
which of course, on one level, they are –
let's look a bit deeper and find out a bit more about Micah,
and what he was talking about.

Micah was a prophet in 8th-century Judah,
more or less a contemporary with Isaiah, Amos and Hosea.
As with so many of the prophets, the book starts off with great doom and gloom.
He prophesied the destruction of Jerusalem,
particularly because they were simply dishonest and then expected God to cover for them:
“Her leaders judge for a bribe, her priests teach for a price, and her prophets tell fortunes for money.
Yet they lean upon the LORD and say, Is not the LORD among us?
No disaster will come upon us.”
But Micah said, “Well, actually....”
As one modern paraphrase puts it:
“The fact is, that because of you lot, Jerusalem will be reduced to rubble and cleared like a field;
and the Temple hill will be nothing but a tangled mass of weeds"

An archaeologist called Roland de Vaux has excavated village sites only a few miles from where Micah is thought to have lived, and he found something very interesting:
“The houses of the tenth century B.C. are all of the same size and arrangement.
Each represents the dwelling of a family which lived in the same way as its neighbours.
The contrast is striking,” says de Vaux, “when we pass to the eighth century houses on the same site:
the rich houses are bigger and better built and in a different quarter from that where the poor houses are huddled together.”

During those 200 years, Israel and Judah had moved from a largely agricultural society to one governed by a monarchy and with a Temple in Jerusalem.
The distinction between the “Haves” and the “Have nots” had grown, as it does still today.
In the tenth century, the “haves” may well have been richer than the “have nots”, and have had more luxuries, but their homes were basically the same, their lifestyles similar.
And then it changed.
But Micah tells the powerful ones –
the judges, the priests, the rulers –
that God doesn't prop up any so-called progress that is built on the backs of other people.
For God, justice and equality matter far more than progress or growth.
But God's people disagree, and they try to stop Micah, and other prophets, telling them God's truth;
they only want to hear comforting, agreeable prophecies about how their crops will flourish and there will be plenty of wine!

But when Jerusalem has been destroyed,
when her people have been carried off into exile,
then a day will come when a new leader will be born to them,
a leader who will “stand and shepherd his flock in the days of the Lord”,
and “who will be our peace when the Assyrians invade our land.”

I expect you realise that these prophecies were often dual-purpose;
they did and do refer to the coming of Christ, of course,
but they also often referred to a local event, a local birth.
We don't know who Micah was originally referring to,
who would be born in Bethlehem,
but we do know that, for us, these prophecies refer to Jesus.

“He will be our peace when the Assyrians invade our land.”
These days we worry rather more about Syrians than about Assyrians –
whether we are concerned about the number of refugees seeking asylum here, or whether we are more concerned, as we should be, about how relatively few our government is allowing in.
Some people, I know, worry that we shouldn't allow them in in case they turn out to be terrorists,
but those are the tiniest of tiny minorities among those fleeing Syria and Afghanistan,
and, indeed, most are fleeing just such terrorists at home.
I mean, how desperate do you have to be to try to cross the Channel in a leaky rubber dinghy, and then not be allowed to land?
Which is actually illegal on the part of our government –
if people genuinely want to seek asylum,
they should be allowed to land and apply through the appropriate channels.

We call them “migrants”, lumping them all under one umbrella.
The term is supposed to be neutral, less laden with emotional baggage than “refugee” or “asylum seeker”.
It isn't, of course, because people then talk about “illegal immigrants” or “economic migrants”.
And it's noticeable that if we Brits go to live abroad we aren't called migrants –
I did the whole economic migrant thing back in the 1970s,
when I went to work in Paris for some years after leaving school,
but nobody called me a “migrant”, economic or otherwise –
I was an expatriate!
And people talked about cultural exchange, and our young people learning about different lifestyles, and so on, and it was all considered a Good Thing.

And, of course, many of your families,
and perhaps some of you are the first generation who did so,
many of you came over here to work and contribute to our society and learn about our way of life –
and have enriched this country beyond all measure!
Maybe you can remember the bewilderment of arriving here,
not too sure of your welcome,
not too sure what life in this cold and rainy land was going to be like.

Even if someone does make it across the Channel,
their problems aren't yet over.
They aren't allowed to work while their claim for asylum is being processed, and although they do get an allowance, it really isn't very much.
Not really enough to live on, and certainly not enough for a comfortable lifestyle.
And if they are found not to be in imminent danger of death back home, they are thrown out again, and if that's on their records they can't really go and try their luck somewhere else in Europe.

I don't know what the answer long-term is.
The politicians will have to work that one out between them.
But we need to pray for all migrants, and do what we can to help.
That may be only donating a few pounds to the Unicef appeals that we see daily on our televisions,
or we may be called to do something more “hands-on”.
Whatever, though, we mustn't think of it as someone else's problem!

Because Jesus will be our peace, so Micah tells us.
If we believe Matthew's account, he was himself a refugee for awhile,
when they fled to Egypt to avoid Herod's troops.
As I understand it, God won't necessarily keep the bad times from us,
or protect us from what lies ahead,
but Jesus will be there with us in the midst of it all.
And I, personally, find that reassuring.

And there is, of course, the other “Assyrian” that invaded our world some twenty months ago now and turned all of our lives upside-down.
I’m speaking, of course, of the Covid-19 virus.
All of us have been affected; all of our lives have been touched in one way or another.
Even if we didn’t get ill, we have had to adapt to wearing masks
and using hand sanitiser frequently,
to getting vaccinated and boostered,
to testing regularly,
and, until July, we had to get used to unwarrantable intrusions into our personal freedoms.
I mean, did you ever think it would one day be illegal to sleep or eat anywhere other than in your own home?
I never did!

But it came, and it happened.
And we learnt that God was, and is, still with us in the pandemic.
When we couldn’t attend public worship, we discovered new and creative ways of being church together.
And that legacy lives on as many churches livestream at least some of their services –
Brixton Hill does every week,
and my daughter’s church is to livestream their carol service this evening;
I hope to watch at least part of it as my grandson is reading one of the lessons.
God has been with us in this pandemic,
no matter what it has felt like at times,
and God will still be with us for the rest of it, and when it is over.
All may not be totally well, but God will be with us.

Our Gospel reading, too, told of someone who badly needed reassurance.
Mary has just met the angel and been told that, if she will, she is the one who will bear God's son, and she has said “Yes”.
But it's early days yet –
there aren't any physical signs that she is pregnant,
she has never slept with a man, what is it all about?
But one thing the angel had told her, that she hadn't already known, was that her cousin Elisabeth, surely far too old to be having babies, was six months gone.
So Mary goes off to see Elisabeth –
incidentally this, for me, is one of the pointers that she was living in the Jerusalem area at the time,
whether at Bethlehem or Jerusalem itself –
tradition has it that she was ­one of the temple servants –
because she would never have been able to travel all that way between Nazareth and Jerusalem on her own.

Anyway, she arrives at Elisabeth's front door,
and there is Elisabeth with a large bump,
and Elisabeth, filled with the Holy Spirit, confirms all that the angel had said.
And Mary bubbles over into love and joy and praise,
and even if the words of the Magnificat are what St Luke thought she ought to have said –
rather like Henry the Fifth's speech at Agincourt being what Shakespeare thought he ought to have said, rather than what he actually did say –
even if they are not authentic, they are probably very close to reality!
We sung a metrical version of her song just a few minutes ago.
And it reminds us that God is turning accepted values upside-down by having His Son born to a virgin mother in a small town in an occupied land.

“Tell out, my soul, the greatness of his might!
Powers and dominions lay their glory by.
Proud hearts and stubborn wills are put to flight,
the hungry fed, the humble lifted high.”

In the culture of the day –
as in ours –
it was thought that prosperity was a sign of God's blessing, and poverty rather the reverse.
But no, that was not what Jesus was, or is, all about.
Instead, he himself was born to an ordinary family that, within a couple of years, was fleeing for its life into exile,
and when they did dare go home, they didn't dare go back so near Jerusalem, but moved up to the provinces.

Mary was so brave, saying “Yes” to God.
I don't know how much she understood, but of course Joseph could –
and seriously considered doing so –
have refused to marry her, and then where would she have been?
But the angel reassured Joseph, and Elisabeth reassured Mary.
All was not totally well, but God was with them.

And that's the message to take into this Christmas, isn't it?
With all the uncertainty about Covid, and the Omicron variant,
all the shenanigans in Downing Street leaving you wondering what the politicians really think,
all the worries about our loved ones,
especially those who haven’t had their booster yet.
All may not be totally well, but God is with us.
And God's son, Jesus, will be our peace when the Assyrians invade our land.
Amen.