Candlemas
By Ulla Monberg, Monday 4th February, 2008
Religion is, in essence, about our relationship to all that cannot be measured and weighed, but which is nevertheless of crucial and vital importance. Religion is about the transitory nature of our walk on earth in relation to the everlasting nature of the divine. It is about our thoughts and deliberations about life in relation to God, time and eternity – or however it is expressed in the great world-religions that we know of and who each in their own way convey some eternal truths about life, human beings, time, eternity and God.
However, Christianity is as a religion a particular phenomenon in that God appears and reveals himself to us in a specific historical situation.
Christianity is not first and foremost a series of eternal stories about God and human beings and their right relation to each other in some abstract form. Rather, Christianity is a story of human beings of flesh and blood at a particular time in history, a particular place in the world, the Middle East, and it is a story about God who takes part in this story in human form.
This we have recently heard again at Christmas, the birth of Christ as one of us in a manger – and very powerful is also today’s Gospel story of Jesus, the infant, being brought by Mary and Joseph his parents, who were modest and faithful Jews, the 60 miles of cumbersome travel from Nazareth to Jerusalem, to bring their infant son to the temple for God’s glory. In other words, Mary and Joseph followed the tradition and custom of the society to which they belonged by doing what all Jewish parents at that time would have done.
And today the Church celebrates the Feast of the Presentation of Christ in the Temple, marking that Jewish ritual of offering the first-born son to God in thanksgiving and asking for God’s blessing. This, in fact, was the Jewish rite of passage which we today associate with thanksgiving or baptism services.
It is interesting that the text that provides a Gospel basis for the service of the Presentation of Christ in the Temple is found only in the Gospel of St. Luke (2.22-40) in the reading we have just heard. In fact, Luke places between the birth of Christ (2.1-20) and the beginning of his public ministry at age thirty (3.23) three stories: his circumcision and naming that happens when a child was eight days old, the presentation in the temple when he was about forty days old, and the visit to the temple at the age of twelve.
All this is to say that Christ by the time he began his ministry at about age thirty was thoroughly grounded and rooted in his own tradition, the Jewish tradition, that he as a faithful Jew went to the synagogue on the Sabbath, “as was his custom� (4.16), and that although Christ and some of the religious leaders disputed over the tradition – and they certainly did, it was a tradition that he knew and kept from childhood.
The synagogue was never unimportant in his observance and praise of God – and neither is the Church for those who consider themselves followers of Christ.
When we look at the account of the presentation itself, it is evident that into this story are woven two sub-stories of the two devout Jewish characters, male and female, who are portraits of the Israel that accepted Christ. There is the story of Anna, who since being widowed young, has lived in the temple, praying and fasting continually, who represents the true prophet, instinctively understanding the true nature of Jesus when she sees him.
The other strand, or sub-story, is that of Simeon, who inspired by the Holy Spirit and representing the true, the devout, temple-attending Jewish people, acknowledges Jesus as “the Lord Messiah�, the longed for “consolation of Israel� (v.25) – a phrase referring to the time to come, the Messianic age.
But Simeon’s words make it clear that Israel’s consolation would not be a time of uninterrupted joy – hostility and death would be aroused by the appearance of the deliverer. Good news always has its enemies and Mary herself would pay a heavy price “and a sword will pierce your own soul too� (v.35), we are told.
In Anna and Simeon, Luke provides a model of the Israel that accepted Jesus and saw in him the fulfilment of ancient hopes.
And it is from Simeon that we have that most magnificent hymn of the Church – the Nunc Dimittis – which was very likely a portion of a Christian hymn familiar to Luke and his readers. This song of Simeon has formed part of daily prayers since the 4th Century – in the Eastern rite it was said at Vespers and in the Roman and many other Western rites it was used at Compline, the late evening service of the Church, and from there found its way into our Evensong in the Book of Common Prayer. It is traditionally used at funeral services and has been set to music by many of the English composers of sacred music.
What is clear in Simeon’s prediction is that no prophet is so powerful and so disturbing as the one who arises out of one’s own tradition and presents to the people the claims of that tradition.
Simeon saw with almost shocking clarity what would become one of great religious problems of his own time and for centuries to follow: OUTRAGE.
Outrage that the almighty God appears in this world as a powerless, fragile human being amongst equally fragile human beings, born the child of a poor family in a small, unimportant country under foreign occupation 2000 years ago!
And who sees him for what he is? These two old, obscure and by society’s standards unimportant people – and I think there are echoes here of the lowly shepherds who were the first to discover the babe in the manger.
It is interesting also, that Simeon does not praise God because “I am saved� but he praises God for the salvation of all people – both Jews and gentiles.
In order to be for us a place to meet God, Christ, who came from God to be one of us, was made in every way like his brothers and sisters.
And as we know, Jesus did not in his life become the hero of delight to all, no,he was captured, tried and executed as a common criminal.
God was, I believe, simply too close, too uncomfortable for people to see. He did not fit into the religious norms and expectations as to how a religious leader should be.
Although God revealed himself in a particular historical context, his appearance was not necessarily accessible. For he came, as it were, incognito, as Søren Kierkegaard explains, and he illustrates this with a story:
The son of the king has fallen in love with a poor girl of the people.
How can he approach her?
If he approaches her in all his royal splendour, she will be overwhelmed and throw herself in the dust at his feet,
then there will be no possibility of a relationship.
The girl will simply disappear, run away in awe of the splendour and magnificence.
If the prince is to have any hope of gaining her love, he must disguise himself as a poor man, someone of equal background to the girl,
that way they can develop a mutual relationship.
Not until this has been established can the prince reveal his true identity, throw off his disguise and bring the girl with him into his world of splendour and make her a princess.
This parable is about the nativity, the Gospel story we hear every Christmas.
God becomes human so that humans can become like him,
but this is a dangerous undertaking.
God runs a great risk: that we become outraged, that we reject him.
As St. John says at the beginning of his Gospel:
“He came to his own,
and his own did not receive him.
But to all who received him, he gave power to become children of God…�
It is the ordinariness in the extraordinary that is so splendid. It is by becoming one of us that Christ in his human form shows us that we are loved – the beloved children of God – that you and I can walk with upright confidence and hope – affirmed and loved by God who lived and died like one of us and thus took away the “sting of death�.
And let us finally return to today’s reading. The theme which runs through all of our readings this morning is that of CONSECRATION; as Mary and Joseph consecrate Jesus to God, so our lives must also be consecrated to Him.
We too have a relationship with God, defined through our consecration to Him, and through our baptism we can walk upright and affirmed in God’s love.
Our life task too is pronounced, which is for our minds and hearts to be remade and our whole being thus transformed in the image of the one who consecrates us. OUR consecration event, however, must be a daily event, signified by our sacramental blessing. It is in our daily consecration to God and our commitment to do His work on this earth that we are transformed into his true sons and daughters.
Let us pray: Lord Jesus Christ, who as a child was presented in the temple and received with joy by Simeon and Anna as the Redeemer of Israel: Mercifully grant that we, like them, may be guided by the Holy Spirit to acknowledge and love thee unto our lives’ end; who with God the Father, in the unity of the Holy Spirit, livest and reignest God, world without end. Amen.
