A former Presbyterian, now Episcopalian, once commented on the Feast of the Presentation, saying, ‘I always associate the readings from the Feast of the Presentation, especially the one from Luke, with the burial office. Isn’t this feast kind of sad?’
That sounds like the perfect coffee hour question that seminarians used to have to answer in the General Ordination Examinations and it is a lead-in for the explanation I am about to give you.
The Presentation, or Candlemas, observed on February 2nd (also the midpoint of winter), should be seen as an important and fully integrated festival of the Christmas cycle. This is a feast rich in meaning, with several related themes running through it — presentation, purification, meeting, and light for the world. The several names by which it has been known in Christian history illustrate just how much it has to teach and to celebrate. It commemorates the fortieth-day wherein Hebrew law demanded that the first-born male child be presented at the temple with an offering of five shekels in order to ‘redeem’ or buy back the child from God.
The strongest attraction of Candlemas is the ‘bitter-sweet’ nature of what it celebrates. It is a feast day, and the revelation of the child Jesus in the Temple, greeted by Simeon and Anna calls for rejoicing. At the same time, Simeon’s words about Christ’s suffering are the most potent in all the scriptures and the liturgy of the Christmas and Epiphany seasons. Coming as Candlemas does at the very end of the Christmas celebration and in the middle of Epiphany, it becomes a kind of pivot in the Christian year between Christmas and Lent. In some places, the liturgical colour changes after the Eucharist at Candlemas from the white of Epiphany-tide to a more penitential colour as Lent approaches. (In the Church of England, this Sunday is already the Third Sunday before Lent as it would be in the 1928 prayer book.) That change doesn’t happen here though one’s eyes might focus more on the purple in the chasuble than the green or white on it.
So the former Presbyterian is not totally off in her assessment of the Feast of the Presentation. Simeon’s words of the canticle, Nunc Dimittis, used in Evening Prayer and Compline for the past 1500 years, do speak of a time of letting go, but they also speak of hope.
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In the feast of the Presentation we have a new winter encounter between God and the people of God in Jesus. But this meeting is between a helpless God-child and two old people who have spent a life-time waiting for the promises of salvation to be fulfilled. How often Simeon and Anna must have wondered if things would ever change or if they would die with the same fears and hopelessness with which they had lived all their lives. Luke presents both of them as waiting for God’s intervention and salvation of Israel. (We may feel the same way, wondering if there will ever be peace in figurative and real Jerusalem.) Simeon waits, by looking forward to the consolation of Israel, and Anna waits, by constantly worshipping in the Temple.
Even though the presentation of the infant Jesus is what drives the story, the emphasis on character shifts. Simeon, whose name means ‘hearing,’ is a ‘righteous and devout’ person who has been told by God that he will not die until he has seen the saviour for the people Israel. At the same time, it is the Holy Spirit that directs Simeon to the Temple on the very day that Jesus is there. By the time Simeon speaks, we have no doubt as to his authenticity.
Simeon’s words speak to the hope of a people oppressed. Simeon exclaims: Master, now you are dismissing your servant in peace, according to your word; for my eyes have seen your salvation, which you have prepared in the presence of all peoples, a light for revelation to the Gentiles and for glory to your people Israel. What is radically different in his profession is that salvation is for all peoples, a light for the non-Jew and Jew alike. Jesus is the fulfillment, the reinterpretation of long-cherished hopes for a people that has spent so much of its history in exile. And Jesus is also the figure of hope for peoples living on the margins of society. At the same time that Simeon proclaims Jesus as this hope, this light, he also tells Mary that Jesus’ presence will create division, a source of dissention, and indeed the very sword that will pierce Mary’s heart.
Simeon sings the song of redemption as the completion of a life-time of waiting which has known the constant need of receiving the mercy of God to rekindle the light of faith. And while we might be inclined to think that Simeon’s song portends his death, he actually asks God to send him forth to proclaim this good news. Ultimately he is a dreamer of hope and he proclaims it as perhaps his last action.
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These days, at least for me, there seems to be precious little hope. The news from Iraq is unrelentingly awful. Yesterday’s massacre at the marketplace is just one more indication of the spiraling violence that is overtaking ordinary people’s lives. A priest colleague’s son is a helicopter pilot in the military and every time I hear of a copter crash, I rush to her blog to see if this time it was Jim. In our Anglican Communion, the fighting continues and there are archbishops who refuse to take communion at the same service at which our presiding bishop and a few others are present.
Where do we find hope? How do we not get sucked into the tsunamis of negativity out there?
There are many paths to hope, and in this season of the manifestation of Christ, it is logical to focus on light. Annie Dillard in Pilgrim to Tinker Creek wrote, ‘I cannot cause light; the most I can do is try to put myself in the path of its beam.’ Putting ourselves in that path is opening ourselves to God’s Spirit who will lead us to hope. Mother Teresa, who worked and lived in the wallow of human suffering called Calcutta, said, ‘There is a light in this world, a healing spirit more powerful than any darkness we may encounter. We sometimes lose sight of this force where there is suffering, too much pain. Then suddenly, the spirit will emerge through the lives of ordinary people who hear a call and answer in extraordinary ways.’ You and I are those ordinary people. None of us know for sure how God is going to call us nor do we know how we will respond, but my prayer is that we will respond to whatever situation with hope… hope for others, hope for ourselves. My prayer is that we will put ourselves in the path of light, and take in God’s Spirit.
When Bill [our organist] heard that we would be observing Candlemas today, he was thrilled. He recollected how, when he was growing up, every person in the congregation would be given a Candlemas candle to take home to burn throughout the year. For those of you would like to, there’s a candle in the back for you to take home. Burn this candle (for as long as it lasts) whenever you need to be reminded of hope. It would be foolish, of course, to think that an eight-hour candle can carry you through the year, so when it burns down, find another special candle to help remind you of God’s spirit working in you, helping to put you in the path of light, where you can be an instrument of God’s hope, as well as peace.
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Simeon was a dreamer and a hoper. We have to be too. Even though there is plenty out there to drain our personal and national emotional spirits, we cannot surrender to despair. Like Simeon, we are called to find the hope that is in our midst. It can be elusive until we remember that the sword that would pierce Mary’s heart — Jesus’ death — became the means of our salvation. Through Jesus’ death we are redeemed; through Jesus’ death, we are set free for ever. That is our hope, the Christian hope and each one of us has been called to be a witness to that Good News — like Simeon.
[9.00 this morning, stained glass window reflection on the north chancel wall]
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