The Good News of Candlemas

A Sermon by Jamie Howison from February 7, 2021 on Luke 2:22-40

Tonight we are marking Candlemas, or the Feast of the Presentation of the Lord. The actual date of this feast is February 2, and at Evening Prayer that day Rachel did mark the date, but we decided we wanted to celebrate it on a Sunday night, and so we are.

February 2nd is exactly forty days after Christmas Day, which was the time set out in the Law for a new mother to undergo a purification ritual, so in a sense this is the final story of the birth and infancy narrative as told by Luke. There is an old tradition in which you left your Christmas decorations up for the full forty days, and then would burn the greens—holly, pine boughs, and wreaths—on this feast day. I can only imagine how many dry pine needles you would have had to sweep up!

I’ve always loved this story of Mary and Joseph bringing their baby to the temple where—to their surprise—he is welcomed by these two elders, Simeon and Anna. Actually more than just welcomed, the child is embraced by these two; embraced as a fulfillment of their deepest longings.  

Lino Cut of the Presentation of Jesus in the Temple, by Karen Cornelius

“This man [Simeon] was righteous and devout,” Luke tells us, “looking forward to the consolation of Israel, and the Holy Spirit rested on him. It had been revealed to him by the Holy Spirit that he would not see death before he had seen the Lord’s Messiah.” Looking forward to the consolation of Israel, which he had been promised he would see before he died.

And Anna, whose husband had died decades earlier, and who now at the age of eighty-four spent all of her time at the temple, in prayer and fasting. She’s waiting too, which is what is signalled in her fasting. “At that moment she came and began to praise God and to speak about the child to all who were looking for the redemption of Jerusalem.”

This child, only forty days old, was the very one they had both been longing for. The arrival of this child would let them—in Simeon’s words—“depart in peace.” Longings fulfilled, they now know that their life’s work has been completed, and whatever breaths they might now take before dying, it was all going to be fine; they were ready. Simeon and Anna alike could see with such clarity in that moment that their lives and their deaths were but a part of a story much bigger than they; that they didn’t have to solve it all or finish everything or win the big individual prize, because they were woven into something far more expansive. Knowing that, death was not to be feared or loathed, but rather accepted in peace.

Maybe I’m particularly aware of that dynamic in the story because I turned sixty last month. Oh, I know, that’s still a long way from Anna’s eighty-four, and surely there will be people taking part in this liturgy tonight who will say, “Sixty? Hah, I’ve got years—maybe decades—on you Jamie.” Which is no doubt true. And someone will maybe want to give me a nudge and say, “sixty is the new fifty,” just as someone said to me ten years ago, “fifty is the new forty.” But you know, at some point that does run into a dead end—literally—and marking a decade does give you an opportunity to take stock. Will I, in another ten or fifteen or twenty years, be able to say that my deepest longings have been—or are being—met? That the life work—the life path—that I had set out upon has been more or less fulfilled? That’s what you hear in Simeon’s great song:

Lord now lettest thou thy servant depart in peace
according to thy word.
For mine eyes have seen thy salvation,
which thou hast prepared before the face of all people;
To be a light to lighten the Gentiles,
and to be the glory of thy people Israel.

That’s the translation from the Book of Common Prayer, which I have seared into my memory after praying it every night for decades. That expression of true and deep fulfillment becomes more and more poignant every year.  

But there is a good deal more going on in this story than that, and as I reflected on it earlier this week, I was really struck by its proclamation of the expansiveness of God’s grace.

That begins with the meeting between these elders and this baby: the aged and the very young. But it also speaks to the roles these two have played over their lives: he as a priest and she as a prophet, or symbolically, the law and the prophets of the Hebrew scriptures. Simeon’s song, too, sings of salvation being prepared for all peoples; a light of revelation to the Gentiles, and glory to God’s people Israel.

The old and the young, men and women, the law and the prophets, Jew and Gentile, all being gathered into the inbreaking light of God’s messiah. That’s the connection to lighted candles on this night on which we celebrate Candlemas by blessing and lighting candles. This light of revelation to the Gentiles—to the nations, to the world—is the light in which we too are bathed.

But there is one more set of words to add to the list of young/old, male/female, Jew/Gentile, Law/prophets, and though it is a harder pairing of words, it is—in Luke’s keen understanding—as crucial to the story as anything else. What is this pairing? It might be hope and sorrow, or perhaps consolation and grief. Whatever it is, we see it etched in Simeon’s face after he has prayed his great song and is looking into Mary’s eyes. Here is how Frederick Buechner describes the scene in his remarkable little book, Peculiar Treasures:

Lord now lettest thou thy servant depart in peace, he said, the baby playing with the fringes of his beard. The parents were pleased as punch, and so he blessed them too for good measure. Then something about the mother stopped him, and his expression changed.

What he saw in her face was a long way off, but it was there so plainly he couldn’t pretend. “A sword will pierce through you soul,” he said to her.

He would rather have bitten off his tongue than said it, but in that holy place he felt he had no choice. (Buechner, Peculiar Treasures)

He felt he had no choice, because he needed to tell the whole truth. The life this child would live was not going to be a victory parade, but rather a long and difficult walk toward his own death. For a moment amidst the palm branches on that final walk into Jerusalem, his followers would mistake it all for a victory march. But it wasn’t, and it was never meant to be. And Luke, the gospel storyteller, wants us to keep that in view right from the very beginning.

But he also wants us to keep the light of which Simeon sings just as clearly in view, because it embodies the truest, deepest, most sure truth of all. Even though we may walk through the deepest and darkest of valleys, we do that in the even deeper promise of light.

That’s the good news of Candlemas.