Candlemas - The Feast of the Presentation

Sermon by Jamie Howison on Luke 2:22-40

Tonight we’re marking a holy day known as The Feast of the Presentation or Candlemas. Candlemas, which sounds a little like Christmas, which is because the two are actually linked. Of course Christmas is the much better known feast day, whether or not you’re a Christian, but maybe that’s a good reason to pay a little extra attention to Candlemas. After all, it doesn’t get buried under a mountain of gift shopping and tinsel… though maybe it is submerged in a kind of layer of unfamiliarity. Yet steadfastly here for the past several years, we’ve made a point of marking the feast day, so at the very least this gathered community will be able to wish one another a blessed and happy Candlemas!

The roots of the feast day are ancient, going back to its earliest observance in Jerusalem around the year 350, and being quite widely celebrated throughout the Western Church within a few hundred years of that date. The blessing of candles on this day has been part of the tradition since the 7th century, and that was all to put a little visible meaning into the proclamation of Simeon in today’s Gospel text, which I’ll offer to you in the more traditional English of the Book of Common Prayer:

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.

In Luke’s telling, as Simeon takes the infant Jesus into his arms he can’t help but proclaim that he has now “seen thy salvation” which is “a light to lighten the Gentiles” and “the glory of thy people Israel.” That light which lightens the Gentiles, the nations, us, is symbolized in the feast with candles, and the ancient tradition was to bless all the candles to be used in the coming church year. Well, we don’t have all the candles we’ll use in the next twelve months, but we do have a new pillar candle for the communion table, as well as a basket of taper candles for all of you to take home with you tonight, so that the light symbolically spreads from this place into all of your homes across the city. So just before the confession time, we’ll offer a prayer of blessing for these candles, and then at communion time there will be a basket of taper candles on the altar and another one on the communion table, and you should pick one up as you move back to your pew. After communion is shared, I’ll light one of your candles on each side of the aisle, and you’ll then share the flame throughout the church. It is lovely to watch the warmth of that light spread from candle to candle, and then to sing together our closing hymn.

Yet we should remember that the story of Mary and Joseph going to the temple with the infant Jesus is not without its layers of caution, even foreboding. They’ve gone, Luke tells us, to “present Jesus to the Lord” in accordance with the Torah, and they’ve brought with them the offering of a pair of turtle doves or young pigeons. That’s the offering brought by a poor family, for those with more money were to bring a lamb and just one bird. Yet Luke is clear that this is not a family of means, so it is two birds that they bring.

“Now there was a man in Jerusalem whose name was Simeon,” Luke tells us. A righteous man, a devout man, an aging man, to whom “It had been revealed… by the Holy Spirit that he would not see death before he had seen the Lord’s Messiah.” And that day he came into the temple, took one look at that peasant couple and their wee baby, and those words burst from his lips. “LORD, now lettest thou thy servant depart in peace,” for I’m seeing the promise, right here in this place. This baby is going to be salvation for all, no matter if Jew or Gentile. This little one is the promise… Your promise!

“And the child’s father and mother were amazed at what was being said about him,” Luke writes, and no wonder. I mean in the flow of the whole story to this point, Mary has heard the word of the angel Gabriel and has been assured by her kinswoman Elizabeth that something amazing is happening, Joseph has had his heart set at ease by an extraordinary dream, and the two of them have heard the proclamation of the shepherds on the night of the baby’s birth. But this is something else again, as this aging man comes to them with these extraordinary words.

And then blessing them Simeon turned to Mary to offer some harder words: “This child is destined for the falling and the rising of many in Israel, and to be a sign that will be opposed so that the inner thoughts of many will be revealed—and a sword will pierce your own soul too.” This child’s life isn’t going to be easy, Simeon is s saying. He’s a sign who will be opposed, whose life will evoke the falling and rising of many in Israel. And then with what I can only imagine is a deep tenderness, he fixes his eyes on that young mother and says, “a sword will pierce your own soul too.” This is going to be heart-breaking for you, Mary. And of course it was.

There’s also the figure of the prophet Anna, a woman of great old age who saw the baby and “began to praise God and to speak about the child to all who were looking for the redemption of Jerusalem.” And again, you wonder what those new parents made of it all, particularly in light of Simeon’s harder words.

But that’s just there, in the fabric of the biblical story. There just are never seamless, flawless heroes who dance from victory to victory. There just aren’t. The great figures of the Hebrew scriptures from Abraham and Sarah through right through Moses to King David and well beyond all come with moments of doubt, failure, struggles, and oh so human weakness. Beyond them into the New Testament you have Peter stumbling with his fears, the disciples all wandering around in a kind of haze, Paul losing his temper in some of his epistles and getting into a fight with Barnabas over giving young John Mark a second chance after he had failed in his first journey with them. You see very human figures with the sorts of foibles and failings that any one of us might carry.

And here you have Simeon looking at this young mom and saying—entirely accurately—this child is going to break your heart.

So we tell the story and we sing Simeon’s song and we light our candles as a small sign of the one who is light to lighten the Gentiles, but we must tell the whole story, confident that the only one who can and will redeem us from the lastness and lostness and leastness and deadness of our lives is the one who continues to bring light into the darkness. That light can sometimes seem very faint, especially when we get lost in our own wounds and lastness, yet it burns all the same.

For tonight at least, after a cold, cold week in our part of the world, may those small flames collectively light up this place with warmth and hope, symbolizing for us the final promise carried in Simeon’s song, namely that God’s salvation has been prepared before the face of all people. Some days it might seem like a far away promise, but it is a promise—God’s promise—all the same.