THE PRESENTATION OF CHRIST IN THE TEMPLE
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Readings: Malachi 3: 1-5 and Luke 2: 22-40
I was reminded by Prue last week that snowdrops are known as Candlemas bells. An old rhyme says “The snowdrop, in purest white array, First rears her head on Candlemas day.’ There are so many customs and legends associated with this day that it’s difficult to know where to begin. The feast is known in the Prayer Book as ‘The Presentation of Christ in the Temple’ commonly called ‘The Purification of St Mary the Virgin’. Actually, these days, it’s more commonly called ‘the Presentation’ and we don’t speak so much about ‘The Purification.’
The snowdrop has been known as a symbol of hope and long associated with February, though with climate change we are seeing the snowdrops much earlier. According to legend, the snowdrop became the symbol of hope when Adam and Eve were expelled from the Garden of Eden. When Eve was about to give up hope that cruel winters would never end, an angel appeared. She transformed some of the snowflakes into snowdrop flowers, proving that the winters do eventually give way to the spring.
In days past, farmers believed that the remainder of winter would be the opposite of the weather on Candlemas Day. The old rhyme goes; “If Candlemas be fair and bright / Come winter, have another flight; If Candlemas bring clouds and rain / Go winter, and come not again.” This practice of predicting the weather led to the folklore behind ‘Groundhog Day’ in the USA and Canada.
As to the date, Candlemas falls forty days after Christmas, and halfway between the Winter Solstice and the Spring Equinox. In pre-Christian times this day was known as the ‘Feast of Lights’ and celebrated the increased strength of the life-giving sun as the winter slowly gave way to spring. Charles Moseley writes, “In the agrarian economy that dominated everyone’s life until so recently, by February the cupboards were bare, supplies were low, and a long, cold spring could mean children dying of hunger, and cattle so weak they had to be carried to the fields. So a festival as a reminder of the joy and promise of Easter was a wise idea in the run-up to the rigours of Lent.”
The term ‘Candlemas’ seems to have originated from the tradition of blessing the year’s supply of candles for churches. And there is more symbolism here too – the candle wax representing Christ’s body; the wick his soul, and the light his divinity.
So, as with other Christian festivals, observances and symbols from pre-Christian times have been utilised to enhance the understanding of the Christian year. Light and hope are very much watchwords in our observance today.
In liturgical terms this festival marks the end of the Advent-Christmas-Epiphany season associated with Jesus’ coming into the world. And in the Presentation we see ancient ceremonies associated with the birth of any true Jew being carried out. Already in St. Luke’s gospel we’ve been told of the circumcision and naming of Jesus on the eighth day after his birth. Now, the redemption of the first-born takes place. Every first-born male, both of humans and cattle, was sacred to God, and had to be bought back from God, not sooner than 31 days after birth. Then the rites of Purification for the mother had to be carried out, forty days after the birth of a boy, and eighty days for a girl. Until those days had been reached, the mother was ritually unclean. At the end of that time she had to bring to the Temple a lamb for a burnt-offering and a young pigeon for a sin-offering. If the family was poor, and a lamb was too expensive, another pigeon might be offered. So, in the case of Mary and Joseph, it was two young pigeons, formally known as the ‘Offering of the Poor.’ So, we can see that Jesus was born into a poor home where there were no luxuries.
But all these ceremonies carried with them the sense that the child was a gift from God. The Stoics used to say that a child was not given to a parent, but only lent by God. Let us pray that all children will be viewed by their parents as gifts from God, not as rights, not as belongings, and not, as children are sometimes told, as ‘accidents.’
The significance of the Presentation in the Temple is, of course, the intervention of the aged Simeon, and his declaration that Jesus will be a light to bring revelation to the Gentiles. Another translation describes Jesus as being God’s instrument of salvation. It’s all part of the gradual showing forth of God’s glory to the wider world. But Simeon also predicts that the child will be the cause of the rising and falling of many in Israel, meaning that people will ultimately have to decide who this child is, and what they will do about it.
Now the Jewish people liked nothing better in any event and circumstance than searching the scriptures to see if what they were experiencing was foretold or an instance of fulfilled prophecy. So here is a verse in the book of Malachi: “I am sending my messenger to prepare the way before me, and the Lord whom you seek will suddenly come to his temple.” Maybe this was ‘The day of the Lord’ that the aged Simeon had been waiting for. But the arrival of the Lord in Malachi was to be a time of judgement. ‘Who can endure the day of his coming, and who can stand when he appears? For he is like a refiner’s fire and fuller’s soap, and he will purify the descendants of Levi and refine them like gold and silver.” This Day of the Lord, then, is a time both desired with a thrill of expectation and dreaded with fear; there will be both salvation and judgement, and no-one can be sure what their fate will be. Will it be a nicely-burning candle or the flame of the refiner’s fire?
Who could have foreseen that the Day of the Lord, when it came, would be so different? God did not come as a terrible, awesome, overwhelming presence, but as a baby in his mother’s arms. Who would have foreseen that the arrival of salvation and judgement could be so earth-shattering and yet so secret; that it would be recognised only by two old people – Simeon and Anna – in a quiet corner of the Temple? What then will this child be?
Every first-born was designated ‘holy to the Lord’. In bringing Jesus to the Temple, Joseph and Mary thankfully presented back to God the gift he had given them. And throughout his thirty years or so on earth Jesus offered his life back to the Father, accompanied with sacrifice, far more costly and personal than those sacrifices in the Temple. That sacrifice was made on a cross, a sacrifice that pained his mother’s soul, as Simeon predicted.
On this feast day, the reality of Jesus as Emmanuel – God with us – is brought home once more. To free us, Jesus had to become one of us. The reading from Hebrews today explains that Jesus fully shared our human condition. Because he knew temptation, he can help us when we are tempted. Jesus is truly the ‘light’ and ‘hope’ which we said were our watchwords today.
Back to the Presentation. Do we consider our lives to be an offering to God? How far are we prepared to go in our offering? Simeon reminds us that Christ is a sign that will be opposed, and each of us has, I guess, encountered that opposition to our faith at some point in our lives. Maybe that is the time when our offering of ourselves is most important, and the time when we can grow in our faith and strengthen that inner conviction which shapes us as disciples of Jesus.
We haven’t said too much about those venerable figures of Simeon and Anna in the gospel story. Simeon had been waiting, and looking forward to the consolation of Israel. Anna never left the temple, but worshipped there with fasting and prayer night and day. They lived in the present moment and were rewarded, rather like those who wait weeks, months, even years to see a rare bird or the Tibetan snow leopard, and are eventually rewarded. They had to be present and alert not to miss the moment. Charles Moseley writes that Simeon and Anna were ‘alive to the unexpectedness of God’s providence’ – and believing that God’s promises are kept.
Let us endeavour to be ‘present’ for God in every moment of life; alert to his presence; expectant that the promise of light returning to dark places will be kept, and willing to be called to whatever he would have us do, and ready to share Christ’s light and hope to the world he has set us in.