Malachi 3.1-4 ‘The Lord whom you seek will come to his temple.’
Hebrews 2.14-18
‘He had to be made like his brothers in every respect, so that he
might become a merciful.’
Luke 2.22-32
‘My eyes have seen your salvation’
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The Presentation of the Lord, which we mark and
celebrate today, is full of rich scriptural resonances.
We have the temple, the place of encounter between
God and Israel, a place of offering and sacrifice.
We have the beautiful image of two young parents
bringing their child to the temple, offering sacrifice for him who will become
the sacrificial lamb who takes away the sin of the world. (John 1.29)
We have Simeon’s moving realisation, when he takes
this child in his arms, that there is nothing more in the whole world that he
needs to receive, or to see, or to do that can make his life complete: I can
depart in peace for my eyes have seen the salvation of the world prepared for
me and for everyone.
Yet, in the beauty and the intimacy of the scene, there
is also a foreshadowing of darkness: Mary, the blessed Mother, will have a
sword pierce her own soul too.
We learn that in this child the thoughts of many
hearts will be revealed for many will oppose him. As in St. John's gospel he
came to his own but his own received him not.
We can’t read this passage without connecting it to
the words of St John’s Gospel:
The true light, which
enlightens everyone, was coming into the world. He was in the world, and the
world was made through him, yet the world did not know him. He came to his own,
and his own people did not receive him. But to all who did receive him, who
believed in his name, he gave the right to become children of God, who were
born, not of blood nor of the will of the flesh nor of the will of man, but of
God. (John 1.9-13)
Simeon received him, and so did Anna.
Anna the prophetess, though advanced in years, is
still young and fresh in expectation and hope, filled with the conviction that
she will see the Lord's anointed: the son of David revealed in Jesus Christ son
of God and son of Mary.
Anna, and Simeon, remind us - of any age - not to be
jaded, grudging or always assuming that nothing good will come in a given
situation: Anna is a prophetess of hope and the vibrant expectation that God
will reveal his beauty, goodness and truth.
What Mary and Joseph were doing in bringing the Lord
to his own temple, his own house, fulfilled the law of Moses and also tells us
what is to come: this child is the new temple, this child's body which shares
the substance of our flesh is our home, our life, our peace, our salvation; Jesus
Christ is our place of encounter with the fullness of the Living God.
And we ourselves have entered the Temple of this church
in holy procession, echoing with our lights, the lanterns of the Wise Virgins,
those five bridesmaids who ran to meet the coming Bridegroom, the spouse of
their souls and ours.
Guided by faith, and enlightened by charity, we
shall meet and know him, and he will give himself to us.
We miss so much if we don't go beyond the surface of
today's readings.
For a start, what we see in the gospel is something
increasingly rare in our society today.
Where birth rates are dropping and being a mother or
father is increasingly devalued, the Presentation of Christ reminds us of the preciousness
of the procreation of children and the Christian vocation for many, but not
all, to be a mother, to be a father.
Mary, in the spirit of other women in the Bible offers
her child to the Lord, because he is the Lord’s gift to her.
Think of Hannah, the mother of Samuel, of the unnamed
wife of Manoah, mother of Samson, of Jochebed, the mother of Moses, of
Elizabeth the mother of John the Baptist, all offered their sons back to the Lord
because they knew that a child is a gift from God, not a commodity or a right.
That’s a radically different view of children from
the societies that offered child sacrifice, like the Incas or the Canaanites
who sacrificed children to the false god Molech.
It’s radically different from the Romans who saw
children as utterly disposable and of no worth.
The Biblical tradition sees children as precious,
and abhors their destruction, be that at the hands of Pharoah, Herod, or anyone
else for that matter.
The Biblical offering of a child is an act of
surrender and trust, not abandonment or annihilation.
What Mary and Joseph are doing is surrendering their
sense of control and trusting God in who their child will become.
The other ‘sociological point’ that the Presentation
of Christ reveals is what it truly means to be intergenerational, a mix of age groups
in a community.
We’re told that increasingly people of different
ages don’t mix, don’t understand each other: the old think the young are
snowflakes who have it easy; the young resent how older people have property
and pensions that they are unlikely to get.
That’s little wonder.
There are a diminishing number of places where
people of different generations both interact and share something in common.
Churches (and other faith communities) are now, more
or less, the only places where a true intergenerational community is formed.
In the spirit of young Mary, mature Joseph and
elderly Anna and Simeon, may our church be an intergenerational community where
we rejoice in other generations, because we all unite around the Christ child.
Ultimately that is the measure of the health of any
church.
The conviction of the gospel and the church is that
it is only in Christ that human lives are enlightened, restored, healed, and
forgiven.
Today, Christ the son of God is presented in human
flesh, a human body, and is present in the world.
If only God, he is remote from us.
If only man, he has no capacity to save us.
But as God and man who enters our life in his body
and blood, through opening ourselves to receive him in prayer and by feeding on
him in patient, faithful reading of his word, then we can know the abundant
life he promises to bring.
And when he comes to the temple of our bodies we can
never be the same, so in St Paul’s words:
I appeal to you
therefore… by the mercies of God, to present your bodies as a living sacrifice,
holy and acceptable to God, which is your spiritual worship. Do not be
conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewal of your mind, that
by testing you may discern what is the will of God, what is good and acceptable
and perfect. (Romans 12.1-2)
