The Light of the Temple

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 brother so that he might become merciful

Luke 2.22-40 ‘The child grew, filled with wisdom’

 

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Today’s gospel reading is such a rich and beautiful story.

 

The key features were set out in the introduction to the entrance procession with our candles:

 

Mary and Joseph, as obedient Jewish young parents, did what they were meant to do under the Jewish Law.

 

The figures of Simeon and Anna, obedient and expectant older people, filled with the Holy Spirit, who saw in Jesus the fulfilment of their long-held desire to see the Lord’s Messiah.

 

Jesus declared to be ‘the light to enlighten the nations’ and the hope of Israel, with whose light we are illumined at baptism: that’s the Christian Enlightenment!

 

All this takes place in the Temple in Jerusalem, the epicentre of Jewish religious practice, the very dwelling place and visible focus of the invisible God.

 

The Temple is at its heart a place of presentation.

 

In the Temple sacrifices are presented to God.

 

To sacrifice is to give up something precious of our own, in order to receive blessing in return.

 

In pagan religion even children were sacrificed, the Bible condemns this in no uncertain terms.

 

The cult of the god Molech demanded child sacrifice, but in Leviticus we read, ‘You shall not give any of your children to offer them to Molech, and so profane the name of your God: I am the Lord. (Leviticus 18.21).

 

The great patriarch Abraham has to be taken right to the brink of sacrificing his son, Isaac, to understand that the God of Israel is not like that, does not demand that. (Genesis 22.1-19)

 

So, in ancient Israel sacrifices were not of children but were typically of animals – which is why God provided a ram for Abraham to sacrifice, instead of Isaac.

 

‘The LORD will provide’ (Genesis 22.14)

 

And in Jesus Christ the Lord provide himself as the sacrificial offering for sin: he is the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world.

 

So in anticipation of his offering of himself, Jesus is presented in the Temple

 

The prophet Malachi sees deep into the Lord’s intentions so that our eyes are open to the work of John the Baptist, whose birth was announced to Zechariah in the Temple, and who prepares the way for Jesus Christ, the one who offers and the one who is offered:

 

Behold, I send my messenger, and he will prepare the way before me. And the Lord whom you seek will suddenly come to his temple; and the messenger of the covenant in whom you delight, behold, he is coming, says the LORD of hosts. (Malachi 3.1,2)

 

That cuts straight to the scene we heard today: of presentation and reception in the Temple.

 

Mary and Joseph present; Simeon and Anna receive.

 

Mary and Joseph the young parents present the Christchild in the Temple.

 

Anna and Simeon, two elderly people yet refreshed, vigilant, eager, receive him.

 

This is the Church in embryo: young and old, men and women, presenting themselves to the Lord, receiving the Lord.

 

Just pause on that elderly man and woman: how inspiring!

 

In a tired world, with so many people feeling just tired, it is a great gift to be infused, inflated, inspired by the Holy Spirit.

 

This is call to allow ourselves to be inflated by the Holy Spirit!

 

The Spirit is the presence of God allowing and enabling us to recognise the Lord and the things of God in the world and in the heavens.

 

Here in the Temple, just as at Christ’s baptism, which we have already celebrated, but that comes later in his life, we see the Blessed Trinity in action: the Son is presented in the power of the Holy Spirit, in his Father’s house, the Temple.

 

At his baptism he hallows the waters of new life and new birth, waters that, in the prophecy of Ezekiel, flow from the Temple, just as the rivers flowed from the Garden of Eden to water the whole world. (cf Ezekiel 47; Genesis 2.10-14)

 

And when the soldier pierced the Crucified Lord, as he hung on the Cross, there flowed water and blood.

 

That was the sword, of which Simeon spoke, that pierced the heart of Blessed Mary too: as the 13^th century hymn, Stabat Mater, puts it:

 

Through her heart, his sorrow sharing,

All his bitter anguish bearing,

now at length the sword has pass'd.

 

The water and blood, flowing from the Sacred Heart of Jesus, signifies life and sacrifice.

 

When a child is born there is water and there is blood.

 

In baptism – itself a birth - there is water; in the Eucharist there is blood: both of which graft us into the Body of Christ, so that we share in his offering to the Father.

 

Just as Jesus Christ is human and divine so we are to shape our lives as human beings in the way of the divine, of God.

 

This is what is meant by those words in the Collect today, that Christ came and was presented ‘in substance of our flesh’: the fullness of divinity and fullness of humanity meet in his body; he is the New Temple, the Temple to be destroyed and raised on the third day as told in St John’s gospel:

 

Jesus, looking at the temple in Jerusalem, said: “Destroy this temple, and in three days I will raise it up.” The Jews then said, “It has taken forty-six years to build this temple, and will you raise it up in three days?” But he was speaking about the temple of his body. (John 2.19-21)

 

St Paul teaches that your body is a Temple.

 

Your body is the meeting place of divinity and humanity.

 

Your body is a temple; it is also a sacrifice.

 

That doesn’t mean you’re going to be slaughtered; it means you’re going to offer yourself in service of God in his world and in the lifting up of your heart in worship.

 

Lift up your hearts. We lift them to the Lord.

 

Our collect today prays that ‘we may be presented to [God] with pure and clean hearts’.

 

This is how St Paul puts it, connecting the offering of ourselves to God and away from the corruptions and machinations of the world:

 

I appeal to you therefore, brothers [and sisters], 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)

 

The human body, in Christian tradition, is precious, honoured, not to be sullied or abused.

 

It’s why we carefully treat a dead body and recognise crimes against the body: it’s why every body matters.

 

We come as members of the Body of Christ, drawn by the Holy Spirit, presenting ourselves at the altar so that in turn we receive the Body of Christ.

 

So let us also, gathered together by the Holy Spirit,

proceed to the altar of God to encounter Christ.

There we shall find him

and recognise him in the breaking of the bread,

until he comes again, revealed in glory.