On Being Present: A Candlemas Homily

Preached as sermon at Croydon Minster on the transferred feast of the Presentation of Christ in the Temple.

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The feast of the Presentation of Christ in the Temple, the scene described in today’s gospel, ends the great liturgical cycle of the Incarnation - from Christmas to Candlemas - 40 days of intensive focus on the Word made flesh, Jesus Christ, Son of God, Son of Mary.

 

At the heart of today’s gospel is presentation and reception. Christ is presented by Mary and Joseph; received by Simeon and Anna.

 

That action repeats in the liturgy of the Eucharist: Christ is present in word and sacrament and presents himself to be received by us who present ourselves in the temple to receive him.

 

But being present in the temple these last 10 months is not open to everyone. For very good reason some are present but in a virtual way.

 

The ideal is always to be physically present in church receiving the Body of Christ, being the Body of Christ, just as Jesus Christ was present in the flesh as Emmanuel, God with us.

 

But being present is not only about physical presence.

 

In the world of work and in schools a well-known problem is the opposite of being present and that is absenteeism. If you’re absent you cannot produce, you cannot engage.

 

There is another problem at work, at school, and in church, which is rather different but has the same effect. That is known as presenteeism. That’s when you’re present but not attentive, not engaging, or as they might say, ‘the lights are on but no one’s at home’.

 

In a pandemic being present, physically, emotionally, spiritually is hard.

 

This is desperately hard for us all at the moment. I know it myself some days, and I know others do too. As a spiritual condition it’s known as akedia of which some features are: listlessness; the inability to get motivated or engaged; putting off what could be done today to an indeterminate tomorrow; a vague questioning of God’s presence with us; lack of confidence about what the day will bring and what its point is.

 

There’s so much more to this than ‘Keep calm and carry on’. This is a spiritual issue demanding a spiritual response. It is about looking for moments fulfilled, not just ticking off the days on the calendar or clock watching; it is about seeing each new day as a gift to us and living it as far as we can to the full: you could use the opening words of Morning Prayer each day:

 

As we rejoice in the gift of this new day, so may the light of your presence, O God, set our hearts on fire with love for you, now and forever. Amen.

 

There is so much more to say on this theme, but for today let’s turn back to the Gospel reading to see what is going on. Simeon and Anna - tired, blurry eyed and feeling time was running out on them - are both patient yet eager eyed for God. Their hearts desire. Their hope and expectation is fulfilled. And they are ready to ‘move on’ fully trusting that God is present with them, in living and in dying.

 

May this Candlemas be a time when our spirits and sight are renewed and, knowing Christ to be present in our lives, may we present ourselves to him in faith and hope and love.

 

A sermon for the Presentation of Christ in the Temple

First preached as sermon at Croydon Minster on the feast of The Presentation of Christ in the Temple

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A community - spanning the generations - with the eyes of all fixed upon Jesus Christ.

That is a pretty reasonable working definition of what a church is called to be: a community, those who break bread together - spanning the generations - with the eyes of all fixed upon Jesus Christ, God Incarnate.

It is something of the scene described in this morning’s gospel reading. A woman and a man - Anna and Simeon - both advanced in years; both expectant and full of hope praying in the Temple: a woman and man, Mary and Joseph, two young parents expectant and full of hope bringing their child to the Temple as required by the Law of Moses.

Anna and Simeon are in the Temple, the place of encounter with God, looking for the coming Lord.

They could have said, as the psalm puts it, ‘we wait for thy loving-kindness, O Lord: in the midst of thy Temple’ (Psalm 48.8).

In the arms of his Mother, Jesus Christ is brought into their midst: the Hope of the Nations, the Light to Enlighten All People, God’s Own Salvation.

The words of the prophet Malachi are fulfilled for Anna and Simeon, ‘the Lord whom you seek will suddenly come to his temple’ (Malachi 3.1).

So we have the elders, Anna and Simeon, and the young parents, Mary, Jesus’ mother and Joseph, her husband and Jesus’ guardian.

This is the image from the icon of the Presentation of Christ in the Temple that you have on the prayer cards distributed this morning.

From left to right:

Joseph stands holding the two young pigeons for the sacrificial offering in the Temple and gazing over at Jesus.

Next to him is Anna, pointing at Mary, whose role was always to be the Mother of God, in Greek Theotokos, also translated, Godbearer. And Anna looks at Mary’s Son and holds in her hand an unfurled scroll with words of prophecy and expectation about Christ.

Then there is Mary herself, who has handed over her child - from the vestibule to the sanctuary - and like Anna, she has a gesture of pointing towards Jesus.

Then the heart of the icon: all eyes are directed at Jesus, who gives the appearance of tugging Simeon’s beard (just like when I have baptised babies and had my nose pinched, lapel microphone torn off and eye poked: yes, all that has happened).

And Simeon bears in his hands his Saviour and ours. It is almost as if he is receiving Holy Communion, and indeed he is, and look at the warmth of his loving gaze, and the reverence of his receiving of Jesus.

This is an inter-generational scene if ever there was one. The church is one of the few places that young and old come together, not graded by precedence but on an equal footing, because we are all here as children of the Most High, children of God.

Receiving Jesus is at the heart of Candlemas and the Christian life. And it has a practical outworking that we’ve been pondering in this church over since the Feast of the Epiphany.

How we receive children in church is a measure of our delight, valuing and welcome of the youngest into our midst, even if they figuratively pinch our noses, poke our eyes, or, more likely, bellow and wail.

Modern re-working of the traditional icon
of the Presentation, seen in a church in Ghent

Last Sunday leaders and helpers from our groups for children and young people at this church met to consider how best our children and young people might be served here, and how they remind us all of the call to be welcoming and hospitable to everyone.

That is what our Candlemas prayer card is for, that we might pray for the whole church family so that we may all, young and old, grow in wisdom.

So Candlemas tells us to welcome the young, appreciate those nurturing the young, and also value the precious wisdom that can come with years.

On one level that just gives us a sociological insight into the church; that is, if we fail to see that what is being presented in Christ is the mystery of his incarnation and the fullness of the Gospel. That’s what Simeon and Anna, Mary and Joseph see in the Temple when Christ is presented there.

The presentation of Christ in the Temple moves us on from any sociological observations and takes us deep into the realities of life and mortality, love and loss, hopes and pain.

Avoidance of the cost and pain of life and Christian discipleship does no one, least of all our children, any favours. The gospel is cheapened when we airbrush out the radicalism of its power, and try and blunt its dramatic message and full implications. That would be to proclaim Easter with the Cross. It’s what the twentieth century German theologian Dietrich Bonhoeffer calls ‘cheap grace’:

Cheap grace is the grace we bestow on ourselves. Cheap grace is the preaching of forgiveness without requiring repentance, baptism without church discipline, Communion without confession... Cheap grace is grace without discipleship, grace without the cross, grace without Jesus Christ, living and incarnate. (Bonhoeffer, The Cost of Discipleship)

Grace is free, but should never be cheapened; that’s Bonhoeffer’s point. Cheap grace does not equip us to handle the predicament of being human, loving and losing, cherishing and weeping:

Anna knows God’s free gift of grace, having lived a life in loneliness as a widow for many years, worshipping and fasting, yet until this moment never having her hopes truly fulfilled. 

Simeon, a righteous man, knows God’s liberating grace as he sees his mortality in a new and liberating way: he can now die, knowing he has seen the Lord’s Messiah.

Mary learns of the costly grace that will come with the redeeming death of her son on the cross, as a sword pierces her own soul.

This is profoundly realistic about life. Christians do not live in cocoons. If we walk the way of the cross we can’t.

That is what the Candlemas Procession tells us: knowing Christ as Emmanuel, God with us, through his incarnation - and bearing candles signifying that light - we turn – young and old - from the Crib to the Cross, from the birth to the death of Jesus. Mortality is never far from our doors. Yet marked with the sign of the cross, recipients of the blood of Christ, our hope is well placed in the Light to enlighten the nations, Jesus Christ, our hope and our salvation.

Simeon glimpsed this truth and will have recognised its coming in every fibre of his being, for, as he knew from the psalms:

‘… this God is our God for ever and ever: he shall be our guide unto death’ (Psalm 48.13)

Shine as a Light in the World

First preached as a sermon at the Parish Eucharist at Croydon Minster, on the feast of Candlemas, the Presentation of the Lord in the Temple. The readings were Malachi 3.1-5 and Luke 2.22-40.

‘Shine as a light in the world to the glory of God the Father’.

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‘In the beginning when God created the heavens and the earth, the earth was a formless void and darkness covered the face of the deep, while a wind from God swept over the face of the waters. Then God said, ‘Let there be light’; and there was light. And God saw that the light was good; and God separated the light from the darkness. God called the light Day, and the darkness he called Night. And there was evening and there was morning, the first day’. (Genesis 1.1-5)

Spirit, water and light all feature in those opening verses of the book of Genesis.

Since our celebration of the birth of Christ some 40 days ago Spirit, water and light have been features of our reflections, because a New Creation has been inaugurated.

The Holy Spirit descended in the form of a dove on Jesus at his baptism in the river Jordan; water transformed into wine at the wedding feast of Cana; light that shone out from the crib of Bethlehem drawing the Magi, who followed the light of the star, to Christ.

And Spirit, water and light connect to our celebration today of the Presentation of Christ in the Temple.

In the beginning, the Creator Spirit of God moved over the swirling waters bringing light and life and beauty: the same Spirit bound together and gave life to the dry bones in Ezekiel’s vision of the valley of death; the same Spirit overshadowed Mary that she might be the mother of the Saviour; the same Spirit empowered the disciples, as the Church, to take the Good News to the ends of the earth; the same Spirit was poured out on each of us when we were baptised and leads, guides and equips us now; the same Spirit makes present Jesus for us in word and sacrament, and in our daily lives. And it was the same Holy Spirit who brought Simeon to the Temple on the day that Jesus was presented there, following Law and Custom.

Water is the source and signifier of life. Where there is water there is life. The Temple in Jerusalem, where Jesus was presented, sat on a great wellspring, and valleys run out from there; hence another vision of Ezekiel when water flows out of the Temple bringing life to everything it touches, even into the waters of the Dead Sea, that becomes teeming with fish.

The psalm says ‘With you, O Lord, is the well of life and in your light do we see light.’ (Psalm 36.9)

Icon of the Presentation of Christ in the Temple

Jesus is both light and life. This is what Simeon sees in him. Simeon, as we know, has been longing for this promise. He sees Jesus in the arms of Mary and Joseph and with joy, and perhaps some relief, he says,

‘Lord, I, your servant, can now die in peace because your word has been fulfilled. I have seen the light which is the salvation of all nations and the glory of Israel’. (Paraphrase of the Nunc Dimittis, Luke 2:29–32)

And Anna, who knew the sorrow of bereavement and grief, also sees new hope, new promise, light and life in this child.

In the midst of the beauty of this light there are dark words as Mary is warned that a sword will pierce her heart. What can this mean? Perhaps it wasn’t until her Son was arrested, beaten and led to the cross that she came to know.

The darkness of the world, its power games, manipulations and dis-ease intrudes on this scene. Sin stalks our world.

Yet this is why Christ came; to bring deliverance from sin, from the cold, gripping darkness that stifles life and light and the anointing of the Holy Spirit. Yet Christ’s light shone out even on the cross; his death is the fulfilment of his glorification. The scene recalled at Candlemas has rightly been called bittersweet.

Today then we move from crib to cross, from Bethlehem to Calvary, Incarnation to Redemption. At the end of our liturgy a procession will move from our crib to the font of this church.

 As we turn to face the font we will be bearing candles as a sign of the light of Christ. At that fountain and well of life in Christ our candles will be extinguished. The extinguished candle gives us a hint of the ash that will mark the start of Lent in a few weeks’ time.

The font at Croydon Minster with
crucifix in the background
(made by Trinity School for a production
of Murder in the Cathedral)

There’s a deliberate echo here of baptism. When Matthew and Joseph were baptised last week they were marked with the sign of the cross and we presented them with a candle and said, ‘shine as a light in the world to the glory of God the Father.’

The light of Christ is a light that all who bear the name Christian are called to shine out, not just in the comfort of a Sunday morning but every day in the shadows of a broken world and human lives. We endeavour to shine out at work, at school in the places where we encounter other people and seek out God.

At the end of every Eucharist we are sent out to love and serve the Lord, and we say that we will in the name of Christ. Working out what that means is a task for each of us wherever we spend our lives and time.

Perhaps the key is in those words of baptismal commission: ‘shine as a light in the world to the glory of God the Father’.

Shining out with that light is about living lives modelled on Christ our Light: being people who are Christ to others, and see Christ in others; loving, compassionate, healing, a source of blessing, trusting in God in all that we think and speak and do.

May Christ the Light of the World, in the power of the Holy Spirit, bring us the refreshment of his life. Amen.

© Andrew Bishop, 2019