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

Transfiguration: shine as lights in the world

First preached as a sermon at the Cathedral Eucharist, Guildford Cathedral, on the Feast of the Transfiguration of the Lord, Sunday 6^th August 2017

Daniel 7.9-19, 13-14; 2 Peter 1.16-19; Luke 9.28b-36

‘You will do well to be attentive to this as to a lamp shining in a dark place,

until the day dawns and the morning star rises in your hearts’ (2 Peter 1.19b)

In nomine Patris…

Prior to his death recently, my spiritual director and confessor, Bishop Geoffrey Rowell was sitting for a portrait. This is because as a former University chaplain many of his former students and friends clubbed together and prevailed upon him to have this done.

Not long before his death I was with him, as he sat in his favourite chair, and we talked. We talked about mortality - he was dying, but at the time I didn’t know how imminent it was – and we talked about light.

Bishop Geoffrey described the method of the portrait painter, who whilst not a man of faith, was intrigued by light and what light exposes and what it conceals. We talked about one of the major theological influences in Geoffrey’s life, Archbishop Michael Ramsey, who wrote a good deal about light, glory and transfiguration.

For his funeral a prayer card had been produced on one side an icon and on the other the finished portrait that had been completed just in time. It was extremely moving for me to see.

Bishop Geoffrey Rowell
by Alexander Debenham, 2017

The portrait, which appeared in many of his obituaries, shows Geoffrey in his episcopal robes sitting in that favourite chair. The portrait shows a curious mixture of the domestic – his favourite chair – and the ecclesiastical - his white and gold cope and stole.

Geoffrey’s gaze looks out beyond the viewer of the picture, as if he is looking towards something beyond this world even, to something deeply captivating. This isn’t the look of someone who is not paying attention to the person in front of him (a besetting sin of many Bishops) rather it is a portrait of a man looking into the uncreated light of God: he can see, to use the title of one of his books, The Vision Glorious.

The Vision Glorious is what lies beyond us, but also is close at hand: ‘you will do well’, writes St Peter, ‘to be attentive to this as to a lamp shining in a dark place, until the day dawns and the morning star rises in your hearts’.

Geoffrey’s gaze is the gaze of the Christian (his mitre is visible but in the shadows of the portrait). It is as if he is looking beyond to the vision of glory that, a vision which we believe he sees now, in all its fullness; a vision glorious of what we may all see in this earthbound life and existence of ours.

In the portrait light gently washes across Geoffrey’s face, as if spilling out from the glory he beholds, something like the look on Moses’ face after he had beheld God’s glory in the Tent of meeting described in Exodus.

The light of Jesus Christ is not reflected light, but is light seeping out from his divinity: ‘I am the light of the world. Whoever follows me will never walk in darkness but will have the light of life’ (John 8.12). The Christian bathes in that light.

On a rather more prosaic level, I spent some time last week working with the lighting consultants for the cathedral and discussing what lighting is needed when and where with our new lighting system.

We covered the sort of issues Bishop Geoffrey had touched with his portrait painter: the way light can be used to draw out certain features; how light and shadow as both necessary in order to give tone and texture to a portrait or a building. We talked about how over lighting deprives a portrait or a building of its character and the nuances of the subject: light is not well used when it bleaches out the subtle details of the subject. Light can be used to pick out and enhance features.

The Transfiguration of the Lord bathes Jesus in light. But this is not a lighting scheme for a building or to pick out the delicacies of a human subject.

 The Transfiguration by Alexander Ainetdinov

Rather it is a declaration of divinity. This divinity shines out through humanity, the human Jesus Christ, who is divine, at one with the Father.

The Letter of James tells us, ‘all gifts come from the Father of lights, with whom there is no variation or shadow due to change’ (James 1.17). The light that is seen emanating from Christ is the uncreated light of God. Gregory of Nazianzus teaches that if we imagine the sun to be bright, and it is – don’t look at it – then the uncreated light of God is beyond brightness.

The call of a Christian is to be attentive to the resplendent light of Christ as to a lamp shining in a dark place, until the day dawns and the morning star rises in our hearts. Christianity is in many ways a religion of light, light refracted into a dark world, but a light upon which God declares, ‘Let there be light!’

Baptism is the moment when we see the Light of Christ first rises our hearts: it connects us with the creative purposes of God,’ ‘let there be light in this child of mine’. Our own baptism, when we are washed clean in water, connects us to the Baptism of the Lord and to his Transfiguration: ‘this is my Son, with whom I am well pleased; listen to him!’

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

Baptism begins the life of paying attention to Christ: it is about bathing in the glory that comes from him; about gazing upon his Divine Face which illumines our faces; it is about being open to the search light of his wisdom and truth; knowing him as the Beloved Son of the Father; it is about being lit up for life.

As St John puts it in his gospel, ‘What has come into being in him was life, and the life was the light of all people. The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness did not overcome it’ (John 1.4, 5). This is Jesus; this is Transfiguration.

The Eucharist draws us into the darkness and shadows of being human and shines the light of Christ into our lives; it takes us to the darkness, ‘in the same night that he was betrayed’ and to the lynching of the cross, when, in the middle of the day, darkness fell over the whole land (Matthew 27.45) and it takes to the glory and splendour of Resurrection.

What this means for us day by day is that we open our eyes to Christ in the world and see what God is up to, the life in which we participate and seek to shine out too: as we’re commissioned at baptism, ‘shine as lights in the world to the glory of God the Father’.

‘You will do well to be attentive to this as to a lamp shining in a dark place,

until the day dawns and the morning star rises in your hearts’ (2 Peter 1.19b)