Candlemas, Sunday 2nd February, The Presentation of Our Lord Jesus Christ in the Temple, by Fr Jack

Malachi 3.1-5
Hebrews 2.14-18
St Luke 2. 22-40

The name is obvious, once you’re told. The Presentation of Our Lord Jesus Christ in the Temple, or (in the old dispensation) the Purification of the BVM (The Blessed Virgin Mary) commonly called Candlemas.  

40 day old baby Jesus is brought like every first born Jewish boy to the Temple to be offered to the Lord, and the mother to be ritually restored to religious fellowship after child birth. All very standard for Jesus’ context. But this strange old man grabs the baby from Blessed Mary and proclaims Him to be the ‘light to lighten the gentiles, and the glory of God’s ancient people, the Jews’ - this is a light for everyone.

So, by tradition, all the candles that are to be used in the coming year are piled up in church and blessed. This feast of lights, candles and Christ, just as we rejoice in the days beginning to lengthen, and the nights shorten towards Spring. 

It all makes sense - all these connections of Temple worship at the time, our theological associations with the text, church life and practise, and the turning of the seasons. Alongside, of course, Simeon providing the text of the Nunc Dimittis, that great prayer of readiness for the end of the day, and the end of life, in Night Prayer and in Choral Evensong: ‘Lord lettest now thy servant depart in peace according to thy word, for mine eyes have seen thy salvation…’. Those words and their musical settings that are such gifts for life in this so often bewildered and weary world. 

Except for the the fact that nowadays, we just order candles on next day delivery from a warehouse in Kent somewhere, and I don’t know anyone who is sufficiently organised to order a year’s worth at at time in order to bless them today!

But here we have some this morning, that will burn in the year ahead, and we shall bless them! And in so doing bless all those who will light them in prayer, or pray by their light, or spend time in here midweek when all there is is the flickering lights by the Reserved Sacrament or St Giles up there.

Anyway, the question I want to ask is this: what does it mean to say that Jesus is the light to lighten the world? Well, I want to pick just one idea to run with briefly. In church we might stare mindlessly at candles, hypnotised by their flickering loveliness, especially during long boring sermons like this one. But more usually we don’t look at light, we see by light. So, if Christ is the light of the world, the light to enlighten all. What might it mean for us to see the world by Christ?

That is very much an open question. If you now disappear with your own thoughts on that, please do. But here, briefly, are a few things that occurred to me - I hope they’re helpful. Please ignore them if they’re not.

I remember Year 8 science. Light bounces off an object into my eye - We had to draw a big eye, a table or a chair or something and the sun and a nice sharp set of arrows - ping, pang, pong. So off we go: if we are to see by the light of Christ, the light for everyone, then Christ is that which connects and interprets our experience of the world. If you follow me back to Year 8 in lab 17, then Christ is the sun, and the arrows that join my strangely huge eye in the corner of the page, and the world around. 

So, here the rubber starts to meet the road: 

To see the world by Christ is to have a very different slant on what is deemed important or impressive. People, attributes, achievements, possessions, labels, whatever.

To see the world by Christ is to think quite differently about what will endure, and what is temporary. 

To see the world by the light of Christ is to have a completely transformed understanding of value - how we spend our time, our money our energy.

Suddenly time spent in worship and prayer, waiting on God, is not a luxury or a maybe, but the most real thing we ever do, time treasured and spent well. 

And to see the world by Jesus the light of the world is (amongst other things) to increasingly find that we are living - actually living - not just thinking, or proposing, by living the most bizarre, maddening and wonderful set of contradictions. You’ll perhaps have heard me and other preachers talk before about how Jesus turns the social and religious order upside down. And that His Kingdom is a topsy-turvey one in which poverty is wealth and vice versa, in which death is the doorway to everlasting life (just as the second reading from the Letter to the Hebrews reminds us today), in which status is ignominy, and the outsider most beloved. And all that is true. So when we live by the light of Christ - experience and interpret and relate to the world in and by Christ - we find all these things becoming true in us and for us. 

Every prayer we say, every liturgy we participate in, every time we receive Holy Communion, every time we open the Bible and swim in its waters, every act of faith, hope or love - all is to be seeing and be able to see more and more, by this light. 

How might this translate into your life at present?

Take a moment, in the silence after you’ve received Holy Communion or a blessing, or during the organ postlude right at the end of the service, and ask yourself.

But before you do (and in case I haven’t been clear) it's helpful to have friends to show us the way, and we don’t have to look any further than today’s Gospel.

Simeon and Anna have waited for years. Years spent waiting, unknowing, for this moment, when because they have waited faithfully, they will be in the right place at the right time. A lifetime spent waiting, for a moment that would make it all worthwhile. 

It flies in the face of everything we’re taught about ambition, success, good sense. They are the tatty, mad old folk who hang around the Temple. But it’s only because they kept faith, and ‘wasted’ all that time, that they saw God face to face. This surely is to see by the light of Christ.

Then there’s Mary who, we’re told by her friend St Luke, ‘stores up’ these things 'in her heart’. The same heart that ‘will be pierced’, we’re told today. She will watch her beloved baby boy, all grown up, die a horrible death. But by storing up her wisdom and love she won’t run away, she will stay and watch, and thereby, be ready to greet Him when He walks out the tomb a few days later.

Mary shows us what tenacity and love look like. What’s the old adage? To love is the suffer, but not to love is to not be alive at all. Mary lives by the light of Christ, and thereby fulfils the plan God has for her life.

There are just a couple of snapshots from today’s Gospel about living life by the light of Jesus. Please do chew over your own, as you find and step into God’s plan for your life (in the big stuff, and moment by moment). Because there can be no greater adventure than to ask these questions and, by the light of Christ, live for the answers.