FEAST OF THE PRESENTATION OF CHRIST IN THE TMEPLE
Sermon preached in the Church of All Saints, New Eltham
at Parish Mass on Sunday, 3rd February 2013
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INTRODUCTION
It may seem a long time ago but it’s just five weeks since
we were preparing the cold turkey, nursing a slight hangover and clearing up
the wrapping paper. Now there’re
chocolate crème eggs in Sainsburys and the holiday brochures are out. But, before we completely forget Christmas,
the Church remembers this final celebration in our great cycle of Feasts which
throw light onto the coming of God among us.
Today, we celebrate Candlemass (which actually fell
yesterday, on February 2nd), that old-English name which recalls that ‘Christ
is the light of the nations and the glory of his people’. The light has come into the world and
darkness is, never again, going to triumph.
In olden days people brought to church the candles they
were to use through the year to have them blessed and still we process them
round the church. Since the year 542,
when the Emperor Justinian introduced the feast to the entire Eastern Roman
empire, Christians have recalled that fifty days after his birth Jesus was
first acclaimed as the light of all people.
For centuries it has been held as the day in which the seasons begin to
change. In America it is known as
Groundhog Day and here in England farmers believed that the remainder of winter
would be the opposite of whatever the weather was like on Candlemas Day (last
year it snowed).
However, this morning, what I want us to think about is that
word – Presentation and to spend a few minutes reflecting on Mary and Joseph’s
offering of their first-born child as a present to God, for that is the basis
of all we celebrate today.
A PRESENT TO GOD
Last week we celebrated Matthew’s baptism and Fr. Derek, in
his sermon, spoke about the giving of presents.
Now the giving of presents is an act that is rich in meaning. It can be as simple as a rose to the one you
love on Valentine’s Day, or as profound as the giving of a nation by one ruler
to another. But in the case of the
presentation of a child in the Temple it concerns the recognition, through the
offering of a life, that all life belongs to God. That there is a higher power and a higher
good to whom we are all accountable.
Life is a gift for which we are thankful, so this
presentation is a joyful act by parents who want to offer that which is their
most prized gift to the highest good.
God. I guess that’s what lies, in
some way, behind why people bring their children for baptism. They want to identify their precious new life
with that which is the greatest good. So
the Christening of a baby needs to involve a desire to be associated with God,
the source of all good. The source of
life. It’s a reminder that each of us is
called to have our heart set on God. In
2010 Pope Benedict chose to entitle his visit to our country ‘Heart speaks to
heart’, a phrase which comes from the motto of Blessed John Henry Newman who
was himself clearly inspired by words of St. Francis de Sales: “Eyes speak to eyes, and heart to heart, and
none understand what passes save the sacred lovers who speak.”
The profound love of Mary and Joseph was a love rooted in
their relationship with God and that, brothers and sisters, is what you and I
are called to nurture.
OFFERING AND
SACRIFICE
But there is, of course, a cost to all this. And that cost has to do with sacrifice. On the one hand we celebrate God’s being
among us, but we are also reminded that it will require the giving of a
life. Today, a pair of turtledoves or
two young pigeons. Later, the offering
of a life on a tree on Calvary. We find
the combination of life and death so difficult to hold together, yet our Faith
constantly proclaims that we need to accept this, apparently shocking,
contradiction.
THOSE WHO OFFER THEIR
LOVE
So Mary and Joseph present – offer – their child, their
first-born, to God. And when you offer
something, of course, it’s no longer entirely yours. What a risk!
Especially with God.
And the reality of that must have been brought home to Mary
when the prophetess, Anna, made that astonishing statement: “And a sword will pierce your own soul, too.” But, come to think of it, it’s not so
astonishing. For there are times when
the heart of every mother, I guess, is pierced through and all they can do is
to stand by their child. Times when all
you can do is to stand by the person you love knowing that you are helpless.
Yet this child, whose life would last only thirty-something
years, is also declared to be the saviour of the world: “My eyes”, says Simeon, “have
seen the salvation which God has prepared for all the nations to see.” So we are presented, yet again, by this
painful paradox of death and life, of having to let go of something that life
may break forth.
And here we encounter the way in which todays Feast speaks
to us all for it concerns the way in which we are to present our-selves at the
Holy of Holies: how God wants each of us to stand before Him in that place of
encounter having offered our deepest desires to Him. This Temple in which we celebrate today is
the sacrament – the outward form – of the Temple of the Heart where God invites
each of us to encounter Him. And that
is, always, a painful process. Our Faith
is no cosy escape from the world: we don’t come to Mass to escape the harsh realities
of life: rather we enter this Temple, celebrate this Mass, because – maybe
dimly – we recognise that here we encounter what life is all about. (Heart speaks to heart.) Life is not a roller-coaster of fun and games
punctuated by pain and loss that intrude like unwelcome and shocking visitors
to our party. Being alive means being
able to celebrate the complexity of it all – realising that you will only know
the full glory of what life is all about if you are prepared to face the pain,
at times, head on and allow yourself to pass through that most bitter place.
That’s why, in that Letter to the Hebrews we heard read, the
writer said: “(Jesus) had to become like
his brothers and sisters in every respect, so that he might be a merciful and
faithful high priest in the service of God …”
CONCLUSION
So Simeon and Anna witnessed the entrance of God’s anointed
One, his Christ, into his own Temple.
Into the Holy of Holies, the sacred place. And his parents brought him there, not so
that he would be protected from all danger and harm (though, as parents, that
must have been their dearest wish) but because they knew they had to present
him to their Lord and God. And God
couldn’t – wouldn’t – protect him.
Rather God had to begin experiencing what it was like to be human. Stunning that, don’t you think? God, the all-powerful Creator, limits himself
to our condition so that he, the source of all Wisdom, could know what it was
like to be human. And to be human means
to be vulnerable and to fall, to suffer pain and loss – and to die.
And God will experience all that. This is only the beginning. Perhaps, come to think of it, the reason why
I am a Christian is to be discovered in today’s celebration.
Because God chose to be like me. How amazing!
Because he invites me to enter the Temple of my heart and
offer all that I hold dear there so that I might encounter Him and, in doing
so, be given in return the gift of life.
Because he shows me that to live is to embrace the whole of
life, even those bits I would rather be saved from.
This final celebration of the season of the Incarnation jolts us back to the reality of life. Thanks be to God.
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