The Presentation of our Lord Jesus Christ in the Temple – HD, Feb 2 2025
MALACHI 3:1-4; PSALM 84 OR PSALM 24:7-10; HEBREWS 2:14-18; LUKE 2:22-40

my eyes have seen your salvation

We celebrate today the Feast of the Presentation of our Lord Jesus Christ in the Temple. Some of you might know it as Candlemas—marking the end of Epiphany season, and following the theme of light that is so present in Epiphany, it’s often the feast day when candles are blessed for use in the church. It’s also, for some, the end of the Christmas season—and the last chance to take down Christmas decorations if you are so inclined to leave them up this long!

At its heart, though, this feast is about family life, and how this particular family’s life—Joseph, Mary, and Jesus—is in some ways entirely commonplace, and yet in other ways deeply unusual.

Mary, Joseph, and Jesus are following religious custom as best they can, much like many other families of the time, with the family in Jerusalem in order to make the ritual offering that is made by new mothers forty days after childbirth, and to make a sacrificial offering for Jesus, Mary and Joseph’s firstborn son. Certainly these were meaningful things to do, but not really out of the ordinary. In this way, it’s not too different from the customs we have for infants—it is like that special moment when parents bring a child to church for the first time, too.

Imagine though, being a new parent, and coming to church with your child, only to have two very elderly people begin to act really, really, strangely, and to hear some deeply uncomfortable things about you and your child. Now we do have people at church that are a bit like Simeon and Anna, people who have been around for a good long time, people who love to spend time in church.

You know who you are! And we need you. We need people to help run things, people willing to spend a lot of time here. It does seem though that Simeon and Anna aren’t really all that productive, though. It doesn’t appear that Simeon and Anna are the sort of people who are making sure things are ready for worship, making sure that the building is being taken cared for, people making sure the coffee is ready and the cookies are out. It’s a good reminder that we need all sorts of folks who can do many different things. That it is perfectly appropriate to spend a lot of time in prayer, that it’s really ok to spend your time waiting on the Lord.

To be honest I really don’t want to say that as we come closer to vestry, and when we are clearly in need of many people who are practically minded and who can help by being a member of Parish Council. And that I might really rather you be a warden than to spend that much time in prayer! But that of course would be unwise; while we certainly need people who can contribute to the church’s temporal well-being,

we would be something less than a church if we didn’t also have prayerful people, people who saw their core vocation to wait upon the Lord, to watch for the Lord. (Of course you could do both, too … and be a prayerful warden or member of Parish Council …)

It seems though that Anna and Simeon were more interested in waiting and in watching. Simeon was “righteous and devout, looking forward to the consolation of Israel”; the Holy Spirit, we read, had revealed to Simeon that he would see the Messiah before he died. And Simeon does see the Lord’s Messiah before he dies, and it is through Simeon that we get some of the oldest parts of the liturgy, so ably sung by the choir, part of the daily office and used in worship by Christians of all sorts: “Lord, now lettest thou thy servant depart in peace according to thy word. For mine eyes have seen thy salvation, Which thou hast prepared before the face of all people; To be a light to lighten the Gentiles and to be the glory of thy people Israel,” in traditional English usage.

Elderly Anna, too, eighty-four years of age, a woman who “never left the temple but worshipped there with fasting and prayer night and day,” sings the praises of God. We don’t have her words, but are simply told that she “began to praise God and to speak about the child to all who were looking for the redemption of Jerusalem.”

It’s a really lovely pairing, isn’t it: the pairing of a set prayer, as heard from Simeon, words we can repeat in worship; but words set alongside Anna’s praise, praise that is left open, leaving some space for our own improvisation, together offering a more complete sense of praise and prayer than we would have if we only had set prayers, or only left to our own words.

As parochial and as homely as this sounds—a family making their religious observance, a busy temple with many others making their own sacrifices and observances, and elderly men and women at prayer, there is also much here that could be very troubling. For Simeon and Anna, this is an unusual child, a unique child, a child who is set to turn the world upside-down.  A child through whom the world would be saved—a child bearing “a light for revelation to the Gentiles and for glory to [God’s] people Israel.” A child “destined for the falling and the rising of many in Israel,” a child “destined … to be a sign that will be opposed,” a child “destined … to be a sign that will be opposed so that the inner thoughts of many  will be revealed.”

Simeon even says to Mary that a sword will pierce her soul.

And so amid the joy, and the tears, the lack of sleep and the dirty nappies, and all the gurgles and smiles that come with an infant comes too, for this family, and this child, a very difficult and unusual future: for this child will grow into a man whose ministry, and whose work on the cross will be, for many, like a sword that cleaves the heart. And not only cleave the heart of those who would oppose him; but a sword that will cleave the heart of those who love him, too, including his own mother.

 And so this story, that of Jesus’s Presentation in the Temple, is fitting for the last day of Epiphany, a season of the light of God’s revelation, an honest revelation that even as it is homely and parochial, an honest revelation that does not avoid future heartache, an honest revelation that even as it recognizes future heartache neither does it avoid the joy that will eventually come, too.

For he is here being revealed to us: this infant who is the light of revelation to the nations; this infant who is the Holy One of Israel, and Israel’s glory; this infant who is the chosen son, the one who will endure opposition, the one who will suffer and die on the cross; but an infant who holds, in his life, death, and life, the future of us all: the future that is the salvation of all peoples.

The Revd Canon Preston DS Parsons, PhD
Rector, St. John the Evangelist, Kitchener