Presentation of Our Lord

 

Luke 2:22-40

Today, Feb 2 is exactly 40 days after Christmas and so we are celebrating the Feast of the Presentation of our Lord at the Temple in Jerusalem, Candlemas or Groundhog Day.  It is also what is called a cross-quarter day, which means it is exactly half way between the winter solstice and the equinox, start of winter and start of spring, so winter is half over today, but unfortunately that means we still have half to go. 

For me this is always a rather difficult time of year.  The fun and joy of Christmas are long gone and all we have left are the bills.  January has been cold, gloomy and snowy, and spring is far away.  The news has been heart-wrenching lately. These are the doldrums of the year with many of our days filled with little more than the mundane tasks of everyday life.

It is also a time of year when our faith can feel stretched thin.  It is easy to feel close to Jesus holding a candle on Christmas Eve, easy to see God in goodness and generosity of Christmas season.  It is easy to feel joyful as we shout Alleluia on Easter, but it can be a little harder to see him now.  When the excitement of major holidays feels far off, how do we maintain our closeness to Christ?

Luckily for us the Gospel of Luke gives us a glimpse of Mary and Joseph returning to their everyday lives after that very first Christmas and perhaps from their story we can learn a bit about the process for ourselves.   The story picks up 6 weeks after that fateful night in the stable in Bethlehem.  And Mary and Joseph being devout and faithful Jews, are making the uncomfortable and arduous journey to Jerusalem to present Jesus at the temple.  It is a practice that dates back to the time of the Exodus, when God spared all the firstborn children of Israel during the Passover.  Because God spared those children, now every firstborn son of Israel is designated as holy to Lord and must be redeemed by presenting a lamb, or if you were poor, 2 turtledoves, for sacrifice in the temple.  It is also the time when post-partem women would complete their lying in, end their ritual impurity and begin to resume more normal tasks.  

So imagine their surprise when all of a sudden out of nowhere an old man rushes up, grabs their child and breaks into song, proclaiming that upon this child rests the salvation of Israel.  He bestows a joyous but challenging blessing upon them and then moments later the prophet Anna appears proclaiming the redemption of Israel to all who would listen.  Right there in the midst of their everyday obligations, they are reminded of the miraculous presence of God incarnate in their midst.

I mean Mary and Joseph knew their son was special, they had seen their own angelic visions and heard the message of the shepherds but this sort of response from strangers still amazes them.  Their son might be the Messiah but I’m sure just like all new young parents, most of their days were still filled with diaper changes, feedings, night wakings and all the grueling, unglamorous tasks of caring for an infant.  It is easy to quickly become desensitized to the presence of the Lord when one is so busy with other things. 

Yet even in that ever so busy and grueling time God sent Simeon and Anna to speak words of truth into the world.  For God gave Simeon and Anna eyes to see what others did not.  The Holy Spirit had given them the power to recognize God’s presence in the world in the midst of the hustle and bustle of everyday life and to use it to bestow great blessing on those around them.  Through their ongoing devotion to critical faith practices, worship and prayer, they had opened themselves to seeing past the mundane to witness Jesus’s miraculous presence in the world.  While others saw only the surface Simeon and Anna, were able to see much deeper and to find Jesus’s presence and will even while he lay hidden from so many others.

But here is the thing.  Simeon and Anna were not the expected choice.  In fact if you made a list of people deemed least likely in Israelite society to be chosen as herald of the Messiah, everyone in this story would have landed near the top.  A dying man, an elderly widow, speaking to two impoverished teenage parents about baby conceived in highly questionable circumstances and born in a stable.   Not unlike the lowly shepherds who witnessed his birth, the foreign magi at Epiphany or the fishermen and tax collectors Jesus later chooses to be his disciples. 

These folks are standing in a building filled with powerful and important people, priests, Levites, religious and civic leaders and all the rich and powerful of Israel.  And they are surrounded by all the trappings of wealth and power and traditional religious authority, yet God chooses these unlikely, seemingly ordinary people to announce the presence of the Messiah.  Throughout the story of Jesus, God calls on ordinary people to carry out his mission.  Simeon and Anna weren’t exceptional, they were just open to experiencing what God is doing in the world.  They allowed the Holy Spirit to give them eyes to see Jesus in the midst of our everyday lives and obligations.  To shake off the fog of distraction and see Jesus right there in front of us.

Simeon and Anna may not have been the expected choice, but they did not receive this inspiration out of sheer luck either.  Simeon waited, and waited for years to receive a message from the Holy Spirit, probably doubting he would even live long enough to see it, yet when that inspiration came, he listened, he followed the Spirit’s commands and he was willing to speak difficult and even dangerous truths to those around him.  And Anna too, she even went so far as to live in the temple, fasting and praying keeping up with her faith practices even when there seemed to be little fruit.  Waiting for just that right moment.

Even Mary and Joseph figure here.  They are new parents with a brand new baby, Nazareth is a long way from Jerusalem and it was a long and expensive journey. They were so poor they couldn’t even offer the proper sacrifice but had to make do with the bare minimum alternative prescribed by the law.  Yet they went anyway.  Each of them did the work, they were all ready and they all showed up when God called upon them.

This is a time when we are all called to ensure that we are ready too.  Simeon’s message to the world is beautiful and exciting and terrifying “This child is destined for the falling and the rising of many in Israel, and to be a sign that will be opposed so that the inner thoughts of many will be revealed-- and a sword will pierce your own soul too." This is a time of Epiphany for this church and this nation, where the inner thoughts of many are being revealed.  And it won’t always be easy, but Jesus will be here, hidden in plain sight waiting for those who seek to find him.  So we must be ready too.  And there is no better thing we can do than to cling each other and to our faith practices, to remain devoted even in struggle and keep our eyes open to the ways the Holy Spirit is working in the World. Amen.