Heb 2.14-end, Luke 2.22-40
Today is the feast of Candlemas. It marks the moment, forty days after the birth of Jesus, when Mary and Joseph bring him to the Temple to offer the sacrifice prescribed by the law after the birth of a baby. It was a completely normal thing for them to do, what everyone in their community would expect them to do. It would have been odd if they hadn’t, and they were probably among many other families in the Temple doing the same.
Imagine the Temple, the hubbub, the coming and going in this vast complex of buildings, courtyards, and covered walkways. It was the focus of national life for the people of Israel, a place not only of sacrificial worship- think of the noise of all those animals, and the smell… but it was also a place to debate, full of heated discussion, maybe argument… If, when you think of the Temple, you imagine the hush of a great cathedral, forget it. This was a noisy, and sometimes smelly place, and it was full of people.
Every Jewish man was supposed to come to the Temple at least three times a year to offer sacrifice at major festivals, and often whole families came together. And then there were all the other times when you might need to make a sacrifice – if you had been ill, or had become ritually unclean somehow, or needed to make amends for something, and, as here, if you’d had a new baby.
The sacrifice Mary and Joseph come to make was meant to be a reminder to parents that their children weren’t just theirs. Ultimately, they belonged to God. They were gifts of God, lent to parents for a time, but not theirs to own or control. God’s plans for them were bigger than theirs. That’s something that those of us who are parents still need to be reminded of sometimes.
But it is true of all children, it was especially true of Jesus, who would grow up to change the course of human history, and do things that were way beyond anything Mary and Joseph could imagine.
There was nothing that singled him out as different as they brought him into the Temple, though. Despite all those famous paintings we see reproduced on our Christmas cards, he didn’t glow in the dark…The only reason that Simeon and Anna knew who he was was that the Holy Spirit told them so, and their hearts were so attuned to God, shaped by decades of prayer, that they recognised God’s voice, and trusted what they heard, and acclaimed him as the Messiah, the chosen, anointed one of God, the one who would be “a light for revelation to the Gentiles” and be the glory of Israel.
That’s where the association with candles comes from, of course and the reason this feast day is commonly called Candlemas. Back in the Middle Ages it was the day on which the candles to be used in church through the year were blessed, and people brought candles from home for blessing too. This feast happens just at the point when we might start to notice the days getting a little bit longer, if we’re paying attention, and the snowdrops – not great , colourful showy flowers, but so welcome – starting to bloom, the promise that winter will end. An old name for them is Candlemas Bells. Candlemas is about that first glimmer of light, the almost imperceptible lengthening of days, of the light we see just before dawn that tells us that the night will come to an end- some nights, especially when we are anxious or lonely, can seem as if they never will. Or imagine you were lost on a dark mountain in the pitch black – Candlemas is that tiny glimmer of torchlight in the distance held by the rescuer coming to save you, or the far-off glow of a window, reorientating you and guide you towards the safety of a house you didn’t know was there. It’s the light that promises you that help is coming, that all is not lost, the light that lifts your spirits enough for you to keep going until dawn arrives.
That’s what Simeon and Anna see in this little baby, a reminder of the faithfulness of God, the God who doesn’t give up on us, even if we give up on him. Who doesn’t stop believing in us, even if we stop believing in him, who doesn’t stop loving us, even if we stop loving him. That was the promise they had held onto during the long years that they had spent in the Temple, and now they see it coming to fruition.
But of course, their recognition that something special is happening is only the beginning. Having recognised him, acclaimed him and blessed him, Simeon and Anna send Mary and Jospeh out, to carry Jesus all the way back to Nazareth, where they will care for him as he grows up and becomes strong and filled with wisdom, ready to start his ministry.
And in a way, this story calls us to do the same. Yes, it calls us to look for Jesus, as Simeon and Anna did; he may come to us in all sorts of forms, inside and outside the church, maybe in the least likely people and circumstances. Our hearts need to be attuned to God through prayer, just as theirs were. And when we find him, yes, this story calls us treasure what he means to us. But it also calls us to carry him out into the world, to shine with his light, wherever we find ourselves, so that we can bring hope to those who feel as if the long, dark winter will never end.
That’s why at the end of the service today we’re going to do two things.
The first thing is that, as you will have seen, we’re going to end the service with some responses, drawing our celebration of Christmastide to an end, and turning towards, Lent, Holy Week and Easter. During the last hymn we will light your candles, but the crucial part of this short bit of liturgy is actually the moment when we blow those candles out, not because the light of Christ has gone out, but as an acknowledgement that, during this long season of pondering the significance of Jesus’ birth, the light, we hope, has gone in, become more deeply part of us.
The second thing we’re going to do is to invite someone – could be anyone, young or old- to carry the Christ Child who has lain in the manger here in front of the altar out tin the procession that ends the service , as a reminder that, like Mary and Joseph , we are all called to carry Christ into the world, to let his light shine out to others. Amen
