Candlemas

1993 (Year A), 2 February (Candlemas)

St Saviours Priory

What to tell a collection of Sisters and their friends on the Feast of Candlemas? The Feast of Purification and Presentation in the Temple, which they don’t know already, is a very daunting prospect?

I guess in your quieter, perhaps more melancholy moments you’ve already thought about your death. What it would be like, how everybody might manage – if you’re feeling particularly morbid, you might wonder who’d miss you anyway? Some people at St 

Peter’s have got as far as arranging the hymns. There’s even stipulations that we are to sing all the verses ‘You’ll have to have them all. You can’t muck about then’, they’ve said, ‘That’ll show you!’ 

I know what piece of music I would like to close my eyes to, and what hymns would be sung at the funeral. There wouldn’t be a dry eye in the place. But no matter how well I prepared, I couldn’t better what Simeon is supposed to have said, especially if he said it in the authorised version, not in Hebrew or Aramaic or any other modern translation. It would’ve been superlative. ‘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.’ In the whole of literature there can be no more powerful or poetic way of expressing the culmination of hope. 

The old meets the new and sees in it the very presence of God. That was the promise and of course you know that already, so that’s not new to you. And moreover we’ve all been where Simeon was, steeped in tradition, permeated through and through with the old and then had to gaze on the presence of God bringing newness and life. Not many of us were blessed as Simeon or were able to greet it as gladly as he did. To do that requires humility, imagination, vision and confidence. Not even Sisters and their friends have all those. 

Simeon’s tradition, like all others encourages us to look inwards. Its very nature means that we must guard the deposit at all costs. It must be kept intact, handed on in its entirety to those who come after. The protection of the tradition becomes the life work. Woe betide anybody who tries to change it. ‘If any man shall add unto these things, God shall add unto him the plagues that are written in this book: and if any man shall take away the words of the book of this prophesy, God shall take away his part out of the book of life, and out of the holy city.’

The all-pervasiveness of our tradition encourage us to live in a land of nostalgia. Great chunks of us constantly inhabit the past. It all fits very neatly with some aspects of our theology. The Garden where our ancestors lived at one with God, is the land which we really do deep down want to return to. The church has emphasised this vision. It’s taught us that we are divorced from God because of our sin. We needed Jesus to come and save us – to make it possible for us to re-enter the garden. To go back. 

The Jews, like Christians, are a people of tradition. The prophets and the diviners, even the tradition has itself at various times encouraged them to keep themselves separate from those they lived amongst. Heaven help us so does ours. Just think about what’s happening to the church at this moment. Yet at crucial times the voice of a new and the radical. element burst into the tradition. Simeon knew it, he spoke of the salvation of Israel, but he also saw a light for the gentiles. Others heard it too. The voice has cried out to people to look beyond the confines tradition with a new message. At one time, stuck in exile, they were told to ‘Build houses and live in them; plant gardens and eat their produce. Take wives and have sons and daughters; take wives for your sons and give your daughters in marriage, that they may bear sons and daughters, multiply there, and do not decrease. But seek the welfare of the city where I have sent you into exile and pray to it on the Lord’s behalf, for in its welfare you will find your welfare.’

These visionaries encourage, enable us, to lay down our dependency on tradition and to look outwards to where God is already beckoning us. This is an amazing alternative, the more amazing because it comes from inside our tradition. 

This has tremendous implications for us. Just think of your own exiles. Times when you were separated from those you love. Times of hurt, times of suffering, times when all you could do was curl up and protect yourself from any interference from outside. Now these radicals tell us that God is waiting even there to be discovered and named. Go on it says be courageous. Even in despair look outwards.

This embraced world, passionately loved by God is a place where spirit touches spirit. It is a place where the citizens can know whatever is opened to them by God’s will and permission. It is a place where he is present and visible. A place filled with hope and the hope is that wherever we go, whatever we do we will never be separated from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord. But you know that too already so I must find something new to say on this Feast of Candlemas. 

What to tell you that you don’t know already? It’s hard, but I have something. Today is Candlemas, it is the Feast of the Presentation and it is Purification Day. What you don’t know is that it’s my wife’s birthday! So I ask give thanks for her I ask you to spare a thought for Sue sometime in what’s left of today. AMEN