In the name of God ☩
Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. Amen.
February
2, the Feast of the Presentation, on which we remember that the infant Jesus
was presented in the Temple and saw his shadow, meaning we have six more weeks
of winter. Wait, that’s the wrong February 2nd holiday. In all
seriousness though, February 2nd is always the Feast of the
Presentation because February 2nd is always 40 days after December
25. Forty days was the amount of time prescribed by the Law for a new mother to
wait before coming back to the Temple for the ritual of purification in which
sacrifices would be offered. Normally, when such days fall on a Sunday, they
are moved to the next weekday. But the Presentation is such an important event
in our faith and the story of Jesus, that the Church calendar notes that this
day takes precedence over what would have typically been the Fourth Sunday
after the Epiphany.
Before
diving into the significance of this event, I want to briefly say why it’s so
important that churches actually follow the Christian calendar and mark such
days as the Presentation. Imagine what would happen to American culture if we
stopped celebrating holidays – no Martin Luther King Day, no President’s Day,
or Memorial Day, Independence Day, Veteran’s Day, Thanksgiving Day, Black
Friday, or Election Day. If that happened, our nation would slowly begin to
lose its sense of identity. Sure, we’d still celebrate seasons of the year with
fall festivals and spring concerts, but we would start to forget what it means
to be Americans. The same is true in the Church calendar – it reminds us who we
are, it helps us to celebrate, it allows us to enter into the unfolding story
of Church history. Even though very few churches will be marking the
Presentation today, the fact that we are isn’t “precious” or idiosyncratic,
it’s absolutely essential.
There
are several things that the event of the Presentation shows us about the
identity of Jesus. The first is that Jesus is thoroughly Jewish. Sometimes
you’ll hear people say that Jesus and the New Testament abolish the Law of the
Old Testament and render Judaism useless, or simply as a raft that got us
across the river which can now be abandoned. But such belief is heresy –
literally. It’s called Marcionism, and despite the fact that it was condemned
as a heresy about 1,800 years ago, you can still find this heresy alive and
well in the Church today.
If
God’s intention was to overturn the traditions and laws of the Old Testament in
Jesus, then we wouldn’t be reading about the Presentation. But we are. Jesus,
Mary, Joseph, Peter, and Paul were all thoroughly Jewish. The Law is not
rejected in Jesus, it is fulfilled. St. Paul tells us that salvation comes
through Israel, and it is only by God’s grace that we, the outsiders, were
grafted onto the vine of Israel. So even if we do not still practice rituals
such as Temple sacrifices, they are a part of our legacy and ought to be
respected. But the larger point is that the Presentation reminds us of why we
must stand up and clearly denounce anti-Semitism wherever it rears its ugly
head. Anti-Semitism isn’t only an insult to the image of God that our Jewish
siblings share, it is also heretical and pernicious to our own faith in Jesus.
There
is another interesting and important detail about the Presentation that we
ought to know about and reflect upon. Luke tells us that the sacrifice offered
was “a pair of turtledoves or two young pigeons.” And that’s absolutely what
Leviticus says is allowed, in special circumstances. The typical offering in Leviticus
12:6 is a lamb and a bird, but there is a provision that allows two birds to be
given if the family cannot afford a lamb. Jesus didn’t grow up doing “reasonably
well;” his family was poor. So poor that they couldn’t afford the regular
offering. It gives a deeper layer of meaning to the words “Just as you did it
to the least of these, you did it to me.” Jesus was the least of these. Pay
attention to the poor, because that’s where we’ll find Jesus.
As
these offerings are made, we are reminded of some of the most foundational
aspects of our faith. These offerings were done for a few reasons. One is the
purification of Mary. While it’s common to view this in a negative way, such as
those ancient people being obsessed with cleanliness or misogynistically
treating women as impure, such views are misinformed. Instead, better than we
realize it, the Jewish people realized the sanctity of life and the holiness of
childbirth. Today, many mothers give birth and are expected to be back at work
within 30 days, perhaps checking emails within a few days after giving birth.
The Purification about Mary is about her coming back into communal life after a
period of rest and recovery, a lesson we would do well to learn from.
The
offering is also about thanking and praising God for delivering us from sin.
While the offering didn’t include a lamb because the Holy Family was poor, it’s
also fitting that they don’t bring a lamb for the offering because Jesus is the
Lamb who will be sacrificed for the sin of the world. Towards the end of the
events in the Temple, Simeon tells Mary that a sword will pierce her soul.
Jesus can never be separated from his Cross. Even here as an infant, Jesus is
on the mission of delivering us from the bondage of sin and death. As we heard
the prophet Malachi say, “the Lord whom you seek will suddenly come to his
temple.” Jesus comes to the Temple and sin offerings are made, foreshadowing
how Jesus will become the Temple of the New Creation where the ultimate
offering for sin is made.
And
the other element to this offering is rooted in Exodus, as Luke reminds us that
“Every firstborn male shall be designated as holy to the Lord.” Again, this
isn’t about sexism that it’s only males and not females. Well, maybe it’s
sexist in so far as most cultures are, but it’s not that male children are seen
as being better than female children. The point is that the firstborn male
child, and therefore the entire family lineage, belongs to God. As we often say
in our liturgy, quoting 1 Chronicles, “All things come of thee, O Lord.”
Everything belongs to God – our past, our present, and our future. And as a way
of remembering this, families would come to the Temple when the first male
child was born to “buy back” this child and their family’s future.
This
ritual in the Temple is so important because it reminds us that Jesus is a
faithful and obedient Jew, that he is found among the least of these, that he
takes away the sin of the world, and that God is creator of all things. This is
certainly worthy of being marked in our calendar. But this event also has profound
implications for us in our own day.
The
response to this Presentation is one that we know well in the Episcopal
tradition. The prophets Simeon and Anna meet the Christ-child and Simeon offers
a poem or song often called the Nunc
Dimittis, which are the first words of this song in Latin. We recite this
song at Evening Prayer daily. Sometimes music is the only way to respond to
such Good News. Thank God for the gift of music, for the talents of musicians,
for the beauty of poetry. Music is a glorious gift from God that taps us into
the beauty of God and we are blessed at St. Luke’s to have Matt Woods leading
our music program and to have our dedicated Parish Choir, Canterbury Ringers,
and parents and children of our St Dunstan’s choir. Like Simeon, they help our
souls to sing and bring us closer to the bliss of encountering Jesus.
Simeon has been
promised that we would not die before seeing God’s salvation in the flesh; and,
upon seeing Jesus, he knows the promise has been fulfilled, and so he says
“I’ve been dismissed, I can now die in peace.” And this salvation is not for
Israel only, but for all the world. Jesus does not show us the path of
salvation, he doesn’t tell us what we have to do in order to earn salvation, he
is our salvation. He fulfilled the Law on our behalf. He absolves us of our sins.
He defeats death so that we, like Simeon, can greet death with peace in our
hearts.
While it’s
important to appropriately mark the dates in the Church calendar, while the
history of what happened in the Temple at the Presentation is interesting, what
makes this feast so vitally important in your life and mine is that it
communicates the comfort of the Gospel. Luke tells us that Simeon was “looking
forward to the consolation of Israel” and Anna spoke words of hope to all who
were “looking for the redemption of Israel.”
In Isaiah, we hear
the words “‘Comfort, O comfort my people,’ says your God.” Jesus tells us that
we can come to him and he will refresh us because his yoke is easy and burden
light. Simeon says it perfectly – because of Jesus, we can go in peace. All has
been taken care of. There is nothing that we have to do, or earn, or prove.
Because of Jesus, we are given a peace which passes all understanding, we can
trust that all shall be well, we are comforted. Simeon begins his song with the
word “now,” and indeed, the peace of God is with us, even now.
Though the title of
this feast, The Presentation, is usually meant to denote the Holy Family coming
to the Temple to be presented after childbirth, there’s another way to
interpret it. Jesus, the Lamb of God, the Redeemer of the world, the Savior of
our souls, the Word made flesh, the Love come down, the Lord of all is being
presented to us. Simeon held the Christ-child and found his meaning and his
final peace. And just as we might hold an infant and immediately feel a sense
of peace, joy, and love, this is what Jesus offers to us. Abundant life is
being presented to us as a pure gift from God. Joy to the world, the Lord is
come: let us receive our King, let every heart prepare him room, and heaven and
nature sing.
