Ms Angela Shelley
Christ Church, New Haven, Conn.
The Presentation of our Lord Jesus Christ in the Temple
February 2, 2020
Lord, you now have set your servant free
to go in peace as you have promised;
For these eyes of mine have seen the Savior,
whom you have prepared for all the world to see:
A Light to enlighten the nations,
and the glory of your people Israel.
It probably began as just an ordinary day at the temple. After all every day is 40 days after somebody’s birth. It was an ordinary day that became extraordinary. Mary went to the temple as part of the ritual purification following childbirth, and brought Joseph and Jesus along. Such a tiny baby, Jesus still swaddled and nestled against his mother’s body on that 40th day.
Then something strange happened. Or maybe we should say, something else strange happened because the last 40 days had been full of strangeness – giving birth in the stable with the mysterious midwife; those shepherds who arrived that night as if they were family; and those wise men who hosted the oddest baby shower ever. Nothing had been ordinary since the angel Gabriel appeared to Mary those months ago to announce that she was having a baby.
Now it’s forty days since that baby was born and Mary bundles him up and takes him with her to the temple. And there Simeon appears, one more strange man, an old man, “righteous and devout”; led by the Holy Spirit to the temple that day. He’s been watching and waiting for the fulfillment of the promise of the Holy Spirit that he would not see death until he had seen the Messiah.
He’d been waiting and watching for a long time; it must have been years. Hoping the promise would be fulfilled; making extra trips to the temple just in case this was the day. Then suddenly it is the day.
I’ve always imagined that Simeon’s eyesight was poor in his old age, that he could barely make out the figures before him. But he somehow saw– by the power of the Holy Spirit – somehow knew that he had seen the Savior, the Light shining in the darkness.
So Simeon reached out his arms and received the infant Jesus. All his waiting and watching, all his hopes were fulfilled. His name, “God has heard” is at last realized. So he began praising God with words we still sing today:
Lord, you now have set your servant free
to go in peace as you have promised;
For these eyes of mine have seen the Savior,
whom you have prepared for all the world to see:
A Light to enlighten the nations,
and the glory of your people Israel.
Even in the dim light of the temple, with Simeon’s faded vision, the “Light to enlighten the nations” shone brightly. Simeon’s hopes – the hopes of the whole world – were fulfilled at last. Praise, blessing, and prophecy poured forth from Simeon.
I have a small icon of this scene: Mary is at the center, clad in blue, of course, holding the infant Jesus on her lap. Joseph stands over her left shoulder and at the bottom is Simeon, kneeling and bending toward Jesus who has his hand on Simeon’s head in a gesture of blessing. Simeon holds Jesus’ tiny foot and kisses it.
When I shared this icon with the children in Church School, they noticed this detail. One of them asked, “Eww! Why’s he kissing his feet?!”
“Oh,” I said, “Baby feet are sweet; people love to kiss baby feet.”
“Well, you wouldn’t want to kiss mine!,” exclaimed one of the children.
The others readily agreed.
“Besides,” I continued, “he’s kissing Jesus’ feet to worship him. Because this isn’t just a baby with sweet feet. He, this tiny, squirming baby, is Very God of Very God.”
So Simeon kisses Jesus’ feet and worships him with all his being. He at last has seen salvation.
Mary and Joseph are amazed at these words of praise. But Simeon isn’t seeing a vision, for there on the margins of the temple, another voice joins in the praise. Anna the prophet, the elderly widow who’s lived at the temple for many years, praying and fasting. She too realizes what she’s seen, who she’s seen. Very God of Very God.
Like Simeon, Anna cannot keep silent. She “talked about the child to all who were looking for the liberation of Jerusalem.” I imagine Anna talking about “the child,” about Jesus, not just that day, but every day, every day for the rest of her life. Because she's seen salvation, and that's all she can talk about.
I imagine, that like the women at the empty tomb who were the first to proclaim the resurrection, I imagine that Anna continued to proclaim the news of the Savior she had seen. Because she's seen salvation, and that's all she can talk about. We too have seen the Savior. We too have been set free. Perhaps not to die, but to live, to live into our highest vocation, the vocation of praising God.
We too have seen the Savior and we have been set free to praise God, to share the Light that enlightens the nations, to tell all who are looking for liberation that salvation has come. Everywhere we go, people are looking for light to enlighten the darkness of our world. Some are waiting and watching, watching in hope. Others long for light, but dare not hope.
There’s so much darkness in our world – and not just the darkness of midwinter. Sometimes it seems the darkness is overcoming the light. But we who’ve encountered the Light of the World have hope, hope that the light will overcome the darkness.
There’s so much fear in our world. Both young and old, citizens and immigrants, conservatives and liberals. It seems like everyone is afraid. Everyone is wishing for something different, for true peace. But only a few dare to hope, to wait and watch in hope, to act in hope.
As Fr Stephen frequently reminds us, hope is our vocation. Waiting in hope, watching in hope, acting in hope. It’s what we are called to do as followers of Christ. We are called to hope, to look beyond the current darkness, to claim the light of Christ, to shine the light of Christ, to be the light. We’re called to join Simeon and Anna in praise and thanksgiving, in proclaiming that Christ has come, that Christ is the light of the world.
For these eyes of mine have seen the Savior,
whom you have prepared for all the world to see:
A Light to enlighten the nations.
Because Christ is the light of the world, the light that shines in the darkness, we process today with candles and we bless candles to use in our worship and to take home from this holy place back to the holy places of our everyday lives as we seek to bear the light of Christ in our everyday lives.
We admire the witness of Simeon and Anna and hold them up as icons of faithfulness. But they probably were ordinary people like us, people who loved God and who over time developed muscles of faith and faithfulness.
Faith is both a gift and the result of habit. “The Holy Spirit was upon Simeon” and Simeon responded to the Spirit’s guidance. Anna “worshiped night and day with fasting and prayer.”
They both inhabited the temple, the place of public worship, the place where their individual faith could be strengthened in community, because even people gifted in faith need the support of community.
We too need community to strengthen our faith and witness. We need community to help us listen for the voice of the Spirit and to give us courage to follow the Spirit. We need the prayers of our community and we need to join in the prayers of our community. Those prayers give hope and light in ways we cannot even grasp.
We encounter Jesus, the light of the world, the salvation of the world, in prayer, in community, in service, and in the sacraments
In an act more intimate than Simeon receiving Jesus in his arms, more intimate even than his kissing the foot of Christ, we receive body of Christ in the Eucharist, we take his body into our bodies that we may become the body of Christ in this place and in the world.
In the mysteries of the sacraments and in the holy boredom of the daily office, in the mundanity of everyday life, we encounter Christ; we meet him in ordinary and extraordinary ways. The question becomes how we are going to respond to this encounter, what we’re going to do about it.
I want to challenge you to bear the light of Christ with joy and thanksgiving; to faithfully share the hope that is ours; to dare to be guided by the Holy Spirit; and to tell others how you encounter Jesus, the Savior…the Light to enlighten the nations.
Amen.