Homily for the Feast of the Presentation of Our Lord Jesus Christ in the Temple (Candlemas)
Luke 2:22-40
Malachi 3:1-4
Hebrews 2:14-18
I have learned over time that one
of my chronic disabilities is that it is that, when I meet somebody new, it is
sometimes difficult for me to remember what he or she looks like apart from the
physical surroundings in which I normally see that person. So if I first meet
you, say, on the way out of church tonight, and run into you tomorrow at the airport
when I’m on my way out of town, there’s a good chance I won’t recognize you.
The same would be the case if a the person who bags my groceries where I
usually shop in Springfield showed up on at the cathedral the next time I’m
there on a Sunday. This is embarrassing sometimes, but I do eventually learn what
the regular characters in my life look like.
Fortunately, there are enough
people in the world who are good at remembering names and faces to compensate for
those, like me, who aren’t. But all of us, nevertheless, are conditioned by
what we expect, by what our experience sets us up to see or hear. When I’m in a
particularly jovial mood, one of the tricks I like to play on people—kids,
usually—is this: spell “pots” (like in “pots
and pans”). Go ahead and spell it out mentally to yourself.
Now spell “post”.
Now spell “spot”.
Now spell what you do when you
come to a green light.
A good many of you just mentally
spelled out s-t-o-p. If you did, you’re a hazard to the rest of us, because we
go at green lights and stop at red ones!
We see what we’re conditioned to
see, what we’re set up for. This tendency has a much more serious significance
than as the foundation of a corny practical joke. As children of this age of
science and technology, you and I are conditioned to assume that if something can
be touched or seen or heard or measured or otherwise accounted for
scientifically, then it has a certain status as credible reality. Conversely, if someone makes a merely
rational or intellectual assertion, or testifies to a purely spiritual
experience, then we tend to be skeptical.
We withhold judgement until there’s...what?
Until there’s proof; that is until
some objective, properly controlled experiment can verify what’s been said. We
see what we’re conditioned to see, and we’re conditioned to see that which can
be scientifically verified.
Yet, there are those people who
claim that there are other ways of seeing, other ways of experiencing
reality. These other ways of seeing don’t
contradict science so much as they simply lie beyond its reach. The two elderly
characters in tonight’s gospel—Simeon and Anna—are among those who testify to
an alternative way of seeing, a way of seeing that is developed and cultivated
by long years of waiting, and thousands of hours of praying. A way of seeing
that is practiced quietly and privately by people in every country on every
continent. For some, it’s a well-worn habit. For millions of others, it’s an
occasional blessing, sometimes an unwelcome one, which soon fades and returns
them to the “normal” scientific way of experiencing reality—that is, a way of
experiencing reality in which we see and understand the events of our lives, and
the events of all our lives—that is, life in general—as just a random chain of
cause and effect relationships. We’re
born with a particular set of genes that determine our looks, our talents, and,
in a large measure, our health. We grow up in a particular environment:
parents, siblings, money—or lack of it, education—or lack of it. We meet
certain people, develop certain relationships. Sometimes we’re at the right place
at the right time and on other occasions we’re at the wrong place at the wrong
time, and the sum of all these random shufflings and re-dealings of life’s deck
of cards, when all is said and done, constitutes our biography. That’s the way
we see it, or, that’s the way we’re conditioned to see it, at any rate.
There were those, no doubt, who
were present at the temple in Jerusalem on that day 40 days after Jesus’s birth
who saw nothing out of the ordinary. Jewish law required women to come to the
temple forty days after giving birth to be ritually cleansed; in effect, to
mark the conclusion of the mysterious, dangerous condition of pregnancy and new
motherhood. And since long-standing tradition was that God had a special claim on
firstborn males, if the child was a firstborn male, he had to be “redeemed”. If the parents couldn’t afford a lamb, the
price of this redemption was the sacrifice of two pigeons or turtledoves, which
is what Mary and Joseph brought with them to the temple on this day. There were probably other sets of parents and
children there at the same time to do the same thing. The great majority of
them saw nothing out of the ordinary about the man and woman and child who are
the focus of our attention.
We see what we’re set up to see.
We can see life as a series of chance encounters, or we can see life as the
medium of God’s presence and God’s activity. This was the way Simeon and Anna were
able to see it, and they were the ones
who didn’t just look right through Jesus that day in the temple. Simeon and Anna
were conditioned, by years of waiting and praying and believing, to recognize “the consolation of Israel”, the Messiah,
the Christ. And when they laid eyes on Jesus, they saw what they were conditioned
to see. They recognized the long-expected Jesus, the one who is the light of
the world—the one whose life and ministry and death would be a scandal, a sign
of contradiction to the religious milieu, and which would inflict bitter suffering
on his mother.
St Luke the Evangelist also had
the gift of sight which Simeon and Anna shared. He was able to see the Holy Spirit
as active in the story: first revealing to Simeon that he would not die before
seeing the Messiah, and then revealing to Luke that this visit to the temple by
the infant Jesus was the foreshadowing of his eventual return to Jerusalem to claim
authority over the temple, and then to suffer and die. Luke rescues this story
from being merely “cute” by placing it in the shadow of the cross.
This gift of sight has also been
given to the Church as a whole, who, in her collective wisdom, has seen the connection
between this gospel narrative and, on one hand, Malachi’s Old Testament
prophecy about the Lord visiting and purifying
his temple, and, on the other hand, the image from the Epistle to the Hebrews
of Jesus our great high priest, flesh of our flesh and bone of our bone, continually
making intercession for us in the heavenly temple of which the Jerusalem temple
was only a pale reflection. This is a grand vision, if we have the eyes to
see it!
Without these eyes of faith, we
see our lives, not only as a random chain of cause-and-effect relationships,
but as a chain that we are trapped in and God is absent from. Life is cruel and absurd, and then you die.
But if we can allow God to set us free from our conditioning, if we can let Jesus
teach us to see with the eyes of faith that Anna and Simeon saw with, then what
a glorious vision awaits us! Life is no longer a roll of the dice but is the
medium through which God touches us and cares for us and showers his mercy upon
us. A friend of mine once expressed this in an almost mathematical way: the
difference between coincidence and providence is faith.
Let that sink in.
Or, if you are more comfortable
with addition than subtraction: Coincidence—the
seemingly random events of our lives,
plus faith—seeing with the eyes of Simeon and Anna, equals providence—God’s
care for us through and in everyday events. When we make this equation a
reality, sadness will turn to joy, despair will turn to hope, and we will be
able to sing along with Simeon: “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.”
Amen.
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