Feast of Candlemas
“For mine eyes have seen thy salvation, which thou hast prepared before the face of all people.”
Often in our lives there is this kind of sliding marker, one that’s different for everybody. A marker, a moment, a brief period that seems to divide our lives into two distinct halves.
The first half (or whatever it might be) of our lives we spend mostly focused on ourselves.
We are young, vibrant, we feel invincible, the cares and worries of adulthood or of seniorhood – the kinds of things we hear our parents and grandparents talking about when we’re young – seem so incredibly far away. Even age is a thing obscured by this vigour and feeling of youth – when you’re 20, 40 might as well be 60 and 60 might as well be the grave. Now that I’m thirty-five, forty doesn’t seem that bad, and 60 hardly seems old.
But I think for most of us there is this moment or perhaps a time in our lives when our focus shifts, when we start to look ahead, towards the end, when perhaps that three-score-and-ten that King David lived – 70 years – a long human lifespan according to the Bible, doesn’t seem as long as it did when we were 18.
This shift in perspective is sometimes brought on early for people who must become independent very quickly and at a young age, maybe due to the loss of parents, of trauma, or of escaping a bad home life. For others it might be at that stage when you begin to lose people whose presence in your life you once took for granted. As a child or even a young man it was unthinkable that my grandparents, or even my father, would ever not be a part of my life, but I haven’t had any living grandparents since 2018, and my father passed in 2015.
The passage of time is so hard to wrap our heads around when we are young, it moves slowly but it begins to loom more heavily in our lives as we grow older and time moves faster.
I am beginning to think now, at 35, about the future – what about having a will, what about retirement - where will I live? – what about my own mortality?
This moment that I am talking about is kind of like a pivot between youth and adulthood, immaturity and maturity, a moment we all must face at some point whether we want to or not.
We’re here today celebrating another important pivot point in our lives, one that is also an important pivot point in our faith and in the lives of Mary, and Joseph, and Jesus. Today we are celebrating a feast of the church known as Candlemas, or the Presentation of Christ in the Temple, or the Purification of the Blessed Virgin Mary. I’ve said at various points in the last month or more that the Christmas season really continues until February 2nd, the official date of Candlemas. It formally concludes the nativity story and cycle, this season of continued revelation and epiphany, the repeated unveiling of the true identity of that child born in the manger.
Christmas and Epiphany, because they celebrations of this new light that has come into the world and lightens every heart that learns its identity, find their consummation in this day – a celebration of light and a day on which the church traditionally has blessed candles, lights that burn in our churches and in our homes throughout the year reminding us of the light of the gospel, the light that is Christ.
This moment that we hear about in the Gospel, that we celebrate today, is the moment when Mary and Joseph bring Jesus to Jerusalem to be presented before God in the temple, as was customary after 40 days of Mary’s purification. Really, it’s a dedication of the child to the service and love of God, not exactly the same but not entirely unlike what we do in Baptism.
The scripture tells us that when they got there they encountered a figure named Simeon, a righteous old man upon whom the spirit had rested and whom God had told that he would not die until he had seen the Messiah, the saviour. Church tradition tells us that Simeon was blind and on the day of the presentation the spirit itself moved him to go to the temple. But when Mary, Joseph, and Jesus enter the temple the scales fall from blind eyes which fill with light as he sees in the arms of Mary what he has been waiting for his entire life. Most in Israel probably expected the Messiah to be a triumphant king, a glorious leader, and not a little baby – but Simeon was open to meeting the Messiah, whoever it might be.
It might give us a moment to think about our own lives and the promises and works of God that take place but that we don’t recognize because we aren’t open enough or paying enough attention to recognize how God is at work in unexpected ways. Sometimes we prefer to wait in the darkness, or grief, or sadness that we know than to venture out into uncertain and new light – light that we long for, but don’t recognize.
Simeon takes the child into his arms and in that moment he offers words to Mary, words that are a similar kind of pivot point to the one I’ve been talking about. He praises God while holding Jesus and proclaims him to the be light that has come to lighten all nations, but when he turns to offer prophetic words to Mary his tone changes and he offers something that for her must both be comforting and distressing, “This child is set for the fall and rising again of many in Israel,” he says, “and for a sign which shall be spoken against; yea, a sword shall pierce through thy own soul also.” In other words, this child is the Messiah, God’s promises to Mary, to Israel, to all nations has come true but for Mary this will come at a great and profound cost – she will have to watch the Son of God, no less her own beloved child, die on a cross.
You see, Candlemas falls roughly halfway between Christmas and Good Friday.
Halfway between the crib and the cross.
Halfway between birth and death.
Today is the day that we turn away from the quiet, cozy, sentimental joy of Bethlehem and the manger, and turn our faces towards the cold, grim reality of Golgotha, the place of the crucifixion.
It’s a solemn reminder that following Jesus is not just about Christmas, it is not just about joy and celebration – it is also about sacrifice, faithfulness and hope in the face of suffering and death.
That pivot point in our lives I talked about I think comes to us when we realize that life is not always a gas, it’s not always a smooth ride, it’s not always easy, we are not going to get what we want, and one day, maybe sooner than later, it’s going to an end. Adulthood and getting old is about looking ahead and preparing for the end, whenever it may come.
But remember too that Candlemas is also roughly the midway point between the Winter Solstice, the darkest day of the year, and the first day of spring, we are already in the midst of turning from the cold, dark, drear of winter towards the promise of new life, and summer’s warmth.
Think too of that silly tradition we keep on February 2nd, when we collectively look to a subterranean rodent with a goofy name, and his reaction to his shadow, to dictate how much more we must suffer with winter. Even in that we show our longing for the light, even that can be a hopeful moment for those who struggle amidst the cold dark of this season.
It all also means that we are about halfway between the cradle and the empty tomb, the greatest source of hope and joy, the final great proof that the promises of God are true, that Jesus has truly come to rescue us from the darkness of sin and death and to free us from fear. We stand now poised between these two worlds, all of us poised as we always are, frail as we are, between life and death; “in the midst of life we are in death: of whom may we seek for succour, but of thee, O Lord?” asks and answers the Book of Common Prayer in the burial for the dead.
The light we bless and distribute today on Candlemas is a reminder, even amidst the darkness (whatever darkness) we are all enduring at the moment – that there is a light that has come into the world to lighten all nations and every heart, a light that can and will transform our fear into hope, our sadness into joy, and our death into life.
“For mine eyes have seen thy salvation, which thou hast prepared before the face of all people.”
Amen.