Candlemas Thankfulness

Well I hope you have taken down your tree and packed away the lights, cards and crib, for today finally and formally brings to end our celebrations of the birth of Jesus. Christmas, the annual time for people to coo and ahhh over the soft-focus story of the birth of a beautiful baby some 2000 years ago. But we should not be taken in by the tinsel and pretty lights: Christmas has been more serious than that. The question we are left with is: what really happened?

Candlemas is a festival that the Church of England tended not to make too much of up until the very recent past perhaps because of it’s Mediaeval focus on the purification of Mary and not the presentation of Jesus as the first born son dedicated to God. Latterly the Church realised how significant this major feast is in her the worshipping life, because, like a steep hill on a good walk, Candlemas provides us with a vantage point enabling us to look back to the Christmas celebration of the birth of God in our midst from where we have come, and forward to the destination of our journey - the cross and death PAUSE... and resurrection.

The Gospel story tells of the Holy Family’s trip up to Jerusalem, to visit the Temples. They went to carry out what was necessary under the Law. Firstly they went so that Mary could be made ritually pure 40 days after childbirth by the offering of the appropriate sacrifice.

The book of Leviticus outlines very clearly the correct sacrificial practice in various circumstances. If you suffer from insomnia I suggest it as a cure, but the book makes it clear that the poor, should sacrifice a pair of young pigeons or a a pair of turtle doves in various circumstances. Luke is making a very important point here. Throughout the Old Testament, God again and again identifies himself with the poor, downtrodden and the outcast. Luke’s point is clear - with the coming of the Messiah, God’s eternal attributes of love and justice have not changed. As the King of the Nations, the Prince of Peace, God’s Son comes to the Temple he comes not just identifying with the socially, spiritually, emotionally and financially poor, but as one of them.

Secondly, the family went to have Jesus dedicated to God. Again the Levitical Law is clear and Luke quotes it for us - every firstborn male shall be designated as holy to the Lord. Luke is making another very important point here. This child will be dedicated to the service of God, like every firstborn Jewish male, but the service he will undertake for God will transform the world.

The other key players in this drama set in the heart of Israel’s spiritual life, the Temple, are Simeon and Anna. Simeon clarifies what God has planned to achieve through this little baby, things that Luke’s readers already know about but now have confirmed through the mouth of a pious and faithful Jew. Simeon had been promised that he would not die until he had seen the Messiah. How Simeon knew that this firstborn male was what he had been waiting for all these years we will never know. But as he holds Jesus (whose name literally means ‘the Lord is my salvation’) in his arms he holds God’s salvation itself. As a result he may depart in peace - he can die happy , knowing that what had been promised to him had been fulfilled, and also knowing that shalom, God’s peace was about to break though in a new way to the whole of creation bringing reconciliation, forgiveness, healing, love and justice to reign on earth through this child. Simeon does here what neither Moses or Elijah or the other great prophets of God could do - as he looks lovingly at that newborn he sees the face of God Almighty the Creator - and lives.

Many of Israel, like Simeon and Anna - are pious and faithfully waiting the redemption of God through this child. Many are not and there will be those who will hate Jesus and in the end they will crucify him. Even here in the temple here is the shadow of the coming cross.

At Christmas we recall the greatest mystery - that God became human like us. The Incarnation, the birth of God amongst is surely about God identifying not only with humanity but with everything created, not to understand it so as to apprehend it, but to love it into eternal life. At Candlemas as Jesus God’s own Son is presented in the Temple and dedicated to God, Jesus offers back to God his humanity, our humanity, and reconciles everything that is created to it’s Creator for his use and his glory.

Today as Jesus is presented to God in the Temple, God presents creation with his peace, the Shalom that Simeon knew, in his Son, to which creation responds with thanksgiving knowing that soon pain, suffering, sin, and evil will be banished and all will be restored into the life of God. My friends it is this that marks us Christians out as distinct from the rest of humanity - our part in the great thanksgiving of all created things, a thanksgiving that knows that God will free the world from sin and it’s affects - sin that makes people lie, murder, cheat, abuse, and corrupt. As Christians, as children of God, our lives are a visible thanksgiving to God from the people of Leverstock Green for all that he gives us in Creation and all that he promises Creation in Christ - to be free from the power of sin. Secular humanity find it so hard to give thanks when they do not know whom they should be thanking, and very often can see nothing to be thankful for. My friends I believe our secular friends and neighbours need us. We must not let them down.

For those love but see no longer...

This afternoon we held our annual Service of Thanksgiving and Remembrance for the Departed. As usual it was a very moving affair. About 100 people in attendance and lots of very good feedback. One person commented how life was still hard since their bereavement, but services and occasions such as today made a real difference. Nice. Thanks be to God for he is good!

Below is the text for my sermon. The ending is missing, but you get a sense of where things are going. I am indebted to ideas from elsewhere for some of it. I also enclose some photos...

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(Based on Ps. 139:1-18 and John 14:1-6)

As bad as we may be feeling just now, there is a being, as the Psalmist wrote, a perfect Father, a God who knows us, understands us, sees us and is all around us on every side and who protects us with His power. What about the loved ones we remember today, we might ask? How was they protected?

The Psalmist continues: Your knowledge, of them and each one of us, is too deep. It is beyond understanding. Where could I go to escape from you? Where could I get away from your presence? If I went up to heaven, you would be there; if I lay down in the world of the dead, you would be there.Our loved ones, I believe are in God’s presence. They are still, and now completely, unassailably, protected with God’s power. They are out of harm’s way.

God the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ created every part of each of the people we come treasuring today. He put them together, them him before they was born, knew them, understood them, watched them all through their life, surrounded them (as he does all of us) on every side, protecting them (as he does us, if we wish it) with His power. That’s all good. But it had to end. There was suffering and death.

O God, how difficult we find your thoughts. How many of the them there are. We don’t understand all of them. We don’t agree with many of them. And we have to suffer losses like this. We have to see loved ones and friends in pain and we can’t fix them or make it go away. It hurts and we wish we could escape, run away, “beyond the east” cries the Psalmist, or to “the farthest place in the west.” We’d like to just go to sleep or take something so we can skip all the pain and anguish. But even if we could do that, the Psalmist says, when we awake, and wherever we try and hide, we are still with You.

Think of it: when those whom we remember today went to sleep sick, tired, weakened and when they awoke, an instant after, they were still, and even more wonderfully so, with God, Father, Son and Holy Spirit, with angels and all the host of heaven. But still it hurts.

“Don’t be worried and upset,” says Jesus in our Gospel passage. “Believe in God and believe also in me. There are many rooms in my Father’s house, and I am going to prepare a place for every one of you (if you want one). I would not tell you this if it were not so. And after I go and prepare a place for you, I will come back and take you to myself, so that you will be where I am.” Jesus mets each of us and takes him to Himself so we will be, with our loved ones, where Jesus is.

How can we know this? Because Jesus said, “I am the way, the truth and the life; no one goes to the Father except by me.” If we believe in God and in Jesus, and in so doing, we make and confirmed our reservation.

Those whom we remember today are fine. They each, by faith in God, have a room that Jesus picked out and prepared for them in his Father’s house. By faith, they are with Jesus in paradise. All their problems are solved and all their questions answered.

What about us who remain? How do we honour their memory? We’re upset and in pain. Things are feeling dark some days, maybe today, perhaps every day.

First, know that the darkest darkness is not dark for God. All He does, as the Psalmist wrote, is strange and wonderful. Despite the darkness of our loss, having those whom we love but see no longer in our lives for a time was wonderful. We can be thankful and enjoy that. God has not abandoned us.

Second, Jesus puts it quite simply: “Believe in God and believe also in me.” Believe what? That Jesus is the Son of God, who died on the cross for our sins and who rose from the dead, thereby securing one of those rooms He went on ahead to prepare one for each of us who would like to join him there.

Third, since the rooms are not an automatic entitlement, we must confirm the reservation. How? Well, to believe in Jesus is to follow Him—to do our best to live our lives the way He lived His and taught us to live ours. What’s the best environment in which to do that? As a member of His body of believers, the Church. That involves this book, the Bible, prayer, worship, sharing our money, serving others—it can be messy—the church of Jesus is not perfect yet—but it contains people loveable people. Kind people. Good dancers, who laugh and enjoy life and with whom you can hang out and with whom you can go out to dinner from time to time...

For us who remain, deciding to believe in Jesus and acting on it is not only the best way to get through our grief, but I suggest it is also the best way to honour those whom we come remembering today. For faith in Jesus assures of a life then with God for all eternity and with those whom we love.

But faith in Jesus Christ also assures us of a life now with God too, as Jesus reminds us that he is the way - God’s way leading us through life; Jesus reminds us that he is the truth - what he tells us about God we can take as true; Jesus reminds us that he is the life - a life in the now filled with peace and love and that a certainty that death is not the end. but a return to the loving arms of the God who created each one of us...