THE PRESENTATION

Thursday, February 2, 2023

Christ Episcopal Church, Woodbury, N. J.

St. Luke 2:22-40

 

The Presentation of our Lord in the Temple, also known as the Purification of Saint Mary the Virgin, or Candlemas, concludes the annual Christmas cycle of holy days. The cycle begins on March 25th, with the Annunciation, nine months before the birth; and it concludes today, February 2nd, forty days after the birth. Along the way we celebrate Mary’s Visitation to Elizabeth on May 31st, John the Baptist’s birth on June 24th, the Lord’s Nativity on December 25th, and the Epiphany on January 6th.  

 

Each of these days highlights a different aspect of the mystery of the Incarnation. At the heart of the Christian faith is the good news that “the Word became flesh and dwelt among us”—that is, God the Son came down from heaven and took flesh to share in our humanity so that we in turn might share in his divinity.

 

At the Lord’s Presentation in the Temple, two figures stand out as representing Israel’s hopes and longings for the coming Messiah: Simeon and Anna. Simeon has received the promise that he shall see the Lord’s Anointed before he dies. When Mary and Joseph bring the infant Jesus into the Temple, Simeon recognizes by divine inspiration Simeon that this is the one.

 

In response, Simeon sings the song we know as the Nunc Dimittis: “Now lettest thou thy servant depart in peace, for mine eyes have seen thy salvation.” Jesus is the glory of God’s people Israel and a light to lighten the nations. These words give today’s celebration its essential character as a celebration of divine light and glory.

 

But there’s a dark side to what Simeon says next: “Behold, this child is set for the fall and rising of many in Israel, and for a sign that is spoken against, that thoughts out of many hearts may be revealed.” In other words, Christ’s coming is not all sweetness and light.

 

To understand what Simeon is saying, I think we can do no better than turn to the twentieth-century Swiss theologian Karl Barth. In his Commentary on Romans, published in 1919, Barth set forth what became known as the theology of crisis, and, more broadly, as Neo-Orthodoxy. Over and against the nineteenth-century liberal Protestant optimism cheerfully affirming an innate human capacity to build the kingdom of God on earth by means of progress in education, medicine, science, and technology, Barth and his associates uttered an emphatic “No!” 

 

Following the devastation and slaughter of the First World War, Barth insisted on God’s utter remoteness from a fallen world estranged by sin and rebellion. This infinite chasm between God and fallen humanity could never be bridged from the human side. But the good news was that God himself had bridged this unbridgeable gap by his Word, his Self-Revelation, given first to Israel in the Law and the Prophets, and then finally and definitively in Jesus Christ, the Word-made-flesh.

 

Confronted with the goodness and light of God’s Word, however, human beings experience a profound crisis. For God’s word comes initially as a word of judgment and condemnation. This encounter with the Word exposes our sin, wickedness, and rebellion so that we’re forced to decide whether to come to the light by confessing our sins, or to retreat further into the darkness by insisting on our own worthiness and self-sufficiency. 

 

When we confess our sins and cast ourselves on God’s mercy, however, his word of judgment miraculously transforms into a word of mercy, forgiveness, and affirmation. The paradox is that when we confess our unworthiness God makes us worthy; but when we insist on our worthiness, we dig ourselves deeper in and further estrange ourselves from God.

 

So, to return to Simeon in today’s Gospel, when Jesus brings God’s light into the world many are unable to bear it. The Incarnate Word stands as a sign of contradiction: those who prefer the darkness reject the light which exposes the world’s sins. His Word confronts each of us with the choice whether to accept or reject the truth about God and ourselves; and in so deciding we become our own judges, set either to fall or to rise, as we lay bare the secret thoughts of our innermost hearts.

 

Even more disturbing are Simeon’s words to Mary, “A sword will pierce through your own soul also.” This saying anticipates the sorrow and anguish that Mary will undergo as she witnesses her son dying on the cross: the result of human rejection of the Word-made-flesh. The light and glory that Jesus brings into the world has a price: one that he himself pays in his own blood, and one in which the Blessed Virgin Mary shares by her sorrow and desolation at the foot of the cross. It’s fitting that Candlemas often comes a few weeks before Ash Wednesday. Even as we recapitulate the joy and light of Christ’s Nativity, glance ahead along the road towards Calvary.

 

So, as we join in today’s joyful celebration, we remember the price Jesus pays to bring us his light and glory. His coming into the world confronts each of us with a decision. Simeon and Anna exemplify those who recognize and welcome him as the world’s salvation. We pray for the grace likewise to receive him as the light who lightens the nations and the glory of God’s people Israel.