Within the Episcopal Church we have have seven principal feasts. This is the kind of thing you have people learn when they are in confirmation class. Most people can come up with Easter and Christmas. We also have All Saints’ Day, Pentecost and Epiphany. I claim the last two are the tough ones – Ascension Day and Trinity Sunday. For those of you who grew up in the Roman Catholic Church, these are a little like Holy Days of Obligation for us.
Easter, Pentecost and Trinity Sunday always fall on Sundays. Christmas and Epiphany are fixed days, so they fall on a specific day on the calendar. Ascension Day is always a Thursday because it falls 40 days after Easter. All Saints’ is always a fixed day – November 1, and it is the only one that can be moved to a Sunday if it does not fall on one.
There are also Feasts of our Lord – Holy Name, the Presentation, and the Transfiguration. If these fall on a Sunday, they are observed Sunday, but otherwise they stay on their own day. There are also cultural feast days, and I suppose Superbowl Sunday is one of those in the United States.
The Feast of the Presentation occurs every year on February 2nd. It is exactly 40 days after Christmas. The law of Moses required that a woman go to the temple on the 40th day after giving birth. She would make a sacrifice and be “purified” by that rite. This day in Scripture is an important day in the life of our Lord because it is the day that Jesus is brought to the temple and recognized as the Savior by Simeon and Anna.
The Presentation is also known as Candlemas, and it is a day that candles are traditionally blessed. You might be amused to know that historically there was a 40 day celebration of the Incarnation after Christmas, and that all Christmas decorations had to come down by February 1. A 17th century poet Robert Herrick wrote a poem called “Ceremony Upon Candlemas Eve”
“Down with the rosemary, and so
Down with the bays and misletoe ;
Down with the holly, ivy, all,
Wherewith ye dress’d the Christmas Hall.”
I am happy to report that we have taken down the Christmas decorations at St. Thomas, so we are good. If any of you have lights still up, it is finally time to get out the boxes and the ladder I guess.
Our Gospel reading today is taken from Luke’s description of Mary going to the temple to be purified and presenting Jesus there. They would have brought with them a pair of turtledoves to offer as a sacrifice.
But what happens at the Temple is nothing short of miraculous.
Two prophets encounter Jesus and understand there is something special about him.
First, there’s Simeon.
Simeon, we are told, was righteous and devout. And he had been told by the Holy Spirit that he would not see death before he had seen the Messiah.
You can imagine his plight. The older he got, the more he likely asked, “Is this the one?” of every person he encountered. “Is today the day?” And the answer must have been “No, not today” a thousand times over.
But on this day, he takes the infant Jesus into his arms and sings:
“Lord, now lettest thou thy servant depart in peace
according to thy word.
For mine eyes have seen thy salvation,
which thou hast prepared
before the face of all people;
to be a light to lighten the Gentiles
and to be the glory of thy people Israel.”
It is, of course, a canticle known to us as the Song of Simeon at Evening Prayer. It is also a prophecy. Simeon says, basically: Today I have seen my salvation, my Lord, my Savior. God has made this appearance for the glory of his people.
We are told that Mary and Joseph were amazed. Jesus was not yet 6 weeks old. They had survived encounters with angels, shepherds praising God, wise ones from the east bearing gifts, and dreams that caused them to escape into Egypt. They have been busy (as if parents of a newborn are not busy enough already).
Just in case they still had doubts about just exactly who Jesus was to them and the world, there’s another prophet, Anna.
We are told she had lived 84 years. This was a venerable age in first-century Palestine. She prayed and fasted in the Temple night and day.
But on this day, she noticed that something was different. She finds Mary and Joseph and the baby and begins to tell about him. “Praise be to God,” she may have said, “for this truly is the redeemer of the world.”
So we have a story about waiting, a story about watching, and a story about discovery.
Like Simeon and Anna we are waiting for the day to come, for the savior to appear, for all things to be put right.
God revealed Jesus to Simeon and Anna. He reveals Jesus to us as well. Like the prophet Simeon, we yearn for the coming of the Messiah. We want everything in this world to be put right. We want the hungry to be fed and the prisoners to be set free. We want the sick to be healed.
Like the prophet Anna, we hope that our prayer and sacrifice and faithfulness will be fulfilled.
And so, we believe.
We believe because we are tired of waiting.
We believe because we are weary of watching.
And we believe because we have discovered the truth.
The hard truth of Christmas and the Incarnation is summed up nicely in a poem by Howard Thurman, a mentor for Martin Luther King and a faculty member at Boston University.
“After the prophets have spoken,
When the song of the angels is stilled,
When the star in the sky is gone,
When the kings and princes are home,
When the shepherds are back with their flock,
The work of Christmas begins:
To find the lost,
To heal the broken,
To feed the hungry,
To release the prisoner,
To rebuild the nations,
To bring peace among people,
To make music in the heart.”
Christmas is over however you look at it. We have celebrated the birth of Christ and the Incarnation. Now is is time to get to work in the fields of the Lord, for the “harvest is plentiful and the laborers are few.”
Let us work, pray and give to make it so.
I have said these words in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit. Amen
Sermon preached by Fr. Tom at St. Thomas, Plymouth
February 1, 2015; Fourth Sunday after Epiphany
Malachi 3:1-4
Psalm 84
Hebrews 2:14-18
Luke 2:22-40