A Sermon Preached at St. Georges Madrid by The Reverend Canon - PDF document

A Sermon Preached at St. George’s Madrid by The Reverend Canon John W. Kilgore, M.D. 2 February 2020 The Presentation of Our Lord Malachi 3: 1-4 Hebrews 2: 14-18 Luke 2: 22-40 Psalm 84 “For my eyes have seen your salvation, which you have prepared in the presence of all peoples, a light for revelation to the Gentiles and for glory to your people Israel.” Today is the Feast of the Presentation of Our Lord, also called Candlemas, Presentation of the Lord (by Catholics), and The Meeting (by the Orthodox) indicating the meeting of Simeon and the Messiah. It is one of the earliest festivals of the church. In the 4th century there was a pilgrim named Egeria who traveled throughout the Holy Land and chronicled the religious practices of the day. Much of what we know about the practices of early Christians is thanks to Egeria and her writings of her travels. She writes that the early Christians had been observing this as a festival for a long time. And in 542 Justinian in Constantinople ordered that it be observed as an official feast of the Church. The Feast of the Presentation of Our Lord commemorates the purification of the Virgin Mary forty days after the birth of Jesus. According to Mosaic Law (in Exodus 13) the firstborn male was to be consecrated as ‘holy to the Lord.’ The rules in Leviticus specify that after the birth of a son, the mother is ceremonially unclean for seven days until the circumcision, and then remains at home another thirty-three days. On the fortieth day she is to present the son to the priest in the temple and offer a sacrifice. In this case two turtledoves. So Mary and Joseph, observant Jews, have yet one more thing to do! Imagine Joseph; he has been through a lot. Engaged to be married he then finds out that his fiancé is pregnant, has a dream where God tells him it is OK, there is a taxation and they have to go to Bethlehem where there is no place to stay. They lodge in an inn and when the child is born angels appear and wise men, strangers from the East come to visit. Joseph is waiting for life to settle down to a dull roar and they have to go to the temple in Jerusalem to comply with Jewish law. And then this happens. Simeon, an old man, ‘upon whom the Holy Spirit rested’ has spent his entire life in the temple in prayerful worshipful obedience. He is faithfully, regularly there, getting old, and waiting for the Messiah to appear. For Simeon has been told by the Holy Spirit that he would not see death before he had seen the Lord’s Messiah. He has been waiting a long time and is probably beginning to wonder if he has interpreted the message correctly. Joseph and Mary bring the infant Jesus in and something mystical happens. Simeon knows, knows , that this is the

Messiah. He is overwhelmed and exclaims the words that we know as the Song of Simeon, nicely enshrined in our service of Evening Prayer - “Lord now lettest thou thy servant depart in peace according to thy word, for mine eyes have seen thy salvation which thou hast prepared for the face of all people. To be a light to lighten the gentiles and to be the glory of thy people Israel.” So this was one of the first proclamations of Jesus as the Messiah. It would be another thirty years or so before John the Baptist gives his cry in the wilderness proclaiming Jesus as the Messiah, the anointed one. A long wait. So why do we celebrate it on this date? The second of February. Well, it is forty days after Christmas the day we celebrate the birth of Jesus. So we are emulating the forty day wait that Joseph and Mary had. And why did it come to be a big celebration and to be called Candle Mass? Many Anglican and Catholic churches will have a Solemn Evensong with incense, chanting of the Nuns Dimittis, and blessing of the candles used during the year. The solemn processions symbolize the entry of Christ, the Light of the World, into the Temple of Jerusalem. As early as the 7th century the celebration included a procession with candles and the singing of the Nunc Dimittis . Particularly in the northern countries where the light of spring was just returning it made sense to make it a special tradition. And the tradition grew up that good weather at Candlemas was considered an indication that more severe weather was expected for at least another forty days; and cloudy rainy conditions meant that winter was nearly over. Also according to tradition bears, after sleeping for the winter and waiting on warm weather, are expected to come out of hibernation to check out the weather on this day. Thus the origin of this day as Groundhog Day. Punxsutawny Phil in Punxsutawney, Pennsylvania will be featured on TV this day in the US. They make a big celebration of it! They wait to see if the groundhog will see his shadow… All back to this tradition of The Feast of the Presentation, Candlemas. The forty day wait for the purification. Waiting is important and we see many examples of waiting in the Bible. Simeon waiting in the temple all those years. Joseph waiting for life to settle down. Abraham and Sara waiting until their old age to have their son. The Israelites in the desert for forty years. Waiting on the Messiah. The Jewish people are still waiting for the Messiah. Line from Fiddler on the Roof. We aren’t very good at waiting. Our lives are so very busy. Everything is instant, especially today with email, cell phones, Instagram, texting, Facebook, 24 hour news. We hardly wait at all. And when we do we oh so often multi-task. Yet our spiritual lives are called to be lives of waiting. Because our culture is always in a hurry, waiting is usually regarded as a waste of time. Synthesis, a religious writing source that I read says, ‘Waiting is the empty space between where we are and where we want to be. But consider, during winter the world rests and waits. The plants are quiescent and the fields are dormant. Yet that is not a time of nothing happening. Recharging, preparing, readying for springtime are occurring although it seems like nothing is happening. We wait nine months for a baby to be born. Henri Nouwen, that great 20th century theologian, has written, “The spiritual life is a life in which we wait, actively present to the moment, trusting that new things will happen to us, new things that are far beyond our own imagination, fantasy, or prediction. That, indeed, is a very radical stance towards life in a world preoccupied with control.” Archbishop David

Moxon, Prjmate of New Zealand Aoretea and Polynesia says that God takes steps a decade at at a time. That’s why things seem slow to us. God’s time is different than our time. And Simon Weil, author of Night , the great inspirational book about the horrors of the concentration camps in World War II has written, “Waiting patiently in expectation is the foundation of the spiritual life.” Waiting, slowing down, giving God some time. When have we done that recently? Perhaps those times of waiting that we encounter every single day can be a time of reflection, pondering, consideration, and prayer, communicating with God. How do you use your waiting time? May we live into waiting as a foundation for our own spiritual lives. Amen. (Extra quote if needed…) Waiting for God is not laziness. Waiting for God is not going to sleep. Waiting for God is not the abandonment of effort. Waiting for God means, first, activity under command; second, readiness for any new command that may come; third, the ability to do nothing until the command is given. G. Campbell Morgan