Love, Joy Peace! Today’s sermon is about Love, Joy, Peace.
The Holy Family, Joseph, Mary, Jesus come to the temple in Jerusalem. Its just a five mile walk north from Bethlehem. Jesus is 40 days old. He’s had his naming and circumcision ceremony already. But this is an important ceremony to bring the baby Jesus to the temple. Actually this presentation is less to do with the baby, and more to do with the Mother.
There’s a service in our old Book of Common Prayer – a service written in the late 1600s called the Churching of Women – and it is the equivalent of this ceremony – and there you will find prayers of thanks and gratitude that the child is alive and that the mother survived.
We see love in this Holy Family, we see Love in the gift of Jesus to Simeon and Anna as the Light of the World comes close to them.
In the midst of all the wonderful things that come next, Simeon finds himself prophesying that not everyone will take kindly to Jesus, not everyone will like His teaching and preaching and challenges and miracles. And then Simeon says to Mary – and a sword will pierce your own soul too. A sword will pierce your own soul too.
I have often read that phrase as being distinctly unique to Mary the Mother of our Lord, Theotokos, the God bearer – this sword, this pain, this is unique to you. But I don’t think it is. A lot of you have seen your children go through difficult times, life has been hard and harsh to them, you’ve done your best to support, but you’re not the messiah, and it hurts when your children – get bullied at school, lose their job, their marriage breaks up, – a sword pierces your own soul –
Ah Mary did you know that your baby boy would one day walk on water – wonderful song – No. Mary did not know that sort of detail. But I suspect that having had that conversation with Angel Gabriel, Joseph having had his dream conversation with Gabriel, and having seen the Shepherds come running in to tell her about their experience of the angelic choir – Yes I suspect that she was beginning to suspect these sort of things might be possible.
And I suspect that she had an inkling that she might live to see him die. The Magi will confirm this with their gift of Myrrh, Herod will frighten them into Egypt, but it wont be for many years before Simeon’s prophecy, as proclaimed 800 years earlier by Isaiah, will come to fruition.
Those of you who have lived long enough to have seen your children suffer, you know something of Mary’s pain. Those of you who have seen your own children die, you know quite a bit of Mary’s pain. What I’d like you to know is the love that both holds Mary, and brings her through this pain – but also the love that is, really, the cause of this pain. This sort of pain doesn’t readily go away. If you didn’t love, it wouldn’t hurt. And Mary is full of God’s love as she holds and cuddles baby Jesus.
So I invite you, whatever pain you’re carrying, to draw close to God’s love, to know you’re held and loved.
Love, Joy, and Peace.
Anna – she’s 84 – Luke wants you to know that – She’s not as old as the martyr Polycarp who declares that he’s been following Jesus for 86 years and isn’t about to renounce his faith. So hurrah for People like Anna, those wonderful welcomers, who sit here in the Church to keep it open for people to come in and find a little quiet, a candle, a prayer, some company. Hurrah for you. You are the Anna’s and Simeon’s of today. Keep at it, We need a few more of you.
She has faith, but note that when she encounters Jesus, when she has her epiphany, her conversion moment, that the result is Joy. She’s filled with a thankful heart and speaks out of her joy that just bubbles over.
Last week I talked about Saul. His encounter with Jesus was a little different. Knocked to the ground, blinded for three days until brave Ananias came and baptised him. We all like his conversion story. But here’s a conversion story, where a woman of faith has her faith lifted to a new and different plane by this encounter with Jesus. She’s filled with joy. Her conversion story is quite different to Saul’s.
And note that this miracle comes quite unexpectedly. There’s no Angel choir, no Surprisingly smelly Shepherds with their sheep. This epiphany comes to Anna on a very ordinary Tuesday. Joseph Mary and Jesus have come to the temple basically to do some paperwork. This is a dull very ordinary mundane moment. But God shows up in this ordinary space through the nudging of the Holy Spirit.
There’s a challenge to us here to be open to God surprising us through strangers, through a mundane moment, through ordinary rota paperwork stuff, and here’s God keen to be cuddled and to cuddle you!
Ah, Love Joy and Peace – Today’s sermon is about drawing close to God’s love, about being open to being surprised by God’s Joy, And Peace.
Simeon. He’s been waiting. Saul was persecuting, breathing our murderous threats when Jesus came to him but Simeon is just waiting. Not so unlike Anna – Anna is enjoying the moment. When Saul encountered Jesus his faith took quite a shaking and reorienting. When Anna encountered Jesus her faith got filled with joy. When Simeon encountered Jesus – his conversion story is different again – here we have someone who sighs and breathes deeply and says I’m home. I’m home. In this child. I’m home.
The world is still a mess and all wrong, Caesars and Oppressive armies and wars and taxes and diseases and trouble and strife – they still exist. The Kingdom of God has not been fulfilled. But here’s Simeon, holding Jesus, and he says – I’m home. I’m complete. I’m content. I’m ready to go, I’m ready to die.
We don’t know his age – which might mean that he’s younger than Anna – I like that idea. Anna is described by Luke as Very Old – and 84 back then yes that would have been really really old. Of course today, 84 is basically what we used to call 60.
But Simeon seems tired. His big prayer is for God to come and console Israel, comfort God’s chosen people, to remember and bring in His kindness. Simeon is in need of that consoling spirit that brings healing, restoration and justice.
He looks at the world and sees the injustice and wants God to not just do good things for his people, for Simeon’s people, but here at last is the Light of the World. This is God’s good news for all people. Light for everyone, even doubters, even the burned out, not just light for the religious, the insiders, the morally sorted. But here in this baby Jesus is God presence, showing that they, we, you, are not forgotten.
We need a little more Love Joy Peace in our lives – today’s reading encourages that God comes to each of us differently but that as we draw close to God that some Love Joy and Peace are to be received – in worship, the sacrament, prayer, in company and fellowship and support.
Simeon has struggled over the years and has come to practice that discipline of purposeful prayerful waiting. He keeps showing up. He keeps calling on God. He’s looking for Light, not just Good News for him, but a Salvation that is open to All People. And now here in his encounter with Jesus he finds peace, he finds he is home.
Anna discovers God in the mundane ordinariness of this moment- and Jesus adds to her faith a joy and praise and thanksgiving –
Peace Joy and Love – Mary is surrounded by the love of Jesus, filled with the love of Jesus, and she will need that over the next 33 years. I pray that you wont need it, the way that Mary did.
But I do pray that we will each weekly, daily, refresh our faith in Jesus, encounter Jesus in each other, in prayer and worship, and in doing so find the gift that He longs to give to each of us. His Light, shining in our darkness, and filling us with His Love, His Joy, His Peace. Amen.
a sermon for 1st February – Candlemas – Celebration of Presentation of Christ in the Temple