Presentation of Jesus Christ in the Temple - February 2

The story we heard from Luke's gospel today depicts a tender scene with Jesus, his parents and two elderly people in the Temple.  We celebrate it as the Feast of the Presentation, 40 days after Jesus' birth.  Since Christmas is a fixed feast, always on December 25th, so too is the Feast of the Presentation. It's always on February 2 and must be celebrated on that day.  But if it falls on a Sunday, our prayerbook specifies that it takes precedence over and replaces the replaces the readings of whatever Sunday after Epiphany it would have been.  In other words, we are celebrating this feast today which was last celebrated on a Sunday in 2003 and won't be celebrated again on a Sunday again until 2020--at which time I expect you will hear a sermon by a different priest.

Luke takes great care in the first two chapters of his gospel to set the Incarnation--God made man in Jesus--in contexts that show Jesus' birth and early days as the working out of God's plan of salvation.  First, God promises a child to Zechariah and Elizabeth who will be "filled with the Holy Spirit" and "make a people prepared for the Lord."  That, of course, is John, the Baptizer.  Next, then God's messenger, Gabriel, visits Mary to tell her God favors her and to ask her to be Jesus' mother.  Then Mary and Elizabeth meet, and Elizabeth identifies Mary's baby as her Lord, saying, "And why has this happened to me, that the mother of my Lord comes to me?". Mary responds with the words of praise we call the Magnificat:  "My soul magnifies the Lord and my spirit rejoices in God my Savior . . ."

Then both John and Jesus are born.  When John is born, Zechariah is able to speak again and is reported by Luke as uttering a song of praise to God as well.  We call it the Benedictus Dominus Deus (the Latin words that begin the song): "Blessed be The Lord, the God of Israel; he has come to his people and set them free," is the translation in our prayerbook.  Then Jesus is born and God's messengers, the heavenly host, praise God with these words: "Glory to God in the highest heaven, and on earth peace among those whom he favors."  And finally the shepherd go to see Jesus, and Luke reports that they returned to their sheep, "glorifying and praising God for all they had heard and seen . . ."

We are seeing a pattern here, aren't we?  This young child elicits praise to God for what people believe they see happening.  God has acted as the prophets have long promised.  Mary said it well: "[God] has helped his servant Israel, according to the promise he made to our ancestors, to Abraham and to his descendants forever."

Unlike Matthew, Luke does not say that Mary, Joseph and Jesus fled to Egypt.  These two gospels have a rather frustrating way of seeing different parts of this story as important.  We think that Matthew and Luke used material that was passed along by oral tradition or contained in other sources, including Mark's gospel. But they certainly contain very, very different emphases. 

Luke has two more events, one from Jesus' infancy and another from his early years, that follow the pattern we have noticed of Jesus' evoking praise to or, in the latter case, amazement at his understanding of holy scripture.

Let use our imaginations to enter the scene I read just a few minutes ago to better understand this next to the last story in Luke's narrative of Jesus' early life. It has elements that may be quite common to our own experiences, and perhaps by examining it we can better understand the meaning of Jesus' coming to live as one of us and be able to praise God more fully as a result.

Imagine you are there in the Temple and you see Mary and Joseph enter with a baby in their arms, so tiny, not even two months old. What does that baby look like?  I remember asking my son what J---- looked like when he first saw him, but before I had seen him, and my son said, "Well, he looks like a baby."  Cute and vulnerable might be two adjectives that come to mind, but immediately your attention becomes focused in this child. 

There is something more than cute and vulnerable, but you can't quite articulate what it is--but you keep looking.  Out of the corner of your eye you see Simeon, righteous, devout, spiritual.  He takes the baby from the parents.  He holds the tiny child so tenderly and begins to praise God for allowing him to see the child who is to be the salvation of all, a light of revelation to the Gentiles and the glory of Israel.  Joseph and Mary look almost startled, yet eager as Simeon blesses them. But they are perplexed again when he prophesies that a sword will pierce Mary's soul. Then another elderly person, Anna, comes over.  What authority she has, because she has devoted herself to praying and fasting at the Temple after she was widowed at a young age. Upon seeing Jesus, she begins to praise God and declare to all who could hear her that this child would redeem Jerusalem. You want to touch the child, but Simeon hands him back to his parents and they turn and walk out of the Temple. You have seen a glimpse of God's glory, and you will never forget it.

Our imaginations have given us an experience that may very close to what happens at an infant's baptism, I think.  For the joy and gratitude we experience in that moment--joy for that particular child's birth and gratitude for new life as God's gift to us--reveals God's glory, perhaps only a short moment, but truly reveals it.  As Simeon and Anna did, our response must be one of praise: "for my eyes have seen your salvation . . . “   Yes, infant baptism testifies to God's grace in all its mystery, in all its glory.  The child does not understand what is happening; but we who are witnesses find in that moment God has revealed God's self, and we will not ever forget it.