Preached at St Mary’s, Potterne; Christ Church, Worton; Holy Cross, Seend; and Christ Church, Bulkington
Hebrews 2. 14-18; Luke 2. 22-40
“Because he himself was tested by what he suffered, he is able to help those who are being tested.”
Jacques Daret, The Presentation in the Temple (c. 1434-35), hangs in the Petit Palais, Paris.
I wonder how many of you know that 1990s hit song by Joan Osborne about God? You hear it on the radio quite often still, or playing in the supermarket when you do your shopping. It goes like this:
♫“What if God was one of us? Just a slob like one of us?”♪♫
I’m not sure the word slob is appropriate, but one thing that makes Christianity unique among religions is that Christians believe that God really was one of us. Maybe not a slob, but one who did all the normal human things, including going to the loo and blowing His nose, and sometimes being afraid, and being tempted to do things that were wrong.
“If God had a name”, Joan Osborne sang, “what would it be?”
For Christians, the God who was one of us did indeed have a name. That name is Jesus. And that means that like the rest of us, God had a family, and places where He grew up, and a language that He grew up speaking. He had a culture, and a religion—Jesus was a Jew. Some people are uncomfortable with the idea that God became someone of a particular nationality and religion, as if He should be above that kind of thing. If we think about it, however, had God came into the world without normal human ties and commitments, that would be an abstract concept, not a real human being.After all, while each of us is a human being first and foremost, we also each have our own culture and background and identity.
We’ll come back to all of that in a moment. But let’s kalso note that today is Candlemas. Candlemas is one of the nine most important days of the Christian year, but it’s hardly paid any attention to outside the Church. I bet you haven’t heard any Candlemas songs playing on Radio 2 or Magic FM, or seen any Candlemas chocolates for sale in the supermarket, or had anyone bring you round a nice bottle of wine for Candlemas.
So why is Candlemas so important in the Church’s year, and in the story of Jesus’ life? Candlemas is the day when we celebrate Mary and Joseph presenting Jesus in the Great Temple in Jerusalem, when He was forty days old. Two things stand out from today’s Gospel reading – Jesus’ Jewishness, and His importance for the whole human race.
In bringing Jesus to the Temple, Mary and Joseph were fulfilling Jewish law; while Christianity would go on to develop in very different directions from Judaism, Mary and Joseph were pious, God-fearing, Jews all their lives—as was Jesus Christ. When we decide to follow Jesus Christ, there are all sorts of things we should try to leave behind, negative habits and practices that encourage us to be selfish, or to be profane, or that lead us in spiritual directions that are alien to the Christian way. But we don’t need to leave behind our culture and identity, and we don’t need to leave behind good habits and practices that helped us to see God at work in the world even before we learned to trust that Jesus Christ was indeed God made human.
Simeon and Anna, pious Jews who in their old age spent their days in the Temple praising God, recognised that this baby was the fulfilment of the Jewish prophecy that God would send a Messiah to save them, because they were God’s chosen people.But Simeon saw something more—this child will be important for the whole human race; He would not only bring glory to the Jews, but reveal God’s truth to the rest of humanity.
Simeon said Jesus would be a light for revelation to the Gentiles, to the people who aren’t Jews: people like us. That’s probably the earliest use of the metaphor that Jesus is light entering a dark world. It’s probably for this reason that, gradually over many centuries, a custom developed of blessing candles on this day, and that’s where we get the term Candlemas from. But this special day isn’t really about candles. It celebrates two things we’ve already discussed – Mary and Joseph’s faithfulness to God’s commands, and Simeon recognising this child would bring light to the whole human race.
For this child, Jesus, was indeed God made one of us, who lived as one of us in every way except He did not sin. He could and did suffer and die like one of us—but because He was God, the source of all life, in dying He destroyed the power of death and opened the way to eternal life for all who put their trust in Him.
That’s what our first Bible reading tells us. It came from a letter written to a group of Jewish followers of Jesus about thirty years or so after His death and Resurrection. It makes much of the fact that it is precisely because Jesus was tested like us by the suffering that is an inevitable part of life, that He is able to help us when we are being put to the test. And it says something more than that: it says God came into the world in Jesus to free us from being “held in slavery by the fear of death”.
If we accept that Jesus was indeed God made one of us, then maybe we need to ask a different question from the one Joan Osborne asked in that song. Maybe we need to ask what it would be to live free from the fear of death, and to discover how much more full of joy and hope our lives could then become.
And now let glory and honour, dominion and power, be ascribed to God the Father who holds dominion over all; God the infant child in the Temple; and God the Holy Spirit who led Simeon to Jesus; as is most justly His due, now and forevermore. Amen.
