Sermon for February 2, 2020 - Feast of the Presentation - The Rev'd Elise A. Feyerherm

Malachi 3:1-4 - Psalm 84 - Hebrews 2:14-18 - Luke 2:22-40

Today is a significant feast day in the Christian calendar, though we don’t often celebrate it in church, for the simple reason that it doesn’t often fall on a Sunday. For some reason, the feast of the Presentation of Jesus in the temple hasn’t garnered much of a following, maybe because a much more popular feast has overtaken it in the polls – you know, the high feast of Groundhog Day.

So I was really excited – and Jeff and the other staff can confirm this – when I realized that we would get to celebrate the Presentation on a Sunday this year. It gives us an opportunity to experience a key moment in the liturgical year, a marker on our journey with Christ that helps us understand where we’re going and why we’re making this journey in the first place.

This feast used to be called “the Purification of Mary.” Luke tells us that the two doves offered by Mary and Joseph was part of the ritual of purification according to the law of Moses. Having stepped back from the hustle and bustle of their lives for forty days after the birth of a son, Jewish women returned to full engagement in society by coming to the temple for a rite of purification.

The concept of religious “purification” isn’t understood very well by the contemporary world – we tend to see the ideas of “pure” and “impure” as a matter of labeling people as good and evil in a moral sense, but it is not that at all. “Purity” in ancient Israel had to do with how fragile and broken humans honor the sheer otherness and transcendence of the Divine. Purity had to do with humans preparing themselves to encounter the utter and unimaginable Otherness of God, an Otherness that not even humans at their strongest could come face to face with and survive.

Certain activities or events or conditions – like touching a corpse, or giving birth – put a person in a state of impurity. Death, birth, reproductive cycles, disease, all these conditions bring to light how much humans are not God; they put our very creatureliness, our vulnerability, on display. These states of being meant that they could not enter the temple until that condition was ritually resolved and brought into balance. But – and I can’t emphasize this enough – it did not mean that they were sinful or condemned by God.

In the contemporary Anglican tradition, we call this feast not “Purification,” but “Presentation.” Jesus’ parents mark this momentous point in their lives by presenting their son in the epicenter of divine holiness in Israel. And they do this in two ways: they make a journey, and they offer sacrifice.

So today we begin our liturgy also with a journey, a procession – a parade of sorts. We tell the world and ourselves that this matters enough to get moving. We tell the world that we have something to take joy in.

Our procession today, you might have noticed, bears a distinct resemblance to another, perhaps more familiar, procession – that of Palm Sunday. Instead of palms, we bear candles to symbolize the light of Christ that will never be quenched. Just as our palms are blessed, so are the candles; and just as our palms adorn our homes until the following Lent, so also these candles will serve to adorn our tables, calling us to worship the Messiah who, before he was a teacher, healer, and martyr, was carried in his parents’ arms to be blessed in the temple.

There is another thread that binds these two processions, and that is the thread of offering and sacrifice. You will remember that although our Palm Sunday celebration begins with rejoicing, as Jesus, riding into Jerusalem, is hailed as King and Savior, our journey that day ultimately follows Jesus to the cross. So too, on this feast of the Presentation, we rejoice with Simeon and Anna that the Messiah has come, and yet are brought up short as Simeon tells Mary of the suffering that will come to her son, and to her: “and a sword will pierce your own soul too.” There is no joy without sacrifice, Simeon reminds us – even though we know that with God, joy will triumph.

In ancient Israel, the physical act of sacrifice in the Temple was central. The very idea of sacrifice may turn your stomach – you may have grown up with the idea that Jesus sacrificed himself on the cross to placate a vengeful, angry God who needed to punish someone in order for sinful humans to be forgiven and for the world to be set right again. Or perhaps you have experienced the idea of self-sacrifice as a weapon that has been used to keep women, people of color, and other marginalized groups in submission. I can understand if the idea of sacrifice doesn’t sit well. Let me assure you that our Church does not believe or teach any of this.

But scripture and Christian tradition won’t let us dismiss sacrifice out of hand – it is an important theme throughout the Bible, and if we take the time to wrestle with it, it might bring us into a deeper understanding of God and of our own vocation in this world.

The Jerusalem temple, from the time of Solomon until its destruction around 70 CE, was the center of Israel’s life. It was the symbol of God’s awesome and life-giving presence among them – the glory of God dwelt there, a source of strength and renewal and a reminder of the gifts and obligations of God’s covenant with Israel. As an embodiment of this unshakeable covenant, the people of Israel offered sacrifices day in and day out – grain, wine, oil, animals, and of course prayers. Most of these were thank-offerings – a response to God’s gracious gift of life and abundance. It wasn’t about placating an angry God – it was about gratitude. And as we know, gratitude is more profound when it is expressed – not just in words, but in deeds.

This is what Jesus’ parents are doing, forty days after his birth – they are showing their gratitude. They are offering sacrifice – a tangible sign of the holiness that their first-born son represents, a recognition that all we have comes from God. Yes, they could have stayed in Nazareth and been thankful in their own heads and hearts. But this journey – this procession – to the heart of Israel’s life with God – connects them with all of Israel, a community whose entire life together consists of living into (and not just thinking about) God’s call to them to be a light to the world. This is one of the ways that ritual sacrifice deepened and strengthened Israel’s religious and social life.

The feast of the Presentation is on the one hand a great celebration: the culmination of the celebration of the Incarnation. It’s the end of the Christmas season. If you were in St. Peter’s Square in Rome today, you would still see the Christmas tree and crèche scenes on display. And on the other hand, this feast insists on carrying us once again into the Paschal Mystery – the mystery of Christ’s suffering, death, and resurrection. The joy and wonder of an infant Jesus is placed in our hands, and at the same time a sword pierces our hearts, knowing that this infant is also God, a God who is willing to endure every pain and anguish along with us.

When we receive the Holy Eucharist today, we know in a way particular to this feast that our empty hands are cradling, as did Simeon’s, the God who has made every sacrifice to fill us with love and grace and healing. The Christ who is placed in our hands this day – and always – is that very Christ Jesus, as real and life-changing as on that day over two millennia ago.

No wonder, then, that we have such good news to share, a love that has been prepared in the presence of all peoples, and that is withheld from none. Thanks be to God.