February 2: Presentation of Our Lord; Candlemas

Feast of the Presentation

Sunday, February 2, 2014

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

As one theologian puts it, Simeon and Anna from today’s Gospel are a welcoming people of God; they are authentic people of God.

I have long admired Simeon and Anna, but this description of them as the welcoming, authentic people of God made me look again at their actions and what we know about them. What causes them to be identified by the very label that I yearn to share: the welcoming and authentic people of God?

Simeon and Anna have been living their lives founded on a promise---the promise of salvation and redemption provided by the Messiah—God’s Chosen and Anointed One.

Their lives, lived in a vastly different cultural context than ours, are not so different in the circumstances.  Just like us, they lived in a time of political upheaval.  A time when just a few people held the bulk of the riches while the majority struggled simply to put food on the table and to keep a shelter over their heads.  One could make an argument that Simeon and Anna lived in a time when 1% enjoyed luxurious riches while 99% simply strove to live. 

Like us, Simeon and Anna saw people around them die too young.  They saw corruption and injustice.  They were witnesses to natural and man-made tragedy. 

And yet, through it all, Simeon and Anna maintain the light.  The light of hope and faith that is born in God’s promise of salvation. Scripture tells us that the Holy Spirit rested on Simeon while Anna lived a life devoted to the praise and worship of God.  Their lives were focused and guided. They believed.  They believed in their hearts, and their belief extended to their actions.  Even though the world around them may have ignored the reality of God’s Kingdom, they chose to live as citizens of that Kingdom.  And by doing so, they were empowered to live with hope-filled expectancy.

Expectancy, not expectations.  Expectations install limits and boundaries.  All too often our prayers to God are filled with expectations---we tell God how our life should unfold, what the answers to our problems look like, just exactly what it is that God should be doing for us.  We pray with expectation instead of praying with expectancy---the expectancy that God does desire to grant us the life that meets our deepest desires, a life that is best for us.  The expectancy that God will indeed see to it that we get the very things we need instead of demanding, through expectations, that God grant us what we want.

A prayer of expectancy, on the other hand, sounds like this:  God, may your will be done.  And this, my friends, is a prayer that works in any and every situation. It is a prayer that can free us from fear and doubt and anxiety---if only we can learn to trust and believe in this prayer and its certain answer.

From Simeon and Anna we learn that if we soak up the Holy Spirit, if we become vulnerable to the Spirit’s movement within us and around us, we too can live lives with this hope-filled expectancy that God will provide, God will remain steadfast, God will redeem every painful situation and suffering that life hands us, God will forgive every downfall and error we make.

Simeon and Anna live lives of devotion. They live lives of offering---offering themselves to God to be shaped and formed---and thereby became the very offering God desires of us---a pure heart.

Purity in the Hebrew world means to be undivided.  Yes, it is about cleansing, but cleansing in the sense of restoring one to the state of its original essence. Purity is about removing the non-essential and restoring the essential---the essence of one’s being. A pure heart is a heart with one loyalty and one focus: to worship God with one’s very life.

To have a pure heart requires that we know our essence--that we know, without a doubt, that we are made in God’s image and we are God’s.  Today’s feast day—the presentation of our Lord at the temple---is the day which marks Mary and Joseph bringing their firstborn son, 40 days after his birth, to the temple in order to “buy back” their son from God.  This ritual is about recognizing that their child does not belong to them; this child—and every child--belongs to God.  This ritual recognizes our essential truth: we belong to God.  Not to our parents, our spouses, our family, or our selves.  We are God’s.  God is our essence.

In our collect today we pray that “we may be presented to [God] with pure and clean hearts.”  This means we must be willing to remove from our hearts anything that is not of our essence---not of God.  Life has a way of encouraging us to consume and accept nonessentials as essentials.  Life has a way of convincing us that more is better.  Life shouts at us that we are better and worthier if we are: more rich or more powerful or more beautiful or more recognized or more titled or more degreed or more normal….whatever that is.   

But, if we devote more time and energy to focus and pay attention to our essence---when we listen to God’s whispers---we learn that our core truth and value lie in how we treat one another.  How we stand in solidarity with those in need; how we love God by loving others because we put their needs in front of our wants, and how we seek the common good, not simply our individual good.  Our essence comes down to those two great commandments: Love the Lord your God and Love your neighbor.  This is our essence; this is who we are.  Our purity comes from living this command intentionally and deliberately.

Pure hearts empower us to recognize God’s essence in the world around us---in people, in Creation, in actions and thoughts and words.  In justice and peace and equality and equity.  In worship and devotion.  In community and individuals.  And then, not only to recognize, but to do whatever it takes to increase the volume of God’s essence within us and around us---transforming the world’s Kingdom into God’s Kingdom.  And all because we live and move from the state of hopeful expectancy that God will indeed get what God desires and we have a part to play in this redemption.

Today we meet Simeon and Anna---from such as these Jesus calls together the many to become the authentic people of God.  The welcoming people of God who don’t hold expectations of what God’s people look and act like.  People who don’t expect to be able to discern the difference between those who are in and those who are out—between the us and the them.  Instead, the authentic people of God recognize God working in their midst—through the gifts of all people, for all people are gifted and loved by God.

Authentic and welcoming people of God recognize that we are all made of the same original essence---the light of God burning within us---the love of God making up our DNA---the very blood and flesh of God changing us from broken into whole.

Simeon and Anna, like Mary before them, recognize the wider significance of Jesus to the whole world---because that’s what the welcoming and authentic people of God do---we recognize that God, that Christianity, isn’t something we own or dole out to the worthy.  God, and this way of life that flows from God, belongs to all Creation in order that all Creation will be restored to its original essence---made in God’s image, by God’s hands, for God’s good pleasure. 

Matthew 5:16 in the Message says it like this:

“Here’s another way to put it: You’re here to be light, bringing out the God-colors in the world. God is not a secret to be kept. We’re going public with this, as public as a city on a hill. If I make you light-bearers, you don’t think I’m going to hide you under a bucket, do you? I’m putting you on a light stand. Now that I’ve put you there on a hilltop, on a light stand—shine! Keep open house; be generous with your lives. By opening up to others, you’ll prompt people to open up with God, this generous Father in heaven.

God created because God loves.  God created because God desires to be in relationship with the created.  That, my friends, is Good News on which we can build a life of hope-filled expectancy, a life of light.  Light that cannot be overcome by the darkness.