NOTES FOR REFLECTION

February 1                  NOTES FOR REFLECTION                         Candlemas

Texts: Malachi 3:1-5; Hebrews 2:14-18; Luke 2: 22-40

Theme:  The title of the Feast, “The Presentation of Jesus in the Temple”, is an obvious frontrunner this week, although it is rather wordy.  Continuing the theme of epiphany, we could go for “Revelation in the Temple” as a reasonable alternative.  I’m going for “The Law, the Prophets and the Holy Spirit”, for reasons that will become clear (I hope) shortly.

Introduction.  The trouble with St Luke’s one-off story is that there are no obvious link-in stories for use in the accompanying lessons.  Hence it’s a bit of a stretch to refer to the lesson from Malachi this week as “related” to the gospel.  Yes, I get the reference to the Lord coming to the Temple, but that could more easily connect with the so-called “cleansing” of the Temple.  Much of the rest of the lesson would seem to be more in keeping with Lent than with the Epiphany.  The second lesson, too, seems even less connected to the gospel than usual, with its emphasis on the Incarnation (Christmas) and Christ’s redeeming death (Passion).  Perhaps we are simply being reminded yet again that the Christian story is a whole package – we cannot break it down into self-contained pieces and expect them to make sense out of the context of the complete narrative.  St Luke’s masterful account of the Presentation in the Temple, drawing together the witness of the Law, the Prophets and the Holy Spirit, underlines this basic truth.

Background.  Trish and I spent last weekend in Wellington, our great capital city, where important buildings cluster together, housing important people who make big decisions of immediate and historical importance.  We walked past the Beehive and the rest of the Parliamentary Complex; we walked past the Supreme Court Building, still mysteriously shrouded in what appears to be an architectural cross between twisted scaffolding and dental braces; we walked past the Old Government Buildings, still, to my eye at least, the aesthetic gem in the whole area, with its own fascinating history, and now housing the University Law School; and, although we didn’t walk past it, we could see Parliament’s next-door neighbour, St Paul’s Cathedral, still frowning across the bottom of Hill Street, outshone, and largely ignored, by its more glamorous and powerful neighbours.

But we hadn’t gone to Wellingtonto mix with the powerful and the elite: we had gone to celebrate with people of real significance to us – family members.  On Saturday, with children (and their partners) and grandchildren we celebrated Trish’s birthday (a little late!); not in some expensive restaurant on the waterfront where people go to see and be seen, but in the cafe at Wellington Zoo!  A tour of the zoo in its modern form is a very humbling experience for those of us who like to believe that the human species is something special.  Most of the animals we were supposedly visiting were nowhere to be seen; like Elisha when Naaman dropped by, they couldn’t be bothered to come out to greet us.  Those that were visible either affected complete indifference to our presence (the baboons were particularly good at this, giving priority to nit-picking over any attempt at a simian powhiri), or tried to work out if we could be conned into giving them a choice morsel.  However, in body if not in spirit, from agouti to giraffes God’s creatures  were there (somewhere) as we celebrated Trish’s birthday.

The next day, Sunday, we didn’t make it to the cathedral or any other church; but we did attend a very important celebration – the third birthday of a grandchild.  Extended family and friends of the parents joined us, as was their custom.

We returned home on Monday, the 26^th, the day between the Feast of the Conversion of St Paul, and the 70^th anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz; we returned home from the capital city of New Zealand to Otago and our own little township of Waikouaiti, where (as far as I know), nobody of any great power and importance lives, although two of our residents won prizes in this year’s Robbie Burns Competition, and our neighbour had remembered to collect our mail and newspapers while we were away.  We returned to a garden even more parched than when we left, to fruit trees attacked by blackbirds and possums, and to a bathroom with water pressure so low having a shower is not for the faint-hearted or slow-footed.  But we were home, back to normality, and we were thankful – for safe travel, for family and friends, for neighbours, and for a place of our own in which to rest and reflect.  

And here was this story from St Luke waiting for me, to show me things that had never occurred to me before, not just about this story but about others we find in these early chapters.  Like the story of the census necessitating the uncomfortable journey to Bethlehem for the very pregnant Mary.  She wasn’t singled out, was she?  Joseph wasn’t singled out.  To the world at large they were just two people required to follow the same order as everyone else.  Their small lives took place within the big picture.  It was just one incidence of living in an occupied country.  It’s what happened to ordinary people trying to lead ordinary lives.  And, of course, it is one small illustration of the deep truth of the Incarnation.  There were no special rules or exemptions for the Mother of God.  Pregnant or not, it was the donkey or Shank’s pony for Mary.

This week’s story is along the same lines, but this time it is religious practice rather than lawful requirement that is at play, as St Luke, with great care for detail, makes clear.  The Holy Family travels to the capital city and enters the Temple, the seat of power for the Jewish people, where the powerful elite were to be found, priests, Levites, and their many functionaries and servants, and what Rome today would call the Curia.  Yet none of these are mentioned in the story – this small insignificant family gathering is of no concern to officialdom.  Only two elderly people are there to greet them with their strange, seemingly half-crazed utterances.  Only St Luke thought they were worth remembering, so much so that he gave us a short biography of each.  These, he is saying, were real people – they had personal histories, hopes and dreams.  Probably unknown to the chief priests, the elders, the scribes and all the other important people of the day, they were known to God, and God had taken them into his confidence, revealed to them great truths that amazed the child’s parents who thought they were simply following the religious requirements of the day.

“And when they had finished everything required by the law of the Lord, they returned to Galilee, to their own town of Nazareth.”  Back to normality.

Malachi 3:1-5.  In large part this is a “standard” Messianic prophesy, with the usual confusion surrounding the identity of the “messenger” (or, sometimes, “servant”).  The emphasis is on the “mixed blessing” of the Lord coming to the Temple/Israel/his people.  What seems like great news turns out to be heavy with danger, for the advent of the Lord is a time of refining, purifying, and ultimately judgment.  This passage is carefully structured to show the process, rather than the event, of the Lord’s coming, and to illustrate the good news/bad news nature of it.  He will be preceded by a messenger to prepare the way, and then the Lord “whom you seek will suddenly come to his temple”.  Who is this messenger? He is “the messenger of the covenant in whom you delight”.  So two ticks for the good news column.  But verses 2-4 bring the reality check: the people have to be purified before they can receive him.  Only then will he draw near to the people, and even then his coming will be a time of judgement.  [Notice how “Lenten” in tone this is.]  Perhaps the most striking verse of the passage is verse 5, with its list of potential offenders.  We might not be surprised to find sorcerers, adulterers and those who bear false witness on the list, but keep going.  Suddenly we find those who exploit workers, widows and orphans – AND “those who thrust aside the alien”.  Who saw that one coming?

Taking It Personally.

·        While we might think 40 days is quite long enough for Lent, this passage seems to be inviting us to start preparing for Lent now.  How might that work out for you?  What might you do by way of planning to make a deeper commitment to Lenten observance this year?

·        Is there something you would like your local faith community to offer during Lent?  This might be the time to raise the issue with your priest or Vestry.

·        Go slowly through verse 5.  Use it first as a personal spiritual stock-take.  Then widen your reflections to consider how the Church measures up.  How does the country measure up?

·        Is there anything you might do to promote the protection of workers, widows, orphans or “aliens” (migrants and refugees)?

Hebrews 2:14-18.  I haven’t checked but I suspect that this is one of those readings that turns up a few times in our annual lectionary.  It is a great summary of the significance of the Incarnation, and therefore it makes sense to have it fairly soon after Christmas.  It strikes me as providing the all-important link between Christmas and Good Friday.  Only if the man on the cross is God Incarnate does any of the Christian Story make sense: only in that case can Christ’s death and resurrection be seen as overcoming death.  And only if Christ is “fully human” (as the Creed proclaims) can he make the one perfect sacrifice for the sin of the world.  The author’s task, it seems to me, is to bring Christ down to earth (he came for us not for the angels) so that we can understand how it is that Christ can raise us up to God.

Taking It Personally.

·        The verse that always gets me in this passage is verse 15 – “and free those who all their lives were held in slavery by the fear of death”.  What do you make of it?

·        The only true response to this passage is surely praise and thanksgiving.  Pray accordingly.

Luke 2:22-40.  In these Notes a week or two ago I queried whether or not some of the biblical stories could be described, in the very modern vernacular, as “editorialised” or “overcooked”.  This one, I think, falls on the right side of that line.  It rings true; and that goes a long way to explaining its power.  St Luke has achieved in its telling a brilliant piece of theology in strictly narrative form.  At the heart of the story is the encounter between Mary and Joseph with Simeon.  How did this encounter come about?  Well, the Law guided the Holy Family to the Temple; the Holy Spirit ensured Simeon was there to meet them.  Moreover, each had a history – a God-infused history – which shows that this meeting was not pure happenstance.  We know of Mary’s preparation to become the bearer of the Christ-Child: St Luke tells us enough about Simeon’s past and character to see how he had been made ready for this day.  The Holy Spirit “rested on him”; he was righteous and devout; he believed in the promise of God for the future; and he had been personally assured by God that he would see the Lord’s Messiah before he died.  Now he is given eyes to see in this infant the fulfilment of that promise, and the words to speak prophetically of all that was to come about through this child.  Telling this story this way is St Luke’s version of the theological truth that the Holy Spirit, the Law and the Prophets all testify to the true identity of Christ.  The only response to such a truth is to break out in praise and thanksgiving, as Simeon does, seconded by Anna.

Taking It Personally.

·        Mary and Joseph are guided by the Law; Simeon by the Holy Spirit.  What do you make of that?

·        What connections (or echoes) can you find between this story, the Christmas story, and the Passion of Christ?

·        Meditate on verses 34 and 35.  Ask the Holy Spirit to guide you into understanding how these verses apply to you.  End in praise and thanksgiving.