A Sermon preached by the Rev. Michael Anderson Bullock
[Malachi 3:1-4; Hebrews 2:14-18; Luke 2:22-40]
Question: What were you doing forty days ago? Here’s the answer. In some manner or form, you were celebrating Christmas Day, most likely opening presents – or at least enjoying them -- at this very hour. Now, how do I know this? (Singing the refrain from Santa Claus is coming to Town – “He knows when you are sleeping; he knows when you’re awake. He knows when you’ve been bad or good. So be good for goodness’ sake…”)
No, not this source of awareness. I know this by virtue of paying attention to the liturgical calendar and the biblical and spiritual traditions it shelters. For the Second of February is the “fortieth” day after Christmas; and the tradition marks this occasion as “The Presentation of our Lord Jesus Christ in the Temple”. The liturgical tradition also refers to this day as “Candlemas”, something that our Sunday School students will help us experience later in our worship. And in the days of yore, February 2nd was also known as the “Purification of Mary”. [N.B. The Prayer Book of 1662 was the first of the Anglican Prayer Books to use our present day, “Presentation” terminology. The 1549, 1552, and 1559 Prayer Books all called this day “The Purification of the Blessed Virgin Mary”1. More in a moment on this issue of “purification.]
Needless to say, there is a lot going on today. Nonetheless and as always, the question is: What does it all have to do with us? More specifically, how does all this traditional biblical and spiritual content clarify what it means for us to follow Jesus and represent our Lord in the world?
In my estimation, there is one word that zeroes in on what this liturgical occasion is about. That word is “redemption”. And it is through the witness of Simeon and Anna that “redemption” emerges in terms of what is actually being “Presented” on this day.
According to the gospel from Luke, two aged figures testify to the “redemption” at work in the “Presentation” of the infant Jesus. Luke informs us that Anna and Simeon have lived faithfully among the Jerusalem Temple precincts and living the prayers it housed. Both have been waiting in the promise of God’s Messiah and longing for the “redemption” of Jerusalem. (2:38). Mary and Joseph had come to the Temple in observance of the Mosaic Law, articulated in Exodus 13. They came to give thanks for the birth of their first-born son and also to mark Mary’s purification after giving birth, in the manner expressed in Leviticus 12. And now is a time to pause briefly and pay attention to Mary’s “purification” – something we liberated folks tend to roll our eyes at.
The Levitical law required that women undergo a period of “purification” after sex, childbirth, menstruation, or after necessary acts of kindness and charity involving the sick or the deceased.2 Despite the historical weight of interpretation (both in Hebrew society as well as in our own culture), the need for “purification” was not meant as a stigma or marginalization of women in terms of “uncleanness” or lack of “purity”. At its essential core (a core that has been easily lost in a male dominated perspective), “purification” was a ritualized response to events that were a necessary and often positive part of life.3 Specifically, “purification” was a recognition that in these threshold experiences, the woman had encountered the border between life and death; and that through the rite of “purification” she was brought back to the normal state of affairs and human order.
In this context of “purification”, the word “liminal” applies to identify that mysterious point of transition, where one human foot is in the imminent vulnerability of death and the other human foot in the province of conveying new life.
“Purification” entailed two forms of proscribed sacrifice. The first part of the sacrifice was an offering (in Mary and Joseph’s case of a pair of doves) – an offering as a sign of thanksgiving and praise for the safe birth. The other was (as the Law expresses it) for “sin” – not that someone has acted inappropriately but to normalize the woman’s return from the life/death separation.
Having just traveled more than 2000 miles, one way, by air, in light of the tragedy over Reagan National Airport, and in the wake of going and having our baggage delayed by three days, I can resonate with the place of such “purification”. After landing safely at Bradley and making it home – with baggage, I offered a quiet and most prayerful “Thank you” to the Holy One for reordering us from the chaos to the stable normality of this life.
But important details and ritual customs notwithstanding, the point of Jesus’ Presentation (and Mary’s “Purification”, for that matter) is all about “redemption” and what that has to do with our faith in God’s Christ and our life as Jesus’ people. So, let’s start at the beginning with the word, “redemption”, itself.
In a word, “redemption” speaks to a “revaluing”. In the past I have posed to you an example of this redemptive “revaluing”, when my Mom would “redeem” her grocery store stamps for physical merchandise: So many books of glued stamps for a baseball glove, for instance. The stamps were “redeemed” for something more valued. Redemption. In computer, digital terms, “redemption” refers to an “upgrading”.
But the biblical meaning and significance of “redemption” speaks to providing the cost to liberate a slave to being free. In the song that is sung at the Easter Vigil liturgy, a song of Exodus in Christ’s death and resurrection, an ancient song referred to as the Exsultet, there is a very poignant and touching line that speaks of God’s redemption in Christ for all life. The line is this:
This is the night, when Christ broke the bonds of death and hell, and rose victorious from the grave. How wonderful and beyond our knowing, O God, is your mercy and loving-kindness to us, that to redeem a slave, you gave a Son.4 (By the way, this ancient song speaks not of an angry God who needs to be repaid for our inadequacies but of a God who loves all his people to the extent that the Holy One refuses to allow our separation from him to stand! God acts for us because God loves us!!)
This is the “redemption” that is celebrated today in the “Presentation” of Jesus in the Temple. This is the “redemption” that God’s faithful people have waited for and longed for since the promise of Emmanuel: God with us. This is what propelled the ancient likes of Simeon and Anna to wait within the Temple precincts because the Temple was viewed as the place where God’s life and human life directly met. It was the place and circumstance where God’s “redemption” would take palpable root and spread like light in the darkness to everyone, everywhere.
So, as Luke introduces us to Simeon, an old man who cherished God’s Covenant and its life-giving promises, a man who “looked for the consolation of Israel” (that is, for the “revaluing of God’s people and their liberation from the enslavement to fear and death -- Simeon, Luke tells us, had been told by the Spirit that he would not die before he saw God’s Christ. So it was that Simeon came to the Temple, whereupon seeing Mary and Joseph and the infant Jesus, he took the suckling child in his arms and praising God offered his poem (and our song) of “redemption”:
Lord, you now have set your servant free
to go as you have promised;
For these eyes of mine have seen the Savior,
whom you have prepared for all the world to see:
A light to enlighten the nations,
and the glory of your people Israel.5
There was also another witness to the “Presentation” of God’s Christ to God’s Temple. Anna, a woman of “great age”, who for 84 years had lived within the Temple precincts with prayers and fasting since the time of her widowhood – Anna also gave witness to what Simeon saw in the infant. She, too, sang an anthem to God’s praise and reassuringly to Mary about her child and to all who were expecting the “redemption” (that is, the freedom) of Jerusalem. Yet, alarmingly to our ears, Anna also noted that God’s Christ would not be above the suffering caused by rejecting God and God’s promise. No, Mary the mother would also feel the piercing in her heart of her Son’s rejection. The truth is and always is that “redemption”, revaluing and receiving God’s life requires transformation both in terms of what we expect and what we need. This is to say that God’s “redemption” – gift that it is -- comes with the cost of the cross’s rejection. Emmanuel: God with us is not above or beyond humanity’s need for “redemption”. And in order to demonstrate – and not simply talk about the reality that God’s love is stronger than fear and death, God’s Son endured the cross in order to shed the light of redemption, its liberation and joy.
There is irony in Luke’s rendering of this “Presentation”/“Purification” account – an irony that further refines the “redemption” point. On the one hand, in their unpretentious piety Mary and Joseph come to the Temple to offer the prescribed “sacrifice”; but on the other hand God is set to provide the true and eternal sacrifice that God alone can give. In coming to the Temple to acknowledge their and our human dependence on God’s grace and mercy, Mary and Joseph are reminded (for the second time) of the primary and essential gift of God for the people of God: that is, the stunning reality of Emmanuel, God with us. We are redeemed by this offering from God. We are revalued (that is, restored) by God’s offering of Jesus, who is the God-lie in human terms.
In this “redemption” story of Jesus’ “Presentation” and with all that has happened this week in our country, I will close with the Prayer Book’s prayer of “General Thanksgiving” [BCP. p. 101]. In my experience this prayer of gratitude contains how we are called to acknowledge and honor our “redemption” by God-in-Christ and what it takes to receive the life Jesus demonstrates and presents to us. That we might find this “attitude of gratitude” “unexciting” only speaks to the stunning nature of God’s love, grace, and – yes -- mercy.
Almighty God, Father of all mercies,
we your unworthy servants give you humble thanks
for all your goodness and loving-kindness
to us and to all whom you have made.
We bless you for our creation, preservation,
and all the blessing of this life;
but above all for your immeasurable love
in the redemption of the world by our Lord Jesus Christ;
for the means of grace, and for the hope of glory.
And, we pray, give us such an awareness of your mercies,
that with truly thankful hearts we may show forth your praise,
not only with our lips, but in our lives,
by giving up ourselves to your service,
and by walking before you
in holiness and righteousness all our days;
through Jesus Christ our Lord,
to whom, with you and the Holy Spirit
be honor and glory throughout all ages. Amen.
1. Notated in Andrew McGowan’s weekly lectionary reflection: “Andrew’s Version”, for 2/2/25
2. Ibid
3. Ibid
4. Book of Common Prayer. “The Great Vigil of Easter”, p.287
5. Book of Common Prayer. Evening Prayer: “The Song of Simeon”, p. 120
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