Sunday Worship 18 January | The Child in the Temple

Luke 2:22-40

When the time came for the purification rites required by the Law of Moses, Joseph and Mary took him to Jerusalem to present him to the Lord (as it is written in the Law of the Lord, “Every firstborn male is to be consecrated to the Lord”), and to offer a sacrifice in keeping with what is said in the Law of the Lord: “a pair of doves or two young pigeons.”

Now there was a man in Jerusalem called Simeon, who was righteous and devout. He was waiting for the consolation of Israel, and the Holy Spirit was on him. It had been revealed to him by the Holy Spirit that he would not die before he had seen the Lord’s Messiah. Moved by the Spirit, he went into the temple courts. When the parents brought in the child Jesus to do for him what the custom of the Law required, Simeon took him in his arms and praised God, saying: “Sovereign Lord, as you have promised,    you may now dismiss your servant in peace. For my eyes have seen your salvation,    which you have prepared in the sight of all nations: a light for revelation to the Gentiles, and the glory of your people Israel.”

The child’s father and mother marvelled at what was said about him. Then Simeon blessed them and said to Mary, his mother: “This child is destined to cause the falling and rising of many in Israel, and to be a sign that will be spoken against, so that the thoughts of many hearts will be revealed. And a sword will pierce your own soul too.”

There was also a prophet, Anna, the daughter of Penuel, of the tribe of Asher. She was very old; she had lived with her husband seven years after her marriage, and then was a widow until she was eighty-four. She never left the temple but worshipped night and day, fasting and praying. Coming up to them at that very moment, she gave thanks to God and spoke about the child to all who were looking forward to the redemption of Jerusalem.

When Joseph and Mary had done everything required by the Law of the Lord, they returned to Galilee to their own town of Nazareth. And the child grew and became strong; he was filled with wisdom, and the grace of God was on him.

We are starting the year by looking at some of the stories that follow the Christmas story. Last week we reflected on the flight to Egypt and the massacre of the innocents. It is a dark story, but as I commented at the time, it is a darkness that Jesus came to lighten, and we begin to see that here as Simeon speaks of him as a light for revelation to the Gentiles.

Before we really get into this passage, I want to acknowledge the difficulty of putting together the timeline of these post-Christmas stories. This visit to the temple must have taken place forty days after Jesus’ birth, as that was the time for the purification rites required by the law. So how is it possible that the family returned home to Nazareth via Jerusalem after forty days, and also fled to Egypt from Bethlehem some time before Jesus was a toddler? The simple answer is that it’s not, unless we suppose that they went back to Nazareth after the purification rites, then returned to Bethlehem in time to meet the magi there. The two stories, recorded in different gospels, don’t easily fit together, and the most likely reason is that something has been misunderstood or misremembered along the way, leaving us with these conflicting narratives.

What does that mean for how we read and understand these passages? For me, it changes very little. The gospel writers were not working together to create a coherent narrative across the four texts, but were each drawing on the stories that had been passed on to them, and choosing the ones that seemed most important. All writers of history and biography do the same, and rather than trying to syncretise the accounts, I think we do better to take them on their own terms and ask why the writer wanted to tell this story in particular.

Matthew seems to have focused on the magi because in that story he saw the fulfilment of several prophecies, and it was important to him to establish Jesus as the promised Messiah. Luke on the other hand chooses a series of stories which connect Jesus to the temple. An angel appears to Zechariah as he serves as a priest in the temple, to announce the birth of the one who will prepare the way for Jesus. Jesus is taken to the temple as an infant, and there is recognised by a righteous man and a prophet. Jesus returns to the temple each year for the Passover, and is found engaging with the teachers of the law in what he calls his Father’s house. If we balance this with Luke emphasising the humility of Mary and the shepherds being the first visitors to the manger, there is a sense that Jesus is drawing people in from the fringes, while still being connected to the centre. Given Jesus’ later rejection by the religious elite, perhaps this was Luke’s way of establishing a kind of legitimacy early on.

Coming to the detail of the passage now, we often call this the presentation of Jesus, but actually that was only part of the reason for this temple visit. The purification rites were for Mary, to remove the ritual uncleanliness associated with childbirth. There’s something uncomfortable to our sensibilities about the idea that postnatal women were considered unclean, but I’m not sure that the purity laws had quite the same moral implications that we might suppose. I think it is quite possible that their primary intent was to reduce contamination and infection, and that the purification rites marked out a period of time in which new mothers could rest and heal.

It might seem particularly strange that the mother of Christ should need to undergo purification, but she would have needed the same time to rest and heal as any other mother, and giving birth to God did not remove her from her obligations to law and community. It might also seem ironic that the parents of the Lamb of God should offer two birds in place of the usual lamb, but that was the concession made for those who were poor, and so from this we assume the poverty of Jesus’ childhood. These little details remind us that Jesus was born into the fullness of human experience, and that included postpartum bleeding and financial struggles.

So Mary and Joseph go to the temple with their baby, who we should remember is less than six weeks old at this point. I imagine these new parents still slightly delirious from joy and exhaustion, and I wonder if Simeon and Anna felt a bit like a fever dream. For Simeon and Anna however, this visit seems to be a dream come true. They have waited and prayed for a long time, and there is something in their steadiness and faithfulness that I find deeply inspiring. The world we live in feels tumultuous, but I don’t expect it felt any calmer to a people living under occupation, and yet they were steady and they were faithful. May they call us to be likewise.

I would love to know more of Anna’s story. Widowed early, she has moved into the temple and dedicated herself to God. We are told that she never leaves the temple, so presumably a space has been made for her there, and there must be people who bring her food and drink and other necessities. We are also told that she is a prophet, and that can’t be on the basis of this story alone or Simeon would surely have been given the title too, so I wonder what wisdom she has previously imparted that she is recognised as such. There are so many stories on the edge of the story, and if the gospel was a tv show, this is the spin-off I would be petitioning for.

We are not told Anna’s exact words, but they seem to be directed more at the people around Mary and Joseph, as she tells everyone who will listen about this child. I read a suggestion this week that Anna is the first evangelist. I would counter that the shepherds have already gone and out shared the news of the angel visit and the child in the manger, but I think a case could be made for seeing Anna as the first named evangelist. What is interesting to me is that at this point they knew so little. They did not have any of Jesus’ teaching to pass on, and they did not have the crucifixion or the resurrection to preach. All they knew was that God was doing something wonderful, and that was enough. Perhaps that might be an encouragement to us to simply tell what we know.

One last thought before I finish, because our tradition of dedication is not exactly analogous to the presentation in the temple, but I did reflect this week on Eddie and Miri’s dedications. It is a beautiful thing to bring a child into the community of the church, to give thanks for them and to make promises to them and to bless them. We chose a particular blessing for each of our children, and this morning I want to share the blessing we chose for Eddie. It is known as a Franciscan blessing, and I think living into it may be one of the ways we keep steady and faithful.

May God bless you with discomfort, at easy answers, half-truths, and superficial relationships so that you may live deep within your heart. May God bless you with anger at injustice, oppression, and exploitation of people, so that you may work for justice, freedom and peace. May God bless you with tears, to shed for those who suffer pain, rejection, hunger, and war, so that you may reach out your hand to comfort them and to turn their pain to joy. And may God bless you with enough foolishness to believe that you can make a difference in the world, so that you can do what others claim cannot be done, to bring justice and kindness to all our children and the poor. Amen.