Sermon for Candlemas Sunday 31st January 2021: MALCHI:3 1-5 , LUKE: 2 22-40.

SHINE BRIGHT CANDLEMAS – Deacon Christine Saccali St Paul’s Athens

 

May I speak in the name of the Triune God, Father, Son and Holy Spirit. Amen

Our Christian ancestors would have been very excited today, on this great feast of Candlemas. Imagine that we are a congregation of say 600 years ago- no zoom then. It is 40 days after Christmas and it is the last great feast of the Christmas cycle before we start to turn slowly this year from the crib to the cross. We have been fasting before this feast but we are looking forward to one of the great and elaborate processions of the year, a highlight, in fact. It is a day when every parishioner is obliged to carry a candle and to offer it to the priest along with a penny- a great sacrifice in those days and in winter. Afterwards though big parish feasts were held. Now don’t we long for those days of our parish breakfasts and look forward to enjoying our get togethers again as Fr Leonard mentioned in his sermon last week on the feast of St Paul, our patronal.

 

I love candles and my study and prayer desk, reflecting as they do the light of Christ. In our days of electricity we forget how precious candles were and still can be in a power cut. If you have a candle handy I suggest you light it now and that is a way of connecting us and we can extinguish them at the end of the service. But don’t go away – you can always do it later as an exercise of reflection on Candlemas and the close of the Christmas and Epiphany season. It is also the beginning of the days noticeably drawing out and retreating darkness which our prayers today echo on this great feast.

Before the mass centuries ago the candles were blessed and the people processed around the church as the great song of Simeon the Nunc Dimittis we heard read was sung. This was an enactment of the journey to Solomon’s temple in Jerusalem by Mary and Joseph for the traditional purification ceremony 40 days after giving birth. The mass then began with a verse from Psalm 47, ‘We have received your mercy, O God, in the midst of your temple.’ The people’s candles would then burn all through the day and night in front of the image of Mary as a sign of the parish’s devotion. Extra candles were brought to be blessed and taken home again to be used in extraordinary circumstances – say, in a storm for protection or, during illness or in the hands of a dying person think ‘ Lord, now let your servant depart in peace.’ This tradition reminds me of an Orthodox one I was unfamiliar with until we moved to the village of Kapandriti 30 years ago this year. At a funeral, you light your own candle in the stand and then take an extra one and place it by the coffin for the deceased and the family. They are then lit after the service.

In the middle ages, these traditions were discouraged by the Reformers and they gradually died out. Then some were replaced. It is easy to see why candles became a focus for today’s Gospel. There is every generation in this story but at the heart is an encounter between Old Simeon and baby Jesus now 40 days old, an important date for mothers in some cultures too who are churched. And we are now looking forward to the forty day Lent period.

 

Candlemas is a bittersweet festival and a turning point in the church year, a pivot. Wise Simeon talks of the sword that will pierce Mary’s side, foretelling the shadow of the cross. Simeon is at the end of a long, faithful life he can die now having recognised and held the Messiah. Then another character is introduced by Luke – Anna, a faithful servant and worshipper at the temple. And another elderly person wise and wrinkly but a valued one and female to boot. It is a remarkable feature of St Luke’s gospel that an incident with a male is often paired with one with a woman.

Anna is a prophet and a patient, waiting one. She presumably hears Simeon’s words and recognises them as the message she has been longing for all her life. Fulfilment has come but in the shape of a baby and a couple. How can this be? It is the slow unfolding of God’s plan. We want everything to be fixed quickly and get on with life especially now but this is a reminder that age matters and the wisdom that comes with age counts. Patience and faith are valued.

A tiny baby grows into the Saviour of the world. It is growth that matters not economics, management or solutions. This does not mean we shouldn’t accept all the scientific and spiritual help we can get at this time. This year my spiritual director who I meet with online every month suggested I pray about a word to reflect on for 2021. Not a New Year’s resolution so easily broken and frustrating but a word to explore and see what happens. The word that came to me was growth. I don’t know what it will mean or what kind of growth it means but you might like to do this spiritual exercise too. And we can compare notes later in the year. I suspect that all our words will be different and suited to our individual circumstances.

 

So this great winter festival of Candlemas has everything within it, birth and light, ageing and learning, waiting, living and dying, striving for holiness and justice, accepting blessing and affirmation, poverty and tradition, then the pain and glory of the cross and resurrection. These are the elements of life and loving embrace and embrace that dance and burn in the candles.

One of the ornaments I hung on my small, outside veranda Christmas tree was a star with the message Shine Bright. This feast sends us twinkling messages. The Presentation of Christ in the Temple is about the loving presence of Jesus, that holy infant, born of flesh. On earth made of flesh yet presented as the Messiah, the only Son of God. That mystery should never leave us as we turn from crib towards cross and take with us the light of Christ.

Let us pray:

May the light of Christ illumine our path.

May Christ, the light of the world

make our lives radiant,

may the star of the spirit,

make the night as bright as the day for us.

May Father, Son and Spirit illumine our pilgrim way.

We stand near the place of new birth.

Let us shine with the light of your love.

We turn from the crib to the cross.

Let us shine with the light of your love.

We go to carry his light.

Let us shine with the light of your love.

AMEN