PROPERS: PRESENTATION OF OUR LORD, YEAR A
TEXT: LUKE 2:22-40
PREACHED AT HOLY TRINITY, PENSACOLA, ON SUNDAY, FEBRUARY 2, 2020.
ONE SENTENCE: The apex of the Christian perspective is to see God’s hand in all things.
Today is one of the Holy Days in the Church Year – the Feast of the Presentation of Our Lord in the Temple.
What is that, you might ask. It starts with the fact that Jesus, Mary, and Joseph were Jews. As faithful, observant, and practicing Jews of that day, they followed the practice of presenting their forty-day-old infant in the Temple. The rite was for his official induction into the Jewish faith, and to complete the ritual purification of Mary after the birth. Keep in mind that first-born males were designated to God.
Mary and Joseph were poor. As poor people, they offered the ritual sacrifice of two turtle doves. A wealthy person would have offered a lamb.
We could talk about the ritual significance of this moment. But I want us to focus on two persons who make brief but important Cameo appearances in Luke’s gospel in this passage: Simeon and Anna.
Both were elderly. They had lived long lives of dedication in the Temple. The Temple, of course, was the massive edifice that was the central place of worship to all Jews. Wherever Jews lived in the world, they directed their prayers toward the Temple. It was described as one of the most beautiful buildings in the world.
It bore witness to the engineering genius of the tyrant king, Herod. It succeeded the previous Temple, built by Solomon, and destroyed by the Babylonians in 587 B. C. The Temple was the center of life, faith, and activity – rising in the heart, and highest point, of the walled city.
Simeon and Anna devoted their lives to service in the Temple. Simeon had received assurance that he would not die before he saw the Lord’s anointed one – the one who would deliver Israel. Anna, 84 years of age, lived in the Temple – always dedicated to prayer and fasting.
We can only speculate what their previous years had been like.
Keep in mind that they were a people – Jews – whose history to that point could be characterized by slavery, deliverance, war, defeat, captivity, and conquest by neighboring powers.
Simeon and Anna almost certainly lived a simple, monastic-like existence. They knew no frills or luxuries. They lived a spartan existence. If they were fortunate, they would have shared in the priest’s portions from the sacrifices in the Temple.
They lived under shadows – the shadow of Herod and his successors, and the shadow of Rome. Perhaps the closest analogy we could make would be life in an Eastern Block country during the days before the fall of the Iron Curtain. Cruel leaders overseen by distant tyrants. What freedoms they knew were limited, and their beloved Temple was always under the watchful eye of Rome.
We know little of Simeon’s background. We know more about Anna. She lived with her husband for seven years (probably until her early-to-mid 20s), after which she was widowed. She began her service in the Temple then. She may have been in the Temple for 60 years.
But I think we can speculate that their lives had been meager, challenging, and anything but easy.
Yet, here they were: open, receptive, and hopeful. Their eyes of faith were bright.
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Years ago, I would travel to Grand Coteau, Louisiana, for silent retreats. There is a wonderful Jesuit Spirituality Center there. The monastic brothers and sisters there welcomed and warmly hosted people seeking retreat time.
Each retreatant would be assigned a spiritual director for the duration of the stay. We would meet with the director an hour each day – to be guided in prayers, to share our journey, to seek insights, to find God’s movement in our lives.
One of my directors once observed to me: “All life is a blessing.” Not just the good stuff, but all life.
I thought, “That’s a simplistic view… easy for someone who lives in a monastic community.” How did one reconcile that perspective with Cambodia under Pol Pot, Auschwitz and the Holocaust, or pediatric cancer wards?
I even thought back on my life – the bitter experiences, the pain, the depression, the anxiety, the broken relationships – and thought, as if…
All life is a blessing? No, that was not my perspective. How could someone say that? How could that be a perspective? Life is difficult… and much more so for many others. I could not preach that mindless perspective to my congregants.
So, I just put that approach out of my mind. And the years went on…
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Years went by, and I lived my life.
Then, as I matured – in other words, got older – I found myself looking back, reflecting on life. Life and distance changes one’s perspective. I was reminded of the poem by the Jesuit priest named Anthony DeMello. It was called, The River. It had nothing to do with a river, except maybe the river of time and perspective.
DeMello’s poem took me to a place billions of miles into space and millions of years into the future – to look back; to gain a more detached perspective. In looking back, I saw the insignificance of my personal travails – and the poet’s refrain was “This, too, shall pass.”
The years, the experience, the wisdom, and the poem -- they changed the way I viewed life.
Now, I am thankful for my life. I can see how each experience, each relationship, each personal failure, each disappointment had led me to this precise moment in life.
It is because of each of those that I stand before you. It is because of each experience that I am the person I am today. I can see how those experiences – good, bad or indifferent – molded and formed my life. Not perfect, by any means, but blessed beyond measure. And deeply grateful.
To be clear, I am not saying that traumatic events in life do not hurt. I am not volunteering for any bitter experiences. I am not advocating some Pollyanna view of the world.
And I admit: I must stand silent in bringing meaning and purpose out of events such as the Holocaust. If Elie Wiesel cannot bring meaning, I certainly can’t.
I am saying that God can move through our lives. Depending on our openness, he can redeem the losses that we sustain and bring about new life where there appears to be none. And when we have moved beyond those losses, we can once again be grateful for the gift of life itself.
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Anna, the elderly prophetess, and Simeon, lived faithful lives. They remained open to the potential that they would see a transcendent blessing in their lives.
They, too, had probably seen and known bitter losses and experiences. And at the end, they were able to see the hand of God in all that they had known. They praised God in words that have echoed through the millennia.
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