Candlemas

A sermon preached by Ray Anglesea at St Andrew's Dawson Street, Crook - 2-Feb-2014

The best days of Christmas for me are those that fall between the 1^st January and 2nd February, the feast of Candlemas. Strictly speaking this time has more to do with Epiphany- tide than Christmas, but I like this time of the year not only because I am still eating Christmas cake, mince pies and finishing of the Christmas pudding with lashing of Brandy Cream but because the Christian story rolls on in quiet, week by week gospel readings, and we begin to see and understand who that baby in the manger is, the penny begins to drop.................... The fullness of God revealed in Christ.

But Candlemas is a strange festival. 

Down with the rosemary, and so

Down with the bays and mistletoe;
Down with the holly, ivy, all

Wherewith ye dressed the Christmas hall;

so wrote Robert Herrick, writing in the 17th century. It sounds like a poem about Twelfth Night. But it's called ‘Ceremony upon Candle­mas Eve,’ according to the dean of Durham.

Originating back as far as the 5^th century, Candlemas, 2^nd of February was a feast for blessing the candles in church. In the middle ages, at Candlemas there were elaborate ceremonies of blessing tapers and carrying them in procession to light up churches and there was much partying. Sound good to me.

In the calendar the 2^nd February is one of those cross-quarter days, half way between the solstice and the equinox, like All Saints’ Day, marking the progress of the cycles of the seasons. Such days bring us close to nature. if Candlemas Day “is fair and bright, winter will have another flight; if the day brings clouds and rain, winter will not come again.”

In Durham Cathedral, where I work, two small Christmas trees arrayed with twinkling lights are to be found either side of the quire steps – they are still there. Many visitors and tourists ask why we leave the trees up after 12^th night. The answer usually given is that the Christmas season does not end until 2^nd February. The famous miner’s nativity crib too is left out until the last hours of Candlemas. In Durham Cathedral this afternoon the cathedral is lit up with over 2,000 small candles, on ledges, pulpits, on the base of columns, around the baptistery, to celebrate the end of the Christmas period. It is indeed a beautiful atmospheric service; may favourite service of the whole year.

Candlemas also commemorates the encounter of Jesus, Mary and Joseph with Simeon and Anna as we saw in our sketch and heard from our gospel. Candlemas recalls how the infant Jesus was brought to the temple, received by Simeon and blessed by God. Those young parents, Mary and Joseph, and elderly Simeon and Anna nearing their deaths, and the little tiny child: all of humanity is there, beautifully portrayed in the masterpiece painted by Rembrandt, a few months before his own death; the painting must have come from the depth of Rembrandt’s soul confronted by his own approaching end while touched by a vision of faith and hope. Simeon and Anna spent their whole life in and around the temple in Jerusalem waiting for what Simeon called the “consolation of Israel.” In the autumn of their lives they rejoiced and thanked God for the sight of the baby Jesus, the young prince of the house of David. Seeing Jesus enabled them to see something greater than death. They could see God’s salvation in Jesus and therefore were able to face their own deaths in peace. What Simeon had discerned however imperfectly was a revelation of unlimited loving, a child whose entire life, fired by love without reserve would bring light and glory.

Candlemas is the last childhood “snapshot” we have of Jesus. Next time we meet him in the temple he will be an adolescent, confounding teachers and scribes, and then not again until adulthood. So the childhood stories, packed as they are with meaning and symbolism are worth unpacking. Even more so since Candlemas is a “pivotal feast”, one last look over the shoulder at Christmas before the serious season of Lent gets underway.

What should we make of the “odd couple,” Simeon and Anna, waiting to see the Holy Family? They are a bit late in getting in their plaudits, aren't they? The shepherds have long gone and even the wise men are on their way home. Yet the gospel carries an important message in stretching out the timeframe for recognising Jesus. Consider the wise men. The genius of their story lies in the fact that they come to Jesus through unconventional routes. They do not get to Jesus by proper observance or by following the Old Testament – they come through their religion to see the light, and this is important, they return home with it. But Anna and Simeon are apparently more conventional. They don’t make journeys. They have waited, kept their counsel, waited and waited and waited. I like their part in this aspect of the Christmas story, for waiting is what many of us must do, even if there is an important distinction to be made here: that between waiting and dithering, of being patient and of being delayed.

It was reported that a minister was visiting projects in Africa. His busy programme was running very late and the road linking his various destinations was rugged and slow. He was five hours late on arriving at the final gathering of the day, and a great crowd of people greeted his arrival with singing and dancing. The honoured guest was full of apologies for his late arrival, to which he received the memorable, if intriguing, reply. “Don’t worry. We knew that the longer we waited, the sooner you would come.”

I am still pondering the logic of those words, but suspect that it is a response that springs from a degree of patience that is now all too rare in our fast, western culture. Waiting patiently is, for many, a counter-cultural activity in a society that expects so much to be delivered in an instant. By contrast, the Psalmist tells us that if we wait patiently for God; he shall give you your heart’s desire. 

That said, the ability to wait with patience is surely valuable, especially as some of the toughest bits of our living can require it. My daughter as many of you know waited patiently for nine months for her baby boy to be born, only to learn that 6 hours after his birth he was not going to make it. A dear friend of ours gave Ki and I this nugget of gold - "Time is of no consequence to God, and to him the shortest life is as significant as the longest. The short life of my grandson; the long lives of Anna and Simeon are significant.

Grieving can take patience. A widow reflected on just how long her deep, and often biting, grief was lasting following the death of her husband. She made no secret of just how tough it all was, but then pointed out that it would be very strange if such pain simply evaporated when she had lost the most significant person in her life. She was having to learn patience, and it took time for her to discover that, when all that was familiar and secure had shifted, her feet were once more on rock and her steps were again secure. It took time to learn that she had a new song to sing - perhaps in the minor key, but with a deep note of gratitude for all that had been, and with renewed trust that God was with her in the dark and difficult places. It takes patient waiting to discover that the depth we can encounter can hold possibilities, lessons and inner strengths that we might not have found in any other place.

For the virtues of determination, patience and waiting are rewarded. As they say Good things come to those who wait.

And isn’t this the point of Candlemas? Part of the genius of the Christmas narrative is to make us journey to see Jesus – we need to go looking for him; seek him out, make an effort. But the gospel also tells it another way. To those who cannot move or do not know how to, to those who are patient, for those who wait, God will also come. Later in the life of Jesus, Jesus will meet seekers and those who came to him, but he will also seek the lost and the ignorant, and those who’d never thought of looking; he is there for them just as much.  And isn’t it strange that the last people in the Christmas story are probably the oldest and wisest. Ann and Simeon, who embody the wisdom of waiting, the virtue of patience and the strength to endure, according to Luke are rewarded for being there – for not deserting their posts.

The outcome of this encounter at the temple is the beautiful Nunc Dimmitis, Simeon blesses the child and the family, and leaves Anna, whose words are not recorded, to prophesy. To be sure, this is a strange encounter on a special day.

I sometime think how funny it is that Jesus spent so little time in religious buildings, and on the first two occasions, like most children, he had to been taken there by his parents with little choice in the matter. When he was old enough to make up his own mind he hardly ever seemed to go. But is it good that Luke affirms that Jesus can be found in the temple. But you can also find him outside the church. God is not constrained by our walls, whether physical, tribal or doctrinal, and he sometimes get inside them. Simeon and Anna found God inside faith; alas many don’t.

And so at the end of the service we will blow the candles out.  It is a deliberate, almost sacrilegious thing to do: to extinguish the light of the infant Jesus. Yet this movement from light to darkness is as important as the more comfortable journey from darkness to light. It is a truth of our humanity. There are many who exist in a kind of twilight world with little belief or hope or lasting values to sustain them. Our world faces dark times with the threats of war, global poverty, disease and climate change. And more personally, we know in our lives and relationships how the light dims from time to time, and when it does, the dark feels hopeless and frightening. Sometimes even faith can desert us; and then, in the dark cloud of unknowing when we have taken leave of God, we are ever more in need of his mercy.

During cold February days, light and dark mingle at this time of year. The light, glorious as it is, is still partial and fragile, for the dark and the cold will cling on for a few weeks yet. Yet the days are getting longer now. The worst of winter may not yet be over, but February doesn't last forever. Soon we shall climb towards Easter. To turn this morning in our service from the Christmas liturgical cycle to the Paschal cycle is to turn from winter to spring. The sap is rising, snowdrops and green shoots are appearing in the gardens.  As we gather here in chapel during the last hours of Christmas, we light candles of longing in dark places and keep the precious flame alive. For soon the Easter day will break and candles and shadows will flee away; Christ will become the eternal light and the glory of the nations, and our hope will emptied in delight.

Amen