Preached at St Paul's Cathedral, Candlemas 2014
The Lord whom you seek will suddenly
come to His temple.
In the Name of the Father, and of the
Son, and of the Holy Spirit.
Back in 2009, the 20s30s group
organized and led a trip to Toronto, and we were joined by a large number of
other St Paul’s
Cathedral parishioners, Episcopalians from other parishes, and it was also a
great way to evangelize, as many non-Episcopalian friends joined us, too.
The purpose of our trip to Toronto
was not to see a show, or to go shopping (though we made a stop for that), it
was to journey together to the Royal Ontario Museum and see the exhibit there
of the Dead Sea Scrolls, uncovered in caves in the 1940s and 50s in the West
Bank, and the earliest-known manuscripts of Sacred Scripture and other
religious documents. Among these
manuscripts, the oldest are from the fifth century BC, and the newest are from
the time of the First Jewish-Roman War, which culminated in the destruction of
the Temple in 70 AD.
As you can imagine, seeing documents
of Scripture that have survived for 2,500 years was awe-inspiring, and the
beauty of the fragments is hard to describe. The exhibit itself was set up as a winding corridor that
doubled back on itself, something like a piece of ribbon candy, so that the
crowds were constantly moving and so nothing was missed. That meant that there were a number of
corner turns that would bring visitors into a new hall filled with priceless
treasures opening before them.
Along with the scrolls, there was a
collection of other items excavated from the West Bank and surrounding
areas. It was approaching one of
the galleries holding those artifacts that we turned a corner. That is one
corner I turned that I will never forget.
A corner that, in my life, can never be unturned.
Around that corner, what opened up in
front of us was a display containing two fairly large building stones. They were beautifully cut stone, and
the first had an indent in the back of it. That indent was a place for a man to stand, and carved
inside the niche in Hebrew were the words: To the place of trumpeting. This was the actual parapet stone of
the Temple where a trumpeter announced the call to prayer. Next to it was a smaller stone, and unlike
the trumpeting stone, this one had a Greek inscription. It seemed odd to me that there would be
a Greek inscription in the Temple, until I read the translation:
NO FOREIGNER
IS TO GO BEYOND THE BALUSTRADE
AND THE PLAZA OF THE TEMPLE ZONE
WHOEVER IS CAUGHT DOING SO
WILL HAVE HIMSELF TO BLAME
FOR HIS DEATH
WHICH WILL FOLLOW
This stone marked the point past
which no Gentile could go. There,
lying before us in the Royal Ontario Museum, were the worn stone from which a
Levite trumpeted out the call to all listening to enter the Temple, and the
stone of prohibition forbidding the entry of any Gentile, a stone under which,
it is possible, St Joseph, The Blessed Virgin, and the Christ Child walked as
they entered the Temple.
The events of our celebration today,
recorded in St Luke’s
Gospel, are likely familiar to us, and the words of Simeon we heard are likely
very familiar, as they are prayed every evening in Anglican churches and homes
across the world.
There were two laws that God gave to
Moses on Mt Sinai and recorded in the Book of Leviticus that needed to be
fulfilled on this day, 40 days after Christ’s birth. The Blessed Virgin, safely delivered from childbirth, was
required to present herself in thanksgiving for the birth of her child, and to
be ritually purified. Also, as
Jesus was her firstborn son, the child himself was required to be presented in
the Temple 40 days after his birth and an offering made. St Luke records the Holy Family
fulfilling the Law, and he notes that their offering was two turtledoves: the
option of two turtledoves in Leviticus is given for a family too poor to purchase
a sacrificial lamb.
We hear further in St Luke’s record
that Simeon has been promised that he would not die before seeing the Redeemer,
and when the Holy Family approaches the Temple, Simeon calls out to them, takes
the child in his arms, and tells them that the Holy Spirit had spoken to him
and that now he could die, as he was blessed to hold in his arms the child who
was promised as the light to the Gentiles and to be the glory of the people of
Israel. Anna was also present, St
Luke writes, and the Holy Spirit inspires her to proclaim the news to all who
were awaiting the redemption of Israel.
Only a few yards from the stone barring any gentile upon pain of death,
the Holy Spirit calls out that this child is to be their light.
Just like several weeks ago when we
celebrated the Feast of the Holy Name on January 1, today’s feast day
has a number of names. In our
Prayer Book, it is called the Presentation of Our Lord Jesus Christ. It has historically also been referred
to as the Feast of the Purification of the Virgin, and more commonly as
Candlemas, referring to the blessing of candles which traditionally occurred at
today’s
Eucharist.
But in the East, this feast has a
different title: The Meeting of Our Lord in the Temple.
It may seem like, at first, that the
Orthodox title for today is about the meeting between Simeon, Anna, and the
Holy Family. However, the title
refers to a different Meeting. It
refers to the Meeting between God the Father, whose presence is marked by the
Ark of the Covenant residing in the Temple, God the Son, swaddled and nurtured
by a family too poor to buy a sacrificial lamb, and God the Holy Spirit,
inspiring Blessed Simeon and Blessed Anna to begin spreading the message of
redemption. This is a Meeting of
the Blessed Trinity, just as at the Baptism of Our Lord when a voice thundered
from the Heavens and the Holy Spirit descended as a dove.
The Lord whom you seek will suddenly
come to His temple.
So, what we celebrate today is the
Meeting of the Blessed Trinity in the Temple. And we witness the Christ, God
come among us as man, being ushered into the presence of God the Father and God
the Holy Spirit. But, in this
Meeting of the Trinity, there’s
a change now, isn’t
there?
For now, through Christ, humanity is
wrapped into the Trinity. Now, all
the work of God in the world and all of the work of humanity in the world are
intertwined. Before, God gave the
Law on tablets on the slopes of Mt Sinai, wreathed in fire and smoke. Those same tablets were held in the Ark
of the Covenant in the Temple, the Ark where God dwelt among his people. Now, in Christ, God again enters the
Temple, and God declares that all nations are now folded into the Blessed
Trinity, for, in Christ, God will be a light to the Gentiles and the glory of
Israel.
In the feast today, we see the
beginning of the replacement of sacrifice in the Jerusalem Temple with the
sacrifice in Christ, the new Temple.
Through Simeon, the Holy Spirit speaks of the Passion when he calls
Christ a sign to be contradicted and when he tells the Blessed Virgin that a
sword will pierce her heart.
Christ himself will predict the temple's destruction, and its
replacement with his resurrected body only a few days before he enters into His
Passion.
The author Max Lucado has called
Christ the hinge on which the door of history swings, and we begin to see some
of that swing here in the Meeting in the Temple. In the shifting of the Temple from being a building in
Jerusalem to being Christ himself, we sense that nothing will ever be the same. No longer with a lamb will we give back
to God what we have been given, but through loving our neighbors as ourselves
do we show God's might and power.
In the temple, created things were offered to the inaccessible God:
grain, doves, lambs. In the new
temple of the resurrected Christ, no longer are created things offered, but it
is the Creator himself who we lift up to heaven in sacrifice, hidden under the
appearance of bread and wine.
And not only the Creator is offered
up in the Eucharist, but we are, as well.
Remembering that in Christ, humanity and divinity are wedded together
and all of us are welcomed into the life of the Trinity, we remember this in
our liturgy.
You may notice each Sunday a quiet
whispered prayer at the altar.
During the part of our celebration of the Eucharist when the chalice is
prepared and the gifts are offered, you may notice the deacon whispering. At the preparation of the chalice, the
deacon first pours in wine, and then a little bit of water, with the words:
Lord, by the mingling of this water and wine, may we come to share in the
divinity of Christ, as he humbled Himself to share in our humanity.
In Christ's Incarnation and birth at
Christmas, in the meeting of the Blessed Trinity in the Temple, in the liturgy
and our celebration of the Eucharist, we are mingled with divinity, we are also
mixed in and consecrated as the Body of Christ.
Today, we will baptize Callum James
Pariseau into the Body of Christ.
And we will remember that we are welcomed into that Body through our
baptism, through our reception of the life of grace and through our promises to
turn from the sin of the world into which we were born. We are baptized into a Church that
strives to include all of humanity, to finally knock down the stone of
prohibition that might bar some from entering into the Temple. That work of including all is work done
in the world through love, kindness, and acts of service. We no longer carry turtle doves in as a
thank offering, but baskets of food to pantries out in our communities. We no longer center around a building
as a place where God resides, but go out into the world to find him, to find
him mingled with the strangers and the friends all around us.
We are baptized into and profess a
faith in one, holy, catholic and apostolic church. We are not baptized into and do not profess a faith in one, Upjohn,
Medina sandstone church. In
baptism, we are mingled with God and, therefore, we are also to be a light to
the Gentiles and the glory of Israel.
In baptism, tribalism is put to death, and the world is opened for the
grace of Christ, and we are sent to bring it to others.
In baptism, we profess a faith in a
body of Christ that has us as its members. We profess a faith in a body of Christ that lives to bring
others into life with the Trinity.
We do not profess a faith of isolationism. We are not baptized into just one particular parish, just St
Paul's Cathedral, but into the mystical body, and we are sent out to be the
body Christ needs us to be in the world.
We do not exist, St Paul's Cathedral
does not exist, to serve and minister to itself. Our altars are erected to inspire, sustain and feed us so that
we carry the Trinity out into the world Christ redeemed through his
incarnation, his meeting in the temple, and his passion. Our altars are not for our own glory
and edification, are not bulwarks against an encroaching world. We are baptized into a life outside of
these walls, outside of these brief hours on Sunday, baptized into a life in
the new temple formed of Christ's own body, a temple formed of homeless
children, students, professionals, the mentally ill, the lost and the lonely. Do not look inside these walls for the
temple. Look to those in need, so
that, in you, through you,
The Lord whom you seek will suddenly
come to His temple.
Amen
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