AFTER ALL THOSE YEARS

                                     Rembrandt, "Simeon in the Temple" (1669)

“Now lettest thou thy servant depart in peace”

Nobody told the old gentleman that this particular eldest male child, this anonymous infant, was what he had been waiting for all those years. There must have been many of them, as every eldest male child had to be presented to the Lord in the Temple: given to God, and then bought back for a couple of symbolic pigeons. So here is this provincial couple, a carpenter and his wife, bringing in their offspring for the ceremony. And there is old Mr Simeon, who has been told that he will not die before the Meshiach has come, pottering around in a corner; and suddenly he points like a game-dog. Shuffles over. Lifts a corner of the blanket covering the kid. Peers. And a vast quiet comes over his features. He lifts up his eyes, and possibly his arthritic hands, and says, “Thank you, Lord; now you’re letting me go. Now I have seen your salvation, which you have prepared for all mankind: a light for the goyim, and a glory for Israel.” But then he turns to the confused parents, and tells them what else he sees; looking ahead. “This child,” he says, “is going to be the the rise and fall of may people in Israel. He will be an icon of controversy. And you,” he says, turning to young Miriam, “will have a sword thrust right through your heart. Many people’s secret thoughts are going to come out into the open.” And after this salvo, nodding heavily, he turns and shuffles off.

But there is more. Anna, an 84-year-old widow who spends all her time in the Temple, praying, and is known to be a prophetess, a seer, also comes over – probably having heard Simeon exclaim. She sees the parents in confusion and in real distress – understandable, after what they have heard from the old man. She, too, peers into the future, but sees it differently from her friend Simeon. What she sees is crowds: the crowds of people who, as Paul would later write to the Jews, live in the slavery of the fear of death. The crowds who need redeeming. The crowds who need the Meshiach, the Anointed, to do what He has come for. She reassures the parents: their son is not just an icon of controversy, a sword through his mother’s heart. He is what Jerusalem is waiting for; and beyond Jerusalem, Israel; and beyond Israel, the world.

Why is the Presentation in the Temple the festival of lights, the blessing of the year’s candles, Candlemas? Three reasons; it is the right time after the birth for the firstborn son to be presented and bought back; it is the middle of winter, between the solstice and the equinox; and it is the commemoration of the “light to lighten the Gentiles”. We – groundhogs and Super Bowls notwithstanding -- live with the consequences. Light that is born; controversy; and all those crowds, all those people in dire need of the love we have been left to bring to them.