MORE LIGHT, OR CANDLEMAS

Today is two feasts in one: the Presentation in the Temple, and Candlemas. The Presentation in the Temple is based on the Jewish law that required every firstborn to be given to God. The child was brought to the Temple as a gift, but could then be bought (or perhaps rented?) back by way of a sacrifice. And so Yosef and Miryam, forty days after the birth of Yehoshua, bring him to the Temple to be given to God. There they meet Shimon, a devout man who spent his old age awaiting the Consolation of Israel, i.e the Moshiach; he recognises this in the child and utters his famous “Lord, now lettest thou thy servant depart in peace”, and then gives a rather unnerving prophecy as to the kind of “consolation” this Messiah is likely to bring. They are then joined by the 84-year-old Chanah, a widow prophet, who also recognises the child and proclaims him to the assembled people.

The point, of course, is that here for the first time the newborn child is revealed, and revealed not only as who he is but as what he is, in the physical context of the Temple and in the human context of the devout. He is the Anointed One, the Saviour, the Moshiach, the Christos. He is what Israel has been waiting for. So the Presentation as a Church occasion is one of enlightenment: the Umwelt, the world around, is for the first time enlightened as to the coming of the Messiah, and as to the identity of this child.

As such, it is a festival confirming the increasing/returning light, and so it is fitting that here should take place the blessing of the candles to be used in the services for the whole remainder of the church year: “Candlemas”.

In France, moreover, Candlemas, or more often Candlemas Eve, is Pancake Night, when pancakes (larger and thinner than the Anglo-American kind) are baked and flipped in the pan, and if the flipped pancake is properly caught in the frying-pan you will have good luck in the coming year.  

Image: Rembrandt van Rijn, "The Presentation in the Temple" (detail)

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.