The feast day of the Church we’re here to celebrate today has had quite a few different names over the years. The original name of the feast was the Purification of the Blessed Virgin Mary, and it got that name because coming as it does, 40 days after Christmas Day, that is, 40 days after the birth of her son, it’s the day when, according to a law we find in Leviticus 12, Mary would have had to present herself to a priest and make an offering for her ‘purification’ after child-birth.

The BCP, on the other hand, in keeping with the Gospel account of Mary and Joseph taking Jesus to the temple to be consecrated to the Lord, called this day the Presentation of Christ in the Temple, and that’s the name the C of E still uses for this day in its Common Worship books and services. And for the same reason, the RC Church now calls this day the Presentation of the Lord.

But we usually call this day by another name don’t we? We call it Candlemas. So where does that come from?

Really that comes from the Song of Simeon which forms part of today’s Gospel reading, in particular, the part of Simeon’s song where he calls Jesus

“…a light to enlighten the pagans…”

as the translation we heard tonight puts it. Because of that, this was a day when candles were used to symbolise Christ as the light of the world and, in the days when candles were the main source of light in a church, it was also a day when the candles that were used in church during the year, were blessed. In effect, it was the day of the Mass of the Candles, or Candlemas. But whatever we call it, it is an important day in the Church’s year, and light has a lot to do with why it’s so important.

For many people, Candlemas marks the end of the season of Christmas. But even if we mark the end of Christmas after 12 days rather than 40, today still marks an end in the Church’s year. For the C of E, today is the end of the season of Epiphany which, as we know, is a season of revelation, a time in the Church’s year when we hear about various revelations of Jesus and who he is. And even in the RC Church when we’re now in Ordinary Time rather than the season of Epiphany, we still use these readings that reveal the identity of Jesus and so it’s still a season when we’re very much concerned with revelation. And so it’s very fitting that we mark the end of this season of revelation, whatever we might call it, with one more revelation about Jesus and who Jesus is. And today we hear that revelation today in the Song of Simeon.

The Song of Simeon, which we often call the Nunc Dimitis, goes like this;

“Lord, now you are letting your servant depart in peace,

according to your word;
for my eyes have seen your salvation
that you have prepared in the presence of all peoples,
a light for revelation to the Gentiles,
and for glory to your people Israel.”

But apart from the obvious meaning of the words, the Song of Simeon tells us that Jesus is the one through whom the promise God made to Abraham will be fulfilled. And that is the great revelation about Jesus we find in this Gospel reading.

We find the promise God made to Abraham in Genesis 12;

Now the Lord said to Abram, “Go from your country and your kindred and your father’s house to the land that I will show you. And I will make of you a great nation, and I will bless you and make your name great, so that you will be a blessing. I will bless those who bless you, and him who dishonours you I will curse, and in you all the families of the earth shall be blessed.”

We find the promise to Abram, and Abraham as he became, renewed later in Genesis. At first it’s an unconditional promise but later, when God does renew it, we read that it’s a promise, and a covenant, a deal, based on faith because in Genesis 15 we read of Abram,

And he believed the Lord, and he counted it to him as righteousness.

But we know that the promise to bless all nations through Abraham didn’t happen. It didn’t happen because his descendants, the people of Israel, kept the blessing to themselves by separating themselves from other people and nations. It was only in Christ that God’s blessing on the nations became a reality when faith in him allowed the Gentiles to be God’s people in the same way that the Jews were. And this is something St Paul writes about, especially in his Letters to the Romans and the Galatians.

St Paul isn’t always the easiest of people to understand, especially when he’s trying to talk about the relationship between faith in Christ and the Jewish law, as he does in these letters. But in essence, what St Paul says is that Abraham’s faith was a resurrection faith. It was a resurrection faith because he believed God’s promise that he would be the father of many nations even though he was 100 years old and his wife, Sarah, was thought to be unable to have children. So for St Paul, the Gospel, the good news that God can bring life from death, was proclaimed to Abraham even before Christ’s birth, and that was the basis of Abraham’s faith; he believed in the Resurrection before it happened. So Abraham’s faith is the same faith as those who believe in Christ because of his Resurrection. And so, just like Abraham, they’re considered righteous, right with God, because of their faith, and because of that, the blessing that God promised to Abraham is passed on to all those who have faith in Christ, Jew and Gentile alike.

So in the Song of Simeon, we see a revelation of Jesus as the one who will finally fulfil God’s promise to Abraham. Jesus is the one who’ll make Abraham a blessing to all people because he’s the one who’ll bring salvation to all people. Jesus is the one who’ll be a light of revelation to the Gentiles because he’s the one who’ll show the Gentiles how to be God’s people and allow them to be God’s people by bringing them to faith. And in doing that, Jesus will bring glory to Israel and God’s people by revealing to the world the truth of Abraham’s faith, which is the faith of Israel. What Simeon is saying is that this baby, is the one that not only he’s been waiting for, but that Israel has been waiting for, and the world has been waiting for.

In Galatians 3, St Paul argued that the offspring of Abraham, those who’d take the promised blessing to all people, didn’t refer to many offspring, it wasn’t offspring in a plural sense, but to one offspring. For St Paul, that one was Christ. And likewise, what Simeon said when he saw and spoke about the baby Jesus is that this is the one, and in that we can see a foreshadowing of what St John wrote in the prologue to his Gospel;

The true light, which enlightens everyone, was coming into the world. He was in the world, and the world was made through him, yet the world did not know him. He came to his own, and his own people did not receive him. But to all who did receive him, who believed in his name, he gave the right to become children of God, who were born, not of blood nor of the will of the flesh nor of the will of man, but of God.

The candles we lit and held tonight earlier tonight were only small, but once we understand what they symbolise, we can recognise them as something much greater. They might only be small, and they might not give out much light as candles, but they symbolise the greatest and brightest light that’s ever shone, the one true light that gives light and life to the world, the light of Christ.

Amen. 

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The Propers for The Presentation of the Lord (Candlemas) can be viewed here.

Amidst the recent controversies that have surrounded the Church of England, there have been calls for the disestablishment of the Church. Whether that’s been because census figures show that Christianity is now a minority movement in this country or because the Church’s teaching shows that it’s out of touch with the prevailing attitudes and values of modern society, the question’s been raised, Why should the Church of England enjoy the benefits of being an established Church any longer?

Being an established Church though, that is, a Church recognised by law as the official Church of the nation and as such, one that is supported by the civil authorities, has always been something of a double-edged sword. Establishment does give the Church a direct input into the political life of the nation and what it says is given publicity that other organisations couldn’t expect. It also allows the Church to enjoy certain exemptions to state law where that comes into conflict with Church teachings. But establishment also ties the Church closely to the state. Too closely for many people, so closely in fact that, for many people, the Church is, if not part of the state, then at least part of the established order of things. But the Christian faith, and the Church that proclaims it has always appealed to what we’d now call the underclasses of society, the poor, the underprivileged, minorities, all those who seem, or at least they themselves think, are getting a raw deal from society. So it can’t be a good thing for a Church to be seen by those people as simply part of a society or established order of society that doesn’t care about them.

Whatever we think about the establishment of the Church of England though, one thing that no one can ever deny is that the Church has never been called to be part of any established order of society. How can it have been, or be, when Christ himself, the one who called the Church into being, said that his disciples, those people who make up the Church, are to be in the world but not of the world? How can the Church be part of any established order of society when we’re urged time and time again in Scripture to conform ourselves to Christ and not to the world? The Church has always been counter-cultural because the faith it proclaims is counter-cultural. One of the reasons the Church has been persecuted so often during its history is that its teaching, its values and its norms of behaviour, don’t fit in with those of the society it exists in.

The Christian faith and the Church are, to put not too fine a point on it, subversive because they openly proclaim that the world has got it wrong, badly wrong, and needs to change and do things in a new, different and better way. And we see this in our Gospel readings this morning.

Today is one of those Sundays when we have different Gospel readings in the lectionaries. At St Gabriel’s this morning, our Gospel is the story of the Wedding at Cana, whilst at St Mark’s our Gospel is that part of Jesus’ teaching at the start of his Sermon on the Mount that we know as The Beatitudes. But nevertheless, they’re both readings that show the Christian faith as something new, different and better.

The Wedding at Cana is where Jesus changed water into wine, the first of what St John calls the ‘signs’ that Jesus gave to reveal his identity as the Messiah and through which he called  people to faith. In the Old Testament we read that wine is a sign of God’s blessing, so that Jesus turned water into wine and the best wine, something better than the people had drunk before, shows that in Jesus, God was bestowing a very great blessing on the people, a blessing they hadn’t received before. So, although we can interpret this sign in various ways, what we see in Jesus changing water into wine is that, in Jesus, God is doing something new, something different and something better than had gone before.

St John tells us that this sign brought Jesus’ disciples to faith but being a disciple of Christ, being a Christian, is not just about giving our intellectual assent to his teachings, it’s about conforming our lives to those teachings. In other words, being a Christian isn’t just about believing in Jesus, it’s about doing what he taught us to do. Being a Christian isn’t just about proclaiming the new, different and better way Christ taught, it’s about living in that new, different and better way. And the Beatitudes tell us something of what it means to live as Christ taught. But not only that, it tells us just how very different that way is to the way of the world.

The first beatitude, or blessing, Jesus pronounces is on those who are poor in spirit, in other words, on those who know their need of God and who don’t have that ‘holier than thou’ attitude which Jesus condemned so often in the scribes and Pharisees. But what do we see in the world around us? Isn’t it true that the world today is awash with people who think that they know better than anyone else? Opinionated people who think they’ve got it all worked out and that everyone should agree with them and that anyone who doesn’t agree is wrong, and not only wrong but dangerous and needs to be ‘cancelled’ out from society so that the world can be a better place and everyone can be happy? And it’s not a new problem; how many people have we met who’ve said something like ‘I just tell it as it is’? when what they really mean is they tell it as they see it which may very well not actually be ‘as it is’.

Jesus then pronounces a beatitude on the gentle, those who show no malice or belligerence towards others and don’t look to exert their will over others but who are kind and considerate towards others. But doesn’t the world laugh at such gentleness? Doesn’t the world operate on a ‘survival of the fittest’, ‘be strong because only the strong survive’ mentality? Doesn’t it often work on a ‘put yourself first and if that means stepping on a few people along the way, so be it, that’s just too bad for them’ mentality?  But isn’t this exactly the kind of thinking that leads to people like the Nazis?

Then we have the beatitude on those who mourn. But who on earth offers comfort to those who mourn any kind of loss? Family members and friends usually, but who else? Isn’t it true that the world very often offers only superficial comfort to those who mourn, a kind of ‘ saying the right words’ kind of comfort rather than ‘doing the right thing’ kind of comfort? And isn’t this because people are too busy with their own problems and chasing their own happiness to be truly concerned with the mourning and suffering of others?

Jesus next pronounces a beatitude on those who hunger and thirst for righteousness. Strictly speaking, this refers to those who want to see God’s will  done, those who want to see the reality of God’s kingdom on earth, but how many people don’t care about what’s right in any objective sense of the word? How many people only care about themselves, their ‘rights’ over the rights of others, having their own way regardless of whether their way is right or wrong and regardless of the consequences to others of them having their own way? How many people in the world today seem to view their opinions as the truth, even when the facts clearly show their opinions to be untrue?

Next we have the beatitude on the merciful, on those who are compassionate and forgiving. But how much compassion and forgiveness do we see in the world? Isn’t it true that an awful lot of the trouble in the world is caused because people are vengeful and lacking in compassion? Isn’t it true that problems persist and are made worse because people can’t or won’t let go of the past but cling to old resentments and harbour grudges. Isn’t it also true that when people do this and say they simply want ‘justice’ what they really mean is they want someone to pay for what’s happened to them, or even what they think has happened to them? And what is that but seeking revenge?

The next beatitude is pronounced on the pure in heart, on those in whom there is no deceit or corruption. But in the world, aren’t such people laughed at and trodden down by others in so many areas of life? Because, as we look at those who rise to the top in the world, don’t we so often see that their rise has been achieved on the back of deceit and corruption? Don’t we find that so many people speak fine words and make grand promises to climb the ladder of success, but then discard all those things, and the people who helped them, once they’ve got what they want?

Jesus then pronounces a beatitude on the peacemakers. We know what peacemakers are, and in a world as troubled as ours they should be regarded as great people, but are they? As we look at history, isn’t it true that the people we regard as ‘great’ are all to often warmongers rather than peacemakers? What is the reason we call people like Alexander, Caesar, Genghis Khan, Napoleon and the like, great men? Isn’t it because they were conquerors who sought nothing but their own glory and power and in the process of achieving it cost the lives of millions of people? And yet we call them ‘great’!

Finally we have the double beatitude on those who are persecuted for righteousness and for their faith in Christ. Here, Jesus links righteousness to faith in him. So we can see this as a statement by Jesus that those who are faithful to him are also being faithful to God. Jesus also says that we should rejoice and be glad for such persecutions for this is just what people have always done to God’s faithful, people like the prophets. This is perhaps one of the most counter-cultural of all Jesus’ teachings, that we should rejoice if people persecute us for our faith because then we’ll know that we are being faithful. But this is nothing like the way of the world is it? The way of the world is to be rewarded for doing right and punished for doing wrong. But in a world in which what’s right and wrong seems to be coming increasingly dependent on people’s own opinion, what’s right and what’s wrong is never certain. And this brings us to the difference between being blessed and being happy.

Happiness on the world’s terms is very subjective; it’s about what makes us happy, it’s about my happiness and doing what makes me happy. But being  blessed in the way Jesus means in the Beatitudes is something very different. Being blessed is about being happy because we’re in a right relationship with God, or perhaps that God will make us happy because we’re in that right relationship with him. So happiness in this sense isn’t about being happy on our own terms, it’s about being happy on God’s terms. And the world doesn’t seem to be interested in that kind of happiness. But for us, it’s the kind of happiness that we should want above all other kinds of happiness. And it should be the kind of happiness we want above all others because it’s the only happiness that will truly last. The kind of happiness the world offers is fleeting and temporary. The world’s kind of happiness comes and goes, and it comes to an end when our earthly lives come to and end. But being blessed is eternal. If we can live in a right relationship with God we can be happy whatever happens in the world, and our happiness won’t end when our earthly lives end; it will go on for all eternity in heaven.

To be a Christian is to be counter-cultural and even subversive because we’re called to be what the world doesn’t want us to be. We’re called to be different. What we have to do, as Christians, is ask ourselves whether we’re prepared to be like that. Are we prepared to proclaim and live the new and different way that Jesus proclaimed and lived, even though that will put us at odds with the world? If we are then we will be proclaiming and living a better way than the world can offer. The world won’t like that, or us for doing it, but in the end, we will be blessed by God for it and enjoy the eternal happiness that Christ’s new, different and better way brings.

Amen.

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The Propers for the 4th Sunday in Ordinary Time (Epiphany 4) can be viewed here.

Among the members of my family is a lady who has a great liking for jewellery. Rings on each finger, earrings, bracelets, necklaces, she wears them all, and all at the same time. At one time she used to wear 3 different necklaces together. Now, you might think there’s nothing so unusual about that but the three necklaces she wore were all religious symbols. There was a six-pointed Star of David, a crucifix, and a cross. These symbols are often seen as having particular meaning. The Star of David is a symbol of Judaism. The crucifix is often seen as a symbol of Catholic Christianity. And the cross is often seen as a symbol of Reformed Christianity, or in common understanding, Protestant Christianity.

I remember one occasion, during a family night out, someone looking at these necklaces, then pointing to them and saying to the lady in question,

“Can’t you make your mind up?”

The lady glanced down at her necklaces, looked at me with one of those ‘Are you going to hit him or shall I’ kind of looks, and then looked the person who’d asked the question with a rather withering look and said in an equally withering tone,

“I’m a Christian, but you can’t have this,” slightly raising the cross,

“without this.” And lifted the crucifix.

“And you can’t have either without this.” And lifted up the Star of David.

“But this is the most important.” And lifted up the crucifix again.

After a few seconds, the other person asked,

“So are you Catholic then?”

To which the lady giving the same looks all round again, answered, in the same tone,

“No, I’m Church of England but this” and lifted up the crucifix again, “is more important than that because the man on it is more important than that.”

That is a true story, and it happened quite a long time ago now, well before I’d even offered myself for ordination, but I’ve always remembered it. I’ve remembered it because of the look on the lady’s face, both the way she looked at me and at the person who’d asked the questions. I’ve remembered it because it was a spontaneous yet brilliant answer, the kind of answer that proves Jesus’ words. That we’re interrogated about our faith,

“…do not worry about what to say or how to say it. At that time you will be given what to say, for it will not be you speaking, but the Spirit of your Father speaking through you.”

And I’ve remembered it because it also shows just how mixed-up people can be about faith and religion. How they can miss what’s really important about faith because they don’t look any further into it than what’s in front of them. How they can make assumptions about faith based on their own knowledge and understanding, which is very often only limited knowledge and understanding, and even on their prejudices. And about how people can make damning statements about the faith of others based on their own prejudices and lack of understanding.

When we speak about our faith, we mustn’t ever lose sight of the fact that it is the Christian faith. It’s called the Christian faith, or Christianity, because it’s a faith based on Jesus Christ; the clue is in the name. And so Jesus Christ must be the ground and centre of our faith. Without Jesus there is no such thing as the Christian faith and if we side-line Jesus in any way, if we make other people in the story as important or more important than Jesus, whilst we might still have a faith, it won’t be a truly Christian faith. And this morning’s Gospel shows that centrality of Jesus Christ in our faith.

The Gospel begins by telling us that Jesus’ ministry begins after John had been arrested. Later in the Gospel, Jesus calls his first disciples. And so we see Jesus in the centre of the proclamation of the Good News of the kingdom – first John, who prepared the way for Jesus, then Jesus himself, who proclaimed the kingdom, then the disciples, who followed Jesus and continued to proclaim the kingdom after Jesus had returned to the Father. And whenever we think about our faith, we always have to remember this order. There were those who came before Jesus, those who prepared for the coming of Jesus, and there are those who come after Jesus, his followers, those who carry on Jesus’ work through time. But both those who came before and those who come after, point to Jesus who is the centre of our faith. Or at least that’s what should happen.

It’s a sad fact, but a fact nonetheless, that much of the division in the Church, is caused because people don’t keep Jesus at the centre of our faith. There are those who put too much emphasis on those who came before Jesus, and unfortunately, that’s often centred on the Blessed Virgin Mary. There’s no doubting Mary’s importance in the story of our salvation; she was the one chosen by God to be the mother of his Son, the mother of Jesus, our Lord and Saviour and the ground of our faith. But some people in the Church would like to see Mary much more highly exalted than she is already.

There are those who call her the Mediatrix of all graces and think all Christians should do likewise. This refers to an understanding that Mary mediates divine grace, God’s goodness and gifts to us, from the side of his throne in heaven. The obvious objection to this is that Christ is our mediator and our advocate, but those who hold Mary to be Mediatrix place her  between us and Christ, to use a business analogy, Jesus is the supplier of graces, but Mary is the distributor of those graces. Now this is clearly not Scriptural and even Pope Francis, in 2019, said that we should not got lost in such foolishness. 

But there are those who, in addition to Mediatrix, would also have Mary as Co-Redemptrix, or Co-Redeemer. By this they don’t mean that Mary is equal to Christ in his role as Redeemer of the world but rather that, through being his mother, her faith and obedience, and as Mother of the Church, she co-operates with Christ in his redemption of the world to a greater extent than all others. But the clear meaning of the prefix ‘co’ implies equality doesn’t it? And so when people begin to go down these avenues, whilst they might not mean to go so far, people will inevitably misunderstand what they mean and go further than the proposers intended. And before we know where we are, in popular thought at least, we end up in a murky world where we’re not really sure who is at the centre, is it Jesus, or is it Mary?

And of course, those who disagree with this exaltation of Mary can go completely the opposite way in response. I met and spoke to a lady just this last week who is vehemently anti-Mary. A lady who said there should be no statues or pictures of Mary anywhere in any churches because, and I quote, “Mary has nothing to do with it.”

When I pointed out that, as Jesus’ mother and so the source of his humanity, Mary has quite a lot to do with it, the reply was,

“That doesn’t matter. SHE has nothing to do with it.”

I wonder what Pope Francis would say about that, because that also is clearly unscriptural and clearly and undeniably, foolishness.

But if attempts to exalt Mary ever more highly have the potential to shift our focus away from Jesus and too much towards those who came before him, what that vehement anti-Mary attitude also clearly and undeniably shows is how we can shift our focus away from Jesus and too much towards those who come after him. In other words, towards the traditions of men that we usually refer to as denominations of the Church.

The clear fact of the matter is, that if those who’ve come after Christ had always kept him at the centre of all things, we wouldn’t have different denominations of the Church; there would be one Church, as Christ intended there to be. Because what is the cause of our divisions other than those who exalt their own teaching and their own ways above the ways of Christ?

I mentioned a few moments ago about the meaning of the prefix ‘co’ and the potential for that to be misunderstood when applied to the proposed Marian title ‘Co-Redemptrix’. But so many arguments and divisions in the Church have been caused by such simple misunderstandings. One person interprets a word in one way, another person interprets it differently. They argue about it and, because they’re both so pig-headed and stubbornly pedantic they fall out and go their separate ways. It’s happened in the Church, and it’s caused divisions in the Church, major divisions that persist to this day. The Great Schism of 1054, the formal split between the Catholic West and the Orthodox East, was caused by arguments about whether the Holy Spirit proceeds from the Father and the Son, as the West argued, or simply from the Father, as the East argued. About whether unleavened bread should be used at the Eucharist, as the West does, or leavened, as the East does. And about who is in charge of the Church, does Rome have universal authority, as the West believed, or does Constantinople have equal authority, as the East believed? And these arguments were made worse because the West spoke and wrote Latin and the East spoke and wrote Greek. Mutual ex-communications, insults and accusations of heresy followed, each side blamed the other, the Church split along Western and Eastern lines and is still split in that way today.

But if we try to look at these things impartially and objectively, isn’t the real root cause nothing more than human pride, a ‘we’re right and you’re wrong mentality’, a refusal to back down or compromise, and anger and hatred because of all that? And yet didn’t Jesus say we shouldn’t ‘Lord it’ over one another, but be humble and loving and forgiving? And, if we look at these things in this way how can we see them other than a shifting of Christ from the centre of our faith and putting our own traditions there in Christ’s place?

Think about in this way, how often have we in the Church’s history and do we still today talk about the Catholic faith, the Orthodox faith and the Protestant faith, as though these were completely different faiths? But aren’t we all supposed to be of the same faith? And isn’t that called the Christian faith?

Amen.  

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The Propers for the 3rd Sunday in Ordinary Time (Epiphany 3) can be viewed here.