Presentation of our Lord

Luke 2:22-40

For the last several weeks we have been hearing the stories of Jesus being baptized, beginning his ministry and calling his disciples. Those stories came from John’s gospel, and from Matthew’s. But today is the celebration of the Presentation of Our Lord, a festival in the Church that remembers an earlier point in Jesus’ life, when he was still an infant, probably a little over one month old, being presented at the temple.

It’s a story we only get in Luke’s gospel. Luke’s gospel is one of the three synoptic gospels, along with Mark and Matthew. Mark was first and then later Matthew and Luke wrote theirs, drawing on Mark, their own witnesses and a third common source called Q.

We know Matthew copied more than 600 verses directly from Mark when he wrote his gospel. Luke, which came third, copied more than 300 verses from Mark, so often these three gospels have similar stories. Because of the similarities and repetition, when there is a unique story, like this one, we should always ask, “Why did the gospel writer choose to tell this story?”

But even before that, let’s begin with why Luke wrote his gospel in the first place. There were already two other accounts. Why did he think we needed this one?

One answer is that at the time of Jesus’ life and ministry, often the second coming was anticipated as something very near, that the disciples who had traveled with Jesus would see first-hand, in their lifetimes. And now, those eyewitnesses were nearing the end of their lives. Luke wrote his gospel, as he tells us in its first verse, to “set down an orderly account of the events that have been fulfilled among us.”[i]

Luke wants us to know Jesus as the fulfillment of God’s promises.[ii]

With that in mind, we hear anew the story of Mary and Joseph bringing the infant Jesus to the temple. He had already been circumcised and named. Now they have returned to the temple for two (2) purposes. First, Mary as a new mother was considered ritually impure for forty days after the birth of her son. After that she was expected to bring an offering to the temple that the priest then offered as a sacrifice to affect her purification. Luke tells us this part of the story so that we know that Mary and Joseph were Torah-observant Jews.

Second, while the Torah does not contain any requirement that first-born males be presented at the temple, there are laws about providing sacrifices to redeem the first-born, and there is an idea in Leviticus and Numbers that first-born sons “belong” to the Lord and are dedicated to serve him.[iii] In his telling of Jesus’s presentation at the temple, Luke casts Mary in the role of Hannah, Samuel’s mother in the Old Testament, dedicating her firstborn son’s life to God.

And then Simeon and Anna appear in the story as devout Jews, who recognize in Jesus the one whom God has promised.

Guided by the Holy Spirit the old man named Simeon appears at the temple at the same time as Mary, Joseph and Jesus and he erupts into praise. Maybe you recognize the words of the nunc dimittis, the canticle we sometimes sing after communion in our worship liturgy.

And then 84-year old Anna who spent her days and nights in fasting and in prayer at the temple also sees the Holy Family, and Luke says she too begins to praise God.

Simeon sings to God, “For my eyes have seen your salvation.” (v. 30) And Anna praises “the redemption of Jerusalem.” (v. 38)

Nothing material had changed in the world around these two faithful people. Doubtless there were still people arguing in the courtyard and on the streets; there were still Roman soldiers occupying their city and towns; there were still people living in poverty and dying from illnesses that couldn’t be prevented.

And yet,
and yet, in Jesus, they saw the promises of God fulfilled.

Faith enables us to live in the in-between time, knowing the rigors of everyday life now and yet having confidence that God is fulfilling God’s promises.

The world would have us believe that the reality we see in the midst of infectious disease spreading in China and political turmoil in both the U.S. and U.K. is irredeemable — it’s never going to get any better. It would disempower us and have us believe we are helpless.

But Father Richard Rohr, a Franciscan priest who teaches about Christian spirituality, recently said that the way through the oppositional dualities that the world creates – Catholic or Protestant, Republican or Democrat, Black or white, male or female , spiritual or religious – is to forgive “reality for being what it is.”[iv] If we don’t forgive then we will accumulate resentments, anger and cynicism.

But when we forgive reality for what it is, we are freed to unclench our hands and release our grip on what we think it should be. And when we do that, we open our hands to receive what Rohr describes as the “bonding glue of grace which heals all the separations that [our worldly means] can never finally or fully restore.”[v]

Simeon rejoices that “he has seen the salvation” promised by God. What he had seen wasn’t a miraculous redemption where the whole world was set right in front of his eyes, and it wasn’t a personal or individual “salvation”, a guaranteed entry to heaven, as we often hear those words interpreted today. It wasn’t even the assurance of resurrection that we have in Christ. Instead, what Simeon saw was Jesus,
God’s boundless love incarnate and more powerful than anything he had witnessed or could imagine.

Like Simeon and Anna, in Jesus, we too are invited to see God’s salvation, or liberation, in the world God so loves.

In our restlessness, we may wonder, is “seeing” enough?

Rohr tells the story of being a young monk going through the work and the prayers, the Divine Hours, that ordered his day and asking one of the older monks, “What are we doing?” After much discussion, the old monk said, “We are holding the universe together.” And Rohr replied, “Maybe that is why everything is falling apart, because few of us are willing to make that commitment.”

Simeon and Anna mad a commitment to hold the space for God to be at work in the world, confident that God was fulfilling God’s promises, even when their eyesight dimmed, their hearing faltered, and their steps got less steady.

And that is what we, dear Church, are doing too as we gather around the font and table in worship; we are holding space. Gathered around this infant in whom God is present, and around the table where we see God present in the bread and wine, we recommit ourselves to hold space for God to heal and restore our universe.

Let us pray…[vi]
The coming of your son, Jesus, broke open the heaven and prepared a way for all your children to come home to you. Give us eyes to see your miraculous spirit moving in this church and in this world. Teach us to be proclaimers of your love to the nations, for the sake of the one whose name is redemption for the peoples, Jesus Christ our salvation.
Amen.

[i] Luke 1:1
[ii] “Luke”. Enterthebible.org. Luther Seminary. https://www.enterthebible.org/newtestament.aspx?rid=4, accessed 1/31/2020.
[iii] “Commentary on Luke 2:22-40.” Stephen Hultgren. Workingpreacher.org. Luther Seminary.
[iv] Fr. Richard Rohr. “Action and Contemplation: Part Two. Love at the Center”. https://cac.org/love-at-the-center-2020-01-17/
[v] Fr. Richard Rohr. “Action and Contemplation: Part Two. Love at the Center”. https://cac.org/love-at-the-center-2020-01-17/
[vi] “Discussion Questions for Presentation of our Lord.” Workingpreacher.org. Luther Seminary. https://www.workingpreacher.org/print_questions.aspx?lectionary_calendar_id=1314, accessed 1/31/2020.