Candlemas
Candlemas
2nd February 2025
(Malachi 3.1-5; Luke 2.22-40)
The Temple in Jerusalem, like almost all ancient temples, was a place of sacrifice; birds, animals, first fruits, and more, were customarily brought there to be slaughtered and burnt to the glory of God. Such sacred places must have reeked of blood, and the clouds of incense which filled them was probably both to cover the smell of decay and to discourage the flies which must have gathered. To be frank, it all sounds rather disgusting. In our times, we generally don’t look for purification through this kind of death and destruction.
But our holy places can still be complex, mixed places which may include tragedy and loss. A few days ago many people were killed in a stampede at the Kumbh Mela, beside the sacred waters of India. Several times in recent years, many pilgrims have died at the Haj in Mecca. On a level which involves no tragedy, and is entirely mundane, I point you to our café, currently occupying the south transept – this in a church which strives to worship the one who cast the traders out of God’s Temple.
In amongst the phrases in Malachi chapter 3 which have been made familiar by hearing many hearings of Handel’s Messiah, did you notice that the chapter begins by announcing that ‘the Lord whom you seek will suddenly come to his temple’? What does that imply: apparently that this temple in Jerusalem, set aside over many generations to represent the place where God dwells, might be so devoid of his presence that now he can suddenly come there?
Great places of worship, indeed all acts of worship, have always had to live with ambivalence. Any effort to represent, let alone to be inhabited by what is ineffable, is bound to be multi-layered, complex, probably hypocritical – and bound to some degree to fail. As Malachi evidently knew, the eternal God still needs to come into these places. Priests and other worshippers will always need to encounter the refiner’s fire; as the Church of England has only too vividly demonstrated in recent times, we latter-day descendants of Levi are some way short of presenting offerings to the Lord in righteousness. Our own ethics always need re-examining if we are to challenge those who swear falsely, those who oppress the hired workers, the widow and orphan, those who thrust aside the alien.
The infant Jesus was brought to the Temple, so Luke tells us, to meet the obligations of religious custom, but unexpectedly there brought release and relief to Anna and Simeon, two old habitues of that holy place. They, apparently more even than the parents, could see the transforming presence of almighty God in this child.
Given that Luke has already told us that Mary and Joseph have lately received messages from an angel, and have met shepherds telling them how angels sang to them about this child’s birth, it seems these new parents were not particularly quick on the uptake.
It is not easy to live in the powerful presence of the mysteries of God. Sometimes we all need the sideways perspectives such as can come from the eccentrics who seem often to be drawn to sacred places. To see that this baby was destined for the falling and rising of many; to see that the mother would know bitterness like a sword through her heart. To know that the presence of the living God reaches into strange places, and can never be held within the walls of sacredness.