Candlemas

Sermon Preached by the Revd Dr Matt Bullimore

It's Candlemas. And we know what that means. If you still have your Christmas tree and decorations up it’s time to take them down. I don’t know how many of you keep this ‘long Christmas’ domestically – but we do keep it in the church. We have Christmas – that great celebration of God’s gift of himself in Jesus – and then Epiphany, the season of coming to see just how extraordinary that is. Christ’s light begins to illuminate who he is and also who we are. And that brings us all the way to Candlemas:

Mary comes to the Temple to present her son to the Lord. She comes to offer thanks. She adores this baby and as his mother she comes with gratitude for this gift; a gift to her but also a gift who’s mystery she is still trying to fathom. She makes a small sacrificial offering, a token of that thankfulness. But what’s she doing is she’s offering Jesus to God, her firstborn, and joyfully receiving him back.

Mary’s surrounded by the usual crowd that baby’s attract, cooing over him and pinching his cheek – and as a mum you imagine her both filling with pride and also wishing everyone would take a step back and be a bit less hands on. But an old man persists. Simeon whisks him into his arms and proclaims him to be the light to all people and Israel’s glory. And then…then a shadow falls on the scene. The man this baby will grow into will divide opinion, reveal people’s inner selves, to such an extent that it will wound his mother’s heart. Simeon points us to the passion. We will kill Jesus because we don’t like what he will show us about ourselves.

So in the Temple, thanks is given for the gift given at Christmas and we hear more of who Jesus is and what he will become. Another moment of Epiphany.

But what do we learn about us, what is revealed to us about ourselves as we accompany Mary and Joseph with their new baby into the Temple?

If we watch Mary, perhaps we catch a glimpse. Look how she offers Christ. Gives him up to God and then receives him back again.

There’s something priestly in that moment, don’t you think? Watch Anna later as she holds up Christ at the altar and how we receive him back in the sacrament. It’s the same movement.

But as you know, and priests know, we don’t offer Christ. Jesus has already made his one offering of himself to the Father, made most visible on the cross. He gives himself up and then he is returned to us at the resurrection. It’s Jesus who offers himself and at the altar he gather us in, invites us to share in that offering, perfecting our imperfect offerings.

So if we want to know what true offering is, we look to Jesus.

When a priest, or Mary, or any of us, when we offer ourselves to God in praise and thanksgiving, when we offer ourselves in loving service to the world, we – well, we can only do it because we share in Christ’s own work.

Which makes this a particularly pleasing little vignette – Mary perhaps doesn’t know it fully yet – but her gesture of offering and receiving is already a share in Christ’s offering of himself. That’s who he is. He is one who offers himself. And she’s drawn into that.

So what does Christ’s offering look like? It is the shape of his life – his whole life from manger to tomb, from tomb to Ascension. It’s who he is as God’s Son from all eternity.

He is a perfect reflection of the Father so he shows us what the Father’s love looks like. He knows himself as beloved and he loves the world as the Father loves it. Watch him heal the leper, watch him honour outcast women, watch him put down the proud, watch him give a portion of his Spirit to those he encounters and see their lives blossom.

That’s Jesus offering himself to the world in love – and he does so even to death.

And all that Jesus does in service of the world, he does for the praise and glory of the Father whom he loves and worships. As he serves the world he turns the world back towards the Father, turns us to see the source of our life. Turns us so we can see we are beloved and so we can offer our worship.

So Mary’s gesture is a little foretaste, a sign, of all that Jesus does. An offering of praise and thanksgiving, and then she receives Christ and is carried with him into the world that he loves.

In the Eucharist, we find that this is our calling too. We offer our lives, our hopes and fears, our joys and our griefs, our relationships, the bits we want God to see and the parts of us we hide away, and we give them up to God. Christ embraces us, every part, and under his wing he presents us to the Father. Makes us part of his perfect offering. And then by his Spirit he recreates us to be – together – his body in the world. He sends us out to love the world with his love, he sends us out to serve the world in his name and with the power of his Spirit.

I’ll finish with three things that might help us flesh out what that means tomorrow, and the day after that. How can we offer ourselves?

The first is to offer ourselves in prayer. Either take time to really inhabit the daily prayers you already do – or, if that’s not something you yet do or forget or miss – then put time aside to pray the Lord’s prayer with Jesus – it’s his prayer after all – and pray it slowly, deliberately, maybe more than once. Offer God that time.

Secondly, have a think about who your friends and companions in the faith might be. And have a conversation with them about what you think God is calling you to do and be. Maybe, if it is someone you trust, be honest about the things that you don’t want to offer God, the things that actually you most need to give him so he can do his healing work. Help one another.

And thirdly, deliberately look at the world around you with Christ’s eyes. Trying to let go of those fears, anxieties, preoccupations and prejudices we all have. Try and look at the world with love and ask, of any situation, how can I bring love to bear here? How can I be love here for these people.

These are the gestures that, like Mary’s, remind us that we are at each moment being called to share in Christ’s offering of himself to his Father and to the world which he loves.