Any way here is the address I presented this morning at St Magnus
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Here we are
The end of the beginning and the beginning of the end.
The feast of the presentation brings to a conclusion the Christmas season in which we have traced the revelation and manifestation of God and His love in the person of Jesus.
From his birth narratives, the worship of the shepherds the glory of the humble manger bed, through the manifestation to the world in the persons of the magi who brought their three mysterious and meaningful gifts which were signs of things to come, to the baptism which set the seal of the kingdom on him and sent him to his ministry among Gods people, through the signs and wonders which further highlighted the glory of God in Jesus, and now back to the child being presented to the Lord at the Temple according to Jewish customs.
It has all be set before us, we too have been presented with the person.
But the conclusion of Christmas is but the beginning of Lent and so another cycle in the church year begins and our faith stories are woven into it all.
Like the Roman God Janus from whom this month of January gets its name, we look back and forth. Over the old and into the new at the same time.
The gift …. The ability to see both directions at once, the before and after, forward and backwards. Is one of the things which marks us in humanity. Perhaps it makes us special.
Simeon sees the beginning when Mary and Joseph bring the baby to the Temple. It is something he has been waiting and longing for… the redemption of Gods people. And in Christ he sees the beginning of this moment, and in so doing he is made ready for his own end.
In seeing Christ the redeemer he is filled with Peace and ready for his journey to continue.
The presentation is the hinge point and from the manger bed we look to the grave beside Calvary. The manger turns to the cross and yet in all the squalor of both stable and Golgotha we see God and recognise his presence.
It is now the 65th anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz. This place has become the focus of that most dreadful of events seen in modern Europe this last century. It is impossible to recognise what must have happened, what must have been endured there and in other such places. Yet even here in the lives of the survivors and their stories we can recognise the face of God, the glorious face which beats down oppression with divine love shining through.
Three weeks since the earthquake in Haiti
There is nothing which Gods love cannot reach into and redeem.
The film directed by Mel Gibson “The Passion of the Christ” controversial when it was released but non the less fascinating. Those of you who have seen it will recognise the way Mary travelled all the way to the cross alongside her son. It was one of the most moving aspects of the film. In all the horror unfolding there was that simple and wonderful witness of love, “near the cross stood Mary”
The moment the spear pierced Christ was also the time Mary felt the pain of birth all over again, birth brought life, and yet his death also brought life again. The events of the Garden of Eden, in traditional understanding, have been undone in Christ, we enter again the garden which God has planted, and from which we were banished, through the death of Jesus.
Mary becomes the link of continuity between the beginning and the end. She holds it all and presents it to us.
Christ is presented to us. We too who have been waiting for the signs of God’s love. We too, ho have been waiting for that moment of recognition, are presented with the sign of hope. We come to recognise God’s promise of healing and wholeness, that for which we all deep down yearn for.
And so we stand at the junction again, The beginning lies behind, the future lies in front, we see both ways and are blessed in the middle.
Standing in the middle may at time be a bit bewildering, like wondering which way is really up? We may feel disorientated and we might wonder which direction is best.
But we can actually only go forward. God may have blessed the past with signs of his glory but it is to the future he leads us now. We cannot and must not live in the past.
But the future is again uncertain, pain and passion lie ahead for sure. But all this with God.
Of course we do look back, often it was good. Like the grieving husband or wife looking back on great memories and all that has brought them and carried them. The past may indeed carry us and inform us. We may even God willing learn from past mistakes.
But we go forward there is to be found our further healing, the moments we are once again made whole in Christ.
Eventually we come with Simeon to our own moment of presentation and we pray that with him we too can say “ now let your servant go in peace for mine eyes have seen the salvation of God”
God bless us as we walk the way to Jerusalem, the way the death and life.
It made me wonder something. If I had been waiting for many years for a revelation from God, and then one day I believed without doubt that I had experienced it, … what would I do?
What might I expect to happen next?
How might I feel?
Should I tell anyone?
The gospel of Luke deliberately puts the story into the birth stories, which have been emphasising the action of God breaking into the world. It wasn’t just Anna and Simeon who drifted back into obscurity… what about the Shepherds too at least.?
And Luke continues his revelation of Jesus Christ with the story of Jesus again in the Temple when he was 12 and then jumps to John also recognising him before he begins his unmistakable public ministry.
Luke unfolds time and time again how God is at work in Christ both in teaching and miracles (signs that the Kingdom of God had indeed come) He shows the death and resurrection as the way in which God’s Glory is shown in Christ and how his power is displayed.
We become witnesses to all this by virtue of reading his account. Luke has intended that we too are moved to realise what we have seen or heard about in our midst. And then comes his finale, and looking at his gospel again this week I felt particularly moved to realise that it was not until the end of the gospel that Luke seems to assume that the disciples are now going to be the witnesses to all this (as he has unfolded it) The final discourses that Luke puts between the risen Lord and the disciples are all about recognising Jesus again in their midst, (just like the birth stories) the breaking of bread in Emmaus the women at the tomb, and then the time of Ascension when Jesus leaves them specifically as witnesses to all this.
Their response was to spend all their time in the Temple praising God…. and so Luke puts his pen down….
that is until he picks it up again and documents something of this witness in the Acts of the Apostles. It was as if he had written “The Story” on volume one and, “the consequences” on volume two.
So the fact that we hear nothing more of Shepherds and Anna and Simeon doesn’t matter so much. What matters is what the story means to us, for we are now the witnesses of it. It is little use blaming the witnesses of the past, we must recognise God in our midst for ourselves and then become witnesses to even that.
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