Candlemas 2022

 

To Be The Light - Candlemas 2022- Luke 2: 22-40

 

It began forty days after the baby was born: born to be light. Or, maybe it began when the angel first told Mary of her special calling. Or, during the reign of King David. Or, when our people were slaves in Egypt. Or, when our ancestor Abraham set out from his home town of Ur on the Chaldes to become the father of more than all the stars in the heavens and all the grains of sand on the seashore. To be a blessing to all the peoples of God’s creation. Or, when God first said, “Let there be light.”

 

Mary and Joseph traveled to Jerusalem to observe the Purification of Mary the Mother of God, and to dedicate their first son to God forty days after his birth. To offer the appointed sacrifice at the Temple to redeem the child. They did so to remind themselves that their child belongs to God. It was a reminder that God has a genuine claim on the best we have to offer.

 

The required sacrifice was a lamb, but those too poor to buy a lamb could offer a lesser sacrifice of the two birds. The crowds in the Temple precincts would know who they were: bird people were poor people. They hoped they could get in and get out quickly.

 

They were not alone. Many people were out of work. The land was occupied by Rome. Taxes were high. The government unstable. There was resistance throughout the land. Common folk had trouble making ends meet. The lines in front of the pigeon sellers were very long.

 

Mary and Joseph were faithful to the custom of the forty days. The number of days and nights of the flood. The number of years his people had wandered in the wilderness becoming God’s people escaping from Egypt. The number of days this child would walk in the wilderness tempted by the devil. The offering of these birds would be a memorial to all the first-born males ordered killed by Pharaoh in that first Holocaust which only Moses survived. The custom binds them to their people and their history.

 

They had come to make a sacrifice and a commitment. Which are really the same thing.

Every commitment comes with a cost. Little did they know the offering they were making. Not only to God, but for the whole world. Nor were they prepared for the old man.

 

Simeon had been praying and waiting. God had promised he would see the light of the world before he died. Simeon was waiting to be released. Waiting for his people to be released. Waiting to see what we all hope to see but are too busy to remember to look for: a glimpse of God’s future. A glimpse of the truth.

 

Simeon, we can imagine, had grown weary. Weary of the occupation. Weary of failed policies and failed programs. Weary of the failure of religious and political leaders. Just weary of being weary. Everything and everyone who had promised life only yielded weariness and death. So, he was waiting to die. Waiting to see if God really keeps promises.

 

Simeon takes the child out of Mary’s arms. Imagine that! Who is he, she must wonder? What is he doing with my child? Why doesn’t Joseph stop him? Suddenly, Simeon becomes a poet for the ages: announcing for all who care to listen that this is not her child, but God’s very own anointed. That this child was born to be light. Light for all peoples. Everywhere and throughout all time. Simeon sees the light.

 

Can you see it, he cries out? Here is the light which will withstand all darkness, any darkness. Even death upon a Roman cross. Then quietly he hands the child back to his mother, and he is gone. Released. God’s promise fulfilled. Simeon returns to God as the mother and father look on. Joseph with the birds in his hands. Mary with the child born to be a light. All the other mothers and fathers looking on. Do we see the light?

 

Once upon a time we lived next door to an old man: Em Tramposch. He had devoted his life to propagating life with his hands: he was a nurseryman. From his fingers new life seemingly would spring forth every day. He had a deep sense of where that life comes from. You could see it in his eyes and hear it in his voice, but most of all in his hands.

 

I would spend days and nights in his greenhouse, watching his hands work: cutting, dipping, planting the cuttings, listening to what he had to say about life, the economy, politics and … Patsy Kline. He was always listening to Patsy Kline.

 

Em had cancer. Some days were better than others, some not so good at all, but nearly every day he was in the greenhouse propagating life, until one summer he became bed ridden. His wife Jane found ways with her camcorder to let him see what was happening down in the greenhouse. Each day he watched and waited. That August, our daughter Cerny was born. Her first day out of the house, we wheeled her in the pram right into the living room, right up to the side of Em’s hospital bed.

 

When he saw Cerny, without a word, Em pulled together what little strength he had left, and held his arms up in the air. He wanted to hold her. I put her in his arms, and he held her by his side. For ten or fifteen minutes she slept cradled in his arms, Jane sitting beside him. He watched. He looked at the baby. It was a picture of life coming in and life going out. But mostly it was a vision of life and light. For that period of time, there we were in the Jerusalem Temple. Simeon was holding our baby. As it turned out, Em, like Simeon before him, was released. He died a few days later.

 

Like Mary and Joseph, we come to remember our past and God’s saving actions. To commit our lives to God, and like Simeon and Em, to catch a glimpse of the light so we can tell others what we have seen. So that we can feel the release. So that like the boy who was born to be a light, we too can become a light for others. So that we can be propagators of light and life for the whole world.

 

We have only this time to see The Light and live accordingly: people of light and life. Amen.