A Piercing Longing
Preached at St. Thomas à Becket Episcopal Church on February 2, 2020 (The Feast of the Presentation of Our Lord, Year A) on the following texts: Malachi 3:1-4, Psalm 84, Hebrews 2:14-18, and Luke 2:22-40.
Today is a special liturgical celebration, as we celebrate the Feast of the Presentation of our Lord falling on a Sunday as it does once or twice a decade. This is why our Gospel reading is not from Matthew, nor John, but from Luke—because Luke is the only Gospel that records any stories between the birth and baptism of Jesus.
So rather than reading Matthew’s Beatitudes today, we’re taking a moment out of our ongoing storytelling sequence to look at an event with Jesus as a 40-day-old infant on this 40th day after Christmas.
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In the Torah, God tells Moses that every first-born male, whether animal or human, is consecrated to Him and set aside for His priests (Exodus 13, Numbers 18). However, they may be “redeemed” for a price, to acknowledge the gifts of God and support the work of the temple. As the first-born son of Mary and Joseph, they dutifully take Jesus to the temple for this redemption, paying the reduced price set for the poor in Judah.
For those who know the Hebrew Scriptures well, it is clear that Luke is seeing this presentation reflecting a very special one that took place over 1,000 years before, recording in the first two chapters of the book of I Samuel. There a woman named Hannah had mourned her lack of children until the high priest blessed her devotion and crying out to God. She had promised that her son would be dedicated to God, and indeed once she conceived, bore a son, and weaned him, she brought him to the temple where he stayed for the rest of his life as a nazarite—a devotee to God. That young child became the great prophet Samuel, who led Israel until they insisted on a king, and then inaugurated the kingdom first by anointing Saul and then David.
For Luke, these stories connect Jesus to the divinely-orchastrated roles of both king and prophet. But the figures surrounding the child are just as powerful in both stories.
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In Samuel’s story, his mother Hannah is a great figure of faith and longing. Going up yearly to the temple, she cries out to God with such fervor that it is mistaken for intoxication. When accused, she replies:
“Oh no, my lord! I am a very unhappy woman. I have drunk no wine or other strong drink, but I have been pouring out my heart to the LORD. Do not take your maidservant for a worthless woman; I have only been speaking all this time out of my great anguish and distress.”
Her longing consumes her. It is everything she lives for and the one thing she asks before she dies.
And when that longing has born fruit, she breaks out into a majestic song on which the Magnificat is later based.
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Turning back to Luke chapter 2, we find two figures in the temple with similar longing. One is even named Hannah, here translated as Anna, who takes the child Jesus in rapture and prophesies about him.
But the other figure is a man named Simeon, and it is his passion and his song that we particularly remember today.
Luke tells us that Simeon was a good and righteous man who had been longing for the “consolation of Israel” just as Hannah had been longing for a child. And just as Hannah was given a promise, so also the Holy Spirit had promised Simeon that he would see his hope come in his lifetime, to see the One anointed for restoration.
When Mary and Joseph arrive at the temple, Simeon takes Jesus in his arms and proclaims:
“Now you release your servant in peace, Master,
in keeping with your word;
For my eyes have seen your salvation,
Which you have made ready before the face of all peoples,
A light for a revelation to the gentiles
and a glory for your people Israel.”
The longing and release in this Song are palpable to me. Imagine Simeon and Anna, waiting in silence year after year, with undiminished fervor but weary hearts, looking for so long after many centuries for the coming of the salvation of Israel. And then, through the halls walk a young couple with little child, humble and poor, and everything within them sings out in exultation because this, this is Christ the King, this babe born in obscurity and poverty is the one to bring hope and life and glory to the world.
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This holy longing that consumes and sustains Hannah, Simeon, and Anna in anticipation of healing and hope and light to all is at the same time a legacy of our religious past, a challenge of the present, and a promise for the future. To leave these figures and feelings as ancient stories alone misses the point. The point for us is, I believe, to ask ourselves what our longings are, what are we desiring so deeply that we devote our lives to its coming.
This is a search that may truly pierce our heart, as Simeon warns Mary, as it reveals the thoughts secreted within. It may be a sign opposed by the structures and systems of our inherited culture and priorities. It may also come into us like a refiner’s fire or a harsh cleansing soap, as the prophet Malachi warns, calling out “who can endure this coming?” We may deeply struggle to align our longings with God’s longings. But it is in this movement that deliverance comes.
The longing for light to enter our darkness is why this Feast is also called Candlemas, and why we have brought these extra candles out to make visible this inward truth. It is also why the icon that my wife and I worked on together to represent this season of Epiphany, of enlightenment, is based on Simeon’s Song as you can see out in the Narthex. This longing is a sacred trust, an anticipation for that always-incoming, always-becoming event that we call the Kingdom of God, “come on earth as it is in heaven.”
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So my prayer for myself and all of us on this Candlemas in 2020 is:
May we search our hearts for what we desire,
May the truth pierce us and lay our secrets bare,
May our longing for the kingdom among us be kindled,
May we look for that day when we may go in peace,
having seen what we longed for present in our world.
AMEN.
