Article
- Date:
- Sunday 29th January 2023
Year A, The Presentation of Christ in the Temple (Candlemas) - Place:
- Holy Trinity, Cuckfield
- Service:
- Evensong
- Readings:
- Haggai 2.1-9
John 2.18-22
The Feast of Candlemas fulfils three distinct functions: it recalls the Presentation of Jesus in the Temple; it is the occasion for the annual blessing of church candles; and, based on a pre Christian festival, it approximately marks the half way point between the shortest day of the year and the coming of Spring.
The ordinance that the first male child should be offered to God occurs as early as Exodus 22,29 and it is recalled vividly in the early life of Samuel. No doubt in most cases the offering was merely symbolic but, in line with his overall narrative, Luke gives space to this story because it strengthens the link between Jesus and the Temple which starts with the opening verses of his Gospel as Zechariah burns incense at the altar and ends with Saint Paul's Pentecostal purification just before his arrest and journey to Rome at the end of Acts.
It is difficult for us to understand both the vital role of male succession in the ancient Jewish world but the dynastic imperative ran down the ages to the shocking story of our Church's founder, King Henry VIII and, even now, distant as we are from the Victorian obsession with male heritage, there is still a soft spot in many families for the first son; and in many parts of the world sons are still valued much more highly than daughters. But what counts is not the anthropology but the notion that whatever we have, we offer the best of it to God.
As for the importance of the Temple, we only have to think of the massive political tension caused by the overlapping of the Jewish 'Wailing Wall' and the Al Axa Mosque in Jerusalem. We are not so obsessed by place but we generally love our places of worship, are fussy about how they are appointed, and are deeply suspicious of change which underlines the importance in religious tradition of continuity.
Another aspect of continuity is the way that Christians appropriated pagan festivals for their own purposes: Christmas, after all, was superimposed on a Midwinter pagan Festival, as is Candlemas; and our Easter is superimposed on the Jewish Passover.
Taken together, you could say that Candlemas represents the Judaeo-Christian love of continuity which goes against our contemporary culture of novelty.
As for the candles they were, of course, an absolute necessity, particularly in Northern countries and places where it was difficult to get hold of oil for lamps and it is natural that these should be blessed for use in churches but, at the Reformation they became the subject, like priestly vestments, of bitter controversy and now they are something of an ornament, much in the fashion of Guardian Angels, a bit cute and a bit Catholic but also very comforting.
When we visit some great cathedral we might light a candle and say a prayer in an act which echoes Medieval Christianity where people thought that they could pray - or even pay - for the deceased loved ones to arrive in heaven.
What I take from this tangle of traditional strands are three simple lessons: first, we cannot handle novelty very easily unless we are able in some way to see it through the prism of the previous; but, secondly, we are apt to take tradition as read without knowing enough about why things were and not taking enough trouble to ask if they should be that way now; and, thirdly, it isn't tradition that we should 'fight for' but, rather, the underlying purposes which it served. Judaism survived the loss of its Temple; we have survived the loss of primogeniture; and our relationship with God in the Communion of Saints has survived the Medieval practise of praying and paying for the dead to get them out of a supposed 'Purgatory' into a supposed 'heaven'.
Needless to say, traditions are of different weight and are therefore varying in their ability to enable or to stifle. I think, for example, that although we know from pure theology that our prayers for the deceased make no difference to their ultimate relationship with God, I still think that there are very good pastoral reasons why people should pray for the dead if they want to.
A more nuanced example would be the use of the Book of Common Prayer which possesses some of the most beautiful English ever written but which almost totally focuses on 16th Century theological concerns - the mechanics of salvation and the doctrines of justification, predestination and sin - and which maintains social hierarchy and the inferiority of women but has just about nothing to say on the issues of social justice, the Church as the People of God and the complexities of contemporary ethics. And an even more difficult third case is the traditional attitudes to all kinds of socio economic, ethical and cultural issues which stop us as a Church facing outwards with confidence into the 21st Century. Tradition, after all, is there to inform and not to dictate.
Having said all of which, let me end on a traditional note which we might take forward into later this year and next year. Our ancestors got it right when they gave Christmas forty days as they gave to Lent; life being as it is, and always has been, we need every day of Christmas we can get. So, in three stages: try to observe Advent in Advent and, consequently, observe an intense Christmas between the coming of the Christ Child and the coming of the Magi; and then, even with the tree down, keep up the feasting and smiling, the hospitality and the thanksgiving, until Candlemas.