York Minster

Candlemas

Date: 2nd February 2010
Preacher: The Reverend Canon Dr Jonathan Draper

I’ve spoken before about how Candlemas is a festival of the church with three different names pointing to three different things in three different directions. Many of you will know that the oldest name is ‘The Purification of St Mary the Virgin’ and derives from the fact that Mary, as was the common practice in her time, would have presented herself in the Temple to undergo a rite of purification after giving birth; she would have sacrificed ‘a pair of turtledoves or two young pigeons’. In traditional Jewish culture, a woman presented herself 40 days after birth for a boy and 60 days after birth for a girl. If a woman was considered ritually unclean for 40 days after having a boy, she must be very unclean indeed after having a girl to have to wait nearly three weeks longer.

As sensibilities changed, however, so the name of the feast has changed too, and it is now commonly known, as we have it this evening, as ‘The presentation of Christ in the Temple’. Here the idea is that Jesus is brought to the Temple to be presented to God; as the reading from Luke has it, ‘every first born male shall be designated as holy to the Lord’, and his family, as devout people, were following this practice. This customary practice, of course, takes on a less than customary feel for Jesus. He and his family are met by a man called Simeon who gives thanks to God that he has lived to see this day in words that we have come to know as the ‘Nunc Dimmittis’; ‘Lord now you let your servant depart in peace’. Then they are encountered by a woman called Anna who also praises God to have seen this child. No wonder Mary and Joseph were amazed.

The other name and tradition for this day is Candlemas, a day on which, rather prosaically, all of the church’s candles for a year were traditionally blessed. This relates back, of course, to the pre-Christian roots of the festival; a day half way between the winter solstice and spring equinox, the mid-point of winter. Which is why, I guess, the tradition of Groundhog Day and predicting the rest of the winter weather grew up.

 So we have three different pictures: light in the darkness of winter, purification from ritual uncleanness, and offering a child to God. All of these, of course, are related in Christ. Christ is the one through whose life and death we are made pure as we try to live Christ-like lives for God. Christ brings the light of God’s Spirit into our lives and charges us with bringing and being God’s light, in turn, to the world.

 I think it is that last point, however, that has given me pause this evening – the charge to bring the light of Christ to the world. When I was younger I understood this primarily to mean telling people who didn’t believe in Christ that they were in the dark and needed to come into the light. Today I principally understand this to mean the ways in which we can bring the light of practical love into the dark places of our world: places of violence and fear, of desolation and mourning. In Christ we have the challenge of being his light in the world.

Candlemas, set in the very human context of family and community life, reminds us that ours is not a remote God, but a God who shares our life and our world, who brought light and love to those in need. Candlemas reminds us that we are called to do the same.

Amen.