Candlemas
Sermon
Candlemas - joint service with Corpus Christi College
28 January 2024
The Reverend Dr Matthew Bullimore, Chaplain, Corpus Christi College Cambridge
Malachi 3.1–5, 20–24; Hebrews 2.14–18; Luke 2.22–40
At that moment Anna the daughter of Phanuel came, and began to praise God and to speak about the child to all who were looking for the redemption of Jerusalem.
We begin at the end of the passage. The prophet Anna arrives on the scene. She practically lives in the temple, worshipping, praying, fasting day and night. She sees the baby. Maybe she hears what Simeon has to say about him. But there’s this amazing recognition of who the baby is – just as there is for Simeon – and she praises God.
But not only that, she begins to speak about the child to all those who were looking for the redemption of Jerusalem.
The redemption of Jerusalem. There’s a group hoping, longing, for Jerusalem’s redemption. That someone will buy it back, will buy it out of slavery. A people desperate for God to pay some price so that the people can be rescued – from the Romans perhaps, or from Sin, or from a sense that they’ve been abandoned, left alone by God because things have just got too shabby. We don’t know. But they’re longing for it. And Anna goes to them and tells them about the child – this child – the baby who Simeon calls the light to be revealed to all people, who is the glory of Israel, who is the harbinger of salvation.
Neither Simeon nor Anna fill in the blanks for us. Not as Luke tells it anyway. The babe will be the cause of the rising and falling of many in Israel. He will be opposed. Mary’s own soul shall be pierced. But that’s all we know about how he will save and redeem.
Now I want to fall back to a couple of little details at the beginning of the passage.
They’re both about redemption.
The first is this. Mary comes to the temple to be purified after childbirth. It’s part of the Law. And the sacrifice to be made, for those not too well off, is two young doves, or pigeons. And Mary makes that sacrifice.
But they also come to redeem the child. Ever since the Exodus, when the first born males of the Egyptians were killed, the Israelites have offered their first born males to be consecrated to the Lord. And they have redeemed them back, newly blessed. They have offered them up in thanksgiving and received them back anew, as a gift. It cost five shekels to do this.
Luke doesn’t mention any shekels. Perhaps Mary and Joseph forgot to pay? Or maybe Luke doesn’t think he even needs to mention it.
Or maybe…maybe Jesus wasn’t redeemed. Maybe it’s Luke’s way of hinting that Jesus was consecrated to God and remained consecrated to God’s service (a bit like the prophet Samuel so many years before). Maybe it’s Luke’s way of suggesting Jesus really belongs in the Temple because that’s where God’s presence is to be found. Remember it’s Luke that tells us that the boy Jesus liked to hang about in the Temple and described the Temple as his Father’s house. Jesus is at home there because it’s where God is present with his people.
And Jesus is God present with his people. Jesus himself is a Temple! No wonder he was at home there. So maybe Luke is saying Jesus, the firstborn wasn’t redeemed, because he is God’s presence with us, the Son who is consecrated to his Father’s service. It’s a thought.
And the second point is this: we could have done with the verse immediately preceding our passage. It’s the verse when Jesus is circumcised and named. His name, Jesus, of course, means ‘God saves’. And it’s the first time that Jesus’ blood is shed.
Jesus’ blood is shed in the circumcision. And then two pigeons die.
We can’t go too far into what’s happening with sacrifices – it’s a big subject. But what this episode gestures towards is that somehow blood-letting becomes redemptive. Jesus’ blood is shed in the temple. And it’s his blood which will be the redemption of Jerusalem.
It’s almost as if since the very beginning, when Cain murdered his brother, when blood was shed for death and murder, we’ve been lost. We’ve found ourselves in a wilderness where we human beings are hopelessly oppressed by our propensity to violence and bloodshed.
But – and this is putting it in a very telescoped way – God pursued us into that wilderness. And in some mysterious way he made blood and death the beginning of a path back to him – there’s something of that in Israel’s complicated system of animal sacrifice.
It’s as if God would chase us into the places where we’ve got so far from him we have no way back. Even in the midst of all the chaos of human sin, misery, violence and death – God comes to meet us. And, extraordinarily, finding us there, he makes that place of sin and death and violence the path back to him.
This is a God who comes as a tiny baby into that world. And he loves us even when we oppose him, loves us even to the point when all of our sin and death-dealing and pride and jealousy and hatred makes us put him to death. We shed his blood. We murder him. And he still loves us.
And on the third day he rises again. Death does not hold him back. And we can no longer think of ourselves as lost or estranged because there he is, still with us, still present with us. Still loving us.
He buys us back from our slavery to death-dealing and sin by showing how futile and powerless it all is. He takes the worst of our bloodlust and hatred and makes it a path back to a life with him. He chases us into the worst so we can have the best.
No wonder the prophet Anna, that elderly faithful woman, couldn’t stop telling those who were hoping for Jerusalem’s redemption about that child.
Who do you tell about that child? Who do you know who is seeking redemption from something? Who might you need to tell about a God who can find us no matter how far we’ve run away? Who does God want you to love back to life?
Amen.