Sermons

Presntation of Christ in the Temple
Sunday 31 January 2010

David Paton-Williams

Readings: Hebrews 2 v14-18; Luke 2 v22-40

"Joseph and Mary took Jesus to Jerusalem to present him to the Lord, and to offer a sacrifice."

After today the Christmas Crib will be put away for another year.

It is all part of the rhythm of the Church's year - times of preparation and of celebration, interspersed with ordinary times as well.

And Candlemass or the presentation of Christ in the temple is one of those moments of change in the rhythm of the year when we stop celebrating the season of Christmas and Epiphany and when we start preparing for Lent and Easter.

The feast of the presentation comes 40 days after Christmas Day. And the reason for that is the OT law concerning childbirth.

After the birth of a son a mother was considered ceremonially unclean for 7 days until her son's circumcision and then she had to remain at home for 33 days. On the 40 day she had to go to the temple to offer a sacrifice "for her cleansing".

So Mary and Joseph went to Jerusalem and came through the gateway into the first Temple courtyard. They would have looked around at the huge cream-coloured stones, the marble and gold, and the sheer vast scale that made the Temple so impressive.

In this courtyard - the Court of the gentiles - which was as far as a non-Jew could go - they would have seen bustling crowds of people.

They would see the money-changers, where people could get the sacred money that had to be used for temple offerings.

They would have seen the cattle market where people could buy the animals for sacrifice.

And they would have seen the lambs that, if they had been better off, they would have chosen one of. But given their poor circumstances they bought a pair of birds - doves or pigeons.

And taking them they went through the next gateway into the Court of Women, where the birds would have been offered up for Mary's cleansing.

And so the used to call the 40th day after Christmas - the purification of the blessed virgin, and it was connected to the traditional ceremony of the churching of women after childbirth, that some of you may well remember.

But there is a second element in the story - the consecration of Jesus, the dedication or offering of Jesus to God.

Exodus 13 requires that first born animals were sacrificed to God in memory of the exodus, but first born children were "redeemed", or bought back, by paying 5 shekels.

But a first born son could be offered to God in a different way - offered up to God's service - like Samuel had been.

So Mary and Joseph, while they were in the Temple for Mary's ritual cleansing, also dedicated Jesus to God.

They know that his life belongs not to them but to God. God gave him to them and they offer him back to God, accepting rather than resisting God's claim on his life.

Today the church remembers that act of presenting or offering of Christ in the temple,

the offering of Mary and Joseph that points forward to Christ's own offering of himself on the cross.

So today we turn from celebrating the birth of Christ and look towards the cross of Good Friday.
- all part of the rhythm of the Christian year.

There are other rhythms of course
- the rhythms of the seasons, of day and night
- then there are the rhythms of our bodies
- including the moment by moment rhythm of breathing

Just as breathing has two sides - in and out so at the heart of the Christian life is the two-sided rhythm of receiving and giving.

And receiving and giving are at the heart of the Christian life because central to it is the idea of offering. God offers himself for the world in creation and in the babe of Bethlehem. Christ offers himself for our sake on the cross of Calvary. The Spirit offers himself to us all, moment by moment though our lives.

And the Christian life begins not with what we do but with receiving the gift, the offering of God for us.

Being a Christian is not first and foremost about being a "good person", not about having Christian values, and doing as much good as we can.

The rhythm of breathing begins with breathing in - and only when we have done that can we breathe out.

In the same way Christian life begins in breathing in, receiving God's grace, freely offered to us. The grace of God - in creation, in Christ and in the Spirit.

But the rhythm of the Christian life also requires a breathing out, a giving, an offering by us.

We offer our worship - our simple praise to God for who he is; our grateful thanks for what he does.

We offer our prayers - for the world, for the our nation and community, for the church and people of faith,
for those we know and care about, and for ourselves.

We offer our money - as a token of our gratitude for all that God has given to us - we offer it for the work he wants to do in and through his church.

We offer ourselves - we dedicate ourselves to serving him in a our daily lives. We each have a ministry and a calling, however humble and ordinary it may seem. We offer what we are and do to him that may use us to further his kingdom of love, justice and peace.

But we offer ourselves to God because God offers himself to us. We give freely of what we have, because we have freely received from the limitless generosity of God. We serve because we have already been served by God's self-giving love. We breathe out because first we have breathed in.

The rhythm of Christian life is one of receiving and giving and receiving again. It is the rhythm of the two-way offering of love between God and his people.

And that we acted out that offering in this Eucharist: - the bread and the wine, that represent Christ's offering of himself on the cross, the limitless grace in which we find ourselves accepted and forgiven, healed and called.

but the bread and wine also represent human labour and the fruit of the earth, our blood, sweat and tears, our joys and triumphs, our tragedies and failures.

The bread and wine are offered to us from God as channels of his grace and they are lifted and offered to God by us as symbols of the totality of our lives representing whatever it is we have to offer to God today.

"Mary took Jesus to Jerusalem to present him to the Lord and to offer a sacrifice."

We have come to St Edmund's to present ourselves to him and to receive the sacrifice he offers, to breathe in the breath of life, so we may breath out our praise and thanksgiving, our prayers and our service. so that we may live and work to his praise and glory.

Amen.

© St Edmund's Church, Roundhay