Articles - From the Vicar

On the 2^nd February, the festival of Candlemas, we remember the occasion on which Mary and Joseph took the infant Jesus to the temple in Jerusalem, an incident that St. Luke recounts in chapter 2 of his Gospel. It is while they are in the temple that Mary and Joseph encounter the elderly Simeon, a “good, God-fearing man” who takes the Christ-child in his arms, and Anna, “a very old prophet…who never left the temple” and who speaks about the child to all who are longing for God to set Jerusalem free.

There is a poignancy about the way Luke describes the reactions of Simeon and Anna, two people ripe in years who might be said to embody God’s ancient relationship with Israel, the Old Covenant. Far from showing resistance to the new relationship, the New Covenant that Jesus embodies, Simeon and Anna rejoice that God has fulfilled his promise: Jesus will not only bring glory to Israel but he is to be the means, the light, which will enable the will of God to be made known to all nations.

There is much that Luke gives us to think about in this story. I am particularly drawn to and encouraged by the constancy and faithfulness of Simeon and Anna and by their willingness, in old age, eagerly to embrace and welcome the renewal of their faith and trust in God as they recognise his promised Messiah. Simeon and Anna remind us that our life of Christian discipleship, unlike our working life, is not one from which we retire but one in which God constantly calls us onwards in joyful expectation as we seek his renewing and life-giving grace in lives of worship, prayer and service.

© St Edmund's Church, Roundhay