It’s more than twenty years since Ann and I were in Jerusalem. We stayed in a Palestinian-run hotel not far from the Damascus Gate, near a busy urban bus station that woke us up each morning. We found Jerusalem to be a busy and bustling and very varied city. Its different communities lived alongside each other, but were also very separate. A short walk one evening took me through the jostling streets of a Palestinian area and then almost immediately into the very different ambience of an Orthodox Jewish district of modern apartment blocks and wide but much quieter streets.
I don’t know how much things have changed by now. There were tensions in the air back then - flags flew to mark the claims and possessions of each different community, and there were places where I didn’t altogether feel at ease, that’s for sure: but there was also the pzazz of city life, where I could be anonymous, and just watch and listen and feel.
I love the anonymity of city life. I like to get away from the tourist trail to places where city life can just swirl around me. I’ve mostly lived in rural places, but there’s a city boy inside me that I can’t deny. City streets are places of hope, intrigue, destiny, and of mystery and revelation. Could I make my home in the city? Probably not - but I love the chances I have to be there. Even the disorientation and dirt and grime, the traffic noises, the tall buildings, the kamikaze pigeons, the purposeful tread of shoppers and commuters - even that I love.
Anyway, today’s Gospel starts on the city streets. Mary and Joseph in a very different time are walking through urban Jerusalem, carrying their first child. Very different streets back then, but still they bustled and were noisy and full of possibility. Back then the temple complex was virtually the same size as the rest of the city all put together. So it would have been the largest building they’d ever seen, by some distance. Unlike my aimless wanderings, Mary and Joseph had a purpose. They had an obligation to fulfil. Their boy child must be presented to the Lord.
In Jewish tradition, the first son belonged to God, and Mary and Joseph needed to do what the Law required, to make the prescribed offering that would ransom back their son. As they weren’t well-off, they’d brought a pair of pigeons. As they entered the temple, they were met by an old man; a man who’d been waiting for this day. I wonder how much Mary and Joseph understood, there and then, of what he said. Cities are hugely disorientating places, at any rate they’re bound to be for those who come in fresh from the country. You never know who you might meet, what might happen, what’s around the corner. They’ll have entered the temple in some trepidation - and now this. What could he mean?
The old man said things about “the one who will be light to the nations, and give glory to Israel.” But then to Mary he said “A sword will also pierce your own soul.” Which, of course, in time it would. Luke tells us the story, and Luke also tells us how Mary stored up in her heart all these things she didn’t really understand. Like that word, for sure. We, knowing what lies ahead, can picture Mary’s anxiety as Jesus leaves the carpenter’s shop to preach in the towns and villages of Galilee and then set his face to the city and the temple where she first heard those words; and her desolation as, on a hill just outside the city walls, she watches her firstborn son die on a cross.
So though today, Candlemas, the Feast of the Presentation is a festival of light to bring a joyful close to the long season of Christmas and Epiphany, it does also have its sombre side. We’re reminded how on our Christian journey light and dark are always intertwined, rejoicing and sadness are never far apart.
The old man, Simeon, and then a little later the widow Anna - for both of them there’s a sense of delight and rejoicing. At last it’s happened. What Malachi the prophet promised has come to pass: “The Lord you seek will suddenly come to his temple.” God has fulfilled his promise to Israel: as we read in Psalm 24, the King of Glory has come in; God’s redemption is at hand.
But there’ll be no redeeming victory without also pain, and the child destined for glory is also bound to suffer. Today Mary’s child is blessed by the temple priests, but one day the priests will conspire to have him put to death.
Of course, as Mary and Joseph stand in the temple, and old Simeon takes their child in his arms, they can’t know anything of what lies ahead for him or for them. It’s just one more moment of disorientation on their visit to the great city, one encounter among many in the shove and bustle of city life.
In a city I quite like to find some quiet spot where the bustle can just flow round me while I watch and consider and spend time with my own thoughts. But then perhaps something will jolt me back into a sharper awareness of what’s around me: a sudden noise, an unexpected sight, something overheard, someone approaching me - and I realise that like it or not, I’m connected into it all, part of that larger story that I can’t ever really just observe from outside. For all of us, there’ll be times when a sword will pierce our own souls, too. And maybe the painful moments and encounters are necessary in fact to our awareness of God.
For disciples of Jesus can’t be insulated from the darkness and pain of the world. We’re not disciples so that the world can’t touch us, we’re disciples so that we can touch the world. When we come to church we’re here to be challenged as well as to be joyful or at peace. At Candlemas traditionally we renew our baptismal vows - and the words said when a child is baptized are in fact quite tough - about fighting evil and renouncing sin. We’re to be light to the world in whatever ways we can, because that’s what Jesus was, and those who are baptized belong to him.
It’s surely a bit dangerous, someone said to me, to go out walking on your own the streets of a city you don’t know. Maybe it is, and I don’t necessarily recommend it to you or anyone else. I suppose I have felt vulnerable, though never seriously threatened.
But consider this: when we see the child Jesus brought into the temple and held there in the arms of old Simeon what we see is God making himself vulnerable - we see God’s saving and redeeming love taking its chance with us. Some like Simeon will recognise that love for what it is. But others may turn away and choose their own path, and there’ll be some who’ll actively oppose it. To follow Jesus is to carry a cross; to accept his way is to accept also the sword that can pierce our souls. But baptism commits us to active faith, and to not playing safe. Jesus says, “Go into all the world.” That’s surely the very opposite of playing safe.
And so, on this day, on a feast that contains both joy and pain, and as we picture the temple in which we find both blessing and burden, perhaps we might take to heart these inspiring words of John Wesley about discipleship and baptismal faith: “Do all the good you can, by all the means you can, in all the ways you can, in all the places you can, at all the times you can, to all the people you can, for as long as ever you can.”
In other words, let’s not play safe. In the name of the one we call the man for others, and for the sake of the God who became small and vulnerable because that’s what it took to save us, may we be ready to offer ourselves, and in the busy cacophony of human life may his light shine in us for the good of his always fragile and often hurting world.
