Feast of the Presentation

These eyes of mine have seen the Savior, whom you have prepared for all the world to see.

Luke 2:22-40

Forty days after the first Christmas, Mary and Joseph set out with their newborn son and two pigeons to the Holy City of Jerusalem to fulfil what was required of them in the Torah. Specifically, they were headed to the Great Temple.  

The assigned reading for this week is among the most beautiful Gospels, and although, technically, the Christmas Season ended with the Feast of the Epiphany, the Feast of the Presentation really seals the season until next December the 25^th.  This is the last time Jesus will be an infant until then.

Though to us Mary is known to be the blessed Christ Bearer, in the First Century she had no special status. There were no special favors, no exemptions for her.  She was to enter into the rites of purification following childbirth just as every Jewish mother must, and then she was to present her first born in the Temple.  

Oh yes, we know that Mary needs no purification after the birth of Jesus. We know that the birth of Jesus is the purification of the entire Cosmos, but St. Luke lets it happen as it did to show everyone that Jesus’ birth was entirely in accordance with the Holy Law and Tradition.

It should have been a rather uneventful moment in history. . . just another pair of Jewish parents presenting another infant in the Temple. I’m sure that Simeon and Anna had seen it many times before. 

One might wonder why Luke would even bother to include this incident in his Gospel. I think it’s because Luke sees this presentation in the temple as the presentation of the Light of the World TO the world. In fact, this Feast of the Presentation in centuries past was known as Candlemas. And churches were filled with lighted candles held in magnificent processions on this day.

I think Luke includes the story of the Presentation, and the church celebrates it, in order to make clear that The Presentation of Christ was not meant to be a one-time event, but an event for all time. . . that the Ministry of PRESENTING Christ is also OUR ministry!

Each of us was PRESENTED, at our baptisms. We were presented to become presenters! PRESENTERS of Christ to a desperate world.

Every February 2^nd, the Feast of the Presentation, comes around as a stark reminder that it wasn’t the Scribes, or the Pharisees or the wise Rabbis who presented Jesus, it was Joseph the carpenter and Mary, his wife who were the first presenters of Christ, ordinary peasant parents.

One of the new insights that the Historical Jesus movement has given us is that Joseph and Mary were not only from the Peasant Class in First Century Israel, but they would have been in the lowest echelons of the peasant class. 

The Word we translate as Carpenter is Tekton in Greek. It is a bit of a misnomer to think that this means carpenter in the sense that we use the word today. . . in the sense of a skilled craftsmen drawing union wages.  Biblical scholarship and historical evidence have confirmed that Tekton refers to a class of people at the very bottom of the social ladder. There were common peasants who had higher standing in First Century Israel than Mary and Joseph and Jesus.

The reason that Jesus’ parents offered two pigeons, instead of the normal pigeon and unblemished lamb, for their sacrificial offering is because this was the offering allowed for the poorest of the poor. 

The very first presenters of Christ had nothing to commend them but their humanity and their faithfulness.

Each one of us has the credentials to be presenters of Christ to the world. We are called to cradle the Christ in our hearts and to bring Christ into every relationship and into every personal encounter in which we find ourselves.

Jesus was presented in a Temple made of stone. We are to present Jesus to temples made of flesh. . . for each and every person in the world is a Temple of God’s Holy Spirit! We present Christ each time we reach out to. . . and each time we care for. . . and each time we love. . . one another.

Two other people meet up with the Holy Family in the Temple.  Simeon from Jerusalem and Anna from the Tribe of Asher. St. Luke didn’t just tell us where they come from to illustrate his knowledge of Palestinian geography. Asher is a tribe in the far north of Israel, and Jerusalem resides in Judah, a tribe in the far south of Israel. Remember the words of that famous hymn:  In Christ there is no East or West, in Christ no South or North.  But ONE community of love throughout the whole wide earth.

Jesus spent his whole life and ministry blurring boundaries, drawing bigger and bigger circles of inclusion. There is no wrong side of the tracks as far as Jesus is concerned.

There’s an old Rabbinic story about God having a conversation with an angel.  

And God tells the angel of the intention to hide the divine image.  And God says, I will hide the divine image on the highest mountain.

The angel responds by saying, No, dear God, they will one day climb the highest mountain.

Then I will hide my image in the deepest ocean.

And the angel said, No, dear God, surely they will one day explore even the deepest ocean.

And God said, Then I will hide it within them.  They will never look there. And so, it was done.

Being presenters of Christ means raising our light high enough to be able to find God’s image in everyone. We present Christ to others in each and every moment of radical, indiscriminate, foolish, reckless, undignified and random acts of love! NO presentation of Christ is too small.

There have been so many times in my life that I have needed the ministry of having Christ presented to me. It is in those times that I can hear the voice of Simeon as he sings his song, and I am moved to sing along:

These eyes of mine have seen the Savior, whom you have prepared for all the world to see.