Sermon Notes
Candlemas Sermon 2010
St. John's, Oulton: The Fourth Sunday of Epiphany: 31st January 2010
[Ezekiel 43.27-44.4; 1 Corinthians ch.13; Luke 2.22-40]
Earlier this month I drove to Cornwall and back in little over 48 hours in order to spend the day with my sister and her family and moreover with my father who celebrated his 90th birthday. He has lived in a residential home since October 2004 and he has dementia and Alzheimer's Disease. About eighteen months ago he passed a critical point: he no longer knows who any of us are. Still, during his birthday there was an occasional 'spark' and he clearly derived a lot of pleasure from blowing out the candles on his birthday cake.
'Honour thy father and mother' (Ex. 20.12) is the fifth of the Ten Commandments and it troubles me the way in which we care for many of our elderly and infirm citizens. Time was when everyone would have lived in their own home cared for by their own family members. Indeed, there are still societies around the world where your children are your social security in that they will look after you when you can not do so any longer.
This coming Thursday 4th February, a member of this church, Frances Rigby, will celebrate her one hundredth birthday. Perhaps even more remarkable than that is the fact that she still lives in the house in which she was born. On a mantelpiece in Frances' living room there are pictures of her three great grand-daughters and there's a picture of the youngest of these with Frances where, together, they are making bread and they both have flour between their fingers and they both have smiles on their faces. Frances says of that little girl: "She's as old as the hills." I just love that, coming from the lips of a woman almost a century in age.
In many of our churches the majority of the membership is, how shall I put it, of riper years? To be bolder: anyone under sixty might be considered as young. It has been observed of the population of our nation that the fastest growing age group are the over-85s and that fact is reflected in our churches to a degree but whatever our age we are loved by God and we are all children of God.
An elderly man and an elderly woman are centre-stage in today's Gospel from St. Luke, Simeon and Anna. We are not told Simeon's age but Luke 2.26 tells us that the Holy Spirit had revealed to him that he 'would not see death before seeing the Lord's Messiah, or Christ.' Anna's age we are told: 84 (in verse 37); she too, on seeing the infant Jesus, 'began to praise God and to speak about the child to all who were looking for the redemption of Jerusalem.' The Church remembers Simeon more than Anna because he spoke the Nunc Dimittis, or 'Lord, now you let your servant depart in peace,' words which are sometimes used in a funeral service but also the words which are spoken or sung in the Office of Evensong.
Anna's testimony, as well as Simeon's, is to be valued highly. Both of these elderly servants of the Lord testify about Jesus. Each speaks of the great things which will be achieved in and through this young child brought by Mary and Joseph. They were amazed at what was said about their son and Simeon showed that he also had the gift of prophecy for he foresaw the suffering which the Christ would have to endure on the cross - this was the sword which would also pierce the soul of Mary, the mother of Jesus.
You may recall that during last year, 2009, there were several Golden, Emerald and Diamond wedding anniversaries in our two parishes. Those couples who marked 50, 55 and 60 years since their wedding days added up to some five hundred years worth of marriage. What a lot of married bliss! What a lot of wisdom too, all those people who lived through the winters of 1947 and 1963, through rationing, strikes, more General Elections than they may like to admit, and so on. The Electoral Rolls of our two parishes combined number over 200 people and if we take a conservative estimate of an average age of sixty then that's twelve thousand years of living between us!
How much wisdom is there, there? St. Paul, writing to the newly-established church in Corinth says they need the gift of love more than anything. Well, how much love have we, with our 12,000 years worth of living, been shown and how much love have we given out ourselves? Of course, we can not quantify it quite so easily as that but surely we can testify to real stories of faith, hope and love.
The measure of true Christian testimony is that a person should speak of what God has done in their lives. It is very easy for that to become what I have done for God. I recall someone in the past, in the church where Lindsey and I were married (in Coventry in 1986!) that they had paid out two and six, half a crown, 12½ pence today, for a brick - yes, a single brick - to build the church with. His testimony spoke of what he had done for God.
By contrast, I remember visiting a church in Enniskillen in Co. Fermanagh (N.I.) where, back in 1884, a woman had tripped over a paving slab on her way to Evensong and broken her hip. If it had happened today she might have sued the church but no, she paid for a gas lantern to be erected so that others, in future, would see their way clearly and safely to the church and not suffer in the way she had. It seems appropriate to remember her generosity of spirit, her love, to pay for a light on this day close to Candlemas, the Presentation of Christ in the Temple, as we recall One who would be 'a light for revelation to the Gentiles.' The original KJV says: 'a light to lighten the Gentiles.' We all need the light of Christ in our lives; we need to be lit up with the graciousness and love of the Lord Jesus Christ.
The translation of our scriptures however is important and that difference between being 'a light to lighten' and being 'a light for revelation to the Gentiles,' is subtle. We think of being lit up like lights on a Christmas Tree or a house that is lit up in an otherwise dark street, say. 'Revelation' is not just the last book of the Bible but it is the pretext of the whole Bible: to reveal to us, Jews and non-Jews - or Gentiles, that's us - that Jesus is the Christ. He is the One who will bring love, healing and wholeness to humanity and indeed to all of creation. We are still just in the season of Epiphany, the time of showing or the manifestation of Jesus to the world beyond Judaism. Today, two elderly Jewish people, Simeon and Anna, recognised in a sense in which they could not have had of their own accord, that the baby Jesus was special and holy. He was, and is, for all the world.
Pray God, that we may be given the wisdom and spiritual insight, whatever our age and stage of life, to recognise the power of God at work in and among us, and that we have faith, hope and love, above all love, for those around us. Now to the only God our Saviour, through Jesus Christ our Lord, be glory, majesty, power and authority, before all time and now and for ever. Amen. [Jude 25]