Sermon by Rev Sydney Maitland for Sunday 6 February 2022.
Presentation of Jesus at the Temple, 12th century cloisonné enamel icon from Georgia Source
• First Reading: Malachi 3: 1-5 ()
• Psalm 24: 1-10
• Epistle: Hebrews 2: 14-18 ()
• Gospel: Luke 2: 22-40 ()
They were expecting him to come with power and glory, to judge the land and the people, to vindicate the faithful and condemn the guilty.
Mounted on a war horse would be fine but standing in the cupola of a battle tank would do. Then there would be no messing about and He would spell out just what was what.
And this expectation still reigns – that the Lord will make His appearance and that the nations of the world would tremble. First however the people of the land would be judged and those taken with sorcery and adultery, perjury and the cheating and oppression of the weak and the unconnected would meet the outcome of that they had done and what they had become.
As I say this is also expected in our own creed in which we proclaim that He will come again to judge the living and the dead.
But first, He would come differently, quietly, even unnoticed except by those whom God had told to expect it. He would come to fulfil the requirements of the law under which He lived and died, and beside which He was raised to life from the dead.
He would come and live innocently under the law, even if He was going to re-apply it so that it might again be a system of love and mercy, of drawing close to God and to one’s fellow dwellers in the land.
And so Mary and Joseph brought Jesus to the temple in Jerusalem to carry out the rite of presentation to the Lord by which the baby would be set before God. If this was going to be special for the first-born of a human mother, then how much more so would it be for the only-begotten Son of God?
Having been circumcised on the 8th day after His birth and made part of the people of Israel, now He was to be set before God and made part of the community of faith.
This was a starting point in the life of Jesus who would grow physically and in His understanding of the things of the mind, of society and of God. This low-key beginning was part of His whole mission for the deliverance of humanity from its own self-destruction and self-alienation from God.
From then on Jesus would be growing up in a family where there would be other brothers and sisters, He would be growing up in a village with its own pecking-order from the mighty to the most abject, the just and holy to the most corrupt and degraded.
Jesus would tread out a life of home and school, the synagogue and the carpenter’s bench. There would be landlords and Roman officials not to mention Joseph’s customers and suppliers.
In this He would find every kind of social interaction, every kind of class resentment, intellectual snobbery, and of course every manifestation of poverty and disease.
He would see for Himself that the world was corrupt in its institutions and relationships, its transactions and attitudes. He would see people in high positions demeaning themselves with malice and consuming themselves with hatred. He would see the randomness of violence and of happenstance.
He would also see acts of kindness and generosity and hear words of wisdom. And all this was going to prepare Him for the mission that had yet to start. When He went out to find His cousin John at the River Jordan, Jesus was not going to have any illusions about the human race or about the place of Israel within it.
But coming to the temple in Jerusalem would hold a different kind of significance. At His coming of age and bar-mitzvah, He would become more aware of His place in the purposes of God even if not quite ready to start work on it.
At the beginning of the last week He would visit the temple again and claim it for His own yet still remaining an out-of-town teacher with His collection of followers.
He would make His point – even if this was going to lead the temple authorities to make theirs and demand His crucifixion.
For us there is an ordinariness about Jesus’ presentation in the temple.
It was a beginning for Jesus as He entered the life of the community and came to see what it was and to suffer its hazards and temptations.
He would live the life of His own disciples down the ages as He also dealt with the unpredictability of human relations, of how people are shaped by life and circumstance and how some rise above it while others are crushed.
Some would learn the power of forgiveness while others would be driven by grievance and a desire for revenge. In seeing a sunset, some would see a work of art and others just a colouring of the heavens or even the advent of night where all sorts of things might happen.
What we see and feel now is what Jesus saw then, and whatever moves us, whether to greatness of pettiness, Jesus has also seen for Himself.
And what this means is that wherever we are and whatever we feel, there is nothing new for Jesus to see: but there are many things for Him to heal, to release and to bless.
