29th January 2012 - The Presentation of Christ in the Temple

The Lord whom you seek will suddenly come to his temple

The most disputed piece of land in the world lies on a mountain top in the old city of Jerusalem. Surmounted today by the beautiful Moslem Dome of the Rock it is the site of the Temple built by Solomon.

The Jewish Temple on this site had been planned by King David but was built by his son Solomon. We read about the dedication of this Temple in the Second Book of Chronicles in the Old Testament which records the prayer which Solomon prayed at its dedication. We hear that after that prayer:

 ... fire came down from heaven and burned up the offerings. The Lord's dazzling glory then filled the temple, and the priests could not go in. When the crowd of people saw the fire and the Lord's glory, they knelt down and worshiped the Lord.

This sign of the Lord’s glory was called the Shikinah glory or the glory of his presence. It had been seen in the tabernacle which Moses had built.  This was the place where God was worshiped during the forty years in the wilderness. Its presence at this point is a sign of God’s continued presence with his people.

The Temple and its worship continued for over 400 years but in the year 598BC the Temple was destroyed when the Babylonians conquered Jerusalem. The prophet Ezekiel describes a vision which took place shortly before the destruction of the temple in which the Glory of the Lord rises from the Temple and departs from it. The Temple was not rebuilt for more than 80 years. However when the Temple was finally reconsecrated in the year 516BC there was no appearance of God’s Glory. One of the questions that was being asked was ‘when would God’s glory return to the temple?’ The prophet Malachi was one of those who looked forward to the day that that would happen.

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At the time when Jesus was born the Temple was a busy place. First of all it was a building site. Herod the King was enlarging and renovating the Temple as part of his major building project. Also the Temple courts would be filled with the greatest Jewish teachers and their disciples. When he was twelve years old Jesus would visit the temple again and become so enthralled by the words of the teachers that he would forget to return home when the time came. Then there were the many hundreds of priests who were trained in the rituals and ceremonies which needed to be performed. Finally, even then, the Temple courts would be filled with the traders selling animals for sacrifice and the money changers who specialised in exchanging the normal everyday currency for the special money required to pay the temple taxes. And there also were a group of the pious in the courts. Mostly elderly they were people who devoted the rest of their lives to prayer and worship in this most special of places. I’ve met people like them today and they glow. Amongst these were Simeon and Anna

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Like all first born Jewish boys of his time Jesus was presented in the Temple forty days after his birth. The law of Moses stated that the first born of humans and of domestic animals belonged to God. An animal should be sacrificed but a human being was to be redeemed, that is, bought back by the paying of a price and the offering of an alternative sacrifice; for the rich a lamb, for the poor two doves or pigeons.

So Joseph and Mary come to the Temple in Jerusalem carrying the baby Jesus. I love David Kossoff’s description of this moment in his Book of Witnesses:

Then a poorly dressed couple approached. The woman rather younger than the man and carrying her baby son. The man carrying the most modest offering allowed by the Laws of Moses. A pair of doves. Simeon got to his feet. He was trembling, and I went nearer in case he should need help. He went forward, not as I thought to bow low to the man, but to take the baby in his arms. He stood and lifted his face and spoke to God, as to a loving friend who’d kept a promise. He blessed God, and thanked him. ‘Now I can die in peace,’ he said. ‘I have seen him – and held him in my arms.’

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This was the moment when Malachi’s prophecy was fulfilled, ‘The Lord whom you seek will suddenly come to his temple.’  But amongst the busyness of the temple no one noticed. The priests had far more important things to do. The teachers were too engaged in imparting wisdom to listen for it, and the workers were simply too busy. Only amongst the small group of the pious, the devout, did two people realise that the day they had been longing for had arrived. Simeon and Anna alone amongst the vast crowd recognised the Lord when at last he came to his temple.

What about us? One of the things which everyone recognises today is how busy we all are. The French Priest, Michelle Quiost wrote:

They pass by on earth, always rushing, hurrying,
jostling, weighed down, snowed under, nearly demented.
And they never get there, there's not enough time.
Despite all their efforts, there's never enough time.

That was written forty years ago, and if anything things have got worse. Yet the truth is often busyness is a choice we make. We cannot make time for anything, for time is not ours to make, but we can choose how the time we are given is deployed. To quote Quoist again:

I don't ask this evening Lord,
for time to do this or that.
I ask for the grace to do conscientiously,
in the time that You gave me,
the thing that You want me to do.

One of the questions that our Bishop is asking of us is how we can become more and more a people of prayer.

More than anything else, we need to become a people of prayer; whose daily lives are formed and punctuated by our relationship with God in Jesus Christ.

Let’s not be like those in the temple who missed the point of the whole thing because they were too busy to see it. Today let’s take as our example Simeon and Anna so that we can say with them, “My eyes have seen your salvation”.