The Presentation
In the name of Christ. Amen.
Our service for today is a bit of
a liturgical anomaly. The Feast of the
Presentation of our Lord in the Temple is one of those days in the church
calendar that happens every year on February 2nd, but among many faithful Christians
it typically goes mostly (or entirely) unnoticed, because it most often happens
on a weekday. It’s rare that it happens
on a Sunday, like today – so it’s rare that it gets the sort of “top billing”
that it’s getting this year.
While chatting about all this
with Michael this week, he asked me if I’d be preaching about groundhogs today,
and I assured him that I wouldn’t. But
guess what? I’m about to start talking
about groundhogs…
It’s unusual for a popular,
secular observance to be so clearly and obviously rooted in biblical tradition,
but believe it or not – Groundhog Day is.
It has its roots in ancient Jewish observances that came to be
celebrated in Christian communities on the basis of the Gospel reading
today. Now, try as you might, you are
unlikely to discover any mention of groundhogs anywhere in the Bible, and
certainly not in anything we’ve read today, so you’ve got to stick with me for
a few minutes while I take you on this little journey through history.
Everyone knows the tradition of
Groundhog Day. It suggests that if a
groundhog leaves its den on this particular day – February 2nd – and sees its
shadow, it will retreat back inside, signaling that winter will continue for
another six weeks. If it does not see
its shadow, however, it signals that winter is almost over. Groundhog Day is mostly celebrated in the US
and Canada, but it came to us from Germany, where the meteorological critter
was not a groundhog, but a badger.
That’s why the capital of Groundhog Day is in Pennsylvania – because it
was so heavily settled by Germans.
And how did those Germans of days
gone by come to use badgers to predict the weather? Well, it’s Martin Luther’s fault. Granted, Martin Luther didn’t overtly
advocate for the wisdom of badgers, but he did start the Reformation – and
thus, started the process of moving the dominant culture in some parts of
Europe away from Roman Catholic religious practice.
This day was significant in
European culture because it was the day that the Roman Catholic church observed
the Feast of the Presentation, or the Feast of the Purification of Mary,
sometimes called “Candlemas”. The day
commemorates the first time that Jesus was presented in the Temple in Jerusalem
by his parents. It was said to have
happened on this day, because the Jewish custom was that women would need to be
ritually purified after childbirth on the 33rd day after her son’s
circumcision. In Christian observance,
it is the conclusion of the 40-day combined Christmas-Epiphany season. She would be purified by offering a lamb as a
burnt offering and a dove as a sin offering.
In ancient Jewish culture, fire
was not just a symbol of purity, but it was revered as a method of purifying
that which was impure. As it says in the
reading from Malachi that we read this morning, silver would be refined – or
purified – in fire. So, too, they
believed that our own impurities could be remedied through the purifying forces
of fire. That’s why burnt offerings were
offered to God.
That’s where Candlemas comes in. The same way that Christmas is a shortened version of Christ Mass – the mass of the nativity of Christ, Candlemas refers to the Candle Mass. While Christians put aside the tradition of burnt offerings to purify us for our sins, we still held on to the ritual significance of fire. But rather than burning flesh, we turned to burning candles. The tradition that was common was that households and churches would gather the candles they needed for the coming year and have them blessed in church on Candlemas – the Feast of the Presentation and the Feast of the Purification of Mary.
Over time, throughout Europe,
people began to see patterns in the weather, and they came to believe that the weather
on Candlemas foretold the weather to come.
In England, there was a little rhyme about Candlemas that said, “If
Candlemas is fair and bright, then winter will have another flight. If Candlemas brings clouds and rain, then
winter will not come again.” Sound
familiar? So that’s how Groundhog Day
came to be – through a convoluted observance of ancient Jewish purity rituals.
For me, though, the real
spiritual significance of this day isn’t about predicting the weather – it’s
about seeing signs that aren’t, on their own, readily visible. These signs take a measure of faith. The signs about the weather are immaterial,
really, other than that they, too, are unseen before they occur. But the gospel points us to the stories of
Simeon and Anna – two strangers to Mary, Joseph, and Jesus, but who saw in that
baby being presented in the temple something that no one else could see.
Simeon was a man of great faith
who was supported by a greater presence of the Holy Spirit. The Spirit had told him that before his death
he would see the Messiah. On beholding
Jesus for the first time, he knew that the Spirit’s will had been fulfilled. “Now you are dismissing your servant in
peace,” he said, “for my eyes have seen your salvation.” He could go on to die, because seeing Christ,
his purpose had been fulfilled.
Anna was also a prophet and a
person of great faith. On Jesus’ entry
into the temple, she, too, knew that God’s will had been fulfilled and she
praised God in his presence.
These two people saw pure and essential truth in him, even before it was readily visible to most others. Like a refiner’s fire, we can’t really see the purity at first. It does its work in the fire in ways that we can only come to know after the fact. But there is unseen benefit at work even when we can’t recognize it yet.
So, today isn’t really about predicting the weather – it’s about recognizing and embracing the grace of God, and celebrating those among us who have vision for it before the rest of us can.
Think of that as you see the
candles burning in church each week. And
remember it when you hear the faith of another that you can’t quite embrace
yet. Remember that there are always
those faithful people among us whose faith leads the way. People like Simeon and Anna. People like John the Baptist. People like all those who led us to faith and
who taught us to live in faith, even before we had faith of our own.
That’s the message of Candlemas –
that sometimes the object of our faith is still unseen. It represents the hope that in time we may
grow into faith as well. Amen.
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