Candlemas 2021 St Andrew’s Milngavie
Dear All
Today we celebrated Candlemas, the Presentation of Christ in the Temple. This is always a great festival. We had a lovely choral service with our singers back in voice! The celebration was followed by a further celebration of the resumption of coffee in the hall!
Notices for this week:
Monday 7pm NWR Council meeting and AGM in church
Tuesday 10am Prayer Group in the Garden Room, 2pm Friendship House Management Committee in church
Thursday 10am Said Holy Communion followed by coffee in Friendship House
Saturday 10am Vestry in Garden Room
Saturday 12th February 10am Snow Drop Walk – meet in hall – followed by soup lunch
Readings for next Sunday – 4th Sunday before Lent Isaiah 6:11-8 1 Corinthians 15:1-11 Luke 5:1-11
Further news from the diocese and church can be found on the St Andrews website. Click on the link below.
https://standrewsmilngavie.church.scot/
Malachi 3:1-5 Hebrews 2:14-end Luke 2 22-40
Today we celebrate the great feast of Candlemas. Candlemas is the culmination – the end point – of the great season of Christmas and Epiphany. It is a feast rich in meaning, with several different interwoven themes – presentation, purification, meeting, light. It is a pivotal moment in the Church year, when we take one last look back at Christmas and the Incarnation, and then turn to look ahead to Lent and the cross.
It’s a feast which attracts much tradition often expressed in art music and liturgy. The feast commemorates the 40 day purification of Mary after childbirth, as set out in Leviticus chapter 12. The feast also commemorates the presentation of Christ in the Temple.
Candlemas gets its name from the tradition of lighting candles which became a distinctive feature of the liturgy, symbolising Christ – the light of the world. Traditionally beeswax candles are blessed, distributed and lit and carried in procession while the Nunc Dimittis is sung, commemorating the entrance of Christ, the True Light, into the Temple.
In the Old Testament, we hear prophetic words from Malachi. “See, I am sending my messenger to prepare the way before me, and the Lord whom you seek will suddenly come to his temple”.
The book of Malachi dating from the late fourth century BC was compiled within a society that contained sorcerers, perjurers and corruption. God declares that a messenger will come to the temple with the purpose of cleansing and warning the people. Perhaps this prophecy is most obviously fulfilled in the ministry of Jesus when he cleanses the Temple, angrily over turning the tables. But today’s feast by contrast shows Jesus entering the Temple as a mere 40 day old baby, meekly carried into the Temple in his mother’s arms. Three ritual ceremonies are included in the gospel account from Luke – the purification of the mother Mary, the redemption of the first-born, and the presentation of the child to the service of God.
When the parents arrive with Jesus in the Temple, the old man Simeon comes and acknowledges Jesus to be the Christ. This is the moment Simeon has been waiting for, and he bursts into joyous song in the words known to us as the Nunc Dimittis, the traditional words are hauntingly beautiful:
“Lord, now lettest thou thy servant depart in peace: according to thy word.
For mine eyes have seen thy salvation;
Which thou hast prepared before the face of all people;
To be a light to lighten the Gentiles: and to be the glory of thy people Israel.”
Simeon boldly proclaims Jesus to be the light of the world, as well as the glory of his own people of faith. Then another elderly wise and holy person enters the scene, Anna the prophet. She too bursts into praise. It is a wonderful picture of the wisdom of old age paying homage to the innocent infant with the parents looking on in wonderment.
There are very many paintings of this Biblical scene. Fra Angelico, the Italian artist who lived in the early 15th century painted a particularly moving one. It is a serene scene. Four saintly adult figures – Joseph, Mary, Simeon and Anna – stand greeting one another between two columns of pillars of the Temple. Simeon holds the young child Jesus in his arms, while Mary looks on expectantly. It is a moment full of mystic meaning as Simeon blesses the baby Jesus, saviour of the world. There is a bitter-sweet tone to Simeon’s words as he prophesies that the child will be a sign that will be opposed and that a sword will pierce Mary’s soul also.
On this great feast of Candlemas, we recall how Jesus was presented to God in the Temple, the most holy of all the sacred places of his religious faith. We too today are called to present ourselves anew to God in worship – to put the past and its failings behind us, and to focus on the living God who loves us and who calls us to a life of deepening holiness.
May we also look ahead to Lent and Holy Week and the journey to the cross, sharing in Christ’s suffering but in the knowledge that we will also share in his resurrection.
In our hearts there is the light of hope, just as the candles display a sense of light in an often all too dark world. God calls us to share in the light of Christ – to bring help and comfort to others by that message of hope and light.
Today we take one last look back at Christmas, giving thanks for the great gift of the Incarnation of Jesus Christ we look ahead with expectancy – the way ahead may be uncertain and even filled with difficulties and challenges, but with Christ as our guide we may be confident of his presence with us and his strength to sustain us, as we follow in his way even to the cross and beyond to newness of life. Amen.