The presentation of...

Today in the church calendar we celebrate the Presentation of Christ in the Temple. It was Jewish ritual that a new child be brought to the Temple where the parents would offer a sacrifice, and a first born child would be dedicated to God. There is a huge amount going on in the gospel reading (Luke 2:22-40) this morning. There is the obedience to the Jewish rituals, the comment that Mary and Joseph brought a pair of turtle doves or pigeons, suggesting they couldn’t afford a lamb.

There are the incredibly prophetic words of Simeon who sees Jesus and knows immediately that he has seen the Messiah, the one who has come into the world to change everything. Now Simeon could die in peace – the world had received an incredible offer of salvation.

And then there was Anna – an old lady who we are told was a prophet. If you go around any of the big cathedrals in Europe you often see old ladies wandering around and it doesn’t seem that they’re doing anything. That seems to have been Anna and yet she was dedicated to prayer and worship and when she saw Jesus, she knew, like Simeon, that salvation was on offer and she went and praised God, and, very significantly, told other people.

All of these are worthy of a sermon by themselves, but this morning I want to think of another feature which is often ignored in this account and which is incredibly relevant to us all and that is the subject of family.

In bringing Jesus to the Temple that day Mary and Joseph were publically declaring that Jesus was part of a bigger family – Jesus was part of a family of brothers and sisters that stretched far beyond that Temple in Jerusalem. It was a family that had existed for generations before Jesus was born and continues today.

And I think that this account and the idea of the wider family speaks an awful lot to the church of today.

When Mary and Joseph brought Jesus to the Temple, they expected a welcome. They knew what they’d come for, and they would do it, but what sort of welcome they received would leave an impression. That is so true for people who come to churches today. First impressions stick – whether it be at a Baptism, a wedding, a funeral, a concert or visiting on a Sunday for a service, impressions will be made that will last.

For Mary and Joseph they met Simeon. His words were not the words of a normal welcome in church, but he spoke to them, he dedicated time to them, and he spoke personally. The Christian faith is about relationships, it’s about family. It’s about letting others know that they are part of a huge family – the family of God – a family where every person is important, and every person is loved.

Our welcome of others is that important…

And as well as our greeting of people, the surroundings are important as well. When we walk into a church, we may well find a place of comfort and security. We may feel it is a wonderful place of prayer and worship, but we also need to think about what others see when they walk in for the first time – does the building look welcoming, cared for, bright, appealing? Is the service understood, whatever that service may be ?

We are part of a generation where church is not the norm for people and as churches we need to respond to that. The Christian faith is a mission faith – it is a faith where we are commanded by Jesus himself to ‘Go and make disciples of others’ – no salesperson will sell a product that does not appeal to the buyer.

It is a challenge to the church to move, perhaps in directions we’re not always comfortable with but to move because sharing the love of God is more important.

There’s a story about a church where every Sunday the Church warden would prepare a saucer of milk and they would put it on the floor of the pulpit. When the Vicar had been in the church for a year, he spoke to his predecessor and asked what this was all about. His predecessor had been in the church for 10 years and said he didn’t know and for some reason had never asked.

And so the Vicar asked the person who had been Vicar for 5 years before that. He explained that the saucer of milk was for the Vicar’s cat – the newer Vicar explained that he didn’t have a cat – and the older one said, ‘neither did your predecessor and neither did I or my predecessor, but it became a tradition and you can’t change it now.’

Sometimes we do things without thinking and people don’t understand, perhaps we don’t.

But that doesn’t mean tradition has no place. It doesn’t mean throwing everything out and starting again – it means evaluating what we’re doing and why and, if it is important, it means making sure that others can see why it’s important.

Mary and Joseph in taking Jesus to the Temple were following a long tradition – a tradition inspired by scripture, but a tradition nonetheless – and that tradition was important because it linked families together as one family – united by the love of God.

And so we’ve thought about welcome and about tradition and we can work at these things – we can look at them and see how they can be modified or improved, or perhaps disposed of.

But when we think of family there is of course one thing that is more important than anything else and that is love. When we think of the family of God, we are thinking of one big family – dysfunctional in many ways, and as different as you can get.

Simeon and Anna were both old – and yet they welcomed Jesus in as a new hope. Of course they knew Jesus was more than just another baby, but what an example it is for all of us to see how they behaved. Simeon saw hope, he saw promise for the future. And Anna saw these things too and she went about and told people.

When we see young people – different in shapes and sizes and different in backgrounds and behaviours we too have the opportunity to see hope. We have the opportunity to see lives that can be touched for good, lives that can offer something new for the future, but we have to invest in that too.

It’s not always easy to see great hope in people who are different from us – it’s not always easy to understand people who do things very differently to us but when we see the image of God in others, we can see hope, we can see possibilities and we can listen to their hopes and their fears and their ideas.

One of the lessons that is very clear from the life of Jesus is that he never chose safety, comfort and security as priorities and his church can’t either. To truly share faith we have to take some chances and to recognise that our family is huge and that included in that family are people we don’t even know, but they are still people that we are to reach out to.

And so the experience for Mary and Joseph as they went to the Temple that day would have been an interesting one – I wonder how theyleft ?

And the experience for people visiting our churches or meeting us today is important as we ask ourselves in what ways we are revealing Christ to others, in what way we are building relationships and building a bigger family.

This week I went to a concert and talk by two people – one a Christian musician and the other a speaker, writer and community worker.

As we think about family I’d like to just share two things they said – the first was that we believe in a God who is changing the world, so we are not to accept it as it is. As we seek to build family, it challenges us to not settle for a church where people don’t know each other,or some people don’t get on, or to settle for a community where people don’t see what the church is doing to try and share the love of God. It’s not easy, but together we can be bold and confident.

We can share the gospel as we meet together and worship and pray together and as we invite others to join us. We can offer hope to those who are struggling for hope, company for those who are lonely, peace to those in turmoil, a shoulder to cry on for some, happiness and joy for others who want to just come and be part of a family bound together by this incredible love that God offers us all.

And the second phrase I want to share was ‘imagine rebirth – we can love people back to life.’ It sounds perhaps a corny phrase. It sounds something that is beyond us but with God on our side nothing is too big and we can be part of rebuilding lives and communities of hope and love, communities where people know of a Saviour who loves us and them without limits. Perhaps this week we can all think of something we can do to show God’s love to someone intentionally and may people see in all that we do something of that love – the love that glorifies God and offers welcome, care, hope, and peace for all. AMEN