Sermon delivered on Candlemas Sunday (transferred), February 3, 2013, at St. Augustine’s Anglican Church, Columbus, OH.

Lectionary texts: Malachi 3.1-5; Psalm 24.1-10; Hebrews 2.14-18; Luke 2.22-40.

In the name of God: Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. Amen.

Today we celebrate the feast of the Presentation of Christ at the Temple. This is the day when Mary and Joseph came to the Temple to complete Mary’s purification process (cf. Leviticus 12.1-8) and to perform the redemption of the firstborn, where they offered Jesus as holy (set apart for service) to the Lord (cf. Numbers 3.40-51). Both were prescribed by the Law of Moses and neither ritual was unique to Jesus. This feast day also came to be known as Candlemas, or the Festival Day of Candles, in which the priest would bless candles for use in the local church for the coming year and in some cases would send some of the candles home with his parishioners for them to use. It is one of the earliest known feasts to be celebrated by the Church.

Candlemas falls 40 days from the birth of Jesus because that is the day Mary would have completed her purification process as prescribed by the Law, which means that Candlemas always falls on February 2. However, the Anglican Church allows for the feast day to be transferred to the Sunday between January 28-February 3, which is what we are doing today. Candlemas is also the midpoint between the winter solstice and spring equinox and before there ever was a Groundhog Day (also observed on February 2), tradition held that when Candlemas fell on a sunny day, there was more winter to come. But when it fell on a cloudy, wet, or stormy day, it meant that the worst of winter was over. For you Christmas fanatics out there, tradition also holds that any Christmas decorations not taken down by Twelfth Night (January 5) should be left up until Candlemas and then taken down. Candlemas also officially marks the end of the Epiphany season, a season in which the Church celebrates Christ as being the light to the world, and so it is particularly appropriate for us to celebrate today with the blessing and lighting of candles. Now that you’ve had your history lesson on Candlemas, I want us to look briefly at what this feast might mean for us as Christians living in the 21^st century.

In this morning’s OT lesson, the prophet warns God’s people Israel not to be too eager in their longing for the day of God’s final judgment on human sin and rebellion because they were going to be among those whom God judged most severely. As we have seen, God will finally judge human sin, not because he is some cosmic ogre who is eager to abuse his creatures, but rather because God is loving and just and implacably opposed to evil. For those who are resolved to do justice, love mercy, and walk humbly with their God (Micah 6.8), God’s judgment will be a good thing because it means God is going to rid his creation of evil and finally put things to right again. As the psalmist observed in today’s lesson, those who do the right things in God’s eyes and keep their relationship with him in proper perspective will be those who get to live with him.

But for those who stubbornly refuse to submit to God’s good authority and seek to make themselves or something else a god instead, God’s judgment is going to be anything but pretty. This was especially true for ancient Israel because God had called them to be his light to the world, to help bring his healing love and redemption to a sin-sick world desperately in need of it. But Israel for the most part had stubbornly refused to play the part, instead chasing after false gods that could not possibly bring healing and redemption, let alone safety and well-being.

And we are used to seeing this kind of dynamic in our own day as well. We see evil thriving, sometimes seemingly unchecked, and we wonder where God is in it all. This leaves many of us with serious doubts about God’s ability to deliver on his promises and/or his love for us. This tempts us to chase after other false gods like technology, science, money, power, and human wisdom in an attempt to protect and shield ourselves from evil and harm. And like many of the ancient Israelites, we like to fool ourselves into thinking that if there really is such a thing as God’s coming judgment on the world, we will be exempt from it because after all, we really aren’t that bad. We try to do justice, love mercy, and walk with our God—when it suits us or when we see that doing so might benefit us. All of this points to the fact that we humans are profoundly broken vessels and without some serious help, The Day is not going to be pretty for any of us, just as the prophet warned, at least if we believe God’s word has any credibility.

But it is to the glory of God that God is not only a God of justice but also a God of infinite love, mercy, and faithfulness. God is fully committed to restoring his good but broken creation and creatures and he is still committed to using the people he calls, his people in Jesus the Messiah, to build on the foundation Jesus laid until the day God brings final judgment and fresh new creation to his world. We see this wondrous promise shining like a bright beacon of light and hope in today’s epistle and gospel lessons. In our gospel lesson Luke is reminding us that in Jesus we are seeing what it really means to be holy to the Lord, to be set apart for God’s service. When old Simeon praised God for allowing him to see God’s promised Messiah, the one who would bring healing and hope to both Israel and the world, and warned Mary that this would be terribly costly, he not only echoed the prophet Malachi’s warning about the costliness of redemption but also points us to Jesus’ death and resurrection. As the writer of Hebrews reminds us, on the cross Jesus propitiated God’s wrath by taking it on himself. While the NRSV translates the Greek verb hilaskomai as to make atonement, that is not the primary meaning of the word. To propitiate God’s anger means to satisfy or appease it. Propitiation is not a very popular term these days (as evidenced by the sloppy translation in our text) because it is not fashionable to talk about the wrath of God. But God’s anger and wrath is not like human anger or wrath. It isn’t temperamental or fickle. Simply put, God’s anger is aroused by evil of any form and as we have seen before, that is for our ultimate good. It is also critical for us to remember that Jesus was the very embodiment of God so that in Jesus, God bore his own wrath so that we wouldn’t have to. As the 20^th century Anglican writer, Dorothy Sayer, observed, in going to the cross, God showed us he was willing to take his own medicine. This, of course, is consistent with God’s great love and mercy for us. Put another way, as Paul wrote to the Romans, in Jesus, God condemned sin in the flesh so that he would not have to condemn us (Romans 8.3). Sin is the enemy of God, not humans, and in Jesus God has taken care of sin by dying on a cross for us. When you think of God’s justice, do you first see the cross of Jesus? If not, you must still live in fear of dying, and in direct contradiction of what the writer of Hebrews asserts.

Not only did God spare us from his just wrath, but as the writer of Hebrews points out, God also used Jesus’ death to destroy the devil (cf. Colossians 2.15). To be certain, there is a mystery about this and God’s defeat of the powers and principalities has not been fully consummated. As Paul wrote to the Corinthians, we must embrace these promises in faith because as finite mortals our knowledge of God and his purposes is only partial. But faith is not wishful thinking because when Jesus burst forth from the tomb on that first Easter Sunday, his resurrection provided the needed proof to verify the NT’s claims about God’s promises to redeem and recreate his good but fallen creation in Jesus and to show us that the resurrection of our mortal bodies and new creation really is our hope and future.

As we think about all this, we realize that God has done all that is needed for us to be his beacons of light and hope to the world. In the death of Jesus, God has done what it takes to end our alienation from him and turn away his wrath forever. As Paul states boldly, “There is therefore now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus” (Romans 8.1). But God has not rescued us from sin and death so that we can escape from the world and go to heaven to be with Jesus. No! We are called to offer Jesus’ love and healing to his world because God’s creation matters and God intends to redeem it! And here is where it gets tricky because I am convinced that for a host of reasons I don’t have time to explore this morning, many Christians don’t really believe (or know) God’s hope and promise offered us in Jesus that the NT writers claim—freedom from the fear of death and a resurrection hope that transcends all that life can throw at us.

I say this because too often we see Christians talking and behaving in fearful ways. We are afraid of what will happen to us if we witness to our faith or live it out. Many of us fear dying and worry what will happen to us when we die because we know we haven’t lived up to God’s standards consistently and we continue to struggle with our fallen human nature. But this is making it about us instead of about what God has done for us in Jesus. If we really believe our sins are covered by the blood of the Lamb shed for us, there is absolutely no reason to be afraid of death (or anything else for that matter) or to wonder how God could possibly love us! The heart of God is made known in Jesus and if we really want to know what God’s heart is like, we must look at Jesus dying on a cross for us. Do you really know the God of the cross??

And if we do not really believe that resurrection and new creation is our destiny, no wonder we let the darkness of the world overcome us at times! But if we know that death will one day be swallowed up in life and that even if our mortal bodies are killed, we are still the Lord’s because nothing in all creation can separate us from his great love for us in Christ, it makes all the difference in the world to us—literally! This knowledge allows us to possess a joy in the power of the Spirit that is not tied to the circumstances of life, but rather to the unchanging love and faithfulness of God. We don’t fear condemnation, either by humans or by God, and this is the energy we absolutely need to be Jesus’ light for the world through our humble and selfless service to others, especially to the least, the lost, and the oppressed. This is what turns heads and makes others stop and ask what is going on [share personal anecdotes]. Do you have that energy in the power of the Spirit? You won’t if you are struggling with your faith! So If you find yourself in that position, I encourage you this week to ask God to help you see and embrace the hope and promise of Jesus that is offered to you freely, and to do the things necessary to allow God to answer your prayers (i.e., learn your Scripture). And if you have that faith-based, Spirit-driven energy, I encourage you to use it as energy to shine the light of Jesus on others in the power of the Spirit so that they too can share in the Good News, now and for all eternity.

In the name of God: Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. Amen.