Christ Church Cathedral, Montreal
A Homily for Candlemas 2007
The Very Rev’d Michael J. Pitts
Malachi 3:1-4
Psalm 84
Hebrews 2:14-18
Luke 2:22-40
As I look at our readings and think about this festival of Candlemas, I see four themes: The role Mary, the Lord coming to his Temple, everything being done according to the law and the contrast of light and darkness. Mary is very present in our music today, and I leave her aside in these thoughts, but I shall try to explore the other three.
I want to begin, in a way unusual for me, by looking at the psalm. It is one of a number of psalms, whose content clearly shows that they were associated with pilgrimage to Jerusalem and to the Temple. In our Hebrew scripture generally, the Temple represents the presence of God among his people. This presence is known both in the sacrificial worship and in the mysterious ark, or box, in the holy of holies. While some texts suggest that the ark was the repository of the law, others saw it as an empty box, and in one description, atop the ark were two seraphim, standing at each side of an empty throne. The presence of God is always deeply mysterious.
How dear to me is your dwelling, O Lord God of hosts! My soul has a desire and longing for the courts of the Lord; my heart and my flesh rejoice in the living God.[i]
These words I believe speak not just of the experience of the Jewish pilgrims entering the temple of Jerusalem. They speak to me of that sense of awe and holiness we can feel when we enter one of the great Byzantine, Romanesque or Gothic Cathedrals of ancient Europe, even perhaps as we enter one of their less ancient grandchildren here in North America.
Another of the psalms also gives expression to the sense of awe:
Ascribe to the Lord the glory due his name; worship the Lord in the beauty of holiness. [ii]
Those words of course inspired the Epiphany hymn:
Worship the Lord in the beauty of holiness; bow down before him, his glory proclaim; gold of obedience and incense of lowliness, bring and adore him: the Lord is his name.[iii]
The peace of a great building, the magnificence of art and architecture combined with the beauty of music and singing can assist us in sensing the presence among us of the deeply holy and mysterious heart of the universe we call God.
We need of course to take care. Neither the psalm nor the hymn speak of the holiness of beauty. We do not ascend to the presence of God through aesthetic activity or appreciation. The sense of the holy and mysterious is the gift of God. Holiness is predicated of God alone. We worship the Lord in the beauty of holiness. Aesthetic pleasure, either in a religious building or in nature can prepare us to receive God’s gift, but only God can reveal his holiness and God can reveal the beauty of holiness in the most ugly of places or situations.
This ambivalence is present in both the Hebrew scripture reading and in the Gospel today. Malachi declares that:
the Lord whom you seek will suddenly come to his temple[iv]
but he goes on to say:
who can endure the day of his coming, and who can stand when he appears? For he is like a refiner's fire and like fullers' soap;….he will purify the descendants of Levi and refine them like gold and silver, until they present offerings to the LORD in righteousness.
In this Malachi is fully part of a whole prophetic tradition which sees the worship of the temple and the glorying in its beauty as being an escape from the real expression of the holiness of God which should rather be found in the practice of peace, social justice and equity.
In a similar way, in our Gospel story the prophet Simeon praised God when the Lord appeared in the Temple:
"Master, now you are dismissing your servant in peace, according to your word; for my eyes have seen your salvation, which you have prepared in the presence of all peoples, a light for revelation to the Gentiles and for glory to your people Israel.[v]
But he went on to say:
"This child is destined for the falling and the rising of many in Israel, and to be a sign that will be opposed so that the inner thoughts of many will be revealed--and a sword will pierce your own soul too."[vi]
Faith not so much a delighting in holiness but a struggle, or rather the finding of holiness in the midst of struggle. Mother Theresa found holiness in the suffering and human degradation of the slums of Calcutta. Brother Roger of Taizé set up the community, in the mist of the second world war, to find peace and holiness in the beautiful Burgundy countryside. Almost immediately he found the presence of God among the Jewish refuges whom the community sheltered and help to escape the death camps. Thirty years later he and his religious brothers and sisters found, and the community continues to find the presence of God in the religious, political and social struggles of the young people who flock by their thousands to Taizé to experience God’s holiness in their lives.
At the end of today’s Gospel story, Luke comments:
When they had finished everything required by the law of the Lord, they returned to Galilee, to their own town of Nazareth.[vii]
The writer of the letter to the Hebrews takes up this theme, which was later developed by Irenaus ,that, in order to bring salvation, Christ had to enter fully into the human condition. What is not assumed (taken on), said Irenaus, is not redeemed. In our passage from Hebrews we read:
Because he himself was tested by what he suffered, he is able to help those who are being tested[viii]
Once again: faith not so much a delighting in holiness, but a struggle, or rather the finding of holiness in the midst of struggle.
The letter to the Hebrews was almost certainly written after the traumatic events of the year 70 on the common era, when the temple was destroyed and both Christian and Jewish communities were struggling to find new identity in a new world. The Jewish community centered itself on Torah, the Christian on Scripture and sacrament. Buildings did not figure greatly in either community until much, much later.
I know, as I said in Trinity Cathedral in Miami last Sunday that, as Dean, I am charged with a piece of gothic revival architecture which is recognized by Canadian authorities as part of the country’s heritage. My colleague there, Dean McCaleb is similarly in charge of a Byzantine building somewhat younger than ours. I know too that buildings, and especially Cathedral building, are important. But we need to take care. Our first concern is not with the holiness of beauty but with the beauty of holiness. Holiness is not intrinsic to the building but is given by the presence of God. The presence of God is revealed in that for which the building exists, namely to be the place of divine drama and common meal. It is as we read, perform and interpret the words of scripture in the liturgy, and as we share the meal of bread and wine that the beauty of God’s holiness is revealed to us. That can happen in the magnificence of a cathedral, in the slums of Calcutta or in the rather ugly concrete church of the Taizé community.
Simeon’s first words, when he saw the child Jesus were:
Master, now you are dismissing your servant in peace, according to your word[ix]
Having received some vision of the beauty of holiness through the meal and the drama in which we present the story, we are dismissed, sent out, on God’s mission of struggling for shalom in our world. And shalom, remember, means much more that the absence of strife. It means health, well being, justice and right relationships with God, with our fellow human beings and with the whole of creation. At the end of John’s gospel Jesus says:
"Peace be with you. As the Father has sent me, so I send you." [x]
It is our mission (and mission means being sent) to live the life of Christ in our world, to bring his peace, wholeness and holiness to every person and creature.
The candles which we lit and carried at the beginning of this liturgy are symbols that we are to be the light of Christ to the world, as we struggle for his shalom. And so, as I did at the begining of our liturgy, I end my reflections by wishing you again Light and peace in Jesus Christ our Lord. Shalom.