This sermon begind with a reading of Ursula Fanthorpe’s poem BC:AD which can be found here
On the surface, this poem has nothing much to do with Candlemas – the presentation of Christ in the Temple. It’s a Christmas poem – one of a series written by Ursula Fanthorpe each year at Christmas – to go out with her Christmas cards. But there is something in this poem about moments of change that reminds me very much of Simeon and Anna – two elderly people who had waited, maybe a lifetime, for this moment. And when the moment finally arrived, quite out of the blue and unexpectedly, on a normal, ordinary day, everything changed forever. The moment they saw in this child with his poor parents, they knew that their moment had come. What did they see, I wonder, that made them realise that this child was special? What was it that made them recognise this moment as THE moment – the moment that changed everything.
We often hear it said that it is John the Baptist who spans the Old and New Testaments – the last of the prophets who witnessed to God and awaited the Messiah. But surely it is really Simeon and Anna who should claim this spot – the spot between BC and AD?
There are times in our lives where we wait for something to happen – something to which we look forward with delight or dread. The house sale will go through and one day soon I’ll be in my new home. One day I will be lounging on the deck of that ship enjoying my mediterranean cruise. One day this suffering will be over and my loved one will be at peace. As I have witnessed this week, one day soon my child’s inquest will happen and I’ll be able to move on. We wait for all manner of things, knowing that the waiting will end, one day, sooner or later. This is a longing we all know – we have something to share with Simeon and Anna.
But, of course, that moment of change is not always welcome. Most of us struggle with change – it makes us nervous and uncomfortable. And these days, change happens so quickly that it often seems impossible to keep up. And the changes, like the ones recently made to £10 and £20 notes are not always for the better.
All things change and facing change is inevitable. Because the world is changing, if the organisations we love most fail to change, they will inevitably die with us – the bridge becomes too wide for newcomers to cross so no-one new will come. The things we love most are the things we have to allow to change, or we’ll lose the things we cherish. The keepers of tradition become the ones who have to oversee change, or the tradition will die and its riches lost.
Here at St Oswald’s, on most Sundays we have no teenagers – they’ve lost interest and left – not just here, but all over the country. Because the church of today has lost its youth, the church of tomorrow will be weakened – it may not survive. In many ways I think this is because we have made the mistake of thinking of children and teenagers as ‘the church of tomorrow’. If we enabled them to take their rightful places in the church of today, there would be a church of tomorrow. As things stand, this seems increasingly unlikely.
But what Simeon saw was not hopeless. He saw a light in the darkness. He saw ‘a light to lighten the Gentiles’ – in a way, what he saw was us – we’re Gentiles, sitting in our little church all these years later. He saw God’s blessing spreading and illuminating, blessing all people – even those who didn’t yet know him.
And that is our hope too. For God’s blessing and love to be known by all. Anna saw that this message would come at a cost – she foresaw Mary’s pain ‘ a sword shall pierce your own soul too’. And change is often painful – costly. Look what it cost our Lord. But in that darkness there is always light – the light shines in the darkness and the darkness has never, shall never put it out.
Candlemas isa great feast of light: people used to bring a year’s supply of candles to be blessed and taken back to their homes. But this feast of light forces us to acknowledge what lurks in the shadows – what it is we want to illuminate. And this is the feast where we bring these things to God – who is love and light.
Amen