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St Paul’s Cathedral
A Sermon by The Very Rev’d Dr Trevor James, Dean of St Paul’s Cathedral
The Presentation of Christ in the Temple
3rd February, 2013
Unless a visitor to the Cathedral this morning had a
pretty good knowledge of what we know as the
‘Church Year’ they might wonder why we are
celebrating the festival we call ‘The presentation in
the temple’. This Feast is poised on the cusp of Lent
with Ash Wednesday only 10 days away and it marks
a decisive end to the Christmas and Epiphany
seasons and the story they follow. When the Virgin
Mary visits the temple 40 days after giving birth she
is following the requirements of Jewish law for
women but when she hands the infant Jesus over to
the old priest and prophet, Simeon, a new stage of
the story begins.
Of course a natural question might be, ‘Well this
might be interesting, but, to put it bluntly, so what?
What has this story, this incident, got to do with us?’
One way of responding to that question is to look at the scene and what is going on – this is
certainly what western art and especially the icons of the Greek and Russian Orthodox churches
have done – they give a stylized image to invite us to see, reflect and encounter the mystery and
the strangeness of what we know of the event.
Most icons have the Mary (and others) on the left, arriving at the temple. Opposite them, to the
right, greeting them on the temple steps is the ancient temple priest, Simeon and often, behind
him, in some, the prophetess, Anna. Between Mary and Simeon is set the infant Jesus and Simeon
often is shown to reach out to embrace him.
In one sense this is a very ordinary event. Any parent, any grandparent, can make sense of the
general picture. Take the scene (never mind the figures and who they represent) and we can
grasp the human story it represents. There at the centre is the baby, this new life, and on one
side is the proud mother with friends or family and on the other side a welcoming human
community gazing with interest, curiosity and perhaps delight or wonder. If we contemplate
that for a moment, one response would be to remember that whoever we are, we live in
community and in relationships; our identity, what we might think of as who we are, is utterly
interwoven with the identities of others and formed by them. We may take this for granted: but
in reality, without knowing it, we are on holy ground. So, at the centre of this grouping is a baby,
a mysterious new person, a vulnerable life, dependent upon these figures about it; offering for
them, perhaps, a new chance in the world; presenting the question of what it will become.
Implicit in this snapshot of our human community are all the things that make for a good family,
for a good and fulfilling society; and as well as this also our human potential for harm,
destructive conflict and distrust.
But this is also a unique and specific event: Mary has brought the baby Jesus to the Temple and
knowing the characters and the story as Luke tells it we might wonder what else can be said or
seen.
This Feast that brings Jesus into the temple reminds us of something about God. Jesus, as the Son
of God, is coming into his own place – the Temple. But he does not enter with trumpets and
cosmic upheaval and signs in the heavens – he comes as an infant and vulnerable. This reminds
us that God immerses himself in our humanity, shares it; knows it; takes it into himself. God
relates to us in our humanity – and does not force us to an awareness of him. You could say God
conceals himself in our humanity and in our world – and waits for us to respond.
The other point that I think the Feast of the Presentation helps us grasp, perhaps less directly, is
something about the Church. When the infant Jesus is brought into the temple, it can be
understood as a sign that something new is to happen – and that something new will eventually
come to be known as the Church. In all the icons and art of the Presentation, the infant Jesus is
the agent or link that symbolically creates a new community – the two sectors of the icons meet
in him. In his adult life, Jesus continued to create a new community – for instance in those
extraordinary fellowship meals where all sorts of people, respectable and otherwise, radical
opposites, came together around the one table; also, after his death and resurrection, the new
community continued to grow and continued to bring people together across cultures, races and
belief systems and it spread around the world.
So here we are today: and as we talk about being the Church - I think it was Archbishop William
Temple who said that the church is the only society that exists for those who don’t belong to it.
The marks of the Church as Catholic are that we include everyone and exclude no one. We are
radically inclusive. But we make mistakes. Church history is full of mistakes. But we progress
despite that; it was St Augustine who described the church as a ‘school’ with God as its teacher.
We are a community that continually has to learn and slowly grow into maturity, generation by
generation, growing into the new humanity God created us to become, including all our diversity
and allowing for the latitude and scope demanded by our human freedom. What begins in the
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Presentation in the Temple is part of God’s experiment with humankind and the creation of the
church to be a ‘laboratory of the Spirit’. The Church is not about maintaining some identity that
is frozen in time but it is always about our human growth into fullness and maturity before God.
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