Jesus’ Presentation and Ours

Sermon preached in Christ Chapel

of the Episcopal Theological Seminary of the Southwest, Austin, Texas,

by the Very Rev’d Titus Presler, Th.D., D.D.,

Dean & President and Professor of Mission & World Christianity

on the Feast of the Presentation (transferred) and the Feast of Anskar, 3 February 2004

Lessons: Malachi 3.1-4; Psalm 84; Heb. 2.14-18; Luke 2.22-40

Today’s story takes us

            from the actually small to an anticipated large,

            from a concretely local to an envisioned global,

            from the clearly anecdotal to the ecstatically cosmic.

The feast of the Presentation of Our Lord Jesus Christ in the Temple — that’s the full name for today — comes to us at an oblique angle,

            either that, or we come obliquely to it.

Put it this way:

When did you last go out and get someone a Feast of the Presentation greeting card?

Or throw a Presentation party?

Or sing a Presentation carol?

If you were to tell the average Lutheran or Episcopalian that you were about to celebrate the Feast of the Presentation today,

            the response would likely be, “What’s that?”

And then when you begin explaining about the pair of turtle doves and two young pigeons,

            the response might be, “You celebrate that?!”

When you go on to Simeon and Anna,

            the response might be, “Oh, yes, I know the Nunc dimittis. 

            That’s a nice thing to celebrate, but don’t we sort of do that at every evensong?”

For us in the 21^st-century West or Global North, there’s this gauntlet of obscure and embarassing stuff at the start of the story that pushes us away from the story —

            purification after childbirth

            an offering of birds. 

And it gets worse when we go to the source in Leviticus:

            “If a woman conceives and bears a male child, she shall be ceremonially unclean seven days; as at the time of her menstruation, she shall be unclean.  

            “On the eighth day the flesh of his foreskin shall be circumcised” (that’s the male child, by the way). 

            “Her time of blood purification shall be thirty-three days; she shall not touch any holy thing, or come into the sanctuary, until the days of her purification are completed.

            “If she bears a female child, she shall be unclean two weeks, as in her menstruation; her time of blood purification shall be sixty-six days. 

            “When the days of her purification are completed, whether for a son or for a daughter, she shall bring to the priest at the entrance of the tent of meeting a lamb in its first year for a burnt offering, and a pigeon or a turtledove for a sin offering.  

            “He shall offer it before the Lord, and make atonement on her behalf; then she shall be clean from her flow of blood. . .

            “If she cannot afford a sheep, she shall take two turtledoves or two pigeons, one for a burnt offering and the other for a sin offering; and the priest shall make atonement on her behalf, and she shall be clean.”

Even allowing for the mysterious ways of God with Israel,

            to our ears and eyes the whole scene seems to be shot through with the crudest sort of patriarchy,

            the crudest dualism in which procreation is paramount but the role of sexuality, especially women’s sexuality, in it is suspect,

            and so the crudest devaluation of women and their holy role in giving birth,

            and, perhaps most painfully, the crudest devaluation of baby girls, as distinguished from baby boys.

Mary and Joseph were into that?

Jesus came in under that?

The answer, of course, is Yes!

Jesus came in under that.

That is what Jesus came in under.

That is what Jesus was.

“And the word became flesh and dwelt among us” —

            not in some divine game of charades, with God simply masquerading as human and hovering above it all,

            but in the fullness of what it means to be human,

            in the fullness of the culture, the religion, the world view of a particular time and place.

And so it is that the Feast of the Presentation is a feast of the incarnation within the incarnation season of Epiphany,

            the season of the showing forth of the Christ in all the world. 

Within what was understood to celebrate the holiness, the set-apartness of God’s people for God —

            as a commemoration of the Passover, by which all the first-born Egyptian male offspring died and all the first-born Hebrew male offspring were spared —

            within what was understood, however ambivalently, to constitute the holiness, the set-apartness, of the event of childbirth and women’s central role in it —

within, in short, the religious culture of that worldview

Mary and Joseph went up to Jerusalem

            as faithful members of God’s holy covenant with God’s holy people Israel

            to do the most holy thing they could do,

             to present — parasthsai — to present their child, their firstborn child to God in the holiest place known to them, God’s holy temple in Jerusalem. 

There was the unsuspecting cooing of the doves,

            followed, I presume, by their abrupt and final squawks,

            the spilling of a little blood from the small animals,

            the offering of prayers,

            the self-offering, I presume, of the parents through those prayers

            as they reposed their love, their hopes, their nurture in this small son.

And in that day of small things came the transition

            from the actually small to an anticipated large,

            from the concretely local to an envisioned global,

            from the clearly anecdotal to the ecstatically cosmic.

From the heart of God’s holy covenant with God’s holy people Israel

            Simeon takes the child in his arms and in ecstatic prophecy unfolds the inner logic of that covenant:

            that God’s salvation has been prepared “in the presence of all peoples” — pantwn twn lawn —

            “a light for revelation to the Gentiles” — ta eqnh —

            that “the glory” of what God was up to with Israel was to be a light, a revelation, an invitation for the whole world,

            for all cultures, all peoples, all ethnicities,

            and this he saw in the child in his arms.

And from the heart of God’s holy covenant with God’s holy people Israel

            Anna praises God and speaks of the child to all who were looking for the redemption of Jerusalem. 

All this in the presentation of an infant in a holy place.

In both the Lutheran and Episcopal calendars, the third day of February is the feast day of Anskar.

In the ninth century, he, like Simeon and Anna, had an intuition of God being up to great things beyond his experience.

Quite to the astonishment of his monastic brothers, who considered the Danes “unknown and barbarous folk”,

            he responded to the King of Denmark’s request for missionaries

            and served there three years with little response to the evangelization he undertook.

He later responded to another vision, in which he heard a voice saying, “Go and declare the work of God to the nations.”

For all we know, it could have been the voice Simeon, still passionate for that salvation in the presence of all peoples,

            so Anskar went to Sweden, where again his efforts for the gospel bore little fruit until three generations later.

Nevertheless, many Scandanavians today, and many Lutherans among them, consider Anskar their apostle,

            the one sent to them with the gospel of Jesus Christ.

“Keep your Church from discouragement in the day of small things,” runs the Episcopal collect for Anskar’s day,

            “knowing that when you have begun a good work you will bring it to a fruitful conclusion.” 

Every student here has in some way been presented.

Some community or collection of communities has in some way presented you to God —

            maybe it began in a prayer group and moved to a parish and its council or vestry,

            for many of you it moved to a synod or a diocese

            and to one of those dread bishops —

            in some way you have been presented to God and to the church.

And you’ve been presented with all your stuff —

            whether you’re into gumbo or TexMex,

            whether you rooted for the Panthers or the Patriots,

            whether you thought the half-time show was a hoot or an outrage,

            whether you’re charismatic or contemplative,

            whether you’re into parish ministry or chaplaincy or social justice,

            whether you’re theological or practical,

            Democrat or Republican,

            intellectual or intuitive,

            whether you’re more comfortable in Spanish, English, Swahili, or Shona —

with all that stuff, some of it revelatory, a lot of it just the plain old stuff or who you are and who any of us is,

            with all that incarnate stuff you’ve been presented to God and to the church,

            with someone having the confidence to say,

            “Ah yes, here we see the possibility of God’s light shining forth for the Israel of the church and for the wider world.”

And you’ve all presented yourselves.

In some way you’ve said, “Yes, that’s the call.

            “Yes, that’s the Spirit’s moving in my life.

            “Yes, that’s how I long to serve God and God’s people.”

We’re starting a new semester.

A lot of things have happened for a lot of you since Advent.

Talking with one person at Community Hour yesterday, I was startled at how the entire future-scape of one person had changed since December

            with lots of personal stuff and lots of vocational stuff.

Changes happen quickly when you’re in seminary,

            and that can be true of staff and faculty as well as for students.

Some of it’s been hard,

            some of may have been excruciating,

            at times you may feel like you are in a day of very small things indeed,

            some of it, we hope, has been exultant.

In the midst of all of it,

            the small things and the big things

             on this Feast of the Presentation, I say this to you:

Trust in your presentation.

Draw strength from those who had the vision to present you.

Stay centered in how you have presented yourself to God and to the church.

With Paul, “I appeal to you, . . . brothers and sisters, by the mercies of God,

            to present yourselves as a living sacrifice,

            holy and acceptable to God,

            which is your spiritual worship.”