Preached on the Presentation of Our Lord Jesus Christ, February 2 2025, at St. Paul’s Episcopal Church, Seattle, Washington by The Reverend Samuel Torvend.
Malachi 3:1-4
Psalm 84
Hebrews 2:14-18
Luke 2:22-40
Detail of Presentation in the Temple, by John August Swanson
Let me say it is an odd cast of characters who appear in this gospel reading. Joseph and Mary, says Luke, bring their infant to the Temple where they offer a pair of turtledoves and two pigeons as an acceptable sacrifice. Well, except for this: Luke does not mention that because of their poverty, Mary and Joseph could only afford the cheapest offering of four birds. And then there is Simeon, a man who, Luke wants us to know, is a righteous and devout person, an elderly man who takes the infant in his arms and sings a song of farewell as if he were preparing for his death: “Lord, now let your servant depart in peace.” And then there is Anna, an elderly widow who praises God for the child. Luke surprisingly calls her a prophet, a title in his world usually reserved for men.
A poor couple with an infant, an old man and an old woman. Let me say: this is not how a blockbuster film begins. But, guess what? It is our story: the story of ordinary people doing what their religion invited them to do: to dedicate this firstborn child to God, only to discover that elderly Simeon sees in this child a light – a light – that will bring life, health, and wholeness to other children and the elderly, to women and men and those of ambiguous sexual identity, to Jews and Gentiles, to the devout and to notorious sinners, to those who are determined to keep traditions intact and those who are ready to throw them out, to the savvy and hip and to the gullible and old fashioned, to the citizen whose family has been in place for hundreds of years and to the immigrant who arrived two minutes ago. Simeon sees in this child a light that will bring life, health, and wholeness ... to you and to me and to the houseless soul on the street outside this church.
The amazing thing about light is this: that it will shine wherever it can without regard for the status or reputation or calling of those upon whom it rests and warms and enlivens. Light is wildly promiscuous, enlightening anything and everyone it touches. As elderly Simeon holds the infant in his arms, he sings, “this child is light for the world” – a lyric I need to hear, perhaps you need to hear, now more than ever at this time in which the rhetoric of retribution and punishment, of scorn and intimidation appears to be the lyric sung at the highest levels of government in our nation.
But, then, Luke would have us look at the law which governed the presentation of a child and its mother in the Temple. For that law asks that a lamb be offered as the pleasing sacrifice to God. And so Luke will suggest later in his gospel that this child is not only light but also lamb: a lamb who will be put to death and then raised by the power of God; a lamb who will become the center of worship in the heavenly city come down to our earth, the lamb who offers mercy and peace so we chant in the eucharistic liturgy. But, then, if you think for a moment about a lamb: well, it’s one of the weakest animals in God’s diverse creation. I mean, if you’re at all familiar with the liturgy of night prayer, of compline, you know that we hear this quotation from the first letter of Peter: “Be sober, be vigilant for your adversary the devil prowls around like a roaring lion, seeking someone to devour,” as if the lion symbolizes the forces in this world ready to tear apart and fragment rather than heal and unite. Honest to God, why, then, a lamb?
The biblical scholar, Barbara Rossing, in her marvelous study of the Book of Revelation suggests that Christians, that you and I, are called to embrace what she calls “lamb power.” For lamb power is the alternative to the exercise of retribution and punishment. For the power of the lamb is that power which rejects violence and embraces active non-violence in order to bring about greater life, health, and wholeness. Consider, then, Susan B. Anthony and the thousands of women in white who peacefully demonstrated for suffrage, who were pelted with rotten tomatoes and feces yet galvanized generations of women to claim the right to vote. Consider Martin Luther King, Jr., and the thousands who joined him in peaceful resistance to the devil of segregation and Jim Crow, who were beaten and brutalized yet changed the sympathies of the nation. Consider Dorothy Day, mother of the Catholic Worker Movement, and the many who joined her in peaceful resistance to the incarceration of the houseless and the hungry, a movement that continues to house and feed thousands, offering them life, health, and wholeness. For you see, the power of the lamb is nothing less than non-violent action that nurtures respect for the God-given dignity of every human being, a power inspired by the words of the adult Jesus: “Blessed are the peacemakers for they will be called the children of God” (Matthew 5:9).
You see, “lamb power” is that which calls into question and subverts the tendency within each of us to strike back when insulted, ignored, or harmed. And let me say, that tendency – to strike back – is not diminishing but rather growing in our culture. Indeed, in a recent study published by the American Medical Association, researchers discovered a sharp increase in violence, maiming, killing, and catastrophic death in movies produced since 2003, the year in which the government of this nation sanctioned the invasion Iraq. “Murderous verbs,” the report says, “murderous verbs” are now far more common in films that have nothing to do with crime or war.
And so let me say how grateful I am for this space in which we can rehearse, again and again, the language of non-violence and compassion, this space that offers us the opportunity to practice that skill which no school, no corporation, and no government teaches: the practice of self-giving love, of sacrifice for the sake of others, which is nothing less than the practice of the lamb.
Thus, in this soaring vaulted space, the prophet Anna is with us as we sing God’s praise and as we pray for the world and its suffering. And here, too, dear friends, is elderly Simeon, as we take into our hands the wounded yet risen Christ, the light of the world, in the forms of bread and wine. For you must know, I hope you know, that God does not need any offering from us. God does not need any sacrifice except this one: our love and our labor for the neighbor in need through which the light of Christ might shine brightly.
Amen.