Sermon: Deconstructing Temple Religion

The feast known as Candlemas invites us to ponder a number of opposites: most obviously the young boy and the old man, the Virgin Mary and the prophetess Anna, then, at a more abstract level, the themes of stability and change, past and future, solidity and spirit, dark and light.

Many of these contrasts rightly run though this liturgy.  But there is one other which needs to be named if the full significance of what we are celebrating is to be grasped.  It is the contrast between the Messiah, the Christ, and the Temple.

In the early chapters of Luke's gospel,  the story of the Presentation of Christ in the Temple is followed quickly by the story of Jesus being lost in the Temple. This is the high-water mark for the Temple in the New Testament. From then on the tide is going out.  Not only does Jesus cleanse the Temple on Palm Sunday but his death is marked by the rending of the Temple veil and in the book of Revelation the vision of new Jerusalem is a vision of a city precisely without a Temple.

In the gospels we read that Jesus confused his listeners by talking about the destruction of the Temple and its rebuilding in three days.  The confusion is that they think he is talking about the ‘real' Temple but he is really talking about the Temple that is his body.

But this confusion is not quite as inept as it might at first seem because Jesus is not just playing with metaphors here.  He is identifying himself as the true Temple, the place of saving reconciliation between the divine and the human.

The primary spiritual truth of the feast of Candlemas is that the Temple is disappointing. That is why Simeon was still waiting. The Temple itself had given him neither illumination nor salvation; he was until this day trapped by unfulfilled hope.  Only now, on seeing the Christ, could he be released to depart. Only now did his eyes see salvation. Only now could he know the peace of God that passes all understanding.

The Presentation is no affirmation of the Temple but the beginning of its end. It is not of course the destruction of the Temple but it is the deconstruction of Temple religion, Temple faith, Temple imagination. 

When he really sees the Christ child, Simeon understands that this new fulfilment, this true enlightenment, puts everything else, including his own past, in the shade.  This is marvellously shown in Rembrandt's great masterpiece of 1631 (Simeon in the Temple) where the Temple provides the shadowy background for the moment of modest but brilliant, transfiguring, illumination. 

And what about the words? ‘And a sword shall pierce your own soul' he says to the young mother.  And he is right.  For when we have seen the word made flesh we realise that the only religious struggle worth engaging in is one which not only catches the imagination and touches our heart but also pierces our soul.  Faith costs us deeply.  And thus it saves.

Rightly understood, Candlemas draws our attention away from religious observance. Instead it directs us to ponder what it might mean for us to stay close to Jesus when he precipitates his defining crisis with the Temple authorities on Palm Sunday.  The faith question for us is not so much where we are today as where we will be as that drama unfolds. Will it be in the Temple with the high priest or at the foot of the cross with the grieving mother?   But if we have glimpsed a fraction of what Simeon saw, there is no question to answer.