If you have not yet, now, at Candlemas, the Presentation of our Lord and the Purification of the Blessed Virgin Mary, you may put away your Christmas decorations. That is the English tradition. If it will last that long, the Christmas tree and all the festive adornments of Christmas are kept until Candlemas. But I suspect that you grew tired of the tree and the decorations long before February 2. Only those exterior strings of lights high on our roofs might escape the urgency to put all the stuff away and pack up Christmas for another year.
After a while Christmas wears thin. We realize that the old and ordinary family tensions remain after the holiday is over. We realize that all the packages under the tree did not hold the happiness, contentment, and peace we had hoped to receive. We realize that COVID and bills and cleaning and work are still there – waiting for the holy day to end and the holiday to be over. We had hoped for more. A longer respite from the harsh realities of this mortal life.
Maybe Jesus hoped for more as well. But already on the eighth day His blood was shed. Circumcision is worth hardly more than a giggle to a sophisticated people who can find no logic in this outward sign. But Jesus shed His first blood so that He might be under the covenant, reaching back to Abraham. He does so not so that He might belong to God – He IS God – but so that He might belong to us.
Maybe Mary and Jesus had hoped for more time before the harsh realities of His incarnational purpose would be revealed – time to bond, to build memories, and to be happy in ignorance. But already on the fortieth day the first born Son who breaks the womb is symbolically taken from blessed Mary His mother and from Joseph His faithful guardian and their earthly family of relatives and friends – and Jesus is given to God to fulfill God’s purpose. That is the presentation.
Maybe Mary had hoped that the words of the Archangel proclaiming the beating heart in her womb to be the Son of God might be delayed so that Jesus might have a semblance of a normal life and she might have one with Him. But already on the fortieth day when sacrifice was offered so that she might declared clean and given entrance back into society, a sword pierces her heart. A stranger plucks her son from her arms and prophesies the future of this baby and warns her that her own soul would be pierced. That is the purification.
That is why we are here today, to remember the Presentation of Our Lord and the Purification of the Blessed Virgin Mary on February 2 every year. Maybe we thought sin might be wished away or forgotten like a nightmare into the shadows. But already we see that death is in the wind, blood must be shed, and a life ruined because of what we thought, said, and did from Eden right down to the ticking second that passed while I speak.
Maybe we thought that Christmas might be more than a mere distraction but a detour around all the unpleasantness that fills life because of sin. But already we see that death is right there in the midst of the wonderful story. Angels sing and shepherds worship but the Holy Innocents of Bethlehem die and the wailing of their mothers still echos in our ears. Simeon prophesies and Anna rejoices but the news warns us of division, of the rising and falling of many, and of a mother who will watch her innocent Son die for the guilty world.
The Christmas of our hopes and dreams is over but the Christmas of God’s saving purpose is still here. It is the sound of the Savior crying out over circumcision blood shed so that we might be marked for God by baptism. It is the voice of Simeon raised in a canticle of praise we still sing having seen our salvation and tasted our Savior in Holy Communion. It is the smile of an aged woman who knows God’s promise as a Word fulfilled and the smile of a people who hear the voice of God preached into their ears, minds, and hearts. It is a sacrifice paid once for all that now becomes the sacramental gift of God’s favor forever. It is a death that has died and a people who live to laugh at death.
Christmas is tied to circumcision and to the presentation and purification. But it is also tied to the teaching of our Lord with authority, to the palms and hosannas of a crowd, to the Passover in the Upper Room, to the suffering of the cross, to the darkness of the grave, and to the light of the Risen Savior who raises us to life. In other words, now, finally, you can put your decorations away. But don’t you dare pack away your joy or hide away your hope for what is truly Christmas is still here, still yours, and still applies.
And you know this not because I say so, but because He has made it so. Our Lord is Emmanuel, God with us in trial and goodness, in trouble and calm, in affliction and health, in defeat and victory, in life and death. We shall not die but live and living we shall dwell before the Lord and within His household forever. And so we join with Simeon to sing again, our song here in this life, until we know it face to face in heaven. Lord, now You let Your servant depart in peace. Amen.
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