Sermon: Candlemas Procession

Preacher:

Date:

Sunday 3rd February 2013

The sight of snowdrops always lifts the spirit. Tiny, and apparently fragile, they bring a luminous quality to dark woodland floors and churchyards at a dark time of year. In the harshness of winter they bob as if they were flickering candles. And close up, the white of the petal is entirely unblemished except for touches of green, the colour of life.

The snowdrop – galanthus, a name derived from the Greek, gála meaning "milk", and ánthos meaning "flower". And the best way to see their full majesty and beauty is to kneel down and, gently lifting the drooped head, to see the intricacy of the patterns before you.

Wordsworth writes of the snowdrop,

Nor will I then thy modest grace forget,
Chaste Snowdrop, venturous harbinger of Spring,
And pensive monitor of fleeting years!

Those themes of purity, light, candles, mother’s milk, intricate beauty have longed linked the snowdrop to the great feast of the Presentation of Christ in the Temple, Candlemas, also known as the Purification of St Mary the Virgin which we celebrate today: hence why the snowdrop has been known in England as the Candlemas Bell. Practice from medieval times was to bring snowdrops into the church at Candlemas to evoke that sense of reverence and presentation and offering.

40 days ago at Christmas Christ was presented to shepherds, heralded by angels, and then 12 days later at Epiphany presented to the Magi, those spiritual seekers from the east. The liturgical time since Epiphany has presented Christ most publicly at his baptism in the Jordan, ‘this is my son’; at the Wedding Feast, the first of his signs, and in the synagogue at Nazareth, ‘the Spirit of the Lord is upon me…today this scripture is fulfilled in your hearing’.

Those presentations are of Christ to the world. This presentation tonight is a human presentation of a child, by Joseph and Mary, to the Father in the temple.

The act of presentation and offering is at the heart of the joyful, transformed and transforming, response to the abundant love of God revealed in Christ. Lives offered in the service of the Father in service of the world for the sake of the Kingdom.

Our round of worship is part of that offering, encapsulated in the offertory procession at the Eucharist and the offering of our gifts. God is not dependent on our offering, nothing we do adds to his glory, but we are dependent on that offering: for three main reasons.

First, offering leads us out of introspection and lives shut in on themselves as we consider others. Secondly it places our wealth and talents as gifts to us, and not something we have created ourselves.  Thirdly, it enables things to happen that might not otherwise happen. So we can understand stewardship, the offering and presentation of our money, time and our talents, as enabling those three things. We look beyond ourselves, freely receiving and freely giving; we recognise that what we have is all a gift, from the fact that we breathe, to our possessions; and that with money we can make things happen to the good.

Simeon and Anna, waiting in the temple, were expectant and they received. They were rewarded beyond measure and, at their somewhat advanced years, were transformed and overflowed with joy. But offering comes with a cost, of course. For Mary, the offering of her son in the Temple came with the salutary warning that her heart would be pierced with pain. And for us Ecclesiasticus says, ‘do not let your hand be open when it is time to receive, and closed when it is time to give’. In the temple we stretch out our hands to receive Christ in word and sacrament, and tonight we ponder how we stretch out our hands in offering , via our pocket, but, much harder, with our lives too.

The little snowdrop, just like the candles we carry in procession, makes an offering to a cold world that gladdens the heart. May the offering ‘of ourselves, our souls and bodies be an holy and lively sacrifice’ to God’s glory, in Christ’s body, the church, that through the Holy Spirit the Kingdom may come.