The Feast of the Presentation of our Lord – Year C – Bill Harkins
The Collect
Almighty and ever living God, we humbly pray that, as your only begotten Son was this day presented in the temple, so we may be presented to you with pure and clean hearts by Jesus Christ our Lord; who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, now and forever. Amen.
The Gospel: Luke 2: 22 – 40
Almighty and ever living God, we humbly pray that, as your only begotten Son was this day presented in the temple, so we may be presented to you with pure and clean hearts by Jesus Christ our Lord; who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, now and forever. Amen.
In the Name of the God of Creation who loves us all, Amen. Good morning, and welcome to this Holy Eucharist in observance of Presentation Sunday, the fourth Sunday after the Epiphany. The story of the Presentation is in many ways a result of showing up and being present for mundane, ordinary rituals. I find myself intrigued by this, and especially today, as we have been about the business of being and doing church. The characters in Luke’s Gospel account are going about the business of what is required of them by Torah, the Law of Moses. They are presenting their firstborn to be dedicated to God. It seems to me important that the words “presentation” and “present” come from the same Latin root, praesens, meaning literally “to be before.” In my pastoral care classes each semester, we talked about “being there” and “being available” or “being present” as key elements of what it means to engage in effective pastoral care giving. In our spiritual lives, being present always has a double meaning. There’s present, as in here and available, paying attention and in attendance. And there’s present, as in now—this moment—or Kairos, in Greek, a sacred moment of time. Almost all of the world’s religions recommend both of these: living in the moment, with full awareness. And, we are learning from neuroscience that practicing mindfulness can literally change our neural pathways and neurochemistry for the better.
I believe this is so very important, especially in a culture that makes being present–here and now–so very difficult. We live in a time of anxiety which potentially robs of us our ability to stay present. We create forms of idolatry out of preoccupation both with the past and the future—neither of which, ultimately, we can control. I see this often in my clinical practice, and in myself.
Regardless, we then live as if the mystery of the Holy Spirit is not blowing through our lives. Thus, we sometimes are at risk for setting ourselves up for disappointment, create idols of our plans without consulting God, and cannot enjoy the present. One of the lessons I have learned from athletics—many years of football and now, many more years of running, is that we can prepare as well as possible, and then we have to show, play the game or run the race, and recognize that in order to do our best we must be present to the moment, to the task at hand. The mantra of my trail running group is “Conditions may vary.” We do the training and then we recognize that once the starter pistol is fired, most anything can—and often does happen. So the wisdom of our religious traditions seeks to address this. Now that both of our sons have become parents themselves, I remind them that the greatest gift we can offer our loved ones is “true presence.” Many faith traditions urge us to make the most of every day as a gift from God, and an opportunity that will not come to us again. Thomas Keating’s Centering Prayer practice has as its goal, in part, practicing the presence of God. This means recognizing that God is here and now moving through our everyday activities, including our smallest ritual acts, no matter how trivial they seem. This knowledge can, and should, offer us a vision of resilience, and hope.
Old Simeon and Anna knew this, too. Simeon is guided to a meeting with Joseph and Mary out of his knowledge that God’s creativity in this world has not been exhausted in the past—and both of them feel in their tired bones that God is capable of doing something in the present that is wholly new, world-shaking, and life-giving. Old Simeon takes Jesus into his arms and is moved to say…”now you are dismissing your servant in peace…my eyes have seen your salvation.” So now we know what salvation looks like. It takes on the face and embodiment of a human being.
For us, this means an affirmation that God has come among us in human form to live as we live, experience life with us in all its wonder and sorrow, and live with us into a new appreciation of what it means to be fully, truly alive as human beings. In other words, what it means to be present…to be there. Theologically this is in keeping with the events of the 40 days of Christmas, which comes to an end with the Presentation—or Candlemas—which we celebrate today. Really, the Incarnation is our central theological doctrine that God has been revealed in human form. Living into the truth of this doctrine means that we follow God’s lead in terms of self-involvement in the world of human suffering: with compassion and ethical commitment at every level of individual, social, and political involvement. It means a willingness to be present. When we say, with Simeon and Anna, “yes” to who Jesus really is, we say “no” to the myriad distractions that keep us in bondage to the past, or to the future. It means looking for opportunities to give our best efforts in our affirmation of who Jesus is, being there in ways we feel called to be there. Each of us is given a life for a reason outside ourselves. Each Sunday, indeed each day, we present ourselves—we bring forth ourselves in Epiphany—and re-dedicate our lives to God.
Through our Baptisms we are given the gift of discernment about what God wishes us to do with our lives. And we are given particular communities of faith like this one, in which to engage that discernment. Each of us has moments when someone, like Simeon, steps up to us and says, “Here is what I see for you…consider this as your ministry.” In whose face do you see Simeon in your life? Such encounters may happen in the most insignificant, mundane moments. In the simple, ordinary rituals of our lives we may encounter those who say to us, in effect, “will you be there…are you present?”
Well, for many years, I listened to Tom and Ray Magliozzi, better known as Click and Clack the Tappet Brothers, whose Peabody Award winning show ‘Car Talk” could be heard on NPR every Saturday morning. One of my favorite parts of this show was the weekly Puzzler, typically a question to which I did not know the answer, but which was always entertaining and educational. One week the weekly puzzler question was this: Last summer I was driving east to west across the country, and found myself in Kansas around noon. I was surrounded on all sides by farms raising a single crop—beautiful to look at, but difficult to understand. When I looked to my right, I saw fields of yellow, and when I looked to my left, I saw fields of green, and yet a single crop was being grown. Please explain. And here’s the answer, which I suspect most in this crowd already knows: In the northern hemisphere, the summer sun is in the southern sky. What I was observing was heliotropism—the tendency for flowers to turn and face the sun. The plants on the left side of me were turned away from me and facing the sun, while the plants on the right side were facing me, and the sun. The plants were sunflowers. When I looked to the right, I saw the yellow faces of the flowers, and when I looked to the left, I saw the green backs of the flowers.
This is wonderful, I found myself thinking, and it perfectly describes how the work of the Holy Spirit, our comforter and advocate, gently guides us in the direction of God’s sustaining, nourishing, and healing presence. Organizations, including Holy Family, are heliotropic. Churches lean toward the source of energy—whether that energy is healthy or not. As memories and imaginations are engaged to nourish participants with the best and most life-giving resources, the church will lean in the direction of those narratives and practices. And it is just like Simeon, stepping up and speaking the truth by virtue of having shown up and paid attention…Imagine a kind of “heliotropism of the soul” in relation to God, and one begins to understand how we are transformed when we turn toward God, whom I understand to be love incarnate, with the help of the Spirit, no matter what the context may be. And now, we can see the human forms of this through advances in relational neurobiology. Diane Ackerman, writing in a New York Times editorial, suggests that what we are learning is that the brain is constantly rewiring itself based on daily life, just as the sunflowers in Kansas are constantly turning toward the sun. For example, did you know that if you are in a committed relationship, holding your partner’s hand is enough to subdue blood pressure, ease stress, improve mental health, and even lessen pain? “In the end,”
Ackerman writes, “what we pay the most attention to defines us. How you choose to spend the irreplaceable hours of your life literally transforms you.” A baby’s first attachments imprint its brain, but this is not the end of it by any means. This neural alchemy continues throughout our lives. Supportive relationships, neuroscience is teaching us, across the life-cycle, are the most robust predictors of medical and mental health, happiness, and even forms of wisdom. In short, loving relationships can alter our brains. This includes our loving relationship with God. We now know that spiritual practices such as mindfulness meditation and centering prayer can change our neural pathways and neurochemistry, and that acts of compassion inform who, and whose, we become. Practicing gratitude leads to neuroplasticity and, literally, changes our neural pathways in life giving transformation.
Ackerman tells the story of her own marriage. After her 74 year-old husband suffered a left-hemisphere stroke that wiped out a lifetime of language all he could utter was “Mem.” “Mourning the loss of our duet of decades,” she writes, “I began exploring new ways to communicate, through caring gestures, pantomime, facial expressions, humor, play, empathy, and tons of affection—the brains epitome of a safe attachment.” This helped rewire her husband’s brain to a startling degree, she reported, and in time they were able to talk again, he returned to writing books, and even his vision improved. The brain changes with experience throughout our lives, and it’s in the context of loving relationships of all kinds—partners, spouses, children, grandchildren, parents, close friends, parishioners, and yes, dear one’s the Holy Spirit leading us, turning us, to God—that brain and body really thrive.
So, there it is. We can respond to our Baptism by turning to one another in love. If you’re in a committed, loving relationship to another—including a relationship with God as love incarnate—this can change your life. What we bear witness to in Baptism, and in the Eucharist, is a commitment to this community and to that love, God’s love, which binds us together. As Richard Powers says in his remarkable book “Overstory,” What we care for, we will grow to resemble. And what we resemble will hold us, when we are us no longer. . . .” We become what we pay attention to and love. We can turn, like sunflowers in a Kansas field, and face the source of love, and compassion, and be our best selves. “Practice Resurrection,” the poet Wendell Berry wrote, and that may begin with reaching out in hospitality and love, to others. Amen.