Fragile life

Sermon preached at Whitkirk Parish Church

Candlemas - 1st February 2009

I was on the receiving end of one of those disproportionate acts of kindness the other day.  This is where the person’s generosity seems just completely unnecessary, more than is required, and is all the more touching for that.  I was burying the cremated remains of an elderly woman and before the little service the family presented me with a gift bag simply saying ‘this is for you’.  When I opened it later, I found a small metal helicopter clock.  I don’t know how much it cost but the effect was heart-warming.  In my thank you note I told them that it is sitting on one of my book shelves and whenever I look at it, it will remind me that there are good and kind people in the community.  They didn’t need to do this but clearly they felt they wanted to.  I find these kinds of generous and thank-filled acts have an impact beyond monetary value and give quite a boost, just like a bunch of flowers does.

The scene in our gospel reading, of Mary and Joseph taking their infant son to the Temple for the customary religious ritual (Luke 2:22-40), has elements of the random act of kindness within it.  While they are there two elderly people come up and start babbling generous and affirming words about him.  He will be ‘a light to lighten the nations’.  He is described as ‘salvation’.  Strangely he is ‘destined for the falling and rising of many’, ‘exposing inner thoughts’.  These are all powerful words about a small child, just 40 days old.  Not surprisingly Mary and Joseph are said to have been ‘amazed at what was being said about him’.

Today is a special festival.  The Feast of the Presentation of Christ in the Temple is when his parents take him to the Temple to do what was required in the law.  It is a rite of purification after childbirth and the details come from the Old Testament.  The book of Leviticus states that after childbirth a woman was regarded as being unclean for 40 days (Lev 12).  After this she shall take a lamb as a burnt-offering and a young pigeon or a turtle-dove for a sin-offering.  These shall be offered on her behalf to make peace with God.  It goes on, though, if she can’t afford those the poor person’s offering is two turtle-doves or two pigeons – one for the burnt-offering and one for the sin-offering.  To the house groups two turtle-doves will bring back memories.  Those with keen ears will have noted that Jesus has the poor person’s offering.  The subliminal message of the gospel is that he identifies with the poorest and those often regarded as being of less worth.  Also, he is the true lamb of God, who will be offered on the cross, so the need for a lamb is being fulfilled in ways they know nothing of at this stage.

Now all of this strikes us as being odd.  We don’t do purification rituals and don’t regard women as being unclean after childbirth.  There is an order of service for the Churching of Women after childbirth in the old Book of Common Prayer and I have never done one!  I once had a knock at the door from a man on his way back from the maternity hospital.  It turned out his daughter was in the back of the car and the first house she should enter to his mind was God’s house and so they were going nowhere until I opened the church and we gave thanks for the birth of the child.  I don’t think I’ve seen them since.  But it was an act of thanksgiving for the generous gift they felt they had received and I think somewhere in the recesses of the father’s mind was this purification stuff after childbirth.

In the ancient Jewish religious culture blood makes you unclean as does death.  Childbirth is a dangerous moment for the woman and child.  Today we forget this because we are not used to it ending tragically.  My predecessors here in past centuries would have seen this differently and would have regularly buried infant deaths and women who died in childbirth – not least Richard Hopkins who in 1699 lost his daughter Clare under 2 and Charles Musgrave who lost two of his sons in 1826 aged 14 months and 3 years.  There are plaques to them in the sanctuary.  Thankfully I bury children rarely.  So, all the squelching and fluids of childbirth touches a deep sense that we’ve had a close shave; it brings to the fore our mortality and the fragility of life.  In a culture where sacrifices are part of the normal religious diet, it is not surprising that a whole area is dedicated to this aspect of life.

The word used to describe this, and it popped up in our first reading too, is atonement (Hebrews 2:17); making an atonement for sin.  There are a number of versions of what this means and some of them are better than others – to my mind.  If you split the word up you get at-one-ment and it is about bringing together what is otherwise separated.  To make an atonement for sin is to recognise that sin drives a wedge between the sinner and the one sinned against.  Ultimately, we sin against God and the wedge needs to be removed and the gap closed.  We also sin against one another and the baptism service recognises this with a phrase about the sins that separate us from God and neighbour.  How can that gap be closed?  How can at-one-ment be restored?

The only one who can close a gap between humans and God is God.  This is what we mean when we talk about Jesus as an atonement.  It is that in Christ we see God reaching out to make it abundantly clear that in his generous mercy the wedge that is created by a sinful world is removed.  The gap is closed by his own self-giving love and we are at-one again.  I find this to be about God’s generous, merciful love.  I find worship songs that talk about God’s wrath being avenged by the death of his son muddle the point.  The point is that it is God who gives of himself and removes it himself, not that he requires someone else to suffer.  The point is there is no sacrifice that can be made by anyone else that can close the gap.  Only God can do it and he does in Christ, because of who we believe Christ to be.  The New Testament borrows the imagery of the Old Testament sacrifices to make this point.

The wonder is that God bothers.  Most of us would look at the world and its sinfulness and decide that we’re not worth it.  God in his mercy decides the opposite.  The message is the opposite of the atheist creed being displayed on a number of buses at the moment: ‘There’s probably no God, now stop worrying and enjoy your life’.  That is not a message of comfort.  It is one of doom and despair.  ‘Eat, drink and be merry for tomorrow we die’ – we face oblivion.  No, don’t feel comforted by that!  The Christian message is there is God and he loves us sufficiently to close any gap there may be by how things are.  There is a place in his heart for each one of us and that is what we see when we look at Jesus.  He has decided that we are worth it.  The bus message seems to be answering a message we are not giving!

Like the random act of kindness in the cemetery, this gift is more than is deserved, but the effect of it is to lift our spirits and fill us with thankful praise.  In the glow of that our hearts are warmed and our lives become joy-filled.  It has that effect.

So, Jesus is brought to the Temple to do for him and for Mary what was required under the old law.  The birth of a child is one of those moments when we become aware of our mortality, of the fragility of life.  We give thanks in this state of awareness and we also know our utter dependency on the grace and mercy of God.  This is what lies behind the strange purification ritual and the acknowledgement that in life we touch the edges of death so need to keep on the right side of the divine.  It also points us to what that child will become: hope for all and the supreme making of at-one-ment with God, the closing by God of any gap made by our sinfulness.  We see our salvation.  The light this brings to otherwise darkness is why we light candles today.

© Ian Black 2009