Tag: Advent

Sermon: Candlemas Spotlights

It’s been ages since I posted a sermon as I tend to now put them on the church website but I thought I’d post this one.

A sermon given at St Mary’s Church on 2nd February 2025
Luke 2. 22-40

I’ve been fascinated by Rembrandt’s art for years and if you’ve been to my study you’ll see his image of the Prodigal Son, which may be well known to you.

Like most European artists in the 17th Century the main focus of his work was religious, and Rembrandt mined the scripture for dramatic imagery. The image he came back most often in his life was this one we’ve just read from Luke’s Gospel.

The Presentation in the Temple.

The Presentation of Jesus in the Temple
oil on panel, 1631 (since 1816 in the Mauritshuis in The Hague)
Simeon’s Song of Praise, c1669
Nationalmuseum, Stockholm

Here are two paintings by Rembrandt of this scene at the temple, painted at different times in his life. The first is The Presentation of Jesus in the Temple painted in around 1630 when Rembrandt was around 25 years old, full of hopes and dreams for his future. It’s a lavish image, opulent, full of people, the light shines out from the infant Jesus at the centred.

The second one, Simeon’s Song of Praise was painted nearly 40 years later and was probably the last painting he ever painted –  it was left unfinished on his canvas when he died. It’s a close up of the scene, Simeon is an old man here, almost blind, wearied by life which is all behind him.

Rembrandt was a master at the use of light and darkness to draw us into the picture and so let’s use that to look closer at the characters in this scene.

Imagine a stage on a theatre which is in total darkness. And then a spotlight shines onto various sections on the stage illuminating the characters one by one.

Imagine I have four spotlights.

Spotlight One – Mary and Joseph

Here we see a young couple doing what is best for their new son – all the male children in a Jewish household are circumcised at eight days old, as was Jesus, and 33 days after giving birth to a male child, the birth mother is expected to participate in the rite of purification.

So, Mary and Joseph take Jesus to the Temple to present him to YHWH. They are poor – we know that because they can only afford to bring doves as an offering; the wealthy parents brought lambs. Mary and Joseph knew they had been given a great gift in this son of theirs, they had been given hints by the angels who visited them of course, but they can’t yet have known what was in store for them. Like all parents they would have longed for the best for their child.

But the prophesies they hear from Simeon are sobering – first they hear that he will be a light to the gentiles and glory to Israel. But then they hear that he will be opposed, and that this will cause them great suffering and pain – ‘a sword will pierce your own soul too’.

Imagine hearing this.

Spotlight Two – Simeon and Anna

These wise elders represent Israel (Simeon) and the temple (Anna). We learn that Simeon was devout and righteous and ‘the holy spirit was on him’. He had been waiting for a saviour for Israel all his life and the spirit led him to the temple on that day.

Rembrandt’s image of Simeon is beautiful in that it shows the blind old man at the end of his life who sees in this baby the light they had been looking for. Simeon takes the child in his arms, and prays a prayer of blessing– a prayer we know as the Nunc Dimitus:

‘My eyes have seen your salvation which you have prepared in the presence of all people’ (Luke 2.30)

Simeon’s song is both Christmas and Good Friday – it encapsulates both joy and great sorrow.

We learn that Anna was 84, had been the daughter of a prominent man but widowed after only 7 years of marriage, without children, and literally lived day and night in the temple – she never left – she prayed and fasted night and day. She was the very first person to tell people about Jesus: ‘she came up at that moment and gave thanks to God, and spoke about Jesus to everyone who was waiting’. (Luke 2.38)

These prayerful elders recognised something that no-one else around them did. That all they’d been searching for and praying for was to be found in this vulnerable child. How did they recognise him?

Spotlight Three – Jesus

It’s unlikely that as Mary and Joseph brought their child into the temple that he had a ready break glow round him, or a shaft of light emanating from him as in a Dutch master painting!

No, Jesus was a proper human baby. He was vulnerable, he needed to learn from his parents. We hear: ‘the child grew and became strong, filled with wisdom’. Some of that wisdom would have been taught to him by his parents.

How did they recognise him?

Simeon, ‘filled with the spirit’ was led to the temple: Anna – though years of prayer and fasting – this is how they knew who Jesus was. Because they were so deeply rooted in prayer, and had been for so many years, that they recognised the light and salvation of the Christ child when it was there amongst them.

Spotlight Four – each of us

In the first few chapters of his Gospel Luke, rather like a Rembrandt painting, invites us to enter into the stories, to identify with the characters.

We have older parents amazed to conceive (Elizabeth and Zachariah), a young woman preparing to have a child (Mary), a man working out how to support his family (Joseph), two elders who are nearing the end of their lives (Simeon and Anna), and next passage we hear of Jesus as a young adolescent working out his independence from his parents. Different people at different life stages all encountering Christ.

So where are we in this story? The spotlight is on us now.

Maybe we identify with these young parents bringing up their children in hope and love; or with the elderly Anna waiting in hope and prayer; or with Simeon, nearing the end of his life marvelling at what has been. Or maybe we can’t see ourselves in this family scene at all because that’s not our experience of life. Perhaps we identify more with the outsiders on the edges looking in, wondering if this child has anything to do with us.

I wonder if perhaps we could then just gaze at the focus of this scene, at the infant. Because in this infant all the hopes and dreams of Simeon and Anna, Mary and Joseph have been fulfilled.

Simeon sings: ‘my eyes have seen your salvation’. And what does salvation look like?

Like a vulnerable baby.

This story is both Christmas and Easter. Joy and suffering. Death and resurrection. The great mystery is that God is made fully known to us by entering into humanity in human form and so from this moment on there isn’t any separation between God and humanity.

That’s what Simeon and Anna noticed. That their salvation was right there in their midst and no-one else had even noticed. God entered into the mess of humanity through Christ and continues to do enter into the world through the spirit which lives in US, you and me.

Simeon and Anna didn’t miss him.  Let’s not miss him. So, this is our story, and we are invited to enter into it. As we go from here God won’t be revealed to us by a spotlight shining to show us the way – here, here, here. Instead, we see God working when we spend time rooted in prayer, when we spent time with the people Jesus spent time with, when we make decisions to love one another and when we live our lives remembering that we have God within us.

Now, this is the news that Simeon and Anna were so excited about. And Anna’s response to this?

‘At that moment she came, and began to praise God and to speak about the child
to all who were looking’. (Luke 2. 38)

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Advent Sunday: there is a light, don’t let it go out

Sermon given at Christ Church Cathedral, Oxford on 2nd December 2018

Revd Clare Hayns, College Chaplain, Christ Church

A few weeks ago we took ourselves off the 02 arena in London to see the rock band U2. For those of you who haven’t heard of U2 (!!)  they are one of the world’s best selling rock bands, selling over 170 million records worldwide. It was an incredible concert with 15-20,000 people, loud (of course), visually engrossing with an enormous ‘barricage’ (a barricade cage) the length of the arena on which vast screens bombard the audience with imagery before the band emerge from within it. It was a fabulous concert.

The final song of the set was a complete contrast to what had gone before.

The noise, bright lights and flashing imagery stopped.

The whole stadium was immersed into darkness: all the screens had gone; there were hardly any instruments on the stages; the band had been dismantled.

We were just left with the lead singer, Bono, on stage with a faint light marking his steps. And he sung of darkness and fear.

And if the terrors of the night
Come creeping into your days
And the world comes stealing children from your room

 When all you’ve left is leaving
And all you got is grieving
And all you know is needing

Hold on, Hold on

What I found so moving about this moment in the concert was that for a few minutes we were invited to recognise the darkness, to acknowledge our fears, ‘the terrors of the night’, and to be truthful about the shadows.

Today is the first Sunday of Advent. A season of calendars, chocolates, and consumerism. But amidst all of that, a season where we are invited to acknowledge the darkness, see it for what it really is, and look with hope towards the light.

And we begin the season with the reading from Luke’s Gospel:

‘There will be signs in the sun, the moon, and the stars, and on the earth distress among nations confused by the roaring of the sea and the waves’. (Luke 21:25)

There is fear, fainting and foreboding. Images that begin Advent aren’t of swaddling clothes, twinkly stars, fleecy lambs, but of reality of the world as it is. Jesus was warning his disciples of hard times ahead. Luke was writing to a people who were living in uncertain times. In AD 69 there was the threat of war in Judea, the Romans had laid siege to Jerusalem, the city faced civil strife and starvation, the Emperor had died. All the fixed points had been removed.

And so this imagery best described the tumultuous times of the world as it really was, and is.

Thankfully we aren’t living through war or siege, but we are living in uncertain times. We don’t know what Brexit will bring, or what the result of the MP’s vote on 11th December will be. We hear rumblings in our news every day about the political and economic turmoil that may or may not be ahead of us.

Someone wrote that ‘Advent is not for the fainthearted’.

It’s a season where we are invited to dwell on the darkness and the shadows and not turn the light on too quickly. Advent is a time when we acknowledge the darkness of the world we live in: the sin, the suffering, the poverty, the greed. This is why our Advent Carol Service this evening will begin in darkness. It is because sometimes song, imagery and drama can help us to understand the theology, in ways that are far more powerful than merely words.

Generally speaking, we don’t like focussing too much on the dark things in life. Someone asks how we are and we say ‘fine, thank you very much’, regardless of whether or not that might be true.

Often when faced with challenged and dark times two reactions are common.

One is that we run away from them: we distract ourselves. There are endless ways we can do this. Social media. Shopping. Drinking. Planning parties. Countless ways in which we can turn on all the lights on and ignore the darkness.

The other is that we give in to the dark and begin to believe that this is all there is. We give up. We get cynical and lose hope, in ourselves, one another and in God.

Jesus speaks to both of these reactions when he says:  ‘stand up, raise up your heads, because your redemption is drawing near’ (Luke 21:28)

There are signs of God’s kingdom here and now. Jesus points us to notice those signs of hope all around us. Look at the fig tree, he says. Look at all the trees. Next Spring’s seeds are already germinating in the dark winter soil. Just because we can’t see it doesn’t mean it isn’t happening.

In Advent we can acknowledge the shadows but have hope that the light has already come into the world.

In amidst the darkness and uncertainty of our world we have hope, because as Christians we have the audacity to believe that God, the creator of heaven and earth, came amongst us, took the form of an infant child, lived, healed, taught and then died, taking upon himself all the darkness that the world could throw at him, and then rose again, heralding a new way:

‘The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness will not overcome it’ (John 1:5)

We don’t need to either hide from the dark, or give into it. We can face the dark, in the knowledge that we are not alone and that these times are not the full story. We can face it with hope…

Hope is not about false optimism – head in the sand, it will all be OK. Hope is about ‘a conviction concerning the future which transforms our present in such a way that we feel secure in the here and now and ready for God’s future’. (Bishop Sarah Mullally, A Good Advent).

Confident that Christ will save us, that the best is yet to come, that his kingdom of justice will ultimately triumph. We can then live in the light of that hope.

Can we be people of hope in the world? People who are alert to what is good. Who look out for buds of Spring. People who don’t give in to the dark.

The collect today is:

‘Almighty God, give us grace to cast away the works of darkness and to put on the armour of light’

Let us put on the armour of light, stand up, raise our heads, our redemption is drawing near.

While we still wait for Jesus’ complete redemption, we have good work to do in the meantime. And we undertake the good work of being Jesus’ disciples in the world:

The work of compassion for those who are hurting; encouragement to those who are afraid; solidarity with those who are oppressed,; resistance to evil; forgiveness for those who have wronged us.

Paul’s prayer to the Thessalonians:

‘may the Lord make you increase and abound in love for one another and for all, just as we abound in love for you” (1 Thessalonians 3:12)

At the U2 concert when Bono was singing about the darkness in the world a single oversized lightbulb was lowered so that it hung by its flex at about head height just over the stage.  He then pushed it so that it swung back and forth and around the stage and over the heads of the audience.

The song is called There is a Light and was written in memory of the Manchester bombing.

If there is a light
We can’t always see
If there is a world
We can’t always be
If there is a dark
Now we shouldn’t doubt
And there is a light
Don’t let it go out

Hold on, Hold on.

And with that Bono left the stage, the concert ended and we were left with the lightbulb swinging silently.

Here is a clip of U2 playing There is a Light at the 02