Inconnu excepte de Dieu (sorry, can't do accents!)

1 February 2009 - Candlemas
1Sam 1:20-28, Lk 2:22-40

In my old parish church in Kent, there is a painting behind the altar depicting the Presentation of Mary in the Temple (a purely legendary event, but one to which there is considerable devotion among Roman Catholics). The striking thing about that painting, and the reason why I mention it today, is the way in which the child Mary is welcomed: by the High Priest, formally, and as someone already singled out as special.

You couldn’t imagine the Mother of God being received into the temple by the under-doorkeeper, could you? This is legend, and legends always conform to the laws of imagination. Special arrangements must always have been made for her. She must have been raised in the Temple, and she must have been received there in a special way. There have been attempts to create legends around Jesus, too, of course: the first ones were the apocryphal gospels, and the genre continues to this day. But these legends are powerless, because we have the gospels, and we know that Jesus was not received as someone special, that he was not even noticed until he began his public life. We find this difficult, but it is indisputably true.

I was talking recently to a man whose ideas are, shall we say, a little unusual. For example, he believes that we were created 300,000 years ago by aliens from outer space. I was finding it a bit difficult to feign interest, but I was suddenly jerked out of my glazed non-listening when he began on the subject of Joseph, Jesus’ foster father. “Of course,” said Hamish, “we have got it quite wrong. Joseph wasn’t a carpenter at all”. “Yes he was,” I protested, “the Greek has tektwn, the Latin faber. A joiner and builder. A jack of all trades. A brickie.” “Oh no” said Hamish. “that’s not what the original word meant. He wasn’t a craftsman, he was a ‘man of the craft’. The craft of the kings, the secret craft passed down from King David to his kingly descendants. What we are being told is that Joseph knew the craft of the kings”. I rolled my eyes. It’s not surprising that this idea appealed to Hamish, what with Rosslyn chapel and the Da Vinci Code and all. It is of course nonsense; by the time of Joseph there were innumerable descendants of David, and there is no reason to suppose that Joseph was in direct line to the throne. He knew he was of David’s line because the Hebrews, like the Scots, had a very strong sense of tribe and clan. I have at least two friends in Edinburgh who can tell me exactly which thrones they are heir to and why. The English are not at all like this, but most Scots can at least tell you their clan, especially if they are Highlanders. Freddy, who “should be” the present king of Scotland (and possibly England and France as well) is a businessman like any other; he has no arcane kingly knowledge. Things do not work that way, except in the fevered brain of the Hamishes of this world. But he is not totally wrong. We instinctively feel that someone who is significant in the supernatural sphere must also be so in the natural sphere. Something in us rebels against God incarnate being an insignificant, unnoticed brickie, son of the same. I remember how shocked we were as children when our scripture teacher suggested that Mary might have been a bad seamstress (going by the parable of the patches which came undone). How much more shocking would it be if I suggested that Jesus Christ might have been a relatively unskilled brickie; reliable and honest, of course, but not top-class otherwise. But after all, it’s no big deal whether God incarnate could build a wall straight or cut an accurate tenon joint. It doesn’t matter whether Jesus was a dicky brickie or a master carpenter. What is interesting to me on this feast of his presentation in the temple is that it is so different from that painting in Kent. The presentation of Jesus that we are given in the gospel is not a parallel to the legendary and much-embellished presentation of his mother.

There was no priest there to greet the Lord when he suddenly came to his temple. Someone handed over the two turtle-doves for the sacrifice, and someone took them back; but no-one even glanced at the little bundle in Mary’s arms. Until, on their way out, they met Simeon, and later Anna, the only two people who realised what was going on. Now, Simeon and Anna were not “personalities”. They were not a prophetic double-act. They may never have met before. They were, so far as anyone knew, in the temple by chance. They weren’t the dignified, almost Moses-like types we imagine, generally recognised as saints by the inhabitants of Jerusalem. We haven’t even any evidence that Simeon was old and venerable. He may well have been a nondescript middle-aged man whom no-one had ever noticed. God had noticed him; he was of great significance and importance to God. He was given the grace not only to sum up in a few words the mission of Christ and his Mother, but also explained exactly how it affects and changes our lives. As for Anna, she was the first person known to have brought the Good News to the Chosen People. But how would her words have been received? We know how the apostles received the women’s announcement of the resurrection, despite knowing, surely, that they were serious and respected people: “their words seemed to them to be idle tales; and they did not believe them”. And would Anna have been believed, Anna, one of the countless babushkas around in the temple, the equivalent of the little old ladies who irritate us by muttering their devotions and knocking over their walking sticks?

This was not because the Lord could not have arranged for a priestly or angelic reception-committee, he who could ask his Father and he would send more than twelve legions of angels. If the first Candlemas was very different from today’s, there was a reason.

Because this baby grew into the man who said: Be careful not to do your acts of righteousness before men, to be seen by them. When you give to the needy, do not let your left hand know what your right hand is doing, so that your giving may be in secret. And when you pray, go into your room, close the door and pray to your Father, who is unseen.

It is so difficult to do this. Not necessarily because we want praise, but because, somehow, unless someone notices what we do, we don’t entirely feel that we have done it. We have a need to be official, to be seen, almost to have our very existence affirmed. The extreme version of that is the culture of celebrity. It takes serious faith to need no other witness but God.

This feast, paradoxically, is a feast for the little people, the unseen people. Most of us, most of the time. Just like Jesus, most of the time.

People sometimes complain that it’s ridiculous to expect us to “imitate Christ”. How can we imitate God incarnate? But yet again, as always, all we have to do is look. Of course Jesus loved preaching and teaching and healing. But I rather think that he was happiest, most himself, when he was alone with his father, silent, unnoticed. And it’s the best place for us to be if we want to be like him, and the safest: hidden with Christ in God.