Presentation: February 1/ 2, 2020

​They met in the temple:  Mary and Joseph, Anna, Simeon – and Jesus.  What brought them to that place of meeting?  What brings us to our temple – this place where God resides?
          Mary and Joseph came in obedience to the Jewish law, to present Jesus to God and offer a sacrifice according to what was written in the law.
          Behind the legalities, however, there was longing:  a search and need for light in their lives.
          Anna never left the temple but worshipped there with fasting and prayer night and day.  Her intent, however, was not about a rule of life or asceticism – it is about longing:  a search and need for light in her life.
          Simeon was guided by the Spirit.  He was righteous, devout, and looking for the consolation of Israel.  But it was more than piety that took him to the temple. . . You guessed it:   it was longing: a search a need for light in his life.
          And Jesus is brought to the temple, not as a passive baby – and not just to fulfill a rule or regulation – but as the embodiment of God’s longing for humanity:  Jesus came as a light to the nations so those who walked in darkness would not have to stay stuck there – but could walk in light – and so we sing:  Christ our light!
 
          As a mother tenderly gathers her children God, you embraced a people as your own and filled them with longing:  for a peace that would last and for a justice that would never fail. . .
          Today’s feast of the Presentation is a sign that the longing has been fulfilled.   This feast reveals the fulfillment of the longing between humanity and divinity. 
Our deepest longings are to know and to be known.  And those longings can only fully be fulfilled in our relationship with God.  And with God’s Son, Jesus Christ – who is light from light, true God from true God.
          This deep kind of knowing and being known – are matters of the heart – not the intellect.  It is about the union between humanity and divinity that sets us free, the oneness that allows us to depart this place, our Temple, in peace ---  walking in the light  of Christ --- and it’s about the relationship that brings us salvation.
          For this type of relationship to happen we must live with and offer the fragileness, vulnerability, and joy of an open and longing heart.  A heart which is free from sin and safe from all distress.  A heart that is free from all those things we stuff down in them and don’t want to name, much less deal with.
 Our hearts are the temples of meeting --- the place where today we find Mary and Joseph, Anna, Simeon, and Jesus.  Longing for that peace that would last and for that justice that would never fail.  Longing for the light of Jesus Christ.
          Longing is not an absence or an emptiness waiting to be filled.  Longing is a presence and fullness waiting to be expressed – waiting to be manifested – waiting to be shown, shared, and experienced. 
Two people don’t long for each other just because they apart.  They long for each other because they are in love.
 
 
          We are all too quick sometimes to quench our deepest longings and satisfy our deepest desires by anything that comes along.  That type of satisfaction never takes us to the Temple – to our heart -- the place of meeting.  But keeps life superficial and us moving from one fix to another.
          Real longing and its fulfillment – if trusted and followed --- always takes us to the temple, and there we discover that Christ is already in our presence – we just have to open our eyes and our hearts in faith to realize it.
 
 
          Through countless generations your people, God, hungered for the bread of freedom.  From them you raised up Jesus, the living bread, in whom ancient hungers were and are satisfied.  Who comes to us today, in this Temple, in this place of meeting – to fill our hearts and lives with his light and love.
  May we open our hearts and find him.  As we sing:  Christ our light!