Candlemas 2021

Malachi 3.1-5

Luke 2.22-40

'Four candles.'

This is the opening phrase of a sketch by the Two Ronnies which is much loved in our household.  You might know it. The corpulent Ronnie Barker walks into a hardware shop, leans across the counter and delivers this line.  Ronnie Corbett, the long-suffering, brown overalled proprietor, comes across with four candles. 'No!' Says Barker, 'four candles!'  'Well there you are!' says the bemused Corbett. 'Four candles!' 'No,' comes the reply, 'Fork 'andles - 'andles for forks!'

This is but the beginning of a litany of verbal misunderstandings generated by the inspired mind of Barker, the wordsmith.  I still end up helpless with laughter every time I watch it, even though I know what's coming.  It's a creation so well loved that at Ronnie Barker's memorial service in Westminster Abbey, the cross was carried up the aisle accompanied by...you guessed it - double the usual number of candles.

This kind of play on words is called an oronym - it's a device in which the juncture - the join - between the words, can be heard in two different ways. 

And today, we have heard a visual equivalent to this. Simeon and Anna, those faithful old retainers who have waited so long for the Messiah, see a baby. There is really nothing unusual at all about a baby being brought to the temple. This was what all Jewish parents were supposed to do, according to the law.  So Simeon and Anna see something sweet and wonderful, but quite everyday - a baby. But at the same time, they see something quite extraordinary. Salvation.

And Simeon puts his reaction into beautiful words.  He doesn't see anything physically different to the spectacle which would have greeted anyone else at the temple that day. He was not endowed with supernatural powers or x-ray vision. In fact, given his age, he would probably have had fading eyesight. He doesn't see through the baby or past the baby - he simply sees the baby. And in seeing the baby, he sees the salvation of the people of God.

Just as it is possible to hear a phrase in two or more different ways at once, so it is possible to see this baby in different ways - as a mewling infant, and as the fulfilment of our hope.

Of course, in the Two Ronnies sketch, the intended meaning of each word is eventually discovered - however tortuously - and so the scene closes down, with the purchase of most of the things on Barker's eclectic shopping list.

What happens in the temple is the opposite.  Simeon sees that before him are two meanings - a baby and salvation - and instead of closing down his understanding, this realisation opens up a vision which is endless. 

Salvation isn't the kind of thing you're supposed to be able to see. Our language can cope easily with the concept of seeing a baby, but this - the idea of seeing salvation - stretches it beyond its usual limits. Simeon, inspired by the Holy Spirit, has a new breadth and depth of vision, and as his mind and heart are expanded by what he sees, so his language is expanded by what he is trying to describe.

Simeon has been waiting for the consolation of Israel - for the Messianic age, so long hoped for. But the consolation his fading eyes see with such clarity is no cosy, fairy-tale ending.  The understanding he gleans opens up a vision of pain and falling, as well as hope and rising. Here there are no short cuts or easy wins. As we bask in the glow of our candles and call to mind Christ, the light to lighten the Gentiles, we hear also of the sword which will pierce him, and in so doing will pierce his mother's soul. As we conclude our celebration of Christmas, we stand now at the gateway to Lent. So anguish and light are held together, as in TS Eliot's poem, A Song for Simeon. In this poem, written at the time of his conversion, Eliot takes Simeon's song, the Nunc Dimittis, which we have just heard, and will hear again later, and which is made familiar to us by its place in the service of evensong) and he draws from Simeon's words the journey of past, present and future. So Eliot's Simeon sings:

Before the time of cords and scourges and lamentation

Grant us thy peace.

Before the stations of the mountain of desolation,

Before the certain hour of maternal sorrow,

Now at this birth season of decease,

Let the infant, the still unspeaking and unspoken Word,

Grant Israel's consolation

To one who has eighty years and no tomorrow.

..............

Grant me thy peace

(And a sword shall pierce thy heart,

Thine also).

.......

Let thy servant depart,

Having seen thy salvation.

This new wideness of vision brings with it a clear-eyed understanding of the way of the cross. Simeon's prayed-for peace comes in an unexpected form.

And yet, he sees it. He sees salvation even when it arrives in the shape of a baby, and even when he also sees the pain which necessarily goes with it.

Much of the narrative we are imbibing in this pandemic encourages us to see salvation as a linear thing:  we are waiting for things to get better, and even if there are setbacks, we hang on to the hope that one day, things will not be as they are now.  We are like Simeon in his waiting years:  trying faithfully to keep going, as best we can, with the hope that good news will come in the end.  Somehow, we are lured into thinking that salvation happens when everything is all right.

Candlemas shows us another way.  As he encounters the divine, Simeon sees the reality of salvation in the mess and pain of the present, and in the knowledge of the mess and pain of the past and foreseeable future. His consolation is not cosy or predictable. It is real and hard:  the consolation of the refiner’s fire. But in a strange way, this is our consolation. Our lives are shot through with imperfection and incompleteness, as are all of the world's lives. But salvation is here. It is in our midst – not a straight line, but a constant, loving, real, mysterious process. We are being saved.  All we need to do is see.  Just as, with Ronnie Barker’s writing, the life of the sketch lies in holding on to two realities at once, so it is with our lives. Our eyes - the eyes of our hearts - need to learn to see the reality of our present existence, and the reality of our salvation, and to hold those two things together, recognising that both are true. 

Then we too will begin to know that hard consolation - that costly peace - of which our candles speak.

Amen.