If you stay around for the annual meeting after this worship service—and I certainly hope that you do—we’ll be shining a light on the way forward for Trinity. We’ll be electing a new vestry and previewing new ministries. And that hopeful look ahead is good and right. But in church we’re always looking backward too. We at Trinity—more than almost any other parish in our diocese—know that we didn’t just land here in this moment, with our eyes fixed on the future. Even if some of us arrived at Trinity recently—and I’ll count myself in that number—we are always aware that we have 160 years of saints lined up behind us, cheering us on. And perhaps a few sinners in that cloud of witnesses too! Somehow that makes me feel very much at home. There is grace enough here for all.
Which is why I like to think of the Feast of the Presentation—also known as Candlemas—as a kind of backwards look forwards. Traditionally it’s been an occasion to bless all the candles we’d use in church, which is kind of an old school way asking God to bless not only the light we receive in Jesus Christ, but actually all the light that would have illuminated the sanctuary during the coming year. That’s a bit of an anachronistic symbol at Trinity now, where most of our light is electric, and our candles burn oil rather than wax. But whatever candle-like things we may bless today, they all serve as a reminder that our churches need light: real, symbolic, and spiritual. And we always have.
If we were to take a really long look back—as we do in our Sunday readings— we’d recall ancient Simeon, righteous and devout—waiting in the Temple for “a light for revelation to the Gentiles and for glory to your people Israel.” I imagine his rheumy eyes—perhaps no longer seeing much of anything—lighting upon the infant Jesus with joyful hope. Somehow he could see in that baby the future fulfillment of God’s promises. But his foresight, so to speak, was grounded in hindsight.
Simeon had spent a lifetime internalizing the words of the Hebrew prophets, such as Malachi, whom we also heard from this morning. And from this backwards knowledge of his people’s longed for refiner’s fire, he knew what to look forward to. Even when it came in the unlikely form of a vulnerable human child. Revealed as the glory of Israel, but also as light for the whole world.
The infant Jesus came as hope for all, but also as hope for yet another elderly person waiting in the Jerusalem Temple. We don’t know a lot about Anna, but we do know she is someone who had suffered loss, and chose to pour out her grief in continuous prayer and fasting. Not a bad thing to do, really, unless our grief over things past prevents us from seeing the new thing that God would do in the present and future. Little wonder, then, that Jesus had to be presented in the Temple. In addition to the necessary ritual purification, I like to imagine that he was present in the Temple at that moment in order that the elders of Israel—carrying individual and collective stories of loss and longing—might see hope for the future revealed. People came to the Temple then, and still come to church now, for exactly that. For hopeful foresight grounded in honest hindsight.
Reckoning with our past—from a standpoint of Christian hope—is what makes us wise and resilient. We know that our future will not necessarily be easy; because we are still a people waiting for God’s ultimate fulfillment. But we know from hindsight that for every hard time there is a good time. We have a deficit budget, AND we have a cloud of witnesses who have given in years past so that we can weather hard times. We have a small congregation AND we have strong partner organizations wanting to serve God’s beloved poor and vulnerable people right alongside us. We’ll be able to do so much more in ministry together! We are wondering about all the changes wrought by COVID AND we know that loneliness and isolation are exactly the kind of social ills that our church is here to heal.
We can look ahead to a future with hope precisely because we look back. We remember that God’s people have been here before, and God brought them—and us—through. Sometimes it is only when we shine the light backwards that we are able to see the road ahead with renewed clarity. I think that our Vital+Thriving team, who have guided us through our history timeline event, are well aware of that.
Last week I was in Memphis Tennessee and had another chance to visit the National Civil Rights Museum at the Lorraine Motel, where Martin Luther King was shot to death almost 56 years ago. It’s a museum that shines a bright light into a dark season in our nation’s history. I was there with a group of ethnically diverse Episcopalians, and one of my black clergy colleagues and I were called upon to help the group debrief the visit. Honestly, I was a bit overwhelmed and barely knew how to begin, but fortunately my colleague Debra did. She asked us to take a moment to acknowledge the ancestors. That is to say, she invited us to look backwards to our saints. People around the room started to name heroes of the civil rights movement—Martin Luther King, Rosa Parks, Ralph Abernathe, Diane Nash.
And then, bidden by the Holy Spirit, I am sure, I thought of the way that my Central American friends remember their martyrs. So after each name I started to say “presente,” bringing our forebears into the present. Fannie Lou Hamer… presente. Medgar Evers… presente. Bayard Rustin… presente. Jonathan Myrick Daniels… presente. That “presente” made them fellow travelers with us now, looking with hope into a future that God can see clearly, even if we don’t yet.
Perhaps we might do the same with the saints that have brought us this far, and whose powerful witness will accompany us into Trinity’s future. St. Simeon… presente. St. Anna… presente. St. Mary… presente. Peter and Annie Cassey… presente. Cesar Chavez… presente. Michael Joyce… presente. Norman Mineta… presente. Josefina Monge… presente. Jean Libby… presente. Whose names would you add?
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God who is sovereign over past and future, we pray that—as your only-begotten Son was this day presented in the temple—so we may be presented pure and holy to you. Together with all your saints, may we become as a bright refiner’s fire, pointing the way to Jesus Christ our Lord; who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, now and for ever. Amen.
Jesus Christ…Presente