In-between times
Today is the Feast of the Presentation of the Lord in the Temple. It’s known by some other names: The Purification of the Blessed Virgin Mary; Candlemas; and Imbolc. It’s the connection to Imbolc that I want to talk about today.
Imbolc is a Gaelic tradition, which celebrates the time of year when the divine hag was believed to be gathering the rest of her firewood for winter. A “hag”, to put it mildly, is the ugly, old witch-like woman you see in fairy tales. Think Hansel and Gretel. The tradition goes that if the divine hag wants winter to last a while longer, she’ll make the weather bright and sunny on Imbolc, so she can gather plenty of firewood. But, if the weather is wet and snowy, it means the ugly old witch is asleep and winter is almost over. We can make our judgements based on today’s weather as to whether or not the hag is fast asleep or wide awake!
The Christian celebration of the Presentation of Jesus in the Temple has roots in or we might say parallels to Imbolc folklore. Imbolc marks an in-between time: the season half-way between the winter solstice and the spring equinox. If you think back, the winter solstice, the longest night of the year, was December 21, and the spring equinox, the first day of spring, is March 20th. We’re at about the half-way point.
In agricultural terms, Imbolc is a really important time for farmers. In the Northern hemisphere, it marks the beginning of lambing season, which means the arrival of fresh sheep’s milk after a food shortage during the colder, darker months. Lambs are born this time of year because lambs can survive better in winter while calves, cows need more vegetation and are born later in the year, in the warmer months. In many parts of the world, Imbolc also marks the springing up, the budding of some really hearty varieties of plants: blackthorn and crocuses, for example. (There’s one, lone crocus on my front lawn and it’s flowering. I don’t know how it got there; ask Andi).
Let’s spend a moment now with the Presentation of Jesus in the Temple and the Purification of Mary. What’s going on here? It was custom in Jesus’ time for any male child born to a Jewish family to be circumcised 8 days after the child’s birth, and 33 days after for the child to be presented in the Temple as part of a purification ritual. So, Mary and Joseph make their way up to the Temple with Jesus. In the Temple, they meet Simeon, a deeply faithful and devout priest, and they meet Anna, a deeply faithful and devout prophet.
The custom is to offer at this service a lamb as a sacrifice for the ritual purification. But, Mary and Joseph are poor, so they offer instead the lesser but equally acceptable sacrifice of two pigeons—two turtledoves. Now, if we were to imagine Imbolc and the Presentation of Jesus in the Temple, side by side, I wonder what we might see? We might see the hearty varieties of crocus celebrated at Imbolc as a kind of metaphor for Anna and Simeon who have not given up praying for salvation, even as their communities faced some of their toughest seasons—politically, economically, environmentally, spiritually.
We might see the lambs of Imbolc, born into cold, difficult climates, their mother’s milk sustaining not only them but their human caretakers as well, we might see the lambs as the child Jesus nursing at his mother’s breast. And, although Mary and Joseph are too poor to offer a lamb as a sacrifice, we might consider through the lens of Imbolc that Jesus, really, is the lamb (which is kind of a major theme in Christian theology). Jesus, the lamb born into a harsh, less than ideal climate—hope of the poor and those who live close to the land; Jesus the lamb whose birth brings nourishment, not only for his own kind, but for the whole world. Jesus: “salvation which has been prepared in the presence of all peoples.”
So, what do Imbolc and the Presentation of Jesus in the Temple and the Purification of Mary have to do with our lives today? I don’t know about you, but, gosh, with the way the world has been going lately, I am feeling this in-between time like I’ve never felt it before. Washington Bishop Mariann Edgar Budde preached a sermon just a little over a week ago now. It went viral. Like, not just in Anglican land but, like, in the real world, too!
The sermon was part of the National Prayer Service held during inauguration week for the newly installed 47th President of the United States. In the sermon, she turned to the president and asked him to “have mercy upon the people . . . who are scared now.” The gay, lesbian and transgender children in “Democratic, Republican and independent families who fear for their lives.” She then mentioned also, “the people who pick our crops and clean our office buildings; who labor in our poultry farms and meat-packing plants; who wash the dishes after we eat in restaurants and work the night shift in hospitals.” The people who “may not be citizens or have the proper documentation”, immigrants, the vast majority of whom “are not criminals” but “pay taxes, and are good neighbors”, who “are faithful members of our churches, mosques and synagogues, gurdwara, and temples.”
She asked for mercy in communities where “children fear that their parents will be taken away . . . those who are fleeing war zones and persecution in their own lands to find compassion and welcome [in the United States].”
Bishop Mariann Edgar Budde is my Anna in the Temple. The trans people and the refugees and the immigrants who make up our communities are my Simeon, who even amidst the struggle to have their dignity as human beings and the dignity of their communities respected and upheld, nevertheless continue to live lives of courage and of joy, and of faith.
We might wonder why the preacher this morning here at St Clement’s in North Vancouver is talking about US social issues. As Beth said in her sermon last Sunday on the different gifts that make up the body of Christ, it’s difficult to talk about the parts without first talking about the whole. Canada is part of the whole. What happens in the United States affects what happens in Canada and vice versa. And, what happens in North America affects what happens in the rest of the world.
For example, because of recent executive orders in the US, right now it can be a scary experience for a trans person living in Canada to pass through US customs on a routine trip for work or to visit family. There are trans people who now more than ever fear being questioned and interrogated in airports and at border crossings because of the gender marker on their ID. As Christians who say in our baptismal vows that we strive to respect the dignity of every human being, this is something we need to pay attention to.
I wish I could stand before you and tell you that the longest night is behind us in what has been an incredibly tumultuous month in world politics. I wish I could tell you that new life is just around the corner and that ‘such and such’ a political party is here to make it happen. But, I can’t. It’s not my job as a priest to tell you how to think or who to vote for. It’s not my job to say from the pulpit what I think about the tariffs announced last night. As my colleague Rhonda said to her congregation last week, it’s not my job to tell you from the pulpit, but you can ask me after at coffee hour!
It is my job as a priest—and maybe more so as a deacon, because priests are first ordained deacons—to try and interpret the needs of the world to the church. So, here’s what I see: We are still very much in the in-between times. We are still holding on, tightly, to the light in the darkness. This means our messengers of hope are the hearty ones, the witnesses of earth and ancestor which bud and blossom and spring up this time of year. Our harbingers are the crocuses, and Anna and Simeon, and the lambs, and our trans siblings, and Bishop Budde, and refugees Rounak, Samir, baby Shalom, Farzad, and Mukkerem. And, our promise of salvation as Christians is as it always has been and always will be: Jesus the long-awaited Christ for all people. Amen.