Seeing Anew
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SEEING ANEW
The Rev. J. Donald Waring
Grace Church in New York
The Presentation of our Lord Jesus Christ in the Temple
February 2, 2025
Simeon praised God, saying, “My eyes have seen your salvation which you have prepared before the face of all people, to be a light to lighten the Gentiles, and to be the glory of your people Israel.” (Luke 2:30-32)
Not long ago I received a mailing from the American Museum of Natural History. Would I like to renew my long-ago expired membership? It was a fair question. I have spent many happy Saturdays there, mostly amidst the dinosaur bones, first as a child and then as a parent. I note that between my two rounds of frequenting the place, they changed the name of my favorite childhood dinosaur. Brontosaurus is now Apatosaurus. I’m not angry, just disappointed. Perhaps if they restored Brontosaurus to its Christian name I’d consider signing up for round-three.
If I do renew my membership, I will certainly return to a particular dinosaur exhibit that tells a fascinating tale. Under a glass case you can see the fossilized remains of a Coelophysis, in the fossilized mud where it died. If you look closely, you can see the tiny bones of another creature where the dinosaur’s stomach would have been. These bones belonged to Coelophysis’ last meal that he ate presumably just before he himself met his end. Upon looking at the tiny bones, paleontologists concluded that they belonged to a baby Coelophysis. Thus, Coelophysis was tried and convicted in the court of paleontology as a cannibal. Say what you will about Tyrannosaurus Rex – he was obviously a brute and a bully – but not even the King of Tyrants would stoop to eating his own young.
Coelophysis, however, lived by no such elevated ethic. Or so everyone thought. Then one day a young paleontologist was waiting for the subway in the station underneath the museum. He saw there on the wall a mural that was an exact duplicate of the fossil upstairs. He studied it, and he looked at it with new eyes. Suddenly he saw the same old thing in a fresh way. He realized that the small bones in Coelophysis’ stomach did not belong to one of its own kind. These were the bones of a crocodile. He revealed the new evidence to his colleagues, and Coelophysis was exonerated of cannibalism. Coelophysis did not devour his own. All he did was take down a crocodile and eat it.[1] There’s no crime in that if you’re a dinosaur. Coelophysis received a full pardon, though I don’t think his redemption is so complete that I would allow him anywhere near the dog runs at Union or Madison Square.
Those of you who were here last week on the Third Sunday after the Epiphany might feel reasonably secure in guessing that today would be called the Fourth Sunday after the Epiphany. I don’t mean to pull the rug out from beneath any smug sense of liturgical superiority you’ve achieved, but that very thing is what I have to do. Today is a day on the calendar that goes by many names, but Epiphany IV isn’t one of them. Outside the church February 2nd is affectionately known as Ground Hog’s Day. At some point today in Punxsutawney, PA, the town officials will drag an unwilling rodent out of his hole to see if he casts a shadow. If he does, superstition says we’re in for more winter. No shadow means winter is just about over.
Inside the church, today is a major feast day of the Christian year. The official name used to be The Purification of the Blessed Virgin Mary. In the Book of Leviticus (12:1-8), Jewish law states that a woman was ritually unclean for forty days after the birth of a male child. It was decreed, therefore, that she should present herself at the Temple to make a sacrifice, and then presto: she would be clean. Since February 2nd is forty days after Christmas, this would be the day of Mary’s purification that Luke describes. So it was that for many centuries the church kept this day, calling it The Purification of Mary.
Luke also cites another custom of the Jews: that first born sons be brought to Jerusalem, presented to a priest, and dedicated into a lifetime of service to God at the Temple. Presenting the child was the Jewish way of thanking God for rescuing them at the Red Sea in ancient times. If the parents didn’t actually want to leave their son at the Temple for a lifetime in God’s service – as most surely did not – they could make an offering to redeem him. So in keeping with the Law of Moses, Mary and Joseph presented Jesus at the Temple, and redeemed him with a small offering of a pair of turtle doves, or two young pigeons. This also happened on the fortieth day, and because Christian high holy days are more appropriately focused on Jesus rather than anyone else, nowadays the feast is called The Presentation of our Lord Jesus Christ in the Temple.
Luke tells us that while they were at the Temple an old man named Simeon took Jesus in his arms. He recognized that the baby was God’s promised Messiah, and declared that he would be a light to enlighten the Gentiles. Because Simeon was apparently the first to call Jesus a “light,” Christians from earliest times have blessed and carried candles on February 2nd, and have also called the day “Candlemas.” So let’s review: today is Ground Hog’s Day, The Purification of the Blessed Virgin Mary, The Presentation of our Lord Jesus Christ in the Temple, and Candlemas. It’s also the day of our annual meeting, and the birthday of my sister-in-law who lives in Milwaukee. Happy Birthday, Cheryl, if you are watching on the livestream.
What’s the point of it all? It seems to me that old Simeon and the prophetess Anna have something important to teach us. When Mary and Joseph presented Jesus to them, they both had the eyes to recognize their salvation in an ordinary child, brought by an ordinary family. They both looked at Jesus in a new way, an saw something extraordinary. Who were these two? We really don’t know much about them. It could be that Simeon was a priest of the Temple who offered sacrifices to God. We know a little more about Anna. She was at least 84 years old. As a young woman, after only seven years of marriage, she was widowed. So from that time until we meet her in today’s reading – probably 60 or more years later – she had devoted herself to being at the Temple night and day: fasting, praying, and encouraging all who came there looking for the redemption of Israel. The point is, they both saw Jesus on this day, and recognized him for who he was.
How hard it can be for us to see Jesus. How hard it can be to recognize the Spirit of the Lord in our midst. Every week The New York Times Magazine includes a column called The Ethicist. People write in and ask for advice on how to make ethical choices in their particular dilemmas. Recently (1/26/25, p.14), one person asked, “Can I go to church when I don’t believe?” The writer describes how he grew up in the church, but now rejects the Christian faith for many of the classic reasons disbelievers often cite: Jesus was just another guy, the Bible is just another book, and the followers of Jesus, throughout history, have not lived by any elevated ethic. They are brutes and bullies just like the rest of us. “But boy, oh, boy,” writes the disbeliever, “do I love the artistic output of Christianity. Bach’s B-minor Mass, the Faure Requiem, St. Paul’s Cathedral – all these lift my spirit. I love a beautiful Christian service. Kneeling creates humility and gratitude. It does me good.” The writer concludes that he’ll never be converted, and wonders if he’s hurting anyone by participating. Is he lying? Is he a hypocrite?
In reply, the ethicist has many good things to say. The way of beauty can be a means by which we experience God without having to explain it. He also touches on the dance between belief and participation. What we say in the Episcopal Church is that participation comes first. It leads the way. Praying shapes believing. Belief is always a work in progress. Who is to say who believe what on any given Sunday? So of course you can come to church. You can even make a gift to the capital campaign no matter what you believe (we already have enough pigeons, thanks). Oftentimes, we give too much weight to our belief. Just because we believe something doesn’t mean it’s true. Likewise, just because we don’t believe something doesn’t mean it’s untrue.
I might say something else, as well, to the disbeliever who wants to participate. Don’t write yourself off as unconvertable. Don’t assume that God won’t open your eyes to see the same old thing in a new way. When you least expect it, God my present Jesus to you. In fact, it may already be happening through your participation. See how it worked for Mary and Joseph, and for Simeon and Anna. One thing I note is how anchored they all were in the law of the Lord. The traditions and rituals their people celebrated kept them focused there. I’m struck by how many times Luke notes that Mary and Joseph were acting out “everything required by the law of the Lord.” It was within the framework of their faith that their eyes came to see Lord’s presence in the otherwise ordinary events of life.
As for Simeon and Anna, they not only practiced their faith, they practiced patience. They waited. We don’t like waiting. We prefer to be in control and make things happen quickly. But every so often you stand before some reality you can’t control. God would be one of those realities. The appearing of Jesus would be one of those realities. We learn to see God by waiting with patience. Simeon and Anna had waited for decades to see God’s salvation, and we can suppose that they would have kept on waiting. For them – for many – spiritual insight and perspective is a blessing that comes only with patience. Why should we wait for God? The answer is: God comes to those who wait.
Finally, we might take note of Simeon and Anna’s hope and faith. These two didn’t spend all those years at the Temple despairing that God would never appear. No, they expected God to fulfill the word spoken through the prophets. They trusted that God would come through, no matter how long their wait would be. Perhaps if we hit pause on panic, and practiced instead a measure of Simeon and Anna’s hope and faith, we too would see Jesus anew, presented to us even today: in the Word, in the Sacraments, and in this community of people gathered together in his name.
Some time ago I read the autobiography of the late Bishop of Newark, John Shelby Spong. Spong tells a story about his days as a philosophy major in the 1940’s at the University of North Carolina in Chapel Hill. He writes of two people who profoundly affected him. The first was a challenge. His name was Professor Louis Katsoff, who was chairman of the philosophy department and a self-proclaimed atheist. When the young John Spong told the professor he was interested in philosophy because his ultimate goal was to become a priest, Louis Katsoff replied that “Christianity was a hopeless hangover from another age, and you should not waste your life.”
The second person the Bishop writes of was the rector of the Episcopal Church in town, a man named David Watt Yates. David Yates was not a scholar, but a courageous man with deep convictions whose faith in Jesus often led him to take extremely unpopular stands on the issues. He was a pacifist. He preached vehemently against racial segregation. He lived his life by an elevated ethic, with uncompromising integrity. From his example Bishop Spong learned about the cost of discipleship.
Years later, after he was ordained a priest, Spong returned to Chapel Hill to speak at the church. He writes that to his utter amazement, he found Louis Katsoff, the atheist philosopher, now a baptized and confirmed member of the church. Spong asked him how this change had come to be, and Katsoff replied, “David Yates finally got to me.” Spong was even more confused, and said, “How could that be? You can think rings around him.” Katsoff replied, “David didn’t outthink me, he just outlived me.”[2]
God presented Jesus to Louis Katsoff through David Yates, and Katsoff saw his salvation in what he’d previously thought was a fossilized dinosaur from another age. On this Feast of the Presentation, on this day of our annual meeting, my prayer for Grace Church is that God presents Jesus to us, and that we in turn present Jesus to the world. Let it be so, until all the earth is able to sing the song of Simeon: For mine eyes have seen thy salvation, which thou hast prepared before the face of all people.
[1] “Subway Sleuth Clears Dinosaur of Cannibalism,” by John Noble Wilford. The New York Times, September 6, 2006.
[2] Spong, John Shelby, Here I Stand, HarperSanFrancisco, 2000, p. 50.