Candlemas – Friday 2 February A✠D 2024
✠ Psalmody: Psalm 48:9;Psalm 48:1–3, 8;Psalm 48:1, 8a, 9;St. Luke 2:34b
✠ Lection: Malachi 3:1–4;Hebrews 2:14–18;St. Luke 2:22–32
In the Name of the Father and of the ✠ Son and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.
One thing I have desired of the LORD,
That will I seek:
That I may dwell in the house of the LORD
All the days of my life,
To behold the beauty of the LORD,
And to inquire in His temple.
On this Friday evening, we are here inquiring in His temple, seeking and desiring the LORD; this is good. Fridays can be holy, too, as we learn in the Scriptures and in the Large Catechism insight on the Third Commandment. It is most certainly made a holy day today, sanctified by the Word of God and prayer, along with other priceless treasures around which we gather and receive by grace. It is also the day of the week on which our dear Lord died for the sins of the world, making Friday good and, indeed, most holy. Oh, the beauty of the LORD that we behold in this Holy Candle Mass!
The extra rites in the Candlemas service are unusual to most, if not all of us, myself included. I most certainly did not grow up worshiping God like this, although I wish I had, especially in remembrance of 40-day old Jesus being presented in the temple where He would be met by the faithful saints Simeon and Anna. I had heard the story, but never tasted the rich heritage of a long-established feast day in the Church’s practice for centuries. Here, we regularly observe this feast, now for the fourth year in a row, because it sets before us yet more and more of the Lord’s beauty to behold. I have come to appreciate and love the candle blessing and procession for the same reason that I appreciate and love kneeling, headcoverings, bowing, vesting, making the sign of the cross, chanting, and much more; and that reason is that, undergirding all of those practices, is reverence as we behold and respond to the beauty of the Lord more and more in this life. They are outward signs that echo His truth and His love among us, His children. We are not commanded to carry on these traditions that adorn God’s Divine Service and our devotion to and worship of Him, but when and where they are done, it is because we understand and delight in the things that remind us and enrich our understanding of Him. There is infinite beauty to behold.
We’ll come back to more about the candle rites that we observe, especially about those candles which each of you have taken up. But first, let us return to Jerusalem, not for the Crucifixion, but decades prior to when the account of tonight’s Gospel took place. Already in the life of Christ, He was conceived by the Holy Spirit in March and born of the Virgin Mary at the end of December, the 25th being the day that we remember in annual celebration. Eight days later, He was circumcised and given the Name that is above all names, the Name at which every knee shall bow and every tongue confess that He is Lord, the Name of Jesus. 32 days later, now at 40 days old, Joseph and Mary brought Jesus to Jerusalem to present Him to the Lord as it is written in the law of the Lord, “Every male who opens the womb shall be called holy to the LORD,” and to offer a sacrifice according to what is said in the law of the Lord, “A pair of turtledoves or two young pigeons.”
Redeemed in Christ, if you want to behold the beauty of the LORD and inquire [of Him] in His temple, you have yet another multi-layered masterpiece presented to you here by St. Luke and the Holy Spirit. There are many allusions to Old Testament laws being fulfilled by the Holy Family and the Christ Child indicating that the fullness of time had come for God to send for His Son and showing that this is no new god, but the same One Who spoke in times past to the fathers by the prophets, here coming forth from everlasting days.
Much like our rich Divine Service, there are different ceremonies happening in Luke chapter two; one, in Mary’s purification, and two, in Jesus’ presentation. According to the law of Moses, every time a woman gave birth, she would be considered ceremonially unclean as her body returned to its normal, non-pregnant cycle. At the end of that period of purification, she would go to God’s Temple and be deemed clean by the means of a sacrifice. That was the purpose of the Temple; for God in His Divine Service to wash away our uncleanness so that we may be presented to Him as pure. He was the Actor in the Temple.
We are told that Joseph and Mary brought a pair of turtledoves or two young pigeons. In this particular sacrifice being made, we see much more than just the fact that the new parents were poor and thus in need of this provision in the law. The two birds were an acceptable substitute for what was foremost commanded as a sacrifice: a lamb. This is another beautiful connection in this text, because though Joseph and Mary could not afford to provide a lamb, God provided One for Himself; One Who would pay for all the things that we cannot afford, namely the penalty for our sins. By God’s providence from the foundation of the world, He was providing the sacrificial Lamb that the parents led not by a rope around its neck to the Temple as it would go unwillingly, but instead a willing sacrifice in His only begotten Son, willingly carried there by Joseph and Mary. Behold the Lamb of God that takes away the sin of the world; that makes the unclean clean, pure, and bright. Remember your candle.
That was the ceremony associated with the mother, the Blessed Virgin Mary in this case. There was also, according to the law of Moses, another ceremony for when a woman’s firstborn child is a boy, as in every male who opens the womb. If that family is not of the tribe of Levi, the one from which priests come through Aaron’s lineage, then, the newborn boy shall be called holy to the LORD, he shall be presented to the LORD in the Temple and a redemption price of five shekels of silver would be paid on his behalf. This is to redeem the little boy, to exempt him, from the service as a priest in the Temple since he is not born of the tribe of Levi. Jesus was born a boy, the firstborn of Mary, born not of Levi, but of Judah, which means His redemption, His exemption from serving as an Aaronic priest in the earthly temple, set the stage for Him to serve in the heavenly one in the order of Melchizedek; that timeless man that Abraham encountered in Genesis 14. In the Scriptures, he is without beginning or end, a prophet, priest, and king of Salem, the place of peace that went on to become Jerusalem. One of the beautiful threads woven into the picture of Christ for you is His redemption out of a temporal priesthood and into another as everlasting Mediator before your heavenly Father where He ever stands for you as your own High Priest.
In His mediation for you, by means of His life, death, resurrection, and ascension, you have One Whose righteousness is yours. He freely gives it to you by grace and not by works, so that no one may boast. Indeed, you need and desire to have the inherit, passive righteousness of God and in Christ you receive it by faith, for He is very God of very God. You also need the active righteousness of Man in the keeping of the law of God perfectly, which means you need the righteousness of a perfect Man to be credited to you, as your own, and that, too, you receive in Christ by faith. You need that two-fold gift: the righteousness of perfect God and perfect Man. You need the true Light which gives light to every man to shine this righteousness into you who sat in the darkness death. He does this by His Word and Sacraments as He freely gives them in His Divine Service. Upon the altar are two candles, because the One Who brings forgiveness to you there is both God and Man. From these candles shine the light of Christ; fully God, fully Man; your Savior. And to where does that holy flame go forth? To each one of you, to be your light of life, to cleanse you as the sacrificial Lamb of God, to make you pure as the white candle that you hold signifies. He is a Light to lighten the Gentiles and the glory of God’s people Israel.
The first time that we lit our candles, we rejoiced that Christ our Light and Life has established His altar in this place and has gathered us around it by grace. We thanked Him. We praised Him. We reverenced Him and His altar. We shall light our candles again from the same Source in remembrance of Him Who also keeps on coming in His true Body and Blood at this altar to shine His light upon us, making us ever more confident in Him as He gives and sustains eternal peace in which we may depart. By His blessed Word and Holy Sacrament, our eyes have seen Christ’s salvation and, in Him, they behold the beauty of the LORD.
In ✠ Jesus’ Name. Amen.
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