Candlemas/Presentation of Christ in the Temple 2024
Preacher: The Very Rev'd Dr Paul Shackerley
Date: Sunday 4th February 2024
Service: Cathedral Eucharist
Readings: Luke 2: 22-40
Liminality (often called a thin place) and Candlemas
Candlemas is a liminal period in the Church’s calendar/lectionary, the midpoint between the light of Christmas and the sombre period of Lent. It marks Simeon’s words, sung and said at Evensong/prayer here daily, Christ the light that is for all people’s, a light to lighten the Gentiles’. Simeon was waiting in a liminal period of Israel’s history. His people were waiting for the Messiah to come to bring light to a dark nation occupied by a foreign state. Simeon is now very old, at the end of his ministry as a temple priest, and edging toward the end of his life, but recognises that at last, the Messiah, the Light, has come in the Christ child. His people in the Holy Land lived in a great darkness, citizens of that holy place, occupied by Romans, ruled by the tyrant king Herod’s court, preached at by corrupt and powerful religious Pharisees making God’s people, Israel, exploited on all sides. Great darkness in the context of Christ’s birth.
And so, Mary and Jospeh arrive at the Temple with Jesus, just 40 days old, for the feast of purification, and the elderly priest Simeon recognised Jesus as the Messiah, the saviour of the world. The moment he’s been waiting for all his life. What does he do? He bursts into song we know as the Nunc Dimittis and remains a canticle of the monastic office of Night Prayer (Compline), which the Benedictine monks would have used here all those year ago. And we use today, using the traditional words ‘Lord, now lettest thou they servant depart in peace’, as Cranmer’s Book of Common Prayer puts it.
The liminal period is ended, and we are crossing the same liminal threshold Simeon did. The hope for the future had arrived for Simeon and Anna.
We live in a liminal world, a world of uncertainty, a world where sometimes it seems that darkness prevails over light. Where suffering is prevalent still, where those who follow a religious faith are persecuted. We will soon enter another liminal place of Lent, leading to the suffering of Christ in Holy Week, to enter darkness, but with hope of the resurrection and new life. A liminal time of self-reflection about our lives and it’s fragility, starting on Ash Wednesday, ‘remember you are dust, and to dust you shall return. Repent of your sins, and turn to Christ’ as ash is placed on our foreheads.
Liminality, often called a ‘thin place’. Thin places are the spaces between one boundary and another, where the divine and ordinary collide. We create all sorts of boundaries that are well defined, our properties have boundaries, our professional relationships have boundaries. They are part of our existence. Boundaries provide is with structures and safety. Countries have boundaries. Rites of passage can show changes in boundaries, from teenage life to adult, from single to partnered, life from death retirement, divorce or separation from a partner or child, are a few examples of moving boundaries and liminal places. We are going to witness the liminal space between winter and spring over the coming weeks. We witness a liminal space between the wilderness of the Covid pandemic isolation to social interaction again.
Liminal, or thin places then, can represent a midpoint or transition between one place to another. But boundaries can also constrain us. Boundaries can turn us into fossils or museums. Liminal spaces mark the boundary between heaven and earth, between the mundane fleshly life to the spiritual word. We all stand in those spaces, but often miss the opportunity to pause for a while in the silence and beauty of the places, like this Cathedral or our grounds, to listen the small voice of calm.
Life can seem like a fixed point, a dull routine that we know inside and out. And then whether we want it or not, change comes, and rips the carpet out from under us, knocking us over. If we’re unprepared for transition in life this can be incredibly painful. Seeking out liminality, and the liminal in life, is a way to prepare, to initiate ourselves into the inevitability of change. Playing with inner world liminality means actively seeking out the places within us that need bridging: head and heart, thoughts and emotions, conscious and unconscious, past and present. It is healthy to let go of the categorisations that plague us and the boundaries that prevent our freedom, at least for a while, so we ‘be’ in the presence of God, instead of constantly doing things, being active.
The experience of a thin place feels special because words fail and cannot be enough to explain the mystery of God. Thin places lead us to silence. Roger Scruton, an English philosopher, writer, and social critic who specialised in aesthetics and political philosophy, wrote that when moments that are saturated with meaning, but whose meaning cannot be put into words… could be described as the experience of liminality, or thin place. Anthropologists use that expression to refer to special times in our lives when our normal situation is so uprooted with a crisis or experiences that are unexpected and surprising, so it becomes possible to plant new roots and take up life in a whole new way. Take for example the loss of a job or loss of a marriage, only to find another job or another partner. These are usually brought about by a major crisis, one that shakes us in the very roots of our being. Jesus experienced that thin place, liminal place, at his Baptism in the river Jordan, at His Transfiguration on Mount Tabor, and at Gethsemane on the cross. Anybody who goes through life with open mind and open heart, but also knows crisis and pain, will encounter these moments of liminal places that change us, or can even liberate and transform us if we let God be God. The place where God is paradoxically both absent and present. Such liminal places of silence and meeting with God doesn’t always happen in Church either. It can happen walking up a mountain, fishing in a river, walking along a beach. Anywhere, God can meet us in all places, liminal space/thin space, where God descends from heaven to earth to meet us. Watch out for them. They are more common than you might think, but we are often in a hurry or too busy to stand in them in silence.
