The Jewishness of Jesus

Homily Candlemas 2012

Many of our Christian feasts follow the same pattern as pagan feasts which came before them. Christmas follows the winter solstice by four days.

And today we are marking Candlemas, which is the final conclusion of the Christmas season, as the baby Jesus was presented in the Temple in Jerusalem 40 days after his birth, and his mother Mary took part in Jewish purification ceremonies.

The name Candlemas refers to the tradition of blessings and distributing candles during the service to symbolize Christ as the light of the world.

There are also superstitions related to Candlemas from Europe, where it was the time when bears and wolves emerged from hibernation to see if the weather was fair enough to leave their shelter.

That evolved in North America into Groundhog Day…Wiarton Willie and Puxatawney Phil.

Listen to this Scottish rhyme from centuries ago:

If Candlemas Day be dry and fair, the half o winter to come and mair, if Candlemas day be wet and foul, the half o winter gane at yule.

The eve of Candlemas---not Boxing Day as in many places these days—was when Christmas decorations of greenery came down.

Another poem from the 17th century by Robert Herrick: “Down with rosemary, and so, Down with the bays and mistletoe; Down with the holly, ivy, all, wherewith ye dress’d the Christmas hall.”

I remember an irreverent folk song from years past titled “Jesus, the Missing Years” by John Prine.

In Mark’s gospel those missing years amount to from Jesus birth to when he was about 30 and began his ministry.

But both Luke and Matthew have birth narratives and both emphasize the Jewishness of Jesus.

And that’s I was thinking about as I read and thought about today’s Gospel. One of the most despicable and regrettable phenomena in history has been the persistence of anti-Semitism.

Thanks to faulty interpretations of scripture, Jews have been called Christ killers and faced discrimination, persecution and even death. The evil of anti-Semitism ultimately laid the foundation for the Holocaust.

And this evil spread far beyond Nazi Germany. I recall seeing a historic photograph of a Canadian beach in the 30’s saying “No dogs or Jews.”

And this evil persists today on Neo Nazi websites.

Yet Jesus, the one who Simeon hails as the light of the world, was Jewish, born of Jewish parents, raised as a Jew, circumcised at eight days, presented at the age of 40 days in the Temple of Jerusalem.

Throughout his ministry Jesus taught in the synagogue. While there was a theme of conflict with Jewish religious authorities, Jesus never urged the creation of a new religion.

His teachings were to further illuminate the Hebrew scriptures that he had learned and quoted frequently.

For Luke, it important to show that Jesus was not rejecting Judaism and setting up a new religion, but building on the law and the teachings handed down from Abraham and Moses and Elijah.

So Jesus was thoroughly grounded in Hebrew tradition. And in Luke’s Gospel, the presentation story confirms that. The law of Moses has been followed in how the child Jesus is presented, or dedicated to God.

The next glimpse of Jesus we have in Luke is when he remained behind at the temple at age 12 to talk to the elders—a sort of re-dedication.

The stories of Simeon and Anna are meant to reinforce our understanding of Jesus as fulfilling the hopes and prayers of the people of Israel for a Messiah, a prophet, a redeemer.

Perhaps the most important teaching from the Candlemas readings is that we as Christians must remember our roots in Judaism, in the teachings of the Hebrew scripture.

In the early church some theologians tried to argue that with the agreement on the Canon—the books of the New Testament, the Old Testament, or Hebrew Scriptures, should be discarded.

But fortunately this view was never accepted. Jesus himself taught from the Hebrew Scriptures and quoted them frequently in the Gospel accounts.

As we read the Bible, we need always to remember Jesus was Jewish. He was a flesh and blood human being, as well as being the son of God.

As we study scripture we need to think about the context in which Jesus, and later Paul ministered. There is much to learn from this formative time in the life of our faith community.