A sermon preached by the Reverend Robert Atwell on the Feast of the Presentation of Christ in the Temple, Candlemas 2007

I have just returned from helping lead a pilgrimage to the Holy Land for a group of curates from north London. Exactly a week ago I stood where Mary and Joseph would have presented their child Jesus to the Lord in thanksgiving for his birth. Of course, the temple no longer exists. It was destroyed by Titus, the son of the Roman Emperor, in AD70 in reprisal for the Jewish revolt against the occupation of Israel by the Romans.

On the television when we see pictures of Jerusalem it is not the foundations of the temple we are looking at but the great medieval walls of the city built by Suleiman the Magnificent and above them, the Dome of the Rock, the beautiful Islamic shrine built in the sixth century on Mount Moriah, the rock where it was said Abraham had offered his son Isaac in sacrifice.

All that is left of the Jewish temple, itself the second temple on the site because the first temple built by King Solomon had been destroyed by the Babylonians, is a huge square, like an Italian piazza. In this area were the various courts of the temple at the heart of which was the Holy of Holies housing the ark of the Covenant which contained the tablets of stone on which were inscribed the Ten Commandments given to Moses.

For decades following their invasion of Israel – or Judea as they called it, meaning ‘The land of the Jews’ – the Romans had respected the inviolability of the temple precincts. When eventually they did storm it and rip down the huge curtain that separated the Holy of Holies from the inner courtyard – the same curtain which St John tells us was torn at the time of Jesus’ crucifixion – they discovered to their amazement that its sanctuary was empty.

They knew of the Jewish prohibition of idols. In spite of this they had expected to find a statue or some sort of representation of God. Instead all they found was a box containing two old bits of stone. Whatever happened to the Ark of the Covenant no one knows to this day. What we do know is that the Romans razed the temple to the ground and all that is left is its western wall – the so-called Wailing Wall.

We went to the Wailing Wall late on Friday afternoon, the beginning of Shabbat. You have to go through a check point to get to it. As my bag went through the X-ray machine I could hear what sounded like a football match going on, and turning the corner I was confronted by the sight of about 3000 orthodox Jews standing before the wall, reciting the psalms and swaying backwards and forwards in that characteristic way they do. The noise was deafening.

The temple mount is an Islamic area, situated above the Wailing Wall. Since the hostilities non-Muslims are forbidden to enter either the Dome of the Rock or the Al Aqsar Mosque. You have to go through two checkpoints, the first manned by Israeli soldiers; the second by Palestinians. This time the air is punctuated by the crying of the muezzin, as they call the faithful to prayer from the loudspeakers in the minarets.

It is all very intimidating – and yet it can’t have been very different from what Mary and Joseph experienced. They too had to run a gauntlet of soldiers to enter the temple, only they were Romans armed with swords rather than sub-machine guns. They had journeyed to Jerusalem to give thanks to God for the safe delivery of their child and to make the designated offering for Mary’s ritual cleansing. The Jewish law prescribed a period of forty days privacy for a woman after childbirth to recover, after which she could re-enter society. And it was in the context of this ceremony that Simeon and Anna encounter them, and to their amazement prophesy that their child Jesus will not only be the glory of Israel, but a light to enlighten men and women of every nation.

We live in an age which glamorizes the young and the beautiful. The wisdom and experience of the old is easily overlooked. We even have to put signs on buses and trains now telling us to give up our seats to the elderly. In today’s gospel, however, the heroes are two old people: Simeon and Anna – the latter aged 84. Together they embody faithfulness and stability. It is they who recognise the uniqueness of this child of a Galilean couple who are so poor that they cannot even afford to pay for the correct sacrifice – that’s the significance of St Luke’s comment about them sacrificing only pigeons.

Now at last, Lord, says Simeon, you can let your servant die in peace. For my eyes have seen your salvation.

As we get older, with more of life behind us than before us, our feelings coalesce into one of two responses to life: resentment or contentment. Resentment is more than disappointment. It has a hard edge to it. It is a mixture of bitterness over missed opportunities (if only I’d done this or that) and jealousy of other people’s perceived happiness or good fortune.

By contrast, contentment emerges within us as a product of the way we live our life, our attitude to others, and the values we choose to live by. If we want to be contented in our old age, we need to get in practice now. We have to let go of anger, not nurse grudges or disappointments; to let go and to move on, always living with thankfulness in the here and now, rather than being a prisoner to yesterday. Lord, now let your servant die in peace. Simeon’s prayer is something we should each aspire to.

If this is true of us as individuals, it is also true of us as families and communities and nations. And that brings me back to where I started this morning in my reflections about Israel and the Middle East. Hatred is not simply an emotion: it is a virus. Like all viruses, it may lie dormant for a while, but it rarely dies. Instead, it mutates. The seeds of violence germinate in the soil of injustice. We pass down to our children, and to our children's children, our unresolved agendas and resentments. It is what makes conflict the default option between ancient antagonists like the Israelis and Palestinians.

Today as we commemorate the presentation of Jesus in the temple let us pray for two things: First, that we may sort out our own lives and relationships, and learn to forgive and be forgiven, and by the grace of God, move on. We need to cultivate the soil of our hearts that it is the seeds of contentment may germinate and give us peace, not simply in our old age, but now.

Secondly, we need to pray for the peace of Jerusalem. As the Archbishop of Jerusalem said to us in his Cathedral last Sunday, the road to peace in Iraq and the Middle East lies through Jerusalem. There will be no peace without justice for all the peoples of Israel, and there can be no justice without forgiveness.

So Lord, may we not only die in peace but live in the peace too. And to that prayer, may we all say Amen.