CANDLEMAS

TERRIBLE JOKE DU JOUR

In my house there are rather a lot of cookery books... But one which is a bit different. It’s by Sybil Kapoor and it’s called “Taste” and her idea is that at the heart of good food is the successful combination of elemental tastes. And she suggests that there are five basic flavours: SOUR, SALT, UMAMI (savoury), BITTER and SWEET. So she explains her recipes starting from the tastes and working outwards, rather than just presenting a series of recipes.

It’s a different approach to cookery and surprising things fall into each category - for example: Peas (Sweet); honey (sweet); Seville Oranges (bitter); Scallops (sweet); coffee (bitter); watercress (bitter); extra virgin olive oil (bitter); parsnips (sweet); dates (sweet); dark chocolate (bitter); bananas (sweet)

Candlemas is a BITTER SWEET festival - and appropriate that we’ve got a baptism, because - as Simeon reminded Mary, parenting is a bitter sweet experience....

Today marks the end of Christmas! I know it feels like a life time ago that the tinsel and cards and trees were adorning your living room, but in fact it’s 40 days. The festival we remember today has got loads of different names: the Purification of the BVM; Candlemas, Feast of the Presentation... 40 days after the birth of a baby was the time when the parents went to the Temple so say thank you to God for the safe birth of a child. And when Mary & Joseph took Jesus they met two people slightly past the first flush of youth: a very old man called Simeon and a woman called Anna. God had promised that Simeon wouldn’t die before he had seen God’s Messiah. Guided by the Holy Spirit he came into the temple and saw the baby Jesus and he said that Jesus was “a Light for revelation to the gentiles” - and in the Middle Ages when candles were the main source of light in dark houses it was this Sunday when people would take their candles to church to have them blessed and as a reminder that Jesus had come at the Light of the world.

And it’s a strange day of Good News and Bad News: Simeon says some excellent things - about how important Jesus is; but he also says some scary things - he predicts that Mary is going to have her heart broken by her child “a sword will pierce your own soul” he warns her. So today is a BITTER SWEET festival - it’s our last look back at the sweet infant Jesus in his manger, and as we peer into the manger for the last time we see the shadow of the cross of Holy Week & Easter beginning to fall over that manger... and the bitter reminder of what lay ahead for that sweet child, and how Mary’s heart would be broken...

Parenting is a bitter sweet thing - as Jody & Alan will be discovering with Sammy-Jo. As children we seem to have an infinite capacity to break the hearts of those who love us most. And Candlemas is a reminder that life isn’t always a bed of roses; following Jesus doesn’t inoculate us against the Nasties of Life. Jesus shared our experience of being human right down to the dregs. So when the BITTER bits of life come to us we know that Jesus has been there first.

Fr. Andrew Perry
Rector, St John the Evangelist, Pevensey Rd, St Leonards on Sea