Burning Candles While We Wait

Anna, Simeon, and the Adventure of Expectation | The Feast of the Presentation, Year C

Luke 2:22-40

In the mornings, most days, I go to the aluminum shed in my backyard and light a candle. I have no special holder, simply a jar filled with sand. There is no brass candle follower at the top, so the wick melts the wax in a cascade along the edges, down into the sand where it clumps in a gritty mess. These candles are the leftovers from church. The head of our altar guild, always attentive to candle length and evenness changes out our candles well before they have ended their usefulness. In Advent, we often melt them down to make purple and pink candles with our families to take home for their wreaths, but for the rest of the year there are always more than enough candles for anyone who wants them to take some home.

They are made, mostly, of beeswax, which means that as I burn the candle the air is filled with a faint sweetness. After lighting it with my trusty blue bic, I sit back from the flame, and watch its fire dance before a small collection of icons and crucifix. The first task after lighting the candles is simply to sit, to breath in and out the words of the Jesus Prayer—“Lord Jesus Christ, Son of God, have mercy on me a sinner.” As I say these words, following as best I can an inhale of seven seconds followed by an exhale of seven seconds, I move my fingers along the knots of a chotki rope. Like a pilgrimage in miniature, I travel the route, moving along a hundred steps, a hundred iterations of the prayer with my breath.

What does this time give me? It can be hard to say most days. I’ve had ecstatic experiences of prayer in my younger years; instances that could be counted as charismatic. Now, however, I just sit and breath, which mostly means I simply wait.

Wait.

It is said that “Do not fear,” is the most common command of scripture. I haven’t counted, but “wait” is at the very least a close second. “Wait on the Lord,” is a common call of the Psalms, it is the very heart of wisdom. God is slow, and so, if we are to be a people that move with God we are going to have to learn to wait.

Waiting is the theme of our Gospel for this Sunday in which many churches will be celebrating the Feast of the Presentation of Our Lord, a feast also known as Candlemas. In my own parish, we’ll be blessing candles and giving thanks to God for the Light that Jesus is for our world. Though it is a holiday that has fallen out of favor in many quarters, its celebration dates back to the 4th century and many cultures have traditions tied to it. I hear the French celebrate the day with crepes, which sounds like a fine idea to me.

The Gospel reading for the Sunday comes from Luke and it gives us the beautiful words spoken by Simeon in his song of praise:

“Lord, you now have set your servant free

to go in peace as you have promised…”

We say these words each Sunday evening in our service of Compline, the whole congregation standing.

“A Light to enlighten the nations,

and the glory of your people Israel.”

Simeon and Anna. Two waiters, people who spent their lives watching for the healing God would bring. It came. Jesus is the arrival of what they were hoping for, a welcome coming that provided a new possibility for the world. But as we remember in Advent, we are now between that arrival and the next. And so, like Anna and Simeon, we too are to wait.

And what to do while we are waiting? On the one hand we are to continue to embody the life of Christ among us. Those who follow in Jesus’ way are now his incarnate presence in the world, doing what he did. Like medical residents, M.D.’s who are still in training, we are called to be Christ and yet we are not finished, just yet, in our education into what that means.

To live as Christ requires not only action, but listening. It takes attunement to borrow a term from Kierkegaard. We are to be brought into tune with the pulse of God’s life, Jesus’ life. And that is why I wait before a candle, repeating a mantra of Jesus’ name, calling for his mercy. The rest of the day will be filled with activity. Writing, conversation, worship, answering emails, dealing with HVAC systems, and all the other radical range that priestly life entails, not to mention taking kids to activities, cooking, cleaning, etc. I do not carry the Incarnation into all of those tasks, though I should. I do know that I have a better chance of living out that call on those days I waited before a candle. In the best of those times I leave that time of waiting, not trodding toward another day, but filled with expectation. Christ, I know, will be present. Where will how I find him, how can I be like him? Waiting, in this way, never leads to boredom. The waiting of prayer is the gateway to the divine adventure.