Sermon preached at the First Evensong of the Presentation of Christ in the Temple 2026

It is hard to imagine being human without sin. We don't need global politics to remind us that, implicit in so much of our behaviour, is that deep instinct to self-aggrandisement and self-preservation; the will-to-power over others (and over our own bodies and souls) to our ultimate material benefit; putting ourselves, our family, our tribe, our nation above all. Darwin was not wrong.

In fact, the challenge we are facing feels like a new insistence (or perhaps an old insistence re-stated) that this fundamental self-focus (me, my family, my tribe, my nation), written apparently into our genes, cannot be regarded as sin at all. It is just 'the way things are', the 'Realpolitik', the truth about ourselves, and anything else is a deceptive and dangerous myth; a conceit that we do best to strip away. Let's not pretend it has ever been about anything other than the raw exercise of power to subdue others and bolster our survival—ourselves, our family, our tribe, our nation.

Of course, this is a kind of truth—a truth we see played out, a truth we recognise within ourselves when we are being honest. But the Church teaches us that these things are a matter for confession and repentance, not for shoulder-shrugging acceptance or jingoistic promotion. The church suggests we can do better, with the help of God's grace; that appealing to our self-serving instincts, a supine surrender to them, insisting they are just the way things are and the only way things will ever be, is to be less human; is to think less of ourselves.

Jesus, the full measure of a human being, was tested as we are, yet without sin. To be human is to be tested. We might interpret this ‘testing’ as anything that frustrates our will to power—to get what we want—and that the human enterprise is to focus our power on overcoming that frustration and getting what we want by all means at our disposal. This does not seem to be quite the pattern of the life of Jesus. His testing, and the testing he therefore shared with us, seems more about how to acknowledge and by God's grace refuse to conform or comfort ourselves with that inevitable undertow of our self-seeking? 

In the divine perspective, succumbing to our will-to-power might in fact be evidence of the most supreme spiritual weakness; the most shrivelled form of our humanity.

Jesus was tested as we are, yet without sin. Jesus must have known within himself that self-serving urge, the drag and undertow of sin, and yet he remained the man for others; ultimately not even defending his own life; dying, we are told, for our sake. Accepting death, he revealed the resurrection, not for his own sake, but so that we might share in it. His goal was not personal survival, or that of his tribe or nation, but to raise us all out of sin, with him and in him, and by the Spirit to continue that work of bringing us to the fullest, richest expression of our humanity; to be people who live for others—other families, other tribes, other nations.

The fact that, in extreme circumstances, most of us probably would revert to self-preservation, and perhaps the preservation of those we deem closest to us, (family, tribe, nation), this does not excuse the acquiescence to such behaviour when there is not, in fact, imminent existential threat. 

When we have the option, when we have any freedom to behave better than that (for others, not just for ourselves), then surely this is when we can learn and practice those virtues of our higher nature, our ‘better angels’; learning how we can be for others; building those muscles, behaviours, instincts, alliances, so that when less favourable times come we might not be quite so quick to revert to type; which is to say we might discover the mind of Christ and of his martyrs, who knew that personal survival and protection is not the only option, perhaps even not the best option for us.

Of course, rumbling in the background of these thoughts is what we have been seeing in international relations, especially over recent weeks and months. Commentators vary between outrage at behaviour that seems entirely driven by selfish, self-aggrandising motives, and others who say that the decades since the second world war are the blip, the outlier—we are now back to power politics as it has always been. 

It has probably always been especially hard for those in power to resist the tug of personal, familial, tribal, national selfishness—in a democracy, they would be unlikely to have been elected on a platform that didn’t appeal to our deep desire for our own material betterment. We would probably only vote for higher taxes if we knew they were going to be paid by someone else. It is always a kind of miracle when politicians manage to behave in a way that doesn’t just serve them and their tribe; it is, I would suggest, a miracle more likely to manifest in the first half of an electoral cycle. Those of us who aren’t in those shoes really shouldn’t be too quick to judge—our politicians and leaders above all, deserve our prayers (not least for a lively penitential practice).

Tonight we begin our celebration of the Presentation of Christ in the Temple—Jesus, the Son of God incarnate brought into his Father’s house; the house where sacrifices were offered as a kind of tribal political currency, to bind the people to one another and to God. Each year the High Priest would enter the Holy of Holies on the Day of Atonement to offer sacrifice for his own sins and for the sins of the people. Today, Jesus is presented and the sacrifice is offered that recalls the death of the firstborn that formed part of the liberation of Israel from slavery in Egypt. A debt is owed for a freedom, a survival, that came at the cost of so much life.

The people of God could never forget the price of their freedom then, or now.

We do not have a high priest who is unable to sympathise with our weaknesses, we heard in the letter to the Hebrews—a letter suffused with Temple imagery. Jesus is presented in that same Temple in the weakest, most vulnerable state, and we know he will be back to offer himself in crucified weakness, as High Priest, for our sins—the ultimate atonement. He knows our weakness, how hard we find it to live for others and not just for ourselves, yet as he is presented today, so he prepares a way for us to (in the words of Hebrews) approach the throne of grace with boldness, so that we may receive mercy and find grace to help in time of need. Grace alone can help us rise above the weakness of our self-serving nature, which puts us constantly at odds with one another and with God.

It is hard to imagine being human without sin, but God shows us how, and invites us in Christ to grow into that humanity—the fullest stature of a humanity that is for others; the power of God made perfect in our human weakness.