Presentation in the Temple
February 2, 2020 – Annual Meeting
Malachi 3:1-4 Who can stand when he appears? (Anna can.)
Hebrews 2:14-18 Free those who all their lives were held in slavery by the fear of death.
Luke 2:22-40 There was also a prophet, Anna.
O God of the prophets, grant us the strength, the wisdom and the courage to seek always and everywhere after truth, come when it may, and cost what it will.
This year, Emmanuel’s 160th Annual Meeting falls on the fortieth day after Christmas, the Feast of the Presentation of Jesus in the Temple, which the Gospel of Luke tells us occurred, as required, when Mary and Joseph took their infant into the Temple in Jerusalem to dedicate him to God and to celebrate the return to purity of his mother. This is a little bit odd because there actually is no known requirement or even custom of presenting an infant in the temple, but there was a rite of purification for a mother after delivering a baby.