‘Lord, now lettest thou thy servant depart in peace, according to thy word’ (Luke 2:29).
What must if have been like to raise the Son of God? Joseph and Mary are thrust into this strange life wherein they must safeguard and guide the living hope of all mankind. The past, present, and future of human history must have surrounded and towered over them as they tried to live as the holy people of God with God made manifest living among them. This history sits just underneath the entire narrative of Jesus’ life: His every breath a fulfillment of prophecy; His every step a planned maneuver in the grand campaign to defeat evil and resurrect the world.
Earlier in the year we celebrated Christ’s circumcision, His first blood-letting for the sake of God’s everlasting covenant, and today our church calendar, which focuses our lives on the life of Christ rather than the world, has us remember and celebrate another time in which the earthly parents of Jesus exhibited their faithfulness to God by following ‘the law of the Lord.’ The family is in Jerusalem for Mary to undergo the rite of purification after childbirth and for Jesus to be presented to the temple authorities and an offering made in His place. These two rites were means by which the people of God could be intimately connected to God’s work in history; it was a way of reminding God’s people that we are either spending our short time on this earth growing in our knowledge and love of God, or we are simply slaving away in the fields of despair or worshipping in the false temples of pain and ruin.
So, what did these two rites teach about God and His people? First, the purification speaks to the closeness with which the mother has been in contact with life and death. As we read in Leviticus: ‘For the life of the flesh is in the blood…’ (Leviticus 17:11). The providence of God has allowed us to live in an age and place where the death of mothers and children has been greatly lessened, but the event of bringing a child into this world is always a dangerous and perilous time: life and death hang in the balance at every moment and the blood and fluids which are involved in this process must be seen by us, not as modern people worried about getting dirty or ruining a clean space, but as physical artifacts of the work of creation and death: beautiful and awful signs of humanity’s privileged role in bringing divine image bearers into a hostile world. The importance of this sign of blood was such that a person needed to be isolated for forty days (our word ‘quarantined’ is derived from this practice). This separation was not because the blood was inherently evil nor the person who came in contact with it, but the setting apart was to remind God’s people of the incredible importance of blood and thus the incredible importance of life. Life is God’s to give and take away. We cannot forget that foundational truth, or we begin to think of life as a substance we give and take at our pleasure, our limitlessly cruel and insatiable pleasure. The Anglican Way helps us to remember the providence of God and our connection to this ancient practice of the church in the Old Testament through The Churching of Women service (BCP p. 349) we faithfully conduct with every birth in the mission.
And what of the need to buy back the firstborn male child? This rite was a reminder of God’s great act of consolation and ruin on the night of the first Passover. As Moses writes, ‘And it shall be when thy son asketh thee in time to come, saying, What is this? that thou shalt say unto him, By strength of hand the Lord brought us out from Egypt, from the house of bondage: And it came to pass, when Pharaoh would hardly let us go, that the Lord slew all the firstborn in the land of Egypt, both the firstborn of man, and the firstborn of beast: therefore I sacrifice to the Lord all that openeth the matrix, being males; but all the firstborn of my children I redeem (Exodus 13:14-15). The ten plagues imposed upon the most powerful nation in the world were a sign to the world, and all powerful nations to follow, that the living God controls life and death. On that last night of plagues, the difference between life and death was faithfulness to the Lord who gives life and takes it away. The rite of firstborn redemption we see in today’s reading was a reminder that this revelation of God’s power is true for every night which followed that final night of judgment upon Egypt. The difference between life and death for Abraham and Isaac, Mary and Joseph, you and I is faithfulness to the Lord.
It is appropriate then that the faithful Simeon be chosen by God to herald the Lord’s presentation in the temple built to worship Him. But, a good question to ask here is, why is it only Simeon and Anna who see and know the magnitude of what God is doing in their midst? Where are the priests and Levites? Where are the scribes and lawyers? Luke wants us to see the dire state of the people into whom God the Son has descended. Corruption and heresy define the temple hierarchy; self-righteousness and pride afflict the scribes and Pharisees. It isn’t that these groups weren’t pious; far from it, they simply were faithful to beliefs which separated them from the God in their very midst. This tragic distance will be seen throughout Jesus’ ministry culminating in these normally incompatible groups coming together to crucify their rightful king. The high degree of a man’s piety is not commendable if that piety leads him to try and murder God or worship idols or indulge in the many ways in which humanity has figured out how to use the pursuit of false righteousness as a way to further our mad rebellion against our creator, sustainer, and redeemer.
Simeon and Anna, on the other hand, represent the holy remnant through which again and again the Holy Ghost showcases His power over and against the unfaithful men who too often try to lead His people astray. Just because the temple has been taken over by priests who don’t believe in the resurrection doesn’t mean that God isn’t working in history to bring salvation to His people. Those traitors were not strong enough to upend the purposes of God or destroy the faith of those who hunger and thirst for righteousness: those false pastors didn’t put that faith in Simeon, and so they have no power to take it from him. In fact, Simeon stands as the vessel of their condemnation, for the sovereign God has reached through time and space to make this faithful old man’s name be remembered by the saints of God long after the names of those unfaithful priests have been burned out of history by God’s holy fire.
We are privileged to know Simeon, and we are privileged to sing his song. The Anglican Christian is invited to sing Simeon’s song at least 365 times a year at Evening Prayer. Our Book of Common Prayer still has the old Latin title: Nunc dimmittis (now lettest thou depart). ‘Lord, now lettest thou thy servant depart in peace, according to thy word. For mine eyes have seen thy salvation, Which thou has prepared before the face of thy people, To be a light to lighten the Gentiles, and to be the glory of thy people Israel’ (BCP p. 22). Why do you suppose we sing this canticle in the evening? The answer lies in today’s text, ‘And it was revealed unto him by the Holy Ghost, that he should not see death, before he had seen the Lord’s Christ’ (Luke 2:26). The purpose of the Daily Office of Morning and Evening Prayer is the same as why we are here today: to be with Jesus through the Word; to be with the Word Incarnate through the Word. The Daily Office brings us to meet Jesus in the words of His Biblical revelation, and in the wake of that encounter, we are ready to face the night, ready to face death.
Why? Because we have the consolation of Israel. As Isaiah writes in glorious anticipation of Christ’s coming, ‘Comfort ye, comfort ye my people, saith your God. Speak ye comfortably to Jerusalem, and cry unto her, that her warfare is accomplished, that her iniquity is pardoned: for she hath received of the Lord’s hand double for all her sins’ (Isaiah 40:1-2). The young child Simeon saw that day, the One who filled him with hope and joy, that boy contained within Him the fulfillment of all prophecy, the fulfillment of our human destiny. We can face death because our King has faced it already for us and ripped from its claws the terror which has plagued mankind since Adam and Eve buried their beloved son Abel in the hard, pitiless ground. The firstborn of the new creation died the cursed death of God’s enemies, so you and I might never fear the darkness ever again.
And so, we sing Simeon’s song as we prepare for the end of the day, and we awake the next thankful for our deliverance from the darkness—ready to fight and love and die for the Kingdom of God, ready to serve and dream as the pure citizens of the new heaven and new earth.