Sermon-of-the-Month for January, 2006: We Have Seen God's Salvation
Luke 2:22-40
22 When the time came for their purification according to the law of Moses, they brought him up to Jerusalem to present him to the Lord 23 (as it is written in the law of the Lord, "Every firstborn male shall be designated as holy to the Lord"), 24 and they offered a sacrifice according to what is stated in the law of the Lord, "a pair of turtledoves or two young pigeons."
:25 Now there was a man in Jerusalem whose name was Simeon; this man was righteous and devout, looking forward to the consolation of Israel, and the Holy Spirit rested on him. 26 It had been revealed to him by the Holy Spirit that he would not see death before he had seen the Lord's Messiah. 27 Guided by the Spirit, Simeon came into the temple; and when the parents brought in the child Jesus, to do for him what was customary under the law, 28 Simeon took him in his arms and praised God, saying,
29 "Master, now you are dismissing your servant in peace,
according to your word;
30 for my eyes have seen your salvation,
31 which you have prepared in the presence of all peoples,
32 a light for revelation to the Gentiles
and for glory to your people Israel."
33 And the child's father and mother were amazed at what was being said about him. 34 Then Simeon blessed them and said to his mother Mary, "This child is destined for the falling and the rising of many in Israel, and to be a sign that will be opposed 35 so that the inner thoughts of many will be revealed "”and a sword will pierce your own soul too."
36 There was also a prophet, Anna the daughter of Phanuel, of the tribe of Asher. She was of a great age, having lived with her husband seven years after her marriage, 37 then as a widow to the age of eighty-four. She never left the temple but worshiped there with fasting and prayer night and day. 38 At that moment she came, and began to praise God and to speak about the child to all who were looking for the redemption of Jerusalem.
39 When they had finished everything required by the law of the Lord, they returned to Galilee, to their own town of Nazareth. 40 The child grew and became strong, filled with wisdom; and the favor of God was upon him.
There are usually considered to be four great Christmas hymns in the scriptures - five if you count the prologue to John's Gospel. The four are found in the Gospel of Luke and reflect times when people touched by the coming of Christ are swept up in awe and spiritual insight and can only break into song, speaking or singing words of thanksgiving and glory.
The first hymn, in Luke 1:46-55, is the Magnificat, sung or spoken by Mary in response to the announcement that she will bear the Messiah, the Son of God: "My soul magnifies the Lord, and my spirit rejoices in God my Savior..." and she goes on to sing about the awesome changes Christ's coming will mean for the world.
The second hymn is sung or spoken by Zechariah, the old priest who with his wife Elizabeth, is gifted with the child who will be John the Baptist. It is the Benedictus, found in Luke 1:68-79, his song thanking God for the salvation to come and the role that his son John will play in preparing the Messiah's way.
The third Christmas hymn is sung not by a person but by "a multitude of the heavenly host" along with the angel who appeared to the shepherds in the fields. It is the Gloria - "Glory to God in the highest heaven, and peace on earth among those whom he favors. This hymn, of course, we sing often at Christmas as "Angels We Have Heard on High" "Angels from the Realms of Glory," and "It Came Upon the Midnight Clear."
The fourth hymn in Luke's Gospel is our scripture text for today, sung or spoken by a righteous and devout man named Simeon as the infant Jesus is brought to the Temple in Jerusalem for a kind of dedication ceremony. This hymn is the Nunc Dimittis, again, from the first words of the hymn as they appear in Latin: "Now let your servant depart in peace...for my eyes have seen your salvation." This passage is often quoted at funeral services; Simeon has been promised he will not see death before seeing the Messiah.
Incidentally, all of these Christmas hymns have been put to a variety of musical settings, including the final six hymns in our Presbyterian Hymnal, settings of the Songs of Mary, Zechariah, and Simeon.
We don't know anything about Simeon other than what Luke tells us in these verses; he makes a brief appearance in the story and is heard of no more. We know that he was a "righteous and devout" Jew who had been waiting long years to see the Messiah, as had many of the Jews of the early first century; we know that he was open to the presence and guidance of the God's Spirit, called the Holy Spirit. And we know him to be a person of candor as well as faith, as he tells Mary after his hymn that this child who will bring salvation to many people will also bring a sword of sorrow to her.
We enter a New Year by the world's common calendar, which is the calendar determined by the coming of the Christ. 2006 A.D. - Anno Domini, the Year of the Lord; now more often, in recognition of the vast diversity of the world's religions, designated 2006 C.E. - Common Era.
Christians will always think of it as the Year of the Lord, though it seems gracious not to impose that on others who hold different faiths that may look to different dates and times as their spiritual center.
We move into a year with many unknowns - in fact most things are unknown. There is a phrase we often use - "the foreseeable future" - but exactly what or how much of the future is "fore-seeable"? Even tomorrow...even the next hours are not ours to know. And so we move into 2006 in faith, trusting that the God who was with us - on good days and bad days, through shadowed valleys and on sunlit peaks, in seasons of delight and winters of discontent - will be the God who walks with us into the future.
We can move into a new year...or a new day...or a new season of our life...in trust and assurance, because we share with Simeon the most important experience possible: We have seen God's salvation in Jesus Christ. There is no longer any doubt about the outcome of things; there may and undoubtedly will be struggles head - for ourselves, our families, our communities, our church, or nation, God's world. There will be, in Ecclesiates' words, times for birth and times for death, times for breaking down and times for building up, times to seek and times to lose, times for silence and times for speaking, times for weeping and times for laughing, times for mourning and times for dancing. But through it all, we know that God has spoken the final word: Life, not death, Love, not alienation.
We have seen God's salvation and know that in the Easter triumph, nothing can separate us from God's love - neither things present nor things to come, neither powers of earth nor powers of heaven, neither the heights to which we may climb nor depths to which we may fall...nothing in all creation can trump God's word of Life and Love.
Like Simeon, we have been promised that we will not die before seeing that salvation - and we have seen it. We have seen it in the Christmas story and will see it through the story of Cross and Resurrection. And the gift of the Holy Spirit to the church at Pentecost. like the gift of the Holy Spirit to Simeon, will seal God's promise to us on both joyous days and wretched days, and will continue to empower us in 2006 to live as God's Spirited people. living each new day and each new year in the courage of hope - for we have seen God's salvation and his name is Jesus. Amen.
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