The Faithful Song of Simeon: A Christmas Season Meditation on Luke 2

And when the days of her purification

according to the law of Moses were accomplished,

they brought him to Jerusalem, to present him to the Lord;

(As it is written in the law of the Lord,

Every male that openeth the womb

shall be called holy to the Lord;)

And to offer a sacrifice according to that

 which is said in the law of the Lord,

A pair of turtledoves, or two young pigeons.

 

And, behold, there was a man in Jerusalem,

whose name was Simeon; and the same man was just and devout,

waiting for the consolation of Israel:

and the Holy Ghost was upon him.

And it was revealed unto him by the Holy Ghost,

that he should not see death, before he had seen the Lord's Christ.

 And he came by the Spirit into the temple:

and when the parents brought in the child Jesus,

to do for him after the custom of the law,

Then took he him up in his arms, and blessed God, and said,

 Lord, now lettest thou thy servant depart in peace,

according to thy word:

For mine eyes have seen thy salvation,

Which thou hast prepared before the face of all people;

A light to lighten the Gentiles, and the glory of thy people Israel.

 

And Joseph and his mother marveled at those things which were spoken of him.

 And Simeon blessed them, and said unto Mary his mother,

Behold, this child is set for the fall and rising again of many in Israel;

and for a sign which shall be spoken against;

(Yea, a sword shall pierce through thy own soul also,)

 that the thoughts of many hearts may be revealed.

 

The story of Simeon and his encounter with Jesus, Joseph, and Mary, is one that echoes down through the centuries in ways easy to overlook.  This Christmas season vignette has so moved the church that the Song of Simeon, in Latin called the Nunc Dimittis, has been sung by Christians in numerous ancient rites of prayer, and at the conclusion of the Lord’s Supper, for centuries.  While the church often orders this reading after Christmas day, it is as fully part of the Christmas story as the Nativity, the Angels’ announcement to the shepherds keeping watch over their fields by night, and the arrival of the Wise Men from the East.

 

Simeon is an old man when we meet him in Luke 2, having spent the many years of his devout life serving in and around the Temple.  In addition to his knowledge of, and faith in, the Scriptures regarding the coming of the Messiah, he was also given a personal revelation that he would not die before seeing the Messiah in the flesh.  We are not told how long before this moment he received this prophecy, or all the ups and downs of his long life before the Spirit moved him to enter the Temple on the day of Mary and Joseph’s presentation of Jesus.  While the ruling class of the Temple, the Sadducees and the Pharisees, are shown as hostile to Jesus roughly 30 years later, we know very little about whether Simeon’s hopeful expectation of the prophesied Messiah was a minority or majority opinion among his peers.  But regardless, we know that Simeon held on in patient faith for the revelation of the One who would come not only to be the consolation of the Jewish people, but also the enlightenment of the entire world.  It was the patient and enduring faith of a long and faithful life, which culminated in the joyous song of thankful departure knowing that the promise was fulfilled.  Simeon’s own eyes had seen the salvation of his people come in the flesh, just as the Word of the Lord had promised, and he could rest in joyous knowledge of God’s saving grace made manifest.

 

This is why the church continues to sing Simeon’s song.  It is a declaration of the fulfillment of God’s promise not only to the Jewish people through whom the Holy Spirit moved the Prophets to testify of the coming of Jesus, but also of the Gospel promise which would give light and life to the whole world.  This Light would break like the dawn in Bethlehem, Nazareth, Galilee, Jerusalem, and all Judea, but its life-giving rays would reach out across the globe to the Samaritans, the Greeks, the Romans, the Africans, the Asians, the Europeans, and to every people on every shore and in every hamlet across the globe.  There would be no remote village or colony, no great empire or Republic, which could be hidden beyond its Light, for the Savior of the World had come to save the whole world.  This Jesus, God with Us, was promised not only to the Jews, but as the gracious gift of salvation, forgiveness, grace, life, and hope to the entire world through the Jews.  This is not a mythic tale told in a local cultural vacuum, a poetic legend without historic grounding in demonstrable fact, but rather the Work and Promise of Almighty God witnessed and recorded down through the ages, ancient and yet present in every age.  This is the story of the Creator of all people who fulfilled His loving promise to be the Savior and Sanctifier of all people, through the Incarnation, life, death, and resurrection of His only begotten Son, Jesus Christ.

 

Simeon’s song speaks to the fire of youth, that a life lived in faith will see its gracious fulfilment, just as it speaks to all the seasons of life where temptation and distraction and fear would lead people to despair of the promises of God.  This song of joyous thanksgiving, shared with us by Simeon at the dusk of his earthly life, rings through our churches and our souls even as we approach our own time of departure, knowing that as God has been faithful to fulfill His Word for the salvation of the world, He has been faithful to us as individuals to save us, as well.  Thus we live in patient faith each day we are given in this world, prepared for that peaceful transition to eternal life in the world to come, content and confident in the gracious salvation which comes to us in Jesus.  This is why Simeon’s song is a Christmas hymn, sung throughout the Christian year in churches across the globe and down through the centuries, echoing the boundless of joy of knowing Jesus is the author and the finisher of our faith, and the pierced Hand from which our life can never be taken:

 

Lord, now lettest thou thy servant depart in peace,

according to thy word:

For mine eyes have seen thy salvation,

Which thou hast prepared before the face of all people;

A light to lighten the Gentiles, and the glory of thy people Israel.

 

Amen.

 

 

The Son of the Highest: A Meditation on Luke 1, for the 4th Sunday in Advent

And in the sixth month the angel Gabriel was sent from God

unto a city of Galilee, named Nazareth,

 To a virgin espoused to a man whose name was Joseph,

of the house of David; and the virgin's name was Mary.

 

And the angel came in unto her, and said,

Hail, thou that art highly favoured, the Lord is with thee:

 blessed art thou among women.

And when she saw him, she was troubled at his saying,

and cast in her mind what manner of salutation this should be.

 

And the angel said unto her,

Fear not, Mary: for thou hast found favour with God.

And, behold, thou shalt conceive in thy womb,

and bring forth a son, and shalt call his name Jesus.

He shall be great, and shall be called the Son of the Highest:

and the Lord God shall give unto him the throne of his father David:

And he shall reign over the house of Jacob for ever;

and of his kingdom there shall be no end.

 

Then said Mary unto the angel,

How shall this be, seeing I know not a man?

And the angel answered and said unto her,

The Holy Ghost shall come upon thee,

and the power of the Highest shall overshadow thee:

 therefore also that holy thing which shall be born of thee

 shall be called the Son of God.

And, behold, thy cousin Elisabeth,

she hath also conceived a son in her old age:

and this is the sixth month with her, who was called barren.

For with God nothing shall be impossible.

 

And Mary said,

Behold the handmaid of the Lord;

be it unto me according to thy word.

And the angel departed from her.

 

I wonder if in our age, the idea of The Most High has become an alien concept.  For nearly 150 years, our Western culture has been steeping in a soup of Darwinist evolutionary theory, garnished in the academy with Nietzschean materialistic atheism, and medically applied to the masses in soulless Freudian psychology.  This triumvirate of atheistic materialists laid the foundations of modern movements in education, politics, and philosophy which convulsed the world into a century of world wars, culminating in the social upheaval and despair of our current day.  When we look around our world today and see people acting less rational than animals, with no moral compass but temporary pleasure and their own will to power, where the life of the mind is reduced to nonsensical ramblings and bio-chemical reactions, and the beauty of the soul is twisted into avarice and perpetual victimhood, we see the lived out experience of our ill fated attempts at self-deification.  Without reference to The Most High God whose Kingdom and Word shall endure forever, we are left with the paltry heights of man’s fallen corruption, like those who celebrate the heaping up of dung hills while ignoring the majesty of soaring mountain peaks behind them.  With eyes blinded, ears deafened, minds darkened, and hearts hardened against the truth of The Most High, the heights of human achievement become ever deepening caverns into which we fall.

 

And yet, our time is not really so unlike that in which the Archangel Gabriel appeared to the Virgin Mary, announcing glad and holy tidings.  Then as now, the strong sought and seized power, the impious manipulated the material world to their passions, the academics thought up justifications for violence and debauchery, and the hearts of the faithful huddled in this worldly darkness enlightened by the Word of the Lord, awaiting the coming of His Word Made Flesh who would scatter all darkness and usher in a never-ending age of light and life. To blessed Mary this Word of the Lord came, and in her was conceived by the power of God Almighty, the Son of the Highest.  In her womb was the greatest miracle ever to be contemplated, greater even than the creation of the universe itself:  Jesus, fully God according to the indivisible essence of His Father, and fully man according to the sinless humanity He received of His mother, united in one Divine Person through whom mankind would be reconciled to the Most Holy Trinity.  The Incarnation of Jesus is the Advent of the Word of God Made Flesh who dwells among us, full of grace and truth, who is Himself the light and life of the world.  This is the Word which was spoken to create the cosmos, now united to His creation by inseparable bonds in the Person of Jesus Christ, to whom has been given the Eternal Kingdom in which forgiveness, life, and salvation are poured out freely by grace to all who repent and believe in Him.  This is the Light of World which no darkness can overcome, or according to their own fallen powers of reason, even comprehend.  This is Jesus, born of Mary, the Son of the Highest.

 

To be sure, the lure of self important scholars, politicians, and the hedonistic rabble, seated upon the dunghills of their various theories and accomplishments, calling out for applause and obeisance from their dark caverns of misery, remain among us to this day.  There will always be another Darwin, Nietzsche, Freud, or a myriad of their intellectually and spiritually blind disciples calling the world to follow them into ever deeper and darker recesses of human depravity.  But despite them all, the Light of the World still shines forth in the Incarnate Word of God who dwells among us, who has reconciled God and man in His own Person through His life, death, and resurrection.  Like blessed Mary, the Word of the Lord comes to us in the darkness of our world and declares us blessed and highly favored by the wonders of His grace.  To us the angelic choir sings the Gloria in Excelsis, inviting our voices to join theirs as we sing glory to God in the Highest, and on earth, peace, good will toward men. 

 

Hear the Word of the Lord come to you this day, to open your eyes that you may see, unstop your ears that you may hear, uncloud your mind that you may perceive, and unburden your soul that you may believe all that the Son of the Highest has done for you.  And may we all, with the Blessed Virgin Mary, respond in faith that we are the servants of the Lord, and that the saving grace of the Lord’s Gospel be fulfilled in us according to His Eternal Word.  Amen.

Turn Again Our Captivity: An Advent Meditation on Psalm 126

When the Lord turned again the captivity of Zion,

we were like them that dream.

Then was our mouth filled with laughter,

and our tongue with singing:

then said they among the heathen,

The Lord hath done great things for them.

The Lord hath done great things for us;

whereof we are glad.

 

 Turn again our captivity, O Lord,

as the streams in the south.

They that sow in tears shall reap in joy.

He that goeth forth and weepeth,

bearing precious seed,

shall doubtless come again with rejoicing,

bringing his sheaves with him.

 

Our Hebrew forefathers knew a thing or two about captivity and freedom.  There had been over a thousand years between Abraham and the writing of this Psalm, and nearly another thousand would come between it and the time of Jesus.  The Hebrews knew the bitterness of being taken captive, having faithless and traitorous leaders, of being punished for their collective rejection of God’s Law and Gospel to chase after other gods.  They had their captivities set to writing, together with the words of the Prophets, so that they might be a continuous living testimony to the judgment and redemption of the Living God.

 

When Jesus came as God Incarnate to fulfill the Law and the Prophets, to give His life as a ransom for many, substituting His righteousness for our evil and paying our debt of justice before Almighty God through His suffering and death on the cross, the Hebrews had carried the testimonies of God for thousands of years already.  They knew through the revelation of God’s Word that their captivity and oppression among the nations, be it by the Egyptians, the Philistines, the Assyrians, the Babylonians, or the Romans, was a type and shadow of their spiritual captivity to sin, death, hell, and the power of the devil.  When Jesus came to free them of their spiritual captivity, He did not immediately free them from their captivity to foreign tyrants which was a temporal punishment for their sin of rejecting Him.  Instead, Jesus freed their bodies and souls from the tyranny of death and hell, liberating them from enemies who would enslave and torment them forever.  The Hebrew people, together with their Christian brothers and sisters, would know the rising tides of another two thousand years of captivity, persecution, and tyrants, down to our present day.  However, the Word of the Lord remained among them, calling all to faith and repentance, and offering the free gift of forgiveness, grace, and eternal life to all who would follow Jesus, no matter the social or political calamities of various times and places.  The liberation of Jesus’ people by grace through faith in His Vicarious Atonement meant a freedom which earthly tyrants could not conquer, and which spiritual enemies could not take away.  It is a victory written in the shed blood of the Son of God, testified by the Holy Spirit, and received by the Father, so that every name of every repentant sinner written in that Book is saved forever.

 

And so we come to our day, and our place in a land once established in righteousness and liberty, with the ascent of mind and spirit to the eternal principles of God written in the fabric of the created world.  This land, this people, once affirmed that man was created by God with unalienable rights and obligations to one another, reflected in the divine image God has placed upon them.  They set down their convictions in words and documents which framed our nation, making America a land free to preach the Gospel of Jesus Christ, and all men free to follow their conscience in their pursuit of God.  Knowing that our nation would only survive and thrive by Divine Providence, and that such providential grace in the affairs of nations was predicated on the virtue and faith of her people, churches were protected and held sacrosanct against the meddling and perversion of secular leaders, with the unfettered preaching and teaching of God’s Law and Gospel ringing from pulpits, schools, and civic institutions.  As any survey of our history will reveal, calls to faith and repentance were once as common in our churches as they were in our public square, calling our people to return to God that they might live free in both body and soul, now and in eternity.

 

Yet here we sit at the turning of our age.  Churches are attacked both physically and legally in an effort to silence the preaching of Jesus’ Law and Gospel.  Politicians arrogate to themselves the power to regulate the worship of people, and to moderate their preaching to conform to political norms.  Atheists, Anarchists, and Marxists roam the streets, proclaiming godlessness through violence, and seeking to overturn the Constitutional Republic once formed on the conviction that man lives as beneficiary of Divine Providence through faith and virtue, where government is endowed by God only to preserve the rights of man He has given them.  Today, our politicians and leaders sell influence to foreign powers, collude with oligarchic captains of industry, undermine the divine rights of mankind, and pollute the minds of the young with corruption, vanity, and wickedness.  We stand at the precipice of our age, and those with eyes to see and ears to hear know the Eternal Word of the Lord endures forever, that the great abyss of our calamitous judgment yawns before us should the Lord God Almighty withdrawn His hand of Providence from us as punishment for our sins.  We see ourselves once again heading into temporal captivity, a fate we have earned because our people have grown wanton after secular gods with self-centered passions, and our churches have failed to preach and teach faithfully while this generation learned instead to despise the gifts of God.

 

Even so, the Lord Jesus comes into the darkness of our captivity to bring us His Living Word once again.  His Incarnation meets us anew in our sorrow, in our judgment, and in our misery justly earned, to offer us the free gift of His grace and salvation which He earned for us on His Cross.  His calls comes with the power of His Holy Spirit to enliven and enlighten the fallen hearts of men, to give new birth from above by Water and Spirit, that all who repent and believe in Him might live free forever.  This is the Gospel which our people once knew, and which they must learn again, if we will be free from the tyrants of soul and body.  The Lord of Glory has shown from the beginning of time His grace and providence for all those who put their trust in Him, and His judgment upon all those who refuse and repudiate Him.  Hear the Word of the Lord come to you again this day, that you might rise once again in His grace and mercy by faith, living in Jesus’ life, victory, and love, rebuilding brick by brick and soul by soul the families, churches, schools, and civic institutions now teetering upon ruin.  And as that Word enlivens your heart and frees you from your enemies, speak it forth to all those around you, that together living free, we may sing once again with the ancient Hebrews:

 

When the Lord turned again the captivity of Zion,

we were like them that dream.

Then was our mouth filled with laughter,

and our tongue with singing:

then said they among the heathen,

The Lord hath done great things for them.

The Lord hath done great things for us;

whereof we are glad.

Amen.