Malachi 3.1-5; Hebrews 2.14-end; Luke 2.22-40

WHETHER WE are still enjoying a misspent youth, making the most of a midlife crisis, or growing old disgracefully, we must listen to Simeon, who was ready to die. “Lord, now you are dismissing your servant in peace.” Simeon, the infant Christ in his arms, is saying what is happening to him. Grammatically, the mood is indicative. It is a statement of fact.

The Lord is letting him go. But the Prayer Book’s Nunc dimittis has not misled us all these years. We hear Simeon’s words as an imperative, as a prayer welling from the heart, and echoed by our own. “Lord, now lettest thou thy servant depart in peace.”

“Lord, now — now — let me go in peace.” The goal of our journey is to reach that “now”, to come to the place where, in serenity of spirit, we can say those words with Simeon. Some of us wonder sadly whether we shall ever get there, such is the mess we have made of things. It is not so much that we are afraid to die; it is more that we are overwhelmed by a sense of wasted opportunities — that we have left everything too late.

There are the frivolous regrets. (I shall never learn to play the piano, see the Taj Mahal by moonlight, or reduce my golf handicap to single figures.) Then there are the far-from-frivolous failures. (She died before I could say sorry. I never replied to that letter. I didn’t go to see him.) Graham Greene’s “whisky priest”, who had to face a firing squad at dawn, “felt only an immense disappointment because he had to go to God empty-handed, with nothing done at all” (The Power and the Glory). He was not as alone as he felt.

T. S. Eliot, whom we have turned to a great deal lately, continues to provide startling readings of the infancy narratives. In his Song of Simeon, he accepts the tradition that Simeon was a very old man, although Luke makes no mention of his age.

My life is light, waiting for the death wind,
Like a feather on the back of my hand.

The poet notices — what Luke does tell us — that Simeon was “righteous and devout”. But he also suggests that this is something about Simeon that Simeon had noticed, too. And he thinks that Simeon had enjoyed a relatively comfortable life.

I have kept faith and fast, provided for
   the poor,
Have given and taken honour and ease
There never went any rejected from my door.

Eliot’s Simeon, like the rest of us, has his regrets.

Not for me the martyrdom, the ecstasy
   of thought and prayer
Not for me the ultimate vision.

This startling picture of Simeon as a grumpy old man, slightly sorry for himself, is no doubt far-fetched. (Eliot was remarkably unsentimental about the elderly. “Do not let me hear of the wisdom of old men,” he says in Four Quartets, “but rather of their folly.”) Nevertheless, he has seen something central to the story of the Presentation in the Temple that we do not discern if the halo around Simeon’s head is too dazzling.

Simeon can breathe his Nunc dimittis, neither because of his unblemished piety, nor because of his sterling service to the Temple, nor even because he has lived to see “Israel’s consolation” and the “Lord’s Messiah”. Simeon knows that now, at last, he can go to God because he has seen God’s salvation. Like Mary, he rejoices in “God his Saviour” (Luke 1.46). And, because the child he holds is a light also to the Gentiles, that is our hope, too, as we rue the wreckage of our wasted days.

So what about the unsaid apology, the unanswered letter, and the unpaid visit? If, belatedly, we could repair those omissions — and all the others — we would not be better placed by virtue of those reparations to ask God to take us home. Simeon is not saved by his sanctity, but by his saviour.

The theology of the Nunc dimittis is that of another canticle: “Nothing in my hands I bring, simply to thy cross I cling.” Simeon sees from afar what salvation costs: the sword breaking Mary’s heart, the spear piercing her son’s side.

Whether or not Simeon was old, Anna certainly was. Luke’s lovely little cameo of her is both an affirmation of the elderly and of women’s ministry. She was either 84 or about 100. (The translation “she had been a widow for 84 years” is perfectly possible.) She was, Luke tells us, “a prophetess”. Exactly what that office or order involved we cannot be sure, but clearly it was a ministry recognised by the Temple authorities. (Temple clergy, it seems, were not required to retire at 70.)

Like Simeon, Anna recognised who Jesus was, and she began to tell everyone in earshot. St Paul, who thought that women should keep quiet, would not have approved of her (1 Timothy 2.12).

Text of readings

Malachi 3.1-5
Thus says the Lord God: ¹See, I am sending my messenger to prepare the way before me, and the Lord whom you seek will suddenly come to his temple. The messenger of the covenant in whom you delight – indeed, he is coming, says the LORD of hosts. ²But who can endure the day of his coming, and who can stand when he appears? For he is like a refiner’s fire and like fullers’ soap; ³he will sit as a refiner and purifier of silver, and he will purify the descendants of Levi and refine them like gold and silver, until they present offerings to the LORD in righteousness. ⁴Then the offering of Judah and Jerusalem will be pleasing to the LORD as in the days of old and as in former years.