The Temple was a busy place; crowds of people at any time of the day and this day, when Jesus was presented in the Temple, was no different. Crowds of people would have been milling around the temple worshipping, praying, buying animals for the sacrifices, chatting with each other, catching up with friends and family.
But in the midst of the busy crowd was Simeon - an oasis of calm amidst the frenetic activity. We read in verse 25: “Simeon was righteous and devout. He was waiting…”
His whole life had been devoted to waiting: waiting for the one God would send for the consolation of Israel. He knew his Scriptures, he knew his God and he knew that the promised Messiah would come. Simeon knew that this would happen before he faced death. In verse 26 we read, “It had been revealed to him by the Holy Spirit that he would not die before he had seen the Lord’s Christ.”
Simeon was waiting…
We can’t imagine what it was that Simeon saw in the holy family so that he knew this was the child he had been waiting for. I assume Mary and Joseph and the child looked much the same as any other family in the Temple on that day. But, in verse 27, we are simply told that, “Simeon was moved by the Spirit”.
He went into the temple courts, he saw the holy family, his eyes fixed on the baby Jesus and Simeon knew: he knew that this was the one he had been waiting for, the one that Israel had been waiting for…
Here was Mary and Joseph, holding their two turtle doves for the sacrifice and, unbeknownst to them, holding the sacrifice for the sins of the world in their arms.
But Simeon knew…and he took the baby Jesus in his arms and he praised God: “Sovereign Lord, as you have promised, you now dismiss your servant in peace. For my eyes have seen your salvation, which you have prepared in the sight of all people.”
We can only marvel at the depth of Simeon’s faith and the depth of his wisdom. Who would have thought that the salvation of Israel would come in the form of a 40-day old baby? Who would have been looking to a young child as the long promised consolation of Israel? Perhaps we would have been on the look out for a wise Pharisee, or a learned Sadducee, or maybe a freedom fighter willing to take on the strength of the Roman occupying armies. But Simeon is so wise and so faithful – and so tuned in to God – that he looks beyond the obvious and finds God in the ordinary, in the mundane, in the shape of a frail and vulnerable baby.
I was saying just a few weeks ago, when preaching on the miracle at Cana, that God comes to us in the mundane and that true spirituality is being able to find him there: that God doesn’t want to take us out of our lives into a spiritual realm but wants us to find the spiritual realm in our every day lives. Sometimes, we are so busy looking for God over there that we forget how to find him over here…Sometimes, we are so busy looking for the miraculous and the supernatural, that we miss the miraculous and the supernatural in our midst: the miraculous gift of salvation in the ordinary things of life. We need to develop spiritual insight like Simeon that recognises God in the simple things in life and to find our salvation there.
And, in the same scene, we come across Anna, another wise old age pensioner; 84 years old, dedicated to worship and the spiritual disciplines. We are told in verse 37, “She never left the temple but worshipped night and day, fasting and praying.” What incredible faith this woman had and, like Simeon, she too was enlightened by the Holy Spirit and recognised in Jesus the consolation of Israel.
And Anna doesn’t want to keep the good news to herself. Verse 38, “she spoke about the child to all who were looking forward to the redemption of Israel.” She was an early evangelist for the Lord.
And so, in Simeon and Anna, we have two sides of the same coin represented. In Simeon, we have a metaphor for us finding contentment in our own salvation and the knowledge that we can die in peace because we have met our Saviour. In Anna, we have a metaphor for the need for us to share that good news of salvation with others so that they too may be drawn to the Christ-child. Simeon represents to us confidence in our personal salvation. Anna represents to us the evangelical spirit to which we are all called. So, at this Candlemas, we can rejoice in our own salvation and we can commit ourselves to the task of evangelism.
But we remember that our rejoicing and our calling both come with a tremendous cost. As Simeon said to Mary, “A sword will pierce your heart”. Our salvation, our message, our rejoicing has only been made possible because the Holy Family were prepared to suffer and, most especially, because the Christ-child was prepared to suffer death on the cross for the redemption of our sins.
And so we prepare to come to Communion tonight with grateful hearts for the coming of the Christ-child into our midst, for his presentation to God at the temple and for the salvation that he has won for us. And we seek for ourselves the faith of Simeon and the passion of Anna so that we might respond to our Messiah as is fit and right to do.
Amen.
