Simeon: Luke 2 v 25-35: ‘My eyes have seen your salvation’
Waiting can be a real pain! It’s something that we are less and less used to when it’s now possible to order something from the internet and have it delivered within the hour. We tend to regard time spent waiting as time wasted. However the writer Sue Monk Kidd offers us a very different perspective when she says, ‘I had tended to view waiting as mere passivity. When I looked it up in my dictionary however, I found that the words passive and passion come from the same Latin root. Waiting is both passive and passionate. It’s a vibrant, contemplative work.’ Her words are particularly helpful as we consider Simeon. Having understood that his life would not end until he had seen the promised Messiah, are we to think that he spent his time twiddling his thumbs until he showed up? I think not.
His was a passionate, vibrant kind of waiting rather than the kind of waiting that ends up with us losing the will to live. His life was defined by his openness to the Holy Spirit (v 25-26) and when the Spirit is at work life is rarely boring. It’s not stated explicitly, but his act of blessing Joseph, Mary and Jesus (v 34) suggests that Simeon was a Temple priest, further emphasising that his was an active rather than a passive waiting. His was a patient hope which endured as he lived day to day life with all its light and shade, times of busyness and rest, of health and sickness, of stress and calm.
Not only did his passionate waiting shape his own life; his ardent hope and openness to the Spirit would have touched the lives of many others in the course of his ministry at the Temple. For Simeon waiting was joyous and expectant. It would, of course, be wrong to think that all this joy was unalloyed; there would have been times when the vision grew dim and he wondered whether the Messiah would ever come. But his life’s work came to fruition as he held the child in his arms. We too can embrace passionate and active waiting. We are not called, as we wait for the return of Christ, to gaze upward and be no earthly use. Instead, we need to have a passion for God’s kingdom to grow, for justice and peace to fill the earth, for the binding up of the broken hearted and for deep peace to transform a fractured world.
Over the Christian centuries people have popped up from time to time convinced of the imminence of the return of Christ; they have all been wrong. In order to see the focus of all our hopes it would be better for us to look back to the child in Simeon’s arms. There are two Greek words for the English word ‘time’. ‘Chronos’ means chronological time. I happen to be writing this at 11.15am on a Tuesday morning and will soon be popping downstairs to make a cup of coffee. It’s just another day. ‘Kairos’ is much more about the right time or the opportune moment that lends significance to an event far beyond its place in series of events that took place on a certain day, week, month or year. For us that might be our wedding day, the day we heard that we passed our driving test or the day our child or grandchild was born. In the New Testament kairos moments at those at which God says or does something profoundly significant that reveals, fulfils or transforms. When John the Baptist cries, ‘The time has come…the kingdom of God is near, Repent and believe the good news!’ (Mark 1 v 15), it is the word kairos that is used. The moment is now, says John, it’s time to get off your backsides and do something about it.
As Simeon holds Jesus in his arms we can see that this also is a kairos moment; one that was meant to be. Two people, one at the very end of his life and the other at the very beginning were meant to meet at this precious moment. The text suggests that Simeon wasn’t actually on duty when Jesus was brought in to the Temple but that the Spirit gave him a nudge (v 27) to make sure he did not miss the divine appointment. In poetic words that have been known to generations of Anglicans as the ‘Nunc Dimittis’, sung at evensong week by week, this helpless infant is revealed as the one who has come not just for the people of Israel but the whole world (v 29-32). Simeon, steeped in the traditions of Israel, was able to see a new and further horizon as he gazed at the child who was born for all of humanity.
And then a more sombre note is sounded. Mary has to be prepared for the sword that will pierce her soul as a sword is plunged into the side of her son as he dies on the cross. The child’s relationship with the people of Israel will be ambivalent (v 34) and costly. Not everybody was as open to the Holy Spirit as Simeon, not everyone saw the further horizon he descried. Whilst Jesus certainly is the Messiah he is not going to lead a war of liberation against the Roman occupiers. He will save, reveal and bring glory but only by walking the way of the cross.
Perhaps it is time for us to become more open to the Holy Spirit. We live in a distracted age and we need to give ourselves time to sit, rest, be open and receive. This cannot be done in a quick couple of seconds in the middle of a busy day. There needs to be intentionality, a definite decision that God will be at the heart of our lives rather than an added extra when can find a bit of time. Think of Simeon who waited and waited, and then saw. If we follow his example we will find that our hearts and minds will be more open to God’s presence and his love. We spend so much time skittering along the surface without ever taking the inner journey to uncover the Christ who lives in the deep places of our hearts where the Holy Spirit is present. As we take that journey it will be, as it was for Simeon, a journey of revelation. It won’t always be easy and swords may pierce our souls from time to time. But as we wait on the Lord with expectancy and commitment we might want to spend some time reflecting on the picture before us of Simeon holding the precious child and open our hearts to receive the love revealed at that most wonderful of moments.
Questions: What does ‘active waiting’ mean to you? Have you ever found your faith growing dim? How can we open ourselves more fully to the Holy Spirit?
Prayer: Lord, give us an openness to the Holy Spirit that we may both wait patiently and work actively for the coming of your kingdom. Amen.