Jeremy Duncan: If we let it, this little offhand observation, this detail that Luke includes in the Christmas story, I think it can do more to shape our image of the divine reflected back to us than almost anything else in the Christmas tale. Where did God choose to be born? It wasn't just a stable. It was a family, and that shapes who Jesus becomes. Thanks for being here at church, and thanks for being here on this last stop in our journey through Advent, and in particular, our journey through the songs of Advent.
This year, we're taking our cues from the gospel of Luke. We're stopping off at each of the four canticles that are offered to us in Luke's version of the Christmas story. So far, we've looked at Mary's Magnificat, her manifesto for her imagination of the kingdom of God her son would bring. We've looked at the Benedictus, Zechariah's explosion of praise after his mouth is finally opened at the birth of his son, John the Baptist. Last week, we joined with the shepherds in singing Gloria in Excelsius.
I think one of the real highlights of the Christmas story every year. So it's angels in the sky and the shepherds in the field, and, of course, the proclamation of the birth of salvation to the world. Really, kinda one of those iconic moments in the Christmas story. It's there in every children's Christmas choir and represented in every nativity display. I know the one thing my five year old absolutely wanted to see this Christmas was the angel on top of our tree at home.
Very insistent about that. But I think that's because it feels suitably grand. The sky is lit up with angels singing, all in wild contrast to the blue collar shepherds just going about their business. And I think that's what I loved about Bobby's sermon last week, the way she highlighted that juxtaposition for us. Because the shepherds aren't special.
They don't receive the wild superlatives in their introduction like Elizabeth and Zechariah do. They're just some dudes doing their jobs when the divine shows up in the sky. And that's pretty neat in and of itself. Your ordinary evening is good enough for God. But there's also some theological significance to this scene.
Because when the angels appear, they sing for God and they say, glory to God in the highest heaven and on earth, peace to those on whom God's favor falls. Now it's a good line. Assuming that is, you can picture yourself among those on whom God's favor falls. And intellectually, theologically, if we're in a bible study trying to get the right answers, I mean, sure, we could all say that the divine falls on all of us. I think the truth is sometimes a little harder to feel than to say.
And so recognizing at Christmas that when the angels come and the song of God's glory is sung and the proclamation of God's favor is made, it doesn't come to the righteous or to the blameless, not even to those who are out looking for it, just to simply those doing their jobs uninterested in religious trappings. Maybe even those, maybe a little disenchanted with the idea of even chasing divine favor. I think that's important to know that God's favor rests even on those of us who can't make heads or tails of religion because that's Christmas in a nutshell, that God comes to find us regardless. Today, we have one final Christmas song. It's a canticle of Simeon called the nunc dimitus.
First, let's pray. God of grace and of peace, you come to us not only in spectacle, but often in the ordinary moments of ordinary lives. You meet shepherds at work or parents who is doing what is required of them, people who are tired and distracted, perhaps even those of us who don't have time to look for you. And at Christmas, you remind us that your favor does not rest on the special or the blameless or even the especially prepared, but all of us simply willing to receive your gifts. As we gather today one last time before the Christ child arrives, would you quiet our striving, loosen our grip on who we think we need to be for you so that you might grant us eyes to see your presence.
Perhaps where we least expect, with hearts open enough to receive so that even our ordinary lives would be welcoming for divine love. As we wait and we hope, as we listen, would you meet us here this Christmas once again? In the precious name of the Christ we await. We pray. Amen.
Today, we actually have a born baby Jesus. Although, he is still an infant, so I'm gonna call this a Christmas story. And he's brought to the temple and presented to the Lord. And so today, we will cover the waiting, the purification rites, the ordis amore, and then finally the dismissed. But first, why don't I read through our text for today?
This is our last Sunday of Advent. We are just steps now from our celebration of the birth of Christ, and this is Luke chapter two starting in verse 22. When the time came for the purification rights required by the law of Moses, Joseph and Mary took him to Jerusalem to present him to the Lord. As it's written in the law of the Lord, every firstborn male is to be consecrated to the Lord. And to offer a sacrifice in keeping with what is said in the law of the Lord, a pair of doves or two young pigeons.
Now there's a man in Jerusalem named Simeon who was righteous and devout, and he was waiting for the consolation of Israel and the holy spirit was on him. And it had been revealed to him by the spirit that he would not die before he had seen the Lord's Messiah. So moved by the spirit, he went to the temple courts. And when the parents brought in the child Jesus to do for him what the custom of the law required, Simeon took him in his arms and praised God singing, Sovereign Lord, as you have promised, you may now dismiss your servant in peace. For my eyes have seen your salvation, which you have prepared in the sight of the nations.
A light for revelation to the Gentiles and the glory of your people Israel. The child's father and mother marveled at what had been said about him. Then Simeon blessed them and said to Mary his mother, this child is destined to cause the falling and rising of many in Israel and to be a sign that will be spoken against. So that the thoughts of many hearts will be revealed. And a sword will pierce your soul too.
Luke two verses 22 through 35. And right in the middle there, that was our song for this week. A song often called the nunc dimitus, which is Latin for now you dismiss. And that's sort of Simeon's final prayer. Right?
He's an old man waiting his whole life to see the Messiah. He's now finally received what he's longed for and ready to be dismissed. Before we jump in though, let's talk about that for a second. Christmas is kind of the season of waiting. We know this.
Advent means coming or arrival, but the whole season of Advent is about waiting for that arrival. And in fact, I have two young kids at home, which means all of December is all about waiting somewhat impatiently for Christmas. Now, what are we waiting for exactly? That's a good question. My daughter is five, and her birthday comes just a couple short weeks after Christmas.
So right now, she is torn between two looming celebrations on the horizon. And so any given day, either of them could take precedence in our house. We are talking at least as much about birthdays as we are about Christmas, which is fine. It's birthday celebrations all the way down, I guess, really. My son, on the other hand, is 12, and he has become much more calculated in his Christmas waiting.
Earlier this season, I asked him what he thought he might want for Christmas. And he said to me, dad, I think this year, I'm just gonna get cash. I'm like, one, that's not how any of this works. You don't just decide what you're gonna get. And two, no, you're not just getting cash this year.
Although, for interest sake, I did ask him what he might want to do with all that cash. And basically, he told me he's just looking to fund his off campus pizza lunch fund. We're in grade seven now, which means he's allowed to leave school at the lunch hour, which means buying a slice of pizza around the corner is like peak independence for a 12 year old. Like, this is the height of it all. So honestly, I get it.
Although, buddy, you are not getting cash for Christmas. Sorry. Still, Christmas is about waiting. It's not a bug. It's a feature of the holiday.
And apparently, it's been built in from the very beginning. Simeon here has been waiting very long time. In fact, there's only one thing he wants left at Christmas, and that's to hold the Messiah. So let's take a look at this story because it really is an interesting one. And it starts in an interesting place.
We read that when the time came for the purification rights required by the law of Moses, Joseph and Mary took Jesus to Jerusalem to present him to the Lord. Now the thing is, there's a few references here that are kind of well, they're confusing. And the NIV, as it tends to do, is try to clean it up for us. What the text really says here is that when the time came for their purification, they brought Jesus to Jerusalem. The problem with that is that only Mary needs to be purified.
Jesus needs to be consecrated. And Joseph, well, I mean, he's just there for the ride. And so from very early in our manuscript history, we have evidence of scribes making corrections here, and they're changing the pronoun from they to her purification. We have a bit of a discrepancy as well in that after having a boy child, Mary would have had a first purification rite eight days after the birth, like this story, but then she wouldn't have offered her sacrifices for another thirty three days after that. Now one of the assumptions we have about the gospel writer of Luke is that he's a Gentile.
He's he's not a Jewish person. And so the most likely explanation here for what we read in Luke is that he just is simply not 100% on top of all the very intricate details of all the Jewish purification rites. He's an outsider looking in after all. He's drawn to Jesus, but he's reflecting on traditions that are largely unfamiliar to him. Oh, fascinating.
And that's it. I think in his fascination, Luke gets what is the most important detail exactly correct. You see, we read that Mary offers two young pigeons as her sacrifice. And that's important. Because if we flip all the way back to Leviticus chapter 12 to where the relevant rules are recorded, this is what we read.
These are the regulations for the woman who gives birth to a boy or a girl. She has to bring a lamb. But if she can't afford one, she can bring two doves or two young pigeons. I think it's very possible that Luke doesn't understand all the ins and outs of the Hebrew system. I'll be honest.
I absolutely do not. I've spent a lot of time each week looking things up and listening to Jewish interpreters when I teach. But what Luke notices, even as an outsider, what he understands instinctively is that Mary and Joseph are faithful, that Jesus is consecrated as he should be, but that this whole scene is an important window into Jesus' childhood. Because Jesus is poor. Now, that's not a value judgment, but it is an important part of Luke's narrative.
Luke sees Jesus very much as an economic catalyst for change, a savior who will save us from our greed. As an example, in the sermon on the mount in Matthew, when Jesus offers one of his most famous lines anywhere in the New Testament, Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven. Luke hears the same speech, but what he remembers is, blessed are you who are poor, for yours is the kingdom of God. For Luke, Jesus' concern for the poor is not born out of some bourgeoisie guilt or a savior complex from the top down. For Luke, Jesus' entire life, including the family that he's born into, all of this is a reflection of God's concern for the least.
And oftentimes at Christmas, we talk about the helplessness of the Christ child, the way that God makes God's self dependent on us. Just a few weeks ago, we talked about how that dependency goes all the way down into the way that God trusts Mary to raise Jesus right. Here, what Luke recognizes in this little offhand detail is that God offers the divine up to the full human experience, including the experience of what it's like to grow up without everything you need. I think that's probably more important than we realize. I think it's why Luke sees this moment.
And even if he doesn't fully grasp all the intricacies of Jewish purification rights, he knows something really important is going on here. Because he sees that God's theological concerns for the poor are reflected back in the lived circumstance of Jesus' childhood. That the incarnation is more than merely God in human flesh. It is God in human experience. And so everything that Jesus will teach and preach and call the world toward, the man that Jesus will grow up to be, these are more than just ideas that exist in the mind of God.
All of this is how God responds to what it's like being human. In other words, God's theology is not just theoretical. It is lived out in the human story. And I think that does something for us when later we will read verses like, whatever you've done for the least of these, you've done for me. It's possible that is far less abstract and esoteric than we think it is.
This is perhaps simply just a reflection of Jesus remembering what it was like to grow up in a household that only had two pigeons to offer. I think if we let it, this little offhand observation, this detail that Luke includes in the Christmas story, I think it can do more to shape our image of the divine reflected back to us than almost anything else in the Christmas tale. Where did God choose to be born? It wasn't just a stable. It was a family.
And that shapes who Jesus becomes. So Mary offers her pigeons. And Jesus is consecrated and there was a man in Jerusalem called Simeon. Now the second part of the story, before we get to his song, is also kind of intriguing. We find that Simeon was righteous and devout, waiting for the consolation of Israel, and the Holy Spirit was on him.
Interestingly, we've kind of flipped back to where we were two weeks ago with this introduction. If you remember last week, it was shepherds, dudes just doing their jobs. But before that came Zechariah and Elizabeth, and they were righteous and blameless. I like this bit in the Christmas story. I like that Zechariah and Elizabeth and Simeon all get their due credit, righteous and blameless and devout.
But as readers, we're also reminded that God draws near to all of us irrespective of our accolades. However, there is some foreshadowing going on here. We're told that Simeon is waiting for the consolation of Israel. And the term there is paraclassim. Now that can mean comfort, consolation.
It can mean encouragement, or even emboldening. In fact, the Jewish people even used the Hebrew equivalent, Menechem, to describe the Messiah, the comforter. But this word, Paraclassen, might be familiar to us if you remember that the writer of the Gospel of Luke gives the Holy Spirit the title, the Paraclete, the comforter. Same word, same concept used to describe God, the divine comforter. So here we have Simeon filled with the holy spirit, waiting for the paraclassen of Israel, and his only wish is to hold the messiah who would then send the Paraclete to comfort the entire world.
Sometimes I think our biggest, boldest, most audacious imaginations of God are good, and yet somehow we find that God is still better. One of the guiding presuppositions in my theology is that when I think I have exhausted my imagination for God's grace, that's probably a sign I need to begin again. Because bigger, more loving, more graceful than I thought. And yet, our lack of imagination is not a barrier. And so Simeon is promised that he will get to see this Messiah before he dies.
And so prompted by spirit, he goes to the temple. And when the parents brought the child, he took him in his arms and sang his song. Now I wonder about this. How did this go down exactly? For some of you, going to church, handing your infant over to some stranger who says, hey.
Can I hold him? That sounds absurd to you. I remember when we first brought our son home 12 ago, we were in the final months of planning for the launch of Commons Church. That meant my son got handed around to whoever was around pretty much every Sunday as we were working. He's 12 years old now.
He's in junior high. You're not gonna get to hold him. But I know there are a bunch of you here in this room that held him as an infant, which is kind of wild to think about. Still, this is what Simeon sings. Sovereign Lord, just as you promised, you may now dismiss your servant in peace.
For my eyes have seen the salvation which you prepared in the sight of all nations, a light for revelation to the Gentiles and the glory of your people, Israel. Couple things here. First, Simeon may have been waiting his whole life for the consolation of Israel, but he does now see a larger story at play. And we actually talked about this in the fall. We went through the story of Sarah and Abraham, and we read, I will bless you and make you a great name so that you can be a blessing.
All peoples on earth will be blessed through you. That idea is absolutely core to the Hebrew identity throughout the Hebrew scriptures. The blessing is not meant to be hoarded and guarded. Blessing is not meant to be maintained and contained. What you are given, you are meant to give away.
Now, do the Jewish people live up to that? Do any of us live up to that? Well, occasionally, maybe. But I think what's important to see here is just how deeply this idea is in the Hebrew identity. Blessing is meant to be shared.
I think that's important, particularly right now in our political climate where there's a lot of talk about me and mine. In fact, in Christian thought, there's something called the Ordis Amore. That means the order of loves. And it's a way to think about our call to generosity and care and kindness in relationship to our responsibilities and our obligations in the world. It is not, however, a way to excuse ourself from caring for our neighbor.
So, for example, I have certain obligations to my kids and to my wife that exceed my obligations to my friends. It's just because of the nature of the relationship and the commitments that I've made throughout my life. That's a way for me to order my loves. So as an extreme example here, if I had one last tiny morsel of food, I would give it to my kids before I would give it to my neighbor. I would not, however, feed my kids cake before my neighbor had bread.
Sorry, guys. Point is there is room for levels of our relationships. There's room for intensity of obligation and responsibility, but to order love well is actually about calling us to move past the me and mine limit that comes naturally to us. In fact, the whole intent of the Ordist is to say, love does not stop at me and mine. And so here, Simeon finally holding the Christ child in his arms.
Everything he's been waiting for all his life, what he knows now is that the glory of his people, Israel, is really the light that shines for everyone everywhere. In other words, good news for us has to become good news for those near us. If it's not, it's not gospel. And if it's not gospel, then maybe it's not really Christmas we're celebrating after all. Here's the thing.
It's fashionable at times to decry the excess and the consumerism of Christmas. By the way, I'm here for all of that. There is no criticism of excess in Western culture that goes too far in my opinion. At the same time, though, I'm a parent. The truth is I want my kids to be excited about what's under the Christmas tree.
I want them to have fun that day and enjoy. I want them to build good memories around the season. I want them to get exactly what they wanted just like Simeon did. But what I really want is that over the course of their lives, every good gift they receive, at Christmas or otherwise, that a lifetime of blessing would slowly help them realize that every good thing that comes to them can be something good for those near them as well. And if I'm being honest, I think that's really what I want for myself this Christmas too.
Because it's easy to get what we want. It's much harder to become who we want to be. And at its best, I think Christmas can actually help us get there. But here's the bittersweet in the symphony. In the NIV, we read, sovereign lord, as you have promised, you may now dismiss your servant in peace.
And honestly, I like that. I mean, it sounds nice. It's poetic, truthfully. The text, however, is a little more dramatic than that. What Simeon sings literally is something more like, now Lord, you are dismissing your servant in peace because I've seen the salvation you promised.
And what that means is that this moment here, holding this child, singing this song, seeing what he's been waiting for all this time, year after year after year without resolution, now finally made real, this is Simeon being dismissed. And what does that mean exactly? Well, the word is ambiguous. It could be set free, acquitted or pardoned, released from a painful condition, sent on your way. Divorced is actually technically the same word here.
But let's be honest. In the context of the story, the way it's played out, all the references to his age and his waiting, we know what this is all about. This is Simeon's last moment. Because this story is very much about the tension between our sense of peace and our unresolved hopes for the world. And look, get it.
That might not seem like a feel good topic at Christmas, especially just seventy two hours from the celebration of the birth of Christ. An old man who dies at peace. But the truth is Simeon's story is part of Christmas every single year for all of us. That we, all of us, behold the birth of a child. We celebrate the arrival of salvation.
We trust that he will be called wonderful counselor, mighty God, everlasting father, that the government will be on his shoulders, and he will finally legalize peace. And we sing our songs, and we light our candles, and we hold the child in our memory, and then we all wake up on December 26. And then, like Simeon, we all have to make peace with the fact that we are part of a story that is bigger than our lifetimes. I think this is both the terror and the joy of faith, that we have to believe in something we won't get to see resolved, that we get to believe in something that is too big for our lifetime to contain. And, Simeon, the nunc dimitus, this final song of Christmas is about how much peace there can be in that realization, how much peace there is in refusing to believe that this is all there is to the story.
See, what I hold on to from Simeon's song is that there's a narrative around me that wants to convince me that the only thing I can believe in are the things I can see and prove and taste and touch, that there is no point putting my faith in anything beyond the horizon of my sight. And what Christmas tells me every year is that the only thing worth putting in is bigger than my lifetime. The only trees worth planting are the ones I won't sit in the shade of. The only stories worth giving my life to are the ones where I slowly learn that every good thing that comes to me is meant to play a part in making the world better for those near me. And that's why Simeon's story isn't a sad song.
It's the only song that any of us will ever have. The invitation to move our slice of the world slowly toward the salvation of all things, and the peace to know that we left what we touched better because of what we believed was possible for everyone. There was once a man in Jerusalem called Simeon who was righteous and devout. He was waiting for the consolation of Israel, and the Holy Spirit was on him. And he lived to see the start of a story that is still unfolding with us today, this Christmas.
He waited his whole long life to hold salvation. And when he finally does, what does he do? He hands it back because that's how hope works. Like any good gift, it is meant to be received and then sent back out into the world. Through our love and kindness and our generosity and grace and the conviction that the story is still unfolding.
And, that's what Christmas is about, that we get to hold the Christ child just long enough to allow him to loosen our grip on what is ours. And then to open our hearts once again to a world that God refuses to give up on. Let's pray. God, we stand now just hours before the celebration of your arrival. And we're reminded in this moment that all the good things we are gifted with, the gifts under our tree, the relationships that we love, your son sent to us.
None of this is meant for us to hold on to, to guard, to protect, but only for us to offer back to the world around us. With more grace, more generosity, more peace, more kindness, more of a life that looks like your self giving sacrifice. God, this Christmas, might we slowly begin to believe that every good thing we have been given is both a responsibility and an opportunity to move the story back toward you. And in that, might we slowly be shaped into the people you imagine us to become. In the precious name of the one we await this Christmas, we pray.
Amen. Hey. Jeremy here, and thanks for listening to our podcast. If you're intrigued by the work that we're doing here at Commons, you can head to our website, commons.church, for more information. You can find us on all of the socials commonschurch.
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Have a great week. We'll talk to you soon.