Date: February 1, 2026

Readings: Hebrews 2:14-18; Luke 2:22-40

Preacher: Sermon by Fr. Travis O'Brian

DEPARTING IN PEACE

            Forty days after his birth, Mary and Joseph bring Jesus to the Temple.  They bring him, in obedience to the Law of Moses, to complete Mary’s “purification” after childbirth and to dedicate their firstborn son to God with a sacrifice of thanksgiving.  In their case, that sacrifice is of “a pair of turtledoves” in place of the usual sheep – a detail that indicates their relative poverty.  These, then, are unremarkable people: a regular family performing their part in the regular duties of their people to God. 

            Yet in the midst of all that regularity, something extraordinary takes place.  As Mary and Joseph enter the Temple, an old man, Simeon, “inspired by the Holy Spirit . . . took Jesus 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 in the presence of all peoples

            A light for revelation to the Gentiles and for the glory of thy people Israel.

 

This well-loved song, which we of course know as the Nunc Dimittis (Latin for the first two words, “now you are dismissing”), is what I want to explore today.  It is at once universal in its scope and deeply personal, touching our greatest vulnerability.  Especially, I want to explore the beautiful hope expressed in Simeon’s welcoming of death as God’s gift.  For that seems to me the true test of faith: trusting God so completely, so freed from all fear, that we are able, with wide open-heartedness, to give thanks to God – knowing even our death to be his good gift.

            Luke tells us that as Simeon entered the Temple, he was “guided by the Holy Spirit.”  What did he see?  Again, nothing extraordinary.  A baby apparently no different than all the other babies brought daily to the Temple for exactly the same purpose.  Yet what did he see?  He saw the fulfillment of God’s promise.  In response, he bursts into song: “now lettest thou thy servant depart in peace, for mine eyes have seen thy salvation.”  Amazing! He’s seen God’s salvation, but what has he seen?  The whole of Jesus’ adult life and ministry, his passion and resurrection, all is still to come.  What God is preparing in the infant Jesus has yet really to begin.  Yet Simeon gives thanks.  For with eyes opened by the Spirit, he sees that what has yet to be completed is complete already.  He sees that the salvation God promises will come is come already.  There is nothing more to desire, because fulfillment is here.  There is nothing more to fear, because joy is already complete. 

“Now lettest thou thy servant depart in peace.”  Simeon welcomes death in a hymn of thanksgiving.  He is free with a freedom for which I pray daily.  I pray that I too might have faith enough, that I might trust God enough, to give thanks for my death.  I pray that I might be free enough from the anxiety that causes me hold onto my life for dear life – as if my life is all I have to live for.  I pray God to free my heart that I too might celebrate Eucharist for my death.

I confess I still have a long way to go.  But I’ve come so far in prayer to see that to be able to give thanks for my own death requires what the mystical tradition calls “resignation.”  We’ve developed a distaste for this word – I sense because we’ve come to think of resignation, incorrectly, as a gesture of indifference.  We think that to practise resignation must mean to consider this world not worth loving, not worth the fight.  But precisely the opposite is true.  We are to practice resignation precisely because we know this world to be “very good;” and good because it is the work of God.  We are to love the world in the way of resignation because to resign the world is to let go of the hold with which we, in our fear of death, so anxiously cling to it, trusting it instead to God’s own hand – the hand, that is, of the giver of all good gifts.

            Resignation is, considered thus, the life of Eucharist.  For to celebrate Eucharist is to give thanks to God for all that we are given – our life and our death.  As we “lift up our hearts,” in our offering of bread and wine and even our bodies as we come to the altar, we return all we receive from God – the whole of our life, the whole of the world which sustains our life – resigning, returning it all from our hand to his.  We let go of our claims to ownership over our lives and over the world, in light of the truth that it is God, not we, who is the author of life.  Our life is not our life, our bodies are not our bodies, our future is not our future, but his life in us, his body in us, his future alive already in us.  To celebrate Eucharist is to let go of ourselves, resign our life and the life of the world, not in indifference, but in praise and thanksgiving – as our response of love to God, trusting all we have and all we are to his goodness.

            The book of Genesis, the story of the Fall, is quite clear: fear of death is a consequence of turning away from the Eucharistic life, the life of complete trust in thanksgiving.  Swayed by the word of Satan, we no longer see or relate to all we receive, all we have no choice in, all we are given, as Love’s good gift.  Instead, all that we do not give ourselves, all which lies outside our grasp and command, we treat as dangerous, indifferent – for not serving our will – and therefore suspicious.  We fear and so seek mastery, in other words, over all to which we are vulnerable.  And to what are we more vulnerable than death?  At the bottom of all desire for self-determination, at the bottom of the world’s pursuit of power to control its own future, lurks fear of death.  That we seek to put all things into our own hand – to grasp and control and manipulate all things and turn them to serve our own will – attests to the fear whose origins are in the whispering of Satan, tempting us to turn from trust and to refuse Eucharist – to refuse, that is, to live by thanksgiving.

            But Simeon’s song is the hymn of the church returning to Eucharist – our song of thanksgiving – trusting that all we receive, we receive from God.  Even our death.  For we, with Simeon, have seen by the light of Christ Jesus, his passion and his resurrection, that even death is entirely in God’s hand.  Therefore, in our Eucharistic remembrance of him, our hearts are widened to celebrate even death (and all that makes us vulnerable) as a good gift, when it comes – for all that comes, comes from God; and all that comes from God is good. 

            Whenever we gather to celebrate the Eucharist, doing, as Mary and Joseph did, our own regular duty to God, something extraordinary happens.  Lifting all we are given to God in thanksgiving, we resign control over our life and over the world and return Lordship to the Creator.  Whenever we gather to celebrate Eucharist, our regular and “bounden duty,” we practise freedom from all fear – and freedom also, as the Letter to the Hebrew says, from Satan.  For Satan works his destructive will by way of the fear that turns us from trusting God to trusting instead only in the promises of power and mastery, the future we are constructing by and for ourselves.  May we, guided by the Holy Spirit, learn to celebrate Eucharist at all times and in all places, and so grow in true freedom day by day.

                                                                                                AMEN