Waiting 2 - Nunc Dimittis

Waiting 2 - Nunc Dimittis

Luke 2.29

Lord, now lettest thou thy servant depart in peace :
according to thy word.

For mine eyes have seen :
thy salvation;

Which thou hast prepared :
before the face of all people;

To be a light to lighten the Gentiles :
and to be the glory of thy people Israel.

The New Testament doesn’t have much obvious worship material. The only prayer is the Our Father. There are a few hymns (or ‘canticles’) as Anglican call them Like the Song of Zazhariah (the Benedictus), the Song of Mary (Maginificat) and some snatches of hymns in the epistles, and some passages in Revelation - and the Nunc Dimittis - the Song of Simeon. 

Strictly speaking I should leave this to February 2nd and the Feast of the Presentation of Christ in the Temple when the story of Simeon and Anna is remembered. 

But it struck me about 10 years ago how important the Nunc Dimittis (Latin for ‘Now, Lord”) is for the celebration of waiting.

The final wisdom in this life is to learn to rest. In the Book of Common Prayer, originally from 1552 and revised in 1662 we pray that we might “pass out time in rest and quietness” and that we “may be godly and quietly governed”.

Isaiah exhorts God’s people:

For thus said the Lord GOD, the Holy One of Israel:

In returning and rest you shall be saved;

in quietness and in trust shall be your strength.

But you refused and said,

‘No! We will flee upon horses’—

therefore you shall flee!

and, ‘We will ride upon swift steeds’—

therefore your pursuers shall be swift!

We are always feeling we should be busy. The devil finds work for idol hands we’re told. But it isn’t necessarily true… I think the devil loves over busy people because he can really mess them up!

I say it’s the final wisdom.. but I don’t mean it’s for elderly folk. It’s something every age group needs…. to know how to stop in a world in which action is everything, productivity matters above all else and frenetic activity is thought to be doing something worthwhile.

The Church is infected by this with its fear of continued shrinkage, rather than the fear of losing a grasp on righteousness and holiness.

We flee on the horses of strategy and projected results. We are pursued by failure.

Happily Jesus never had much of a strategy, he just lived out of the moment and responded to the needs of each day as it came. Simeon and Anna had learned how to wait, how to rest. That’s why Simeon could say he was ready.

I rather fancifully like to think of the Nunc Dimittis as a duet  sung by both Simeon and Anna - though Luke tells us Anna arrived after Simeon had sung it… but even so….

Simeon waits. He slows right down. He is fully aware of the great themes of Death, Judgement, Heaven and Hell we looked at last week. These “Four Last Things” were, I think, his companions in a way that made him able to wait with patience. He knew how to rest. He knew that he was mortal, that God knew him through and through, that he was already part of eternity and that he need never be alone.

How else would he have picked out THIS baby amongst all the others being brought into the temple? Only by slowing down, watching, waiting.

In this photo at Anna appears, at it were, between Joseph and Mary. Luke does not leave her out of the story - though many stained glass windows in our churches do, just showing Simeon… who in Wribbenhall, where this window is, he’s in the next window to the right holding the Christchild. I was so excited when I discovered this!

Anna exemplifies the hidden life of waiting - 84 years old after a marriage of 7 years.  - perhaps 60 years of waiting. She began to learn waiting as a young woman. How did she know to “come up at that instant” as Luke puts it.. without being someone who learned to watch, wait… and so begin to see what was really happening?

Somehow, every Christian needs to learn the art of living at a different pace to the world. In practice that might mean making sure we take breaks out of the world… little retreats, spaces in every day. I means doing things differently, being different. Which is not something Christians think of themselves as in our society. But we are different. We should be different, living in a different time frame.

It’s godly quietness, the slowing down, the waiting where we find the meaning, as we quoted R S Thomas saying last week… and T S Eliot telling us that “the faith, the love, and the hope” are in the waiting.

Watching, waiting… These are essential to knowing what’s really going on.

Slowing down enables us to come to terms with our own mortality, that we are under God’s judgment and mercy. That we are already participants in heavens and that we need to live both here and there with others.

Certainly we must slow down and wait for Christmas, for the Child born “as at this time”, and so we can recognize him when he comes and also recognize what’s going on in the world around us.

Lord, now lettest thou thy servant depart in peace :
according to thy word.

For mine eyes have seen :
thy salvation;