“Lord, now you let your servant depart in peace according to your word.” The words of this Nunc Dimittis, Latin for the first words of this song, often wash over us with a poetic force, but as Simeon spoke them, they are quite matter of fact. Simeon has the actual fulfillment of God’s promises in his arms.  Not just a promise to him, but a promise to the entire world that was thousands of years old when Simeon was born. 

These words tell us why we celebrated Christmas. It is painfully clear that the world cannot create or maintain peace.  Terrorist activity around the world and our country.  A role model fallen from grace. Family fights and arguments over the holidays. We grieve for a world so lost without this peace, but peace has come in the salvation that God brings about through God becoming flesh. A peace of Christmas that heaven cannot contain so it breaks into this world at the incarnation and the angels proclaim.

Simeon was old but his life was not filled with the things of old age – he waited.  He waited at the Temple.  He waited on the Lord.  He took the promise of God personally and daily he entered the Temple to pray to the Lord and wait upon the Lord to fulfill the promise and give the eyes of an old man the blessing of seeing the promised future unfold. Not an aimless waiting for death, nor a waiting for perfect happiness or fulfillment in this life. But it is a waiting on the timing of the Lord. Simeon saw with the clear vision of faith and knew his time of waiting was over.  He had seen the Lord’s salvation and now his life was full.

Unfortunately, Simeon’s prayer has been trivialized for centuries. It’s the “I will die happy if” version of the prayer. Most of us have uttered that phrase… “I will die happy if I get that job; I will die happy if she will marry me.”  In fact, there is a book out there entitled Die Happy: 499 Things A Guy’s Gotta Do While He Still Can. The blurb for the book says, “Face it. There are some things in life that come with an expiration date.”

But you see, Simeon’s prayer is not just about dying in peace.  Seeing Jesus is not just another thing to check off the bucket list.  It’s about living in the promises of God fulfilled in Christ and what He has done for us on the cross.  Being ‘dismissed’ was not just a synonym for death. It also meant that one was being released from some obligation from a master, such as sentry duty.  It is clear that Simeon had been on such duty.  He waited and prayed each day, as did Anna, to see God’s salvation.  And now, just as he took Jesus in his arms, his sentry duty was over for God had kept His promise of salvation for His people.

Seeing the salvation of God gives us a peace that comes from knowing that we can face death without fear; a peace that allows us to live in God’s purposes for our lives; a peace that leads us to grateful praise and joy; a peace that means we can rest from searching for answers and God because God Himself comes to us.  Peace is not having our dreams come true. Peace is seeing God’s promises come true. Like Simeon, you have been led here today by God’s Holy Spirit.  Like Simeon, God has fulfilled His promise to you.  Jesus was there for Simeon. He’s there for you.

It might surprise you that in the early years of the Reformation little distinguished the Lutheran Divine Service from the Roman Mass -- not ceremony or vestment or words or even language. Only what was proclaimed from the pulpit loud and clear and a little addition to the Mass made by Luther.  Luther’s greatest modification to the mass was to add the Song of Simeon as the post communion song. The peace he talks about is perfect contentment which seeks no more.  We sing this after Communion because that is the same peace that we have after receiving Jesus’ body and blood.  No more is needed.  Our sins are completely and utterly forgiven.  God’s promise is fulfilled.

Though we don’t see Jesus just as Simeon did, we see Him working through His means of grace.  When we see God’s salvation in God’s living Word, through the waters of Baptism, and in the bread and wine, His very body and blood given and shed for the forgiveness of our sins. Having seen Christ in the Sacrament, receiving Him in our bodies and souls, we join Simeon in his inspired song.  Each time we hear God’s forgiveness, each time we taste God’s forgiveness, we have that peace in which we can depart.  It’s no accident that after we receive the body and blood of the Lord, we hear the blessing, “Depart in peace.”

Because of this Gospel we are not without hope, not without grace to sustain us, not without purpose to our waiting, and not without all we need to be ready now and every day to meet our Lord and enter into His heavenly glory where He has prepared a place for us, that we may be where He is.