Song of Simeon's Reprise

I've been thinking about the "songs of Luke's gospel."  Most of them have become canticles we chant more regularly in Morning and Evening Prayer and frequently but less so in our Sunday celebrations of Holy Eucharist.

For the Sunday after Epiphany we will sing with Simeon, his nunc dimittis.  I have already written about how this song has more to it than we'd expect from it's fixture in Compline.  In short, there's much more to it than going to rest peacefully.

It can be understood as celebrating the "next day" of enlightened living with "the nations and . . . your people Israel."  So, not just a happy ending but a glorious beginning is ours now that God has set us free in the person of Jesus, son of Mary.

This is another reminder that to God our lives matter now, and enough that he would be with us as much as possible.  Indeed, there is no higher compliment that God can pay us. It is greater and includes the glory of his having a "chosen people."

Simeon wanted Israel's dream to come true and he did all he could to survive until that assurance was real.  He expected God's love of Israel to be good for the world.  And it was.

He also expected to see a Messiah who would elevate Israel to the high calling of being a blessing that blesses.  Granted Simeon wasn't alone in his expectation.  Many if not most of the Hebrew people were obsessed with the idea, the dream of, the hunger for a champion to set things right.  Sadly, too many of them wanted that "right setting Messiah" to be exclusive, as exclusive as a holiness code or a genealogy.

But Simeon's song is bigger than that.  It sings of more than vengeance and zeal, more than final solutions.  Simeon's freedom and shalom and vision and inclusivity and hope and glory is exactly what God wants for Israel AND the nations, for the whole world.

I've been reading Compline every night since Christmas.  But the dream come true that is Simeon's is as exciting as it is comforting, as inspiring as it is restful.  Some nights it's hard to go to sleep.  But what better way to find rest than in the confidence of the morning already having what it needs?