NUNC DIMITTIS

December 27, 1987, 11:00 a.m. Worship Service
John M. Buchanan
Fourth Presbyterian Church, Chicago

Scripture
Isaiah 61:10-62:3
Luke 2:22-35

“Lord, now lettest thou thy servant depart in peace, according to thy word:
for mine eyes have seen thy salvation" Luke 2:29,30 (RSV)

During a one-week period. of time last October the stock market. went
into. free fall... Iran launched a Chinese-made missile from Traqui
territory and hit: a Kuwaite tanker flying an American flag... Mrs. Reagan
checked into Bethesda Naval Hospital for what we thought was a biopsy but
which turned out to be radical surgery.

But the event which commanded our attention, virtually mesmerized the
whole nation, happened in Midland, Texas. An eighteen-month old child,
Jessica McClure, was playing in the back yard, tumbled down a well and~
was trapped underground for 58 hours. For two and one half days, we-could
think of little else: We inquired about her the first thing in the morning

and the last thing at night. "How is she doing? Have they reached her
yet?" . Oo

Time “Magazine gave it-prime coverage and tried to explain.. "The
drama offered the ultimate counterpoint: The dark currents of world events
shared the (T.¥.) screen with the whimper of a helpless toddler crying out
for 'mommy.'" I was in a restaurant in Lancaster, Pennsylvania, savoring a
football victory with. a son,-and when the news came on the television
screen. the whole place quieted down. Having ignored the news about the
rest of the world people crowded in, listening, and were deeply and
inexplicably touched by the drama of the rescue effort.

“Her humming verses from a Winnie-the- -Pooh song tapped the wellspring
of our humanity," Time observed.. "In a confusing week, it was the plight
of this tiny girl that was most readily comprehensible."

Babies do that kind of thing to us. They command our-attention.
They claim our hearts. They cause us to do the most unlikely things. - They
cause otherwise controlled and dignified adults to talk as if they have
taken leave of their senses. It is impossible for most of us to ignore
them. In the Scottish village where we lived for a while, the Mums would
leave the babies in their prams outside the grocery. store, on the sidewalk;

unattended. And everyone who walked by, stopped, peered in, sometimes
lifted. the blanket and said something profound like “cootchie, cootchie"
and chucked a chin before moving on

Why, this dynamic is so powerful, I have actually seen a modern
American family stop in its tracks, repeatedly, to watch a video-tape of a
six-month old, simply sitting in a high chair eating her morning cereal.
Busy homemaker, businessman, medical student, college senior, high school
student - sitting around watching reruns of ‘the baby eating. It's amazing!

William Willimon, preacher to the University at Duke, observes that
not only do we respond to the fact that babies are absolutely vulnerable
and clearly need us, but "somewhere within our deepest selves, we know that
we need babies. Some deep human instinct tells us that babies are a sign
of our human creativity at its best.. One finds it difficult to remain
neutral in the face of such smiling mystery.” (ton A Wild And Windy
Mountain, -p. 26] :

; something like that happens, I think, every time we baptize a child.
There are a lot of sound theological reasons for our traditional
Presbyterian preference for Infant Baptism. And there are a lot of sound
theological reasons for our Presbyterian insistence that baptism is ‘a
public event, to be celebrated in the context of public worship. There is
also great psychological and. emotional wisdom in the event. Something deep
within us is touched... Something important is said when babies are held up
in our midst. Something potentially very significant is cultivated when we
all get in the act. And some deep reservoir. of hope is tapped.

“Lord, now lettest theu 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.. :

That is what an old man said one day, long ago, when he saw an infant
in the Temple and took the infant from his mother's arms and for a moment,
cradled him and looked. at him. I am fond of this incident. I was fond of
it before I had a grandchild, but I am even: more fond of it now.

a

It was “eight days- after the birth. Mary. and Joseph were in the
Temple. wit their. new baby as the law and custom recommended. They were
there for the ceremonial cleansing and purifying which the law prescribed
for new mothers. They brought their new baby, their first-born, to present
him to God, as Jewish parents had been doing for centuries, ever since the
Exodus from Egypt, by way of a ritual sacrifice. That is the situation in
which Mary and Joseph encountered Simeon, a man we assume was elderly.
Luke simply describes him as “devout and waiting for the consolation of
Israel,

That moment when Simeon takes the child in his arms is one of the
most human moments in the Bible.

When there were new babies in our home, and parents would visit, I
was always surprised and pleased and impressed when, without fanfare or
explanation, the new grandmother or grandfather would simply take the baby,
sit down and cradle him or her, even though it had been 25 years,... just

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as gracefully and naturally as eating a meal or reading the paper... There
is, I have experienced, something fundamentally good, maybe even holy, when
your father or mother holds your child. You. have been a channel of
something it seems. Your parent is one generalion closer to the source.
The baby is one generation closer to the goal. But deeper still. you. know
that whenever an adult holds any child that person is somehow powerfully
affirmed. Human life is affirmed

The words Simeon said on the occasion, are surely among the
loveliest:. “Lord, now lettest thou thy servant depart in peace; for mine
eyes have: seen thy salvation."

The Church knows it as the: "Nunc Dimittis," and since sometime “in ‘the
Fifth Century it has been prayed, every evening, year in and year ont,
century in and century out, in monasteries and churches, as part of Evening
Prayers.

I'm. fond of the incident. because of its emotional affinity, but it's
also theologically important. Simeon was saying quite a bit, after all,
when he suggested his nation's salvation rested on this humble child of a
peasant carpenter. Certainly no one else was thinking like that. As I
watched with dismay, the violence in Gaza among the Palestinian péople last
week, I mused about how little things change in.2,000 years. The roles are
reversed but. the situation is the same. Now it is the Palestinian people
who are dispossessed, without land, ordinary rights, or any voice in. their
future. The soldiers now are Israelis. The soldiers were Roman 2,000
years ago.and the Jews were denied their sovereignty and their rights. And
just as a revolution is clearly brewing among the Palestinian people’ today,
so Bethlehem was volatile; the people of Judea: were waiting for the right
political leader to emerge’ to lead the revolt against Rome. In that ‘time,
the traditional hope for the Messiah had a distinctly political and -
military cast to it. The Messiah would surely come and re-establish the
throne of David. That meant kicking the Romans out. . And the presentation
of a peasant child in the Temple was not the most logical place to begin
looking.

So, from the outset the Gospel of Jesus Christ has been in sharp
contrast with common hopes and expectations. The birth of Jesus didn't fit
the prototype Messianic expectations. Jesus, the man certainly didn't
measure up. to the Messianic criteria accepted: by the important people of.
his day. In fact those people mostly concluded that he was either demented
or dangerous, and all agreed -that society would-be well served by his
death. ;

it is the nature of this birth and it is the nature of this faith to
contrast with the hopes and expectations of popular religion. That is an
important part of Christianity - for which old Simeon is an eloquent
reminder:

The contrast is timeless. When the modern church fails to live by
the rules of popular religion, it will be criticized. William Sloane
Coffin preached his last sermon at Riverside Church in New York City last
Sunday and the New York Times reported on what a vital and lively and often
controversial place Riverside became in recent- years. It was controversial

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because it did not confine its programs to traditional prayer and Bible
study ~- although it has plenty of those. Instead it created programs to
feed the hungry. [t took steps to reach out to outcasts and to include
them. It worked for peace and human rights — and society was surprised.
When Christianity is truly and honestly Christian, and when the church is
truly and honestly the church, there wild be a sharp contrast between the
reality of the thing and the expectations the world has for it. Simeon is
a reminder of that

Simeon also saw that nothing was going to be the same again. -This
infant he held in his arms was going to precipitate conflict. “Set forthe
rise and fall of many" is the way Simeon put it. As if on cue, Herod
reacted immediately, ordering the execution of all the infants in the
region... The Magi had to. return home by another route. TT. S. Eliot has one
of them. say...

"We returned to cur places, these kingdoms... But no
longer at home here, in the old dispensation, with an
alien people clutching their gods..."

In the pleasant aftermath of Christmas, Simeon is a sign that the
Christianity we espouse will be demanding, perhaps divisive and
controversial: that the nature of the enterprise is such that it confronts
the status quo in us, as individuals, and the structures of our society in
ways that are not always sweetness and light. Simeon saw that the Christ
will be an advocate for change, growth in people and in society: and that
is never painless or easy... Simeon saw that. potential in this baby -
perhaps he could see that it would be this Christ, for instance, whose
authority would ultimately force a culture to rid itself of built-in
racism, a process that was not easy. Simeon saw that this Christ would be
present whenever people decide to throw off the chains of oppression and be
free. He also saw that it happens within us: that this Christ calls us to
change, to be different, to be strong, to be faithful and honest and loving
in a world that often laughs at those ideas as irrelevant.

The Spanish mystique Unamuno put that dynamic beautifully...
"May God deny you peace but give you glory."

Simeon, cradling the child and reciting his lovely canticle with its
warning - is a reminder that when it comes to saving us and our world, God
is not restricted by our expectations, our theology, our churches, our
political structures or our conventions, customs,...

Someone wrote recently that what we rational Westerners fear most is
that we will be taken in, that we will be seen to be gullible. We are
afraid that somehow we will believe too much. So we approach our religion
with cur guard up, so to speak, not wanting to be taken in by anything we
don't thoroughly understand, or which will not be reduced to a scientific
equation.

Perhaps that is why God comes at us by way of this infant. Perhaps

it is precisely because we can't resist babies and because babies do shake
us loose from our self-imposed dignity and babies do cause us to act not

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altogether rational ly. Perhaps God chose a baby precisely because babies
cause us to listen to our hearts at least as intently as we listen to our
brains.

in a commentary on this incident, Paul Tillich once wrote,

"Thy mystery of salvation is the mystery of a child.
Only he who can see power under weakness, the whole
under a fragment... can say ‘Mine eyes have seen thy
salvation.'" [The New Being, p. 95)

Old Simeon had something extraordinary going for him. He could see
he was an ordinary baby. The angels and shepherds and Wise Men had long
since gone back to their respective businesses and on this day what we have
is an eight-day old baby and a young mother still a little shaky on her
feet and a dutiful father, no doubt concerned to get back to his carpentry.
And somehow - in that - Simeon could see God's salvation.

That, it. seems to me, is what this incident is about. And it is what
the Advent Season and the Christmas celebration are about, long after all
the merrymaking, and long after the decorations are put away and life
returns to normal. God comes into the life of the world in the most
ordinary ways - and asks for our hearts and our lives. God saves us -
through ordinary channels: not just catastrophic. emotional upheavals. of
spiritual rebirth; not justin heavenly apparitions and celestial voices,
but in ordinary ways. © ,

God loves us and comes to us and gives us newness of life -

in. the context of the work we do,

in our labor and laughter ,.

in our our love and play,

in our relationships and in our struggles.

There is something of that in Truman Capote's lovely story, A

Christmas Memory. Perhaps you saw it on television, or better yet, read it
again this year.

A little boy, Buddy, is left, for the most part, with an elderly
woman relative, who is mildly mentally handicapped and quite child-like.
They are good friends. They make fruit cakes every Christmas and exchange
gifts and each year they give each other kites.

It's Christmas Day. The fruit cakes have been sent. Modest presents

have been exchanged by other family members - and the kites have been given
again...

“Buddy, the wind is blowing,’ and nothing will do till
we've run to a pasture below the house where Queenie has
‘scooted to bury her bone (and where a winter hence,
Queenie will be buried too). There, plunging through
the healthy waist-high grass, we unreel our kites, feel
them twitching at the string like sky fish as they swim
into the wind. Satisfied, sun-warmed, we sprawl in the

19 /97/R7

grass and peel Satsumas and watch our kites cavort.
Soon I forget the socks and hand-me-down sweater. I'm
as happy as if we'd already won the fifty-thousand—
dollar Grand Prize in that coffee-naming contest.

“My, how foolish I am!' my friend cries, suddenly
alert, like a woman remembering too late she has
biscuits in the oven. 'You know. what I've always
thought?’ she asks in a tone of. discovery, and not
smiling at me but a point beyond. | 'I've always thought
a body would have to be sick and dying before they saw
the Lord. And I imagined that when He came it would be
like looking at the Baptist window: pretty as colored
glass. with. the sun pouring through, such a shine you

_ don't know it's getting dark. And it's been a comfort:
to think of that shine taking away all the spooky
feeling. But I'll wager it never happens. I'll wager
at the very end a body realizes the Lord has already
shown Himself. That things as they are' - her hand
circles ina gesture that gathers clouds and kites and
grass and Queenie pawing earth over. her bone:- ‘just
what they've always. been, was seeing Him. As for me,.-I-
could leave the. world. with today in my eyes,'™

It was something like that, I imagine, when an old man ‘cradled a new
born: "I could leave the world with today in my eyes."

“Lord, now lettest thou thy. servant depart in peace; for. mine .eyes
have seen thy salvation."

. God comes into the life of the world and into your life and mine.
God uses the ordinariness of life and fills it with holiness. God's
kingdom comes into the life of the world through a.baby.

We have cradled this. child. We have held him in. our arms, in our
customs and traditions and lovely celebrations and we have been marvelously
affirmed.

We have seen the salvation God has provided. And so we, like
Simeon, may depart in peace — or — in the meantime - live into. the future
with great. hope,

strength,
expectation,
confidence,
and joy. Amen.
Lord God, we have seen your salvation once again. We have welcomed the

child. Now give us courage and faith to live as disciples: to. follow your
son Jesus, wherever he leads us. Amen.

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