Waiting in the Night (Advent 4)
Nunc dimittis servum tuum, Domine, secundum verbum tuum in pace
quia viderunt oculi mei salutare tuum
quod parasti ante faciem omnium populorum
lumen ad revelationem gentium, et gloriam plebis tuae Israƫl
Luke 2:29-31
Just as Zechariah's song, Benedictus, has traditionally been part of Lauds, or then Matins, and Mary's Song, the Magnificat, is associated with Vespers or Evening prayer, so too Simeon's song, Nunc Demittis, has traditionally been part of Compline (Night Prayer). In many ways I think the opening of Luke's gospel with the characters of Mary, Zechariah and Elizabeth, Anna, and Simeon, serves to situate Luke's gospel as picking up a range of messianic expectations rooted in the intertestamental waiting.
We see this, for instance, in Luke 1:8-24, and its echoes of the Hannah narrative from 1 Samuel 1. We see it too in the way that Mary's conception of Jesus parallels and then exceeds Elizabeth's (and Hannah's, and Sarah's - the OT sets up the expectation that God grants children to the childless, and then goes beyond this to grant a divinely conceived child to the virgin). We see it again in the way Mary's Song (Luke 1:46-55) echoes Hannah's (1 Samuel 2:1-10). It is no coincidence that Mary's song is laden with messianic (indeed political) expectations - hopes that Luke's account simultaneously subverts and fulfils (Luke 4:16-21).
When Jesus and his family go up to the Jerusalem temple in Luke 2, we are told that they encounter two people. The second of these is Anna (as a name Anna = Hannah), who appears to have been living as a widow for 84 years, spending her time daily (if not continually) in the temple, worshipping, fasting, and praying; she is reasonably then over 100 years old. She was also a prophetess, and she approaches them and "began to give thanks to God and to speak about the child to all who were waiting for the redemption of Jerusalem." (Lk 2.38 NETS).
One of the dominant themes in the early chapters is this - the faithful (remnant) who have been waiting for the redemption of Israel. Anna has spent her whole life waiting. These are the faithful ones who have been waiting for so long.
Simeon's encounter is recorded just prior to this, where we are told that he was "just and devout" and that he was "awaiting the consolation of Israel" (the hope for the deliverance of the nation), furthermore that the Holy Spirit had revealed to him that he would not die before seeing the Lord's Messiah. We have no idea when that was revealed to him, but we can imagine that (i) he had spent every day since that revelation waiting to see if it were that day, (ii) he was probably advanced in years, maybe not Anna level (this is also the general tradition of the church, that Simeon was aged).
Simeon, led by the Spirit, goes out and encounters the child Jesus, and takes him in his arms before offering a benediction. Here's my rendering of the Greek:
Now you release your slave in peace, master, according to your word
because my eyes have since your salvation
which you prepared in the presence of all peoples
a light for revealing to the Nations
and glory of your people, Israel.
I won't give you a detailed exegesis of the Greek, but I will make a few points. "Release" here is not the setting free of a slave, but the release of leaving his post, his duty done, and the release of death. The overlay of these two concepts, with in peace, points to the end of waiting - all of Simeon's life has been a waiting for the consolation of Israel, and here in the person of Jesus he has seen him, and now he can go! O joy, to wait and wait and wait, and finally to receive the Awaited One. He has seen God's salvation because he has seen the saviour, echoing here Isaiah 52:10 in particular. In the OT the idea of God's salvation being seen by the nations tends to point towards them witnessing God delivering his people, but in the course of Luke's gospel it will clearly become a universalised salvation - the salvation that God has prepared is both light/glory, for Gentiles and Jews alike. I think lying in the background to this short song is all of Isaiah 40-66, the hope of the Servant as Saviour.
Not all waiting, not all hope, is in vain. Advent is a season for waiting, yes, but it's waiting for the coming of Christ the King in his second coming, in the sure and certain faith that is produced by his first coming. This is why I said that the Nunc Demittis is ideal for Night Prayer - like the watchman waiting through the long dark hours, not knowing when the dawn will come, our waiting will very often be long, cold, silent, pained, anguished even. But the Light will come. And we will depart in Peace.