Grace to you and peace from God our father and our Lord Jesus Christ! Amen

“Greetings, favored one! The Lord is with you”, was said to Mary. (Lk 1, 28)
“The child grew and became strong, filled with wisdom; and the favor of God was upon him”, is said about Jesus the 4 week old at the end of today’s Gospel reading. (Lk 2, 40)
“And Jesus increased in wisdom and in years, and in divine and human favor”, is said about the twelve year old which ends the childhood stories. (Lk 2, 52)

Greetings to you, sisters and brothers, favored ones, adopted, made children of God by God’s own son, born of a woman, born under the law (Gal 4, 4), into the frame of our human finiteness - in order to plant salvation in our conditions, in our minds, in our hearts.
Greetings, favored ones, graced ones, graced in your baptism with salvation through the Holy Spirit.

We have just started the celebration of the twelve days of Christmas from Dec 25th until January 5th, leading up to Epiphany on the 6th. Christians celebrate the fullness of the mystery of Christ in these twelve days. It would be to misunderstand Christmas if we took it to be just a birthday party for Jesus. To the fullness of the mystery of Christ belongs that throughout history the favored ones, Christians, have become martyrs for the salvation he brings to the world - and so it is that the Church celebrated this past week the memory of St. Stephen, the first martyr for Christ, and of all martyrs, remembering the killing of the innocent children in Bethlehem by king Herod.

The children are remembered as martyrs on the fourth day of Christmas more because they died un-knowing than innocent. They were still ignorant, unaware. People of all ages and everywhere can be witnesses for Christ and die for Christ who do not know Jesus and his Father, the God of Israel, and who were never baptized. These witnesses and unknowing martyrs are part of God’s universal plan for the salvation of his creation.
Such witness to the mystery of Christ mostly goes unnoticed by us, it is beyond our reach and our control. It happens outside the church, on the macrocosmic stage of salvation.

Simeon and Anna, however, lead us inside, into the temple, the Holy of Holies, on this 5th day of Christmas. Here, by the side of two prophets, Simeon and Anna, both waiting for the consolation of Israel, for the redemption of Jerusalem, we are let in on a tender, intimate scene of the encounter between Simeon and the baby Jesus. Luke has shaped the encounter between Simeon and Jesus intentionally on a microcosmic scale so that we may relate to the mystery of Christ become flesh with our own lives, our own experiences, our own microcosms.

Mary and Joseph have traveled from Nazareth to Jerusalem according to the law, with their infant Jesus to purify, and to present their firstborn to the Lord God. Just as they bring Jesus in the temple to begin the rite of presentation, the rite of giving away, Simeon the prophet is guided to them by the spirit. He reaches out for the baby, and the parents put him in the prophet’s arms. Simeon has been waiting for the consolation of Israel, he is a wise man, he knows which condition the world is in, he is aware of its utter desolation. As prophet, vicariously for all of Israel, against reason and hope of the doubtful, he firmly holds on to the consolation which God has promised, trusting that he would see the Anointed of the Lord before his death.

Interestingly, the age of Simeon is not disclosed to us, in contrast to Anna’s, who is 84.
When Simeon holds Jesus in his arms he breaks out in immediate praise and exultation. “Master, now you are dismissing your servant in peace according to your word. For my eyes have seen your salvation, which you have prepared in the presence of all peoples, a light for revelation to the Gentiles and for glory to your people Israel.” (Lk 2, 29-32)

Simeon addresses God as the master (despotes) in relation to whom he is the servant, the slave. Within the structure or, if you will, the hierarchy of this relationship, God now fulfills in an act of pure grace the prayers and hopes of his prophet Simeon. We witness how with Jesus in his arms, Simeon is liberated, joyous and exuberant. He actually holds God’s salvation in his arms. God dismisses his servant in peace, allows him to leave behind all that which constricts, all that which is heavy and burdensome for the prophet to know and bear. And the final consummation of being dismissed in peace, sisters and brothers, of letting go, is for Simeon just as for you and me, to die. For my eyes have seen your salvation.

We sing Simeon’s hymn of praise often, here at Christ the King. After communion. “Lord, now you let your servant go in peace; your word has been fulfilled. My own eyes have seen the salvation which you have prepared for us in the sight of every people...”

Just as Simeon received the Lord into his outstretched arms in the temple, not only seeing God’s salvation but even touching and feeling it, so do we receive our Lord into our arms, into our entire being, in the Holy Sacrament of Communion, liberated to let go of all that we hold on to, liberated of all which we are held in; and we are dismissed in peace.

The Church emphasizes the understanding of Simeon’s hymn as prayer to God at the time of dying by singing it again in the compline, the night time prayer at nine o’clock, the night being our unmistaken reminder that our days will come to an end. By singing Simeon’s hymn the church submits itself to the continual practice of joyful hope and expectancy of God’s peace in the face of the world’s continued unpeacefulness and desolation.

Dear congregation, we Christians, too, have a rite of presentation, of being given away, handed over to God. In baptism our family presented us to God (or as adults we ourselves), we were made children of God, graced ones, favored ones ourselves now. And in the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ we are already dismissed in peace, into the microcosms of our lives and deaths, liberated to tell of God’s grace and God’s salvation for this world. It is this dying into the peace of God in which Martin Luther found the greatest consolation and strength, and when he felt the devil’s presence taking over in him, he is reported to have said: “ I am baptized.”

We celebrate today the fulness of the mystery of Christ as it has been revealed to us in the birth of Jesus of Nazareth. The transition from Israel’s and the church’s hope for fulfillment to the arrival of the salvation of God is told to us in the touching, intimate human encounter of Simeon and the baby Jesus cradled in his arms. For we can only grasp the universal scope of God’s salvation, including Gentiles and Israel, in such a particular story.

Let us join Simeon, Jesus, Mary, Joseph, and Anna in the temple, in the holy of holies, and weave our lives and hopes into that moment of grace, joy and peaceful dismissal. For God has chosen you and me, too, to receive Jesus into our arms and cradle him tenderly.

Greetings, favored ones, for your bondage, your fears, your sorrow, your emptiness, your joylessness have been taken from you, dismissed; and in life and death we are prepared to let God’s peace shape what we do and which we leave undone.
“For my eyes have seen your salvation, which you have prepared in the presence of all peoples, a light for revelation to the Gentiles and for glory to your people Israel.”
Amen