Death is not a subject we normally think about this time of year. We are in the Christmas season in which the new life of the infant, Jesus, is celebrated. The New Year is a few days away, and it is a time of new beginnings. The promise of new life in the birth of Jesus and that sense of a fresh start in the new year focuses our attention on life. But just as the shadow of the cross hung over the manger and the infant, so our own mortality casts a shadow on all of these new beginnings. Death is inevitable no matter how many new beginnings we have in this life.
I’m not trying to dampen your spirits and dull your celebrations, but death plays its role in our Christmas celebration. What I call the final Christmas Carol in Luke’s Gospel, the Song of Simeon, is surrounded by and shot through with the realities of death; Simeon’s death, the death of Jesus, and even a form of death for Mary.
The reality of death is the context for the setting of Simeon’s song. Joseph and Mary are bringing the child Jesus to the Temple for a purification rite prescribed in Leviticus 12. When a woman gave birth to a child, she was unclean for a period of time, seventy-three days if the child was a female and forty days if the child was a male. Though uncleanness is not a sin, it is a result of sin, and that result is ritual death. Mary is coming with the child for their “resurrection.” Her time of impurity was cut short because she had a male child who had been circumcised eight days after his birth (Lk 2.21). The seed of the woman died for the woman to reduce the time of her impurity.
But Luke says that it was for their purification that Mary and the child came to the Temple. Jesus is sinless and needs no purification. But just as he was baptized by John with a baptism of repentance, identifying with our sin, and just as he suffered the curse of death on the cross because of our sins, so he is going through this purification rite on behalf of his people. He was born of a woman, born under the law, to redeem those who were under the law, that we might receive the adoption as sons (Gal 4.4-5).
Death is the reality that brings Jesus to the Temple.
Simeon, who probably bears the name of the tribe of which he is a part, would be familiar with that death and need for redemption. His name’s sake was cursed by Jacob/Israel along with his brother, Levi, for the vengeance they took on the Hivites because of the rape of their sister, Dinah (Ge 34; 49.5-7). Levi was redeemed by standing faithfully for Yahweh at Sinai against the idolaters. Simeon was redeemed by being incorporated into the tribe of Judah (Josh 19.1). Simeon’s salvation was in Judah or in union with Judah, the tribe from which the king of Israel would come. Simeon, though a faithful individual (Lk 2.25), is still under the curse of the “first Simeon,” just as the whole world lived under the curse of the first Adam. He is waiting for the consolation of Israel which will end the warfare and bring peace (see Isa 40.1-2).
Having been told by the Spirit that he would not die before he had seen the Lord’s Anointed One, the Christ, the Messiah, the King, he waited patiently. The Spirit that told him that he would not die until that time led him to the Temple on that day to see the salvation for which he and all the faithful longed.
When he sees Jesus, he sings that his Master has allowed him to die in peace because holds the Prince of peace in his arms, the one who will bring about the peace of which the angels sang in the field with the shepherds earlier.
Simeon is not concerned here primarily about his being able to go to his rest in God’s presence after his death. He had that assurance. That was never in doubt. Simeon is not singing, “When we all get to heaven.” Simeon’s vision of salvation is the worldwide mission for which God ordained man in the beginning.
The salvation that he holds in his arms is a light to the Gentiles; a light that not only exposes sin but illumines the way of life in which the nations are to walk. This one who is the light to the nations is the glory of Israel. He is everything Israel was made for because he is Israel incarnate. He takes on the mission of Israel. He adorns her with promised salvation, and he is the pillar of cloud by day and pillar of fire by night that leads her through the sea and eventually into the promised land. Simeon can go to his rest because he sees in Jesus the grand mission of the salvation of the world accomplished. His personal salvation is a part of that, but he is rejoicing that the world will be made right and God’s faithful sons will inherit the world as God promised Abraham (see Rom 4.13).
This salvation will not be glorious triumph after glorious triumph. Death will be woven into it and, indeed, an integral part of its accomplishment. Jesus, Simeon says, is set for the fall and rising of many in Israel (Lk 2.34). A sword will pierce even through Mary’s soul, not only the agony of seeing her son be rejected and suffer but also the stabbing doubt that she will have to face at times. There were times that Jesus’ family thought he was out of his mind (Mk 3.22). She will have to wrestle with this.
The promise of Jesus’ birth, life, death, resurrection, and ascension is not a pain-free life, one in which we experience no sorrow and no death. The shadow of our death hangs over us at all times. But it is the light of the resurrection that casts the shadow for us now. Because of this, when it is our time to die, we can depart in peace.
