To Die In Peace

The Feast of the Presentation

Malachi 3: 1-4; Psalm 84; Hebrews 2: 14-18; Luke 2: 22-40

“It had been revealed to him by the Holy Spirit that he would not see death before he had seen the Lord’s Messiah.”

Good morning on this 4th Sunday after the Epiphany, when the Church celebrates the Feast of the Presentation of the Lord…or the Purification of Mary…or Candlemas!

It’s confusing, I know.  And it gets even more confusing. When I was preparing this sermon I actually counted more than 10 “official” designations for this feast day in the Christian calendar, depending on the denomination, the local church, and which part of this morning’s gospel that particular flavor of Christianity wanted to emphasize.  At the risk of being irreverent, I must say none of them seemed especially relevant to our lives today: I mean, are there any parents here who have sacrificed an animal to God in place of their first born son? Any mothers here who observed 40 days of ritual purification after childbirth?  When was the last time anyone here had their candles sacramentally blessed?

So, since there were so many things to celebrate today already, I figured it wouldn’t hurt if I added one more that seems far more relevant to me.  So welcome to, “The Feast of Simeon’s Liberation,” where we’ll celebrate something that has pretty indisputable implications for our lives today.

But let’s start by imagining, for just a minute, the first century scene Luke has set for us:  The interior of a massive temple.  The smooth slabs of cold stone lining the floors and walls.  The lingering scent of frankincense, mingling with the smoky aroma of lambs and doves sacrificed as burnt offerings.  A scattering of the faithful are here and there in the courtyard, among them an old man-- there because he intuitively knows that this is the day…and he’s learned to trust his intuition. 

A clearly poor, travel-weary peasant couple enters the scene with their tiny child, not yet 6 weeks old. The old man turns, approaches…and as the mother curiously, but easily, tenders the tiny child into his open arms, the old man looks heavenward, sighs deeply, and says to God gratefully, "Master, you are dismissing your servant in peace...”

Other translations of this passage read, “Master, you let your servant go in peace,” or “…Lord, you now have set your servant free to go in peace.”  The original Greek word here, apoluo, means to release, to let go, to set free.  You get the idea.

This old man, Simeon by name, has been waiting a very long time for the coming of Messiah, certain that it would happen within his lifetime. But with each passing year, and old-age well upon him, he has wondered more than once if perhaps he was wrong all along. And now finally, on this day of Simeon’s Liberation, Mary and Joseph walk into the Temple to complete the ritual post-childbirth purification required of Mary, and to present Jesus to God as their firstborn son at the same time—and Simeon takes one look at the tiny infant and just knows:  This is Messiah.  This tiny child—so ludicrously unlike the long-anticipated hero who would rout the Romans and restore Jerusalem to her finest glory—this is Messiah.

And at last, Simeon is free.  Free to go in peace. 

But here’s the kicker: Simeon is free to go in peace to his death.

Now, I know none of us likes to think about death and dying-- especially in a place like this, which must surely be the closest thing to Paradise that can be found this side of the veil! Yet Simeon’s story does beg the question:  What would it take for us to die in peace?  What would it take for you to die in peace?  And that, it seems to me, is a pretty relevant—if unwelcome—question to consider.

What would it take for you to die in peace?  Maybe it would be having all your affairs in order, or mending a broken relationship. Maybe it would be realizing a particular dream, reaching a particular goal, or accomplishing a particular ambition. Maybe it would be just knowing that your loved ones will be okay after you’ve gone, or experiencing that one thing on your bucket list you’ve just got to do. I’m sure there are any number of other things I haven’t thought of.  And I’m equally sure they’re all absolutely valid things for one to want to do before dying. Hopefully, we’ll all have time to do them.  

But then what? I’m going to go out on a limb here and suggest that even if we manage to do everything we think we want or need to do before dying, more than a few of us will still be just a bit too concerned about what’s going to happen to us after death to really die in peace. And don’t we all want to die in peace?

So let’s change scenes and go to our first reading this morning, the letter to the Hebrews, one of the most beautiful pieces of writing in the Christian scriptures.  As we just read, Jesus took on flesh and blood, “so that through death he might... free those who all their lives were held in slavery by the fear of death.”  The Christ, the Eternal Word who was with God in the beginning and without whom not one thing would’ve come into being, chose to become flesh and blood like us in the person of Jesus, then willingly took on all the hatred, evil and suffering this broken world could heap on him--even took on death itself, and won—just so we would know beyond a shadow of a doubt that we need no longer fear death…so we would know that we need no longer fear death because we are loved with a love that is more powerful than death…powerful enough to replace our fear with the assurance of new and eternal life even after death.  Because in the end, love— the creative force of life —wins. 

Now, lest you think this is a bunch of pie-in-the-sky malarkey, let me assure you that a) I am a pretty intelligent and perfectly sane human being and b) I don’t believe pie-in-the-sky malarkey.

But I do believe this.  I believe this to my core, and for far too many reasons than I have time to elucidate this morning.  But let me quickly give you three: 

One:  I want to die in peace. I want to die with all my affairs in order, having tried my best to mend broken relationships, to realize my dreams, and to attain my goals.  I pray for a deep and solid assurance that my loved ones will be well and flourish when I’m gone. I want to be grateful for the life I’ve had, yet eager for what’s to come. That’s pretty much all that’s left on my bucket list. And I have discovered that when I dare to suspend my stubborn insistence on understanding everything with the limited perspective of my rational intellect, and risk engaging my God-given gift of intuitive knowing and imagination instead, I can easily embrace the beautiful and mind-boggling mystery that Jesus the Christ—the very enfleshment of God’s love…came to prove that love, not death, has the final word—and I can die in peace, without fear. Why would I not want to hitch my wagon to that star?

Two: I don’t want Jesus to have suffered all that hatred, humiliation, anger and agony for nothing.  I don’t want his death to be meaningless.  And I certainly don’t want his resurrection to be a myth, a metaphor or a mass hallucination. I want to believe. I choose to believe. I figure, like the young man once famously said to the late Christian scholar Phyllis Tickle about the Virgin Birth, “It’s such a beautiful story, it has to be true whether it happened or not.” Indeed!

And three:  I’ve been in recovery for 26 years. Last October, my 83-year old sponsor succumbed to metastatic cancer. As an adult, she had finally come to believe in a merciful, loving God rather than the kind of punishing one with which so many of us are raised. But she still struggled mightily with the whole idea of an afterlife.  We talked about it a lot over the many months that her life was waning, and within days of allowing herself to believe in an afterlife, an afterlife of love and light and joy, my dear Dorna let go and died in peace.  I don’t think that was a coincidence.  Especially since when I went to write my homily for her burial, in my prayer I asked her what she wanted me to say. That’s something I always do that when I’m writing a funeral homily. But this time, in my inner heart, I heard Dorna say, as if she were sitting right next to me on the couch, “Why, tell them it’s true, Margot!  Tell them it’s true!” And I’ve always done what Dorna told me to.

So I’m here to tell you it’s true: Because we are flesh and blood, the Christ himself became flesh and blood, so that through his death he might destroy the power of death, and free us from the fear of death. 

Happy Feast of Simeon’s Liberation, and may it lead you to your own , in peace.

Amen.