Mine Eyes Have Seen Your Salvation

Scripture — Luke 2:22-32 (NRSV)

When the time came for their purification according to the law of Moses, the parents of Jesus brought him up to Jerusalem to present him to the Lord (as it is written in the law of the Lord, “Every firstborn male shall be designated as holy to the Lord”), and they offered a sacrifice according to what is stated in the law of the Lord, “a pair of turtledoves or two young pigeons.”

Now there was a man in Jerusalem whose name was Simeon; this man was righteous and devout, looking forward to the consolation of Israel, and the Holy Spirit rested on him. It had been revealed to him by the Holy Spirit that he would not see death before he had seen the Lord’s Messiah. Guided by the Spirit, Simeon came into the temple; and when the parents brought in the child Jesus, to do for him what was customary under the law, Simeon took him in his arms and praised God, saying,

“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.”

Devotion

My journey to Anglicanism was a long one (I’ve written about it at more length here and here) and it happened for complex reasons, but if I was to point at what first drew me to explore the riches of liturgy according to the Book of Common Prayer, it would be two words: “Evening Prayer.”

If you are some flavor of Anglican, that’s probably all I need to say. If not, a couple of words. Christians prayed, often corporately, in the morning and the evening from the very earliest days, and after Christianity was legalized they often did so publicly. For a number of reasons (many of which you can read about in this book) the idea of daily morning and evening prayer became, as the centuries wore on, pretty much the province of monasteries and convents, who developed a whole cycle of multiple prayer times per day interspersed with their other labors.

Over the last few centuries, though, the idea of corporate morning and evening prayer for the whole church has risen in favor again, and nowhere more so than among Anglican Christians, who have a heritage stretching back to the English Reformation of calling the church to these sorts of prayer times. And so it is that even the smallest Episcopal or ACNA church will often have at least one time during the week when congregants are invited to come and pray Morning or (more usually) Evening Prayer together.

Perhaps there will only be two or three people (and if there is, someone will usually make a joke about Matthew 18:20). The service may be quiet and contemplative or, in a bigger church, enriched with beautiful music. But, whatever size the congregation and however adorned or plain the service, you will always hear Simeon’s words from this passage, quite frequently even in the KJV (which springs most easily to my mind for this passage):

Lord, now lettest thou thy servant depart in peace,
according to thy word;
For mine eyes have seen thy salvation,
which thou hast prepared before the face of all people,
To be a light to lighten the Gentiles,
and to be the glory of thy people Israel.

Simeon spoke these words, often called the _Nunc dimittis _from the first two words of the passage in Latin, over two thousand years ago. He was one of the first people to recognize, in a tiny baby from a poor rural family, the utter inbreaking of God into our world in a new way, an inbreaking for which Simeon had longed for decades. And we know that, since about the fourth century, whether in cathedral or monastery, tiny church or great basilica, Christians who gathered in the evening to pray have been affirming those same words that he affirmed.

It’s ok for us to go now, we say and we pray, because we have seen Jesus. We know that he knows our every weakness. We know that he will enlighten the world with his truth and make it full of his glory. We know that he will save us. Even us, and even to the uttermost. Amen.

Find all Life for Leaders devotions here. Explore what the Bible has to say about work at the High Calling archive, hosted by the unique website of our partners, the Theology of Work Project. Reflection on today’s Life for Leaders theme can be found here: A Light to the Nations.