Now, Lord, you let your servant go in peace: your word has been fulfilled. My own eyes have seen the salvation: which you have prepared in the sight of every people. A light to lighten the nations

or – in the unbeatable poetry of the wording of the KJV (this wording actually first appeared in the 1560 Geneva Bible):

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.

Nunc Dimittis. Now dismiss. The phrase has been taken up and used all over the place in English literature, sometimes to mean “it’s all over” or “it’s the end of an era” and sometimes to mean, “my life’s purpose has been fulfilled” (I’ll be elaborating on this theme in my next book).

Yesterday we thought in Chapel about how Simeon’s words related to his life. We know almost nothing about the everyday reality of Simeon’s life – was he a full time prophet, or did he have a day-job? Was he married? Widowed? A father? We don’t know. Neither do we know whether or not he was successful, clever, happy, hardworking, popular…  All we do know is that somewhere on the back burner in his mind he had this conviction that before he died, he would see the beginning of a new era of salvation, not only for his own people, but for the whole world. And the single thing he has been remembered for ever since, is not his life’s work, but that he saw this one thing fulfilled.

What about us? There’s a lot of lazy talk in the Church about “calling”, some of which is important, but some of which is a bit navel-gazing. Of course it matters that we make the most of what we have set before us, But sometimes there’s a lack of acknowledgement that what we feel “called” to is as much the result of circumstance as it is divine providence. We don’t have a completely open-ended choice in our lives; some people have almost no choice at all, and it would be theologically vacuous, as well as deeply offensive, to suggest that they were less “called” to be fully human than those of us with more privelege and freedom. WHat we do every day – whether we’re married or single, or have a “ministry” or a job, is not necessarily the central point in working out what we’re here for. ANy of those details might change anyway. So to discover our life’s purpose is is not just about the detail of our everyday life, but to have some sense of why we’re here at all.

Alongside this, though, we also thought yesterday about the fact that Candelmas (Feb 2) and Holocaust Memorial day (Jan 27) fall within a week of each other. We remembered those who did not depart in peace, with a sense of life fulfilled, but who were herded to their deaths in an inhuman way. A light to lighten the Gentiles, and the glory of thy people Israel – let this remind us, always, that we have not found our purpose in life, or seen the light of God, if we are still not able to see the image of God in every other human being – most especially when they are not like us.