NOTES for Luk 2:21-38

There are people in the world of one thought, one goal, one idea. And if the idea or goal is worthy, God can meet such people. So it was with Simeon. He wanted only one thing: to see the Messiah. With his own eyes. To live to the day when the Messiah would come. And God promised him this.

Of course, if not everyone, then many among the Jewish people were waiting for the Messiah then. But they waited in different ways. In some way everyone probably expected Him. The only question is how. Some waited only to a certain extent. In principle they would not have minded seeing Him and meeting Him, but only to a certain extent. In any case, waiting for the Messiah was not the main work of life for such people. If He had come during their lifetime, well, they too would perhaps have been among those who met Him. If their business allowed.

Others waited more impatiently, with hope. These were usually deeply religious and religiously active people. For them the coming of the Messiah meant the culmination of their own religious life, and they certainly did not doubt that on that day they would be in the first ranks of those who met Him. Moreover, they were sure that the Messiah would come first of all precisely for their sake. There were especially many such people among the members of the Pharisaic brotherhood, but of course there were others who had no direct relation to the Pharisees and yet awaited Him with the same hope. For such people the Messiah and the Kingdom were the meaning and center of their religious life.

But there was, apparently, yet another category of those awaiting the Messiah's coming, probably a very small one. These people waited for the Messiah because He was not only the main meaning, but the only meaning of their life. Or, more precisely, the Messiah and the Kingdom were in fact their life; they knew no other. Perhaps only such people could strictly be called Christians before Christ: they were already living by what exists in God's eternity but had not yet entered our fallen world. They lived, of course, as expectation and forefeeling, but they lived. And naturally each of these people would have been happy to see the Messiah with his own eyes. For them this was not the culmination of their own life, but its source, life itself opened to them in fullness.

Of course, this was not given to everyone: many had to touch death, Sheol, the world of shadows on the way to the fullness of the life they sensed beforehand. Simeon was happier: he saw the Messiah not from Sheol, where he had not yet had time to descend, but from the world of the living. And now even Sheol was no longer frightening to him, for time had already ended for him. The eternity of the Kingdom had begun, and with it the fullness of times.

Luke's Gospel mentions a mysterious person about whom we learn only from this evangelist, since no other information about him exists in other sources. It is a man named Shimon (Simeon), of whom it is said that he was waiting for the "consolation of Israel," that is, the coming of the Messiah, and that the Holy Spirit was upon him. From this one can conclude that Simeon was either a prophet or one of those wise teachers of the Torah whose experience of revelation was comparable to the prophetic.

There were never many such people, of course, but one can hardly find an age in Jewish history when they did not exist at all. Judging by the evangelist's words, Simeon often turned to God in prayer, asking that God give him the chance to see the Messiah, whom in those days many, if not all, were awaiting. And, as one can see, in response to his prayers Simeon received a revelation that he would indeed see the One he awaited so much before he died. Such a promise was, of course, a miraculous gift from God to this man. But Simeon's own stance also played a certain role here.

The Messiah too can be awaited in different ways. One can wait for Him in passing, without of course forgetting Him altogether, but also without keeping Him constantly in mind. One can wait while understanding that most likely one will not live to see Him, and therefore should not make this expectation the meaning of one's life. Or one can wait as Simeon did, waiting by making this expectation the only goal, the only meaning of one's earthly life. Such expectation may appear unreasonable, since there are no guarantees. But on the other hand, the life of each of us has meaning only insofar as it is completed in the Kingdom. Otherwise it will sooner or later pass into nonbeing.

Already for this reason the meeting with the Messiah cannot fail to be the chief goal of any of us, if only we take our life seriously. And if one lives this way, then God comes to meet us. Even if our ideas about Him or about His Messiah do not fully correspond, or do not correspond at all, to reality. What matters is what we want and what we strive for, not how we imagine what we take to be the goal and meaning of our life. In the end, God is one, the Messiah is one, and the Kingdom is also one. And every sincere seeker at the end of the path will find precisely them, and not something else.

Righteous Simeon was waiting for the Messiah. Of course, he was not the only one. In those days in Judea, if not everyone, then very many were waiting for the Messiah. But they waited in different ways. Simeon waited with his whole heart. Waiting for the Messiah became the sole meaning of his life. Of course, death, departure into Sheol, did not change anything radically for a righteous person. In the end, when the Messiah comes and the day of universal resurrection and Judgment arrives, all will come out of Sheol. They will return to the fullness of life - at least until the Judgment.

Because before God a person must appear precisely in fullness - in that greatest fullness which was opened to the person and which he managed to contain. So that it becomes clear what the person can do. This is not a competition, but precisely an evaluation: can the Kingdom be entrusted to this person? And if it can, then in what measure? But it is one thing to pass through death and Sheol, and quite another to meet the Messiah while still alive.

Many dreamed of such a meeting, dreamed of it in every age. And Simeon lived by this hope. And God promised him that he would see the Messiah. With his own eyes. During his life. Without descending into Sheol. And now what God had promised came to pass. Before Simeon was the Messiah. Waiting ended in meeting. For Simeon this was the Meeting with a capital M: after all, he understood Whom he was seeing. And now he could depart in peace. Leave this world. And not only because God's promise had been fulfilled, but also because with the Messiah the Kingdom had entered the world.

It had not yet been revealed, but it was already here, in our fallen world. And that means death now ceased to be simply a departure into Sheol, as it had been before. It is not by chance that the corresponding Greek word means not only "release" but also "set free." The point is not only that Simeon was bound by waiting for the coming of the Messiah. The point is that before the Messiah's coming, the only alternative to earthly life for him was Sheol. Now another alternative appeared: the Kingdom. Simeon was free. As were hundreds of righteous people who had completed their earthly path before him and had also waited for the Messiah or at least had foreseen the Kingdom. "With my own eyes I have seen Your salvation." And now I am free. Ahead are the Messiah and the Kingdom.

Simeon's prophecy proved unexpected for Joseph and Mary. They are amazed. This can seem strange: both of them knew the good news that God's messenger had announced to Mary before Jesus was born. And yet they are amazed. Why? Here the nature of fallen man shows itself. The peculiarities of human memory. And of human perception as well. In fact, the functioning of memory, like that of all human nature, both physical and psychic, is determined by a person's spiritual condition. And the question of spiritual condition is the question of what predominates in that stream of human life which the Bible calls the soul, and which a modern philosopher would call existence.

According to God's design, the life of the human soul was to be determined by that breath of life which God gave the human being at creation. By God's breath. But in fallen man, according to the Bible's witness, the soul is "in the blood." Just as it is in animals. And its quality is determined, as in animals, by nature and not by spirit. And memory is one of the abilities of the soul, one of the functions of a person's psychic nature.

A person is able to remember only what is at least somewhat akin to his own life. And the more akin it is, the better, more fully, and more deeply a person remembers this or that event. The longer and more clearly he remembers it. The more real the event itself becomes for him. Conversely, what touches a person's life only partly, what is not akin to him, what, though beautiful, astonishing, and altogether extraordinary in itself, still clearly exceeds the ordinary spiritual level of his life, will remain in human memory as something not entirely real.

As something remembered like a beautiful dream, yet still more like a dream than reality. And even if everyday life constantly reminds one that the apparent dream was no dream at all, the sharpness of perception is still almost inevitably dulled. Then everything becomes ordinary. And the thought comes to mind: what if everything is not like that at all? What if nothing special happened? And nothing unusual lies ahead?

Of course, neither Joseph nor Mary could forget what had been said to them about Jesus. They were expecting something extraordinary. And yet what is happening becomes for them an expected surprise. Everything depends on the mode of perception, on what predominates in one's gaze: spirit or nature. If nature predominates, then the Kingdom itself becomes an expected surprise. But that is not the main thing. The main thing is how a person responds to the expected surprise. Will he accept what enters his life, or reject it? Will he take a step into the Kingdom, even in amazement and bewilderment, or remain outside?

Every person knows that someday he will die. Death is a unique phenomenon: it is completely obvious and completely closed to those who have not yet experienced it. God speaks with a person, and that person remains alive. On the basis of this Gospel passage, one can say that a person who speaks with God, not somehow but face to face, receives both life and death: life full of His presence, the light of revelation for all, and death as the fulfillment of the promise, as the possibility of a full and final encounter.

Today's reading continues the account of the witnesses connected with the Nativity. And if the first witnesses were shepherds, now righteous people and prophets come to take their place. It would seem that these people are not at all like simple shepherds. But there is something common that unites them: all of them are waiting for the Messiah and are ready to receive him as he is. For a prophet, the revelation received from God is most important; he hears God directly, and for him there is no question about whether he can trust what he has heard.

The prophetic experience of direct communion with God is, of course, unique every time, but with all its uniqueness, none of those who had occasion to hear the voice of God raised questions of what modern theologians call theological verification: any prophet receives the revelation given to him as a direct instruction to act. And if God points to the infant brought into the Temple as the Messiah, then that infant truly is the Messiah, whoever may say otherwise and whatever doubts learned rabbis and teachers of the Torah may express on this matter.

Righteousness is a phenomenon of another kind, but a righteous person too is often given the ability to hear God. And if at times his mystical hearing is not as sharpened as a prophet's hearing, the habit of trusting God unconditionally helps the righteous person become certain of the authenticity of the revelation received. What unites these people with simple shepherds is not only the expectation of the Messiah, but also their attitude toward God and toward the will of God. One could say that, unlike the same Pharisees, for example, they are not very religious. Of course, all of them are members of the Synagogue, but there they are apparently not in the front rows: there are people there whose activity makes them barely noticeable, and sometimes completely unnoticeable.

In theological and religious-political disputes, so frequent in the synagogues of the Gospel period, they apparently either take part rarely and unwillingly, or do not take part at all. They do not belong to any religious school and perhaps do not even have what is usually called a religious worldview. They simply trust God, who long ago became the center and meaning of their life, and they live while listening attentively for what he will say to them. Or they pasture their flocks, like the Bethlehem shepherds. Of course, compared with learned theologians they may appear simple people, even, like the shepherds, ignorant. But they will certainly have no problems with the theological interpretation of what they have heard from God. Nor will they have needless doubts about the reliability of what they heard. That is why they are granted to see the Messiah before others. Including those who were sure they would see him first.

In the Gospel we read about how the infant Jesus is brought to the temple for the first time, what happens there, and what is said about it. Knowing the Gospel story and remembering how throughout the past twenty centuries Jesus has remained "a sign that is spoken against," we need not be surprised by anything. The prophet Malachi brings us back to what escapes us against the background of the heavy words of Simeon's prophecy. The Savior's first appearance in the temple is described this way: "the Lord whom you seek will suddenly come to His temple." Everything here is unsettling. Does a person know what kind of God he is seeking? Are we seeking the Child who constantly causes contradiction and strife? You are waiting for God, and suddenly a little Child is brought in, and you stand before the need to accept that this very Child is the light for revelation to the Gentiles and the glory of Israel.

The word "Sretenie" is Slavonic; in Russian it means "meeting." What meeting is being discussed? The meeting of the Savior's parents with Simeon? Their meeting with the prophetess Anna? Of course, that too. But first of all the Gospel story tells us about the meeting of the people of God with their Messiah.

It is not surprising that this people was represented by those who were awaiting the Messiah's coming. Something else is surprising: on behalf of the people He is met by people who, it would seem, were not the most prominent among those awaiting Him. Of course, in this sense there is no point speaking about the Temple priesthood: the priesthood was reserved and skeptical toward popular messianic expectations. But there was also the Synagogue; in the synagogue environment messianic expectations at that time were very intense. And yet God showed the Messiah not to the leaders of the Synagogue, but to people who, though known, were not among the leaders of the people.

The choice may seem strange, but on closer examination it is quite understandable. Of course, if not everyone, then very many in the Jewish people were waiting for the Messiah at that time. But most of those waiting for Him had their own ideas about the Messiah, about what He should be and what He should do. Meanwhile, He was not going to do almost anything that both ordinary people and learned rabbis expected from the Messiah.

They expected the Messiah to restore an independent and strong Jewish state, to drive the Gentiles from the holy land, and to establish a new rule based on the Torah that would become Israel's golden age. And, of course, they expected miracles from Him, miracles that would solve all the problems at once, both of the people as a whole and of each person belonging to it in particular.

Everyone expected triumph, and no one expected Judgment. Only Simeon, who possessed the prophetic gift, understood everything correctly. He understood that the Messiah is the One who would cause many to fall and many to rise, just as one could expect on the day of Judgment. Such a person could be allowed to see the Messiah: this would not produce in him either excessive, unjustified expectations or unnecessary excitement. Everyone else still needed to wait. They needed to wait for the day when the Father would bring the Son out into His earthly ministry.