Malachai 3.1-4;            Psalm 84;         Hebrews 2.14-18;       Luke 2.22-40

The thing about growing older is that it slowly creeps up on you, and it’s only when you find yourself doing some strange things that you realise it’s happening.

For instance, you know you’re getting older when it takes you twenty minutes to find your car in the supermarket car park.

You know you’re getting older when it takes at least two tries to get up from the sofa.

You know you’re getting older when your idea of a night out is sitting just outside the back door looking up at the stars – when ‘happy hour’ is a nap – when you get two invitations to go out on the same night, and you pick the one that gets you home the earliest.

You know you’re growing older when you look for your glasses for half an hour, and then find that they were on your head all the time – when you and your teeth no longer sleep together.

You know you’re growing older when your memory is shorter and your complaining is longer.

Growing old is something that is coming to all of us. But I wonder just how old can one be?

Modern records give us the names of the five people who’ve lived longest:

Violet Brown of Jamaica lived for 117 years and 189 days.

Marie-Louise Meilleur (Canada) – 117 years and 230 days.

Nabi Tajima from Japan lived for just 30 days longer – 117 years and 260 days.

The USA gave us the second longest lived – Sarah Knauss who’s life spanned 119 years and 97 days.

And the person who had the longest life on record was from France – Jeanne Calment – she lived 122 years and 164 days.

If you look these people up, you’ll read about their long and fulfilling lives – and gentlemen, you’ll also realise that they were all women!

In our gospel today we meet an old man – Simeon – as he fulfils his destiny after decades of waiting in the temple.

Simeon took [the child Jesus] in his arms and praised God, saying, ‘Lord, now you are dismissing your servant in peace, according to your word; for my eyes have seen your salvation’ (Luke 2:28-30).

These words stand at the centre of our gospel reading. They are beautiful words by which Simeon tells the story of his life and by doing so, prompts us to think about our stories – our lives.

After all, what good is it to us if we read about how Simeon receives the child Jesus into his arms, but we do not do the same?

What good is it to us if Simeon’s eyes see salvation and our eyes do not?

What good is it to us if Simeon is free to go in peace if we are not?

It’s simply not enough to come here this morning to hear about Simeon receiving the child, Simeon’s eyes seeing salvation, and Simeon being set free to go in peace. If simply listening is all we do, then we have bound this story – the good news that we have to proclaim – to a time long ago and a place far away, and it doesn’t have much to do with our lives. We must let the truth of this story transcend its history.

While there is a historical truth to this story, there is also a cosmic truth, a truth that is not limited by time and place. This story is an archetypal experience that is happening in all times and all places for all people. The truth of this story is happening here and now for you and me. It is as much our story as it is Simeon’s.

If we want to understand and claim this story as our own and not just Simeon’s, then strangely enough we need to know a bit more about Simeon. So, I want to tell you what our sacred tradition says about Simeon. Tradition says Simeon was one of the seventy translators of the Hebrew scriptures into Greek, what we call the Septuagint – meaning translated by the seventy.

That translation is supposed to have begun around the third century before Christ and was completed in the year 132 before Christ. Those of you who are good at maths will realise that that means that by the time he met the infant Jesus, Simeon was a really, really old man – much older than any of the women we heard about from modern records. One strand of the tradition says Simeon was 270 years old when Jesus was presented in the temple. Another strand of the tradition says Simeon died at the age of 360.

But I don’t want us to get too hung up on and distracted by Simeon’s age; whether he really was that old, and how someone could live to that age – is not the point. I think better questions for us to ponder are, What does it mean for us that Simeon was that old? What is the tradition trying to tell us? Well, you have to know another part of the story.

Holy tradition says that, when translating the Hebrew scriptures, Simeon came to that verse in Isaiah chapter 7 that says, “Behold, a virgin shall conceive and bear a son”. This made no sense to Simeon and he was going to substitute the phrase “a young woman” in place of “a virgin,” when an angel stopped him and declared the verse to be true, and promised that before he died Simeon would see the child of this virgin.

Think about what this means. Simeon has been promised that he will see the Messiah, the Christ, the one whose name means salvation, and that promise was made nearly two hundred years before it was fulfilled. Simeon must have lived those days, those years, decades and centuries with hope, trust, expectation, and anticipation. Every day for weeks, months, years, decades, centuries – Simeon is left waiting and wondering. “Is this the day? Is this the day I will see salvation or is this the day I will give up hope? Is this the day I will experience the fulfilment of the promise or is this the day I despair of it ever being fulfilled?”

Simeon’s life was one of expectation, anticipation, and waiting. And who among us has not had their life characterised by expectation, anticipation, and waiting? We’ve all stood in that place waiting for and needing something to happen, living in expectation and hope, anticipating the future, and wondering if today was the day.

We all know what it’s like to wait – waiting for life to change, for grief to go away, for a prayer to be answered, for joy to return, for forgiveness and reconciliation, for clarity about a decision, for meaning and purpose, for healing and new life. We wait and hope for all sorts of things.

We have all sorts of hopes and expectations for what God is doing in our lives and in our world. I think that each time we come here to church we must do so with some sense of hope, some need, some expectation. We come here to this place trusting and anticipating the promise that God is present and working in our lives, even if we can’t see or clearly understand how that might be. So, we show up and we wait for the miracle.

That’s what Simeon did.

So, what’s the miracle for Simeon? What’s the miracle for us? I don’t think it is that Simeon lived to such a great age. And it’s not that Simeon held the baby Jesus. And it’s not that Simeon’s eyes saw salvation or that Simeon had been set free to go in peace. Those things are happening all the time.

Here’s what I think the miracle is. Simeon continued to show up. He continued to be vigilant and attentive. He continued to trust the promise. He continued to wait with hope and expectation. He never despaired. He never walked away from the promise. The miracle for Simeon and for us is in the showing up.

Sometimes showing up is the most difficult work we do, and it takes all we have just to show up. But it’s always the question before us. Will we continue to show up? Will we be awake and vigilant? Will we live with hope and trust? Showing up is the means through which God fulfils the promise to us and to Simeon.

Simeon thought he was waiting for the child to show up, but what if it was really Jesus waiting for Simeon to show up? Simeon thought he was presenting the child to God, but what if it was really the child presenting the old man to God? Every day that Simeon showed up, the infant Jesus was seeing and upholding Simeon.

And what Simeon experienced can be ours too if we simply show up. And by that I don’t just mean showing up to church each Sunday – thought that is important. I also mean acknowledging God’s sovereignty over our everyday lives, allowing him to speak into the situations we find difficult and inviting him into the joy and celebrations we experience. The presentation of Jesus doesn’t happen in the Jerusalem temple, but in the temple of our lives, every moment of every day, day after day, month after month, year after year, decade after decade. It happens in the midst of waiting. It happens every time we show up, face up, to the reality of our lives.

So, my friends do show up, do invite him in – and claim what is already yours – open your eyes to see His salvation.

Amen