Peace Strong Enough for Sorrow

The part of this gospel reading which I suspect many of us are most familiar with is the Nunc Dimittis — Simeon’s prayer that flows out of him when he meets Jesus. It is a beautiful prayer of fulfillment, peace, and thanksgiving, and Christians have gone on to use these words for centuries.

But it is important to notice that this offering of praise sits right in the middle of a passage that also contains a prophecy of pain and suffering. There are many examples of this tension throughout the Bible, as we see time and again that God does does not shy away from complexity. Again and again, we are confronted with the truth that our lives are a constant weaving together of joy and sorrow, that praise and pleading often rise from the same place, sometimes even in the same breath.

For Mary it must have been such a day of mixed emotions. She is amazed at the unexpected encounters they have with Simeon and Anna, and the strange and wonderful things that are said about her son. She hears words of blessing, wonder, and promise. But she also hears a warning: that her son’s life will be marked by opposition, and that her own heart will be pierced. This is not a moment of uncomplicated joy. And yet Mary does not turn away. She does not retreat or harden herself. She carries on, faithfully mothering this child who has already brought strangeness, disruption, and risk into her life. She holds joy and fear together — just as Simeon gives thanks while also speaking of grief and upheaval.

But still, it is peace that sits at the heart of this narrative, and at the heart of Simeon’s prayer. Simeon’s peace is a curious thing. He does not say, “Everything is now perfect.” He does not say, “The world has finally sorted itself out.” Instead, he says, “I have seen what I needed to see.” This is not the peace of escape or certainty. It is the peace of fulfillment. The peace of completion rather than comfort. The peace of a life oriented toward faithfulness, rather than control or predictability. Simeon can let go, not because suffering has disappeared, but because he trusts that God is at work, and that God will remain present in whatever comes next.

In the Pixar movie Inside Out, we meet all the emotions who live in a little girl’s head. They usually work together, but at one point Joy decides that Sadness is superfluous, that her contribution is not needed or helpful. But as the movie progresses we come to a moment where Joy finally realizes that with Sadness kept at a distance something essential has been missing. She sees that the moments of real healing, connection and growth, only come when Sadness is allowed to be present — not fixed, not rushed away, but held, being allowed to play her part alongside the other emotions. Similarly I think we see here that peace does not come from eliminating sorrow, but from letting it be part of a larger, loving story.

That is what Simeon is modelling for us here. His peace is not fragile or naïve. It is strong enough to make room for sorrow without being undone by it.

I wonder if there have been significant moments for you when you have experienced pain or sorrow, but clung to faith throughout? Or moments when joy and grief have sat alongside each other in peace? This is a deeply spiritual gift, to be able to find peace, because the reality is that we live in a very imperfect world full of very imperfect people, including ourselves. But Simeon shows us here that the blossoming of peace is not negated or subverted by suffering, because our God who gives peace is always at work and walking alongside us.

This is a deeply Christian truth: God does not protect us from pain. Instead, God enters into pain with us. That is what the incarnation means, Jesus being a human. God comes close, vulnerable, and present. As time goes on and this baby grows up, this also becomes the pattern of Jesus’ life and ministry. Decades after today’s presentation in the temple, Jesus stands at the tomb of his friend Lazarus and weeps. Even knowing what is going to happen next, he does not skip over the grief. He enters it, feels it, is wounded by it. Because the cause underlying this ever-present tension of joy and grief together is that love, when it is real, always makes us vulnerable, and this vulnerability even extends to God. This is what we see time and time again in the person of Jesus, not a God untouched by suffering, but a God who chooses to be with us in it.

I expect many of us, perhaps most of us, are going through a combination of joy and sorrow right now. Life is never perfect, and even the moments which feel closest to it are fleeting. We know, if we are honest with ourselves, that difficult moments and situations touch each one of us. But what is true, what we see in Simeon and Mary today, is that God chooses to walk with us through all that we carry. So the question is what kind of people we are as we live within this tension. Are we people who harden ourselves against pain, who build walls, turn away, pretend it isn’t real? Or are we people who learn how to hold it honestly, how to find peace even within the eye of the storm?

Simeon’s peace is that of someone who has learned how to pay attention, and who sees God at work. He has waited, prayed, and trusted for long enough that when God is finally before his very eyes, Simeon has no doubts of what he is seeing. The peace that flows from that recognition is what we are drawn to in the beautiful words of the Nunc Dimmitus. Neither Simeon nor Mary see the whole of Jesus’ life in that moment. But they each see enough to trust God.

Perhaps that is what peace can look like for you too. Not the absence of anxiety or pain, but the confidence that God is always with us in the middle of it. Perhaps our peace can be the ability to say, ‘I have seen what I needed to see’. Love where it was unexpected. Light in the darkness. God at work in all kinds of moments. That is a holy peace, a peace that dwells deep within us and slowly puts down roots in the assurance that God is here, God is faithful, and God is always at work, with us on every step of the journey, no matter what it looks like.

Amen.

Hebrews 2:14-18; Luke 2:22-40