The Problems of Life

I’d like to begin with a quotation from one of the greatest fictional characters of recent years. I won’t say who it is except that she is a much older woman giving advice to a much younger female family member. The quotation is this:

As it turns out, this is actually quite a good piece of advice and it proves useful to the younger character, though she is baffled by it at first. The point her elder relative was really making is that we shouldn’t see problems and difficulties as somehow getting in the way of life but as being part of life’s essence, as being the central way that we grow as human beings, how we learn, how we change. In that sense, problems and difficulties can be seen not as unpleasant and annoying but as opportunities. As the old Stoic saying goes, the obstacle is the way.

But it’s that last part that offers us the twist: until at last, we die. If we adopt this stoical attitude of simple focussing on our problems and attempting to solve them, thinking about little else, then death sneaks up on us, and all of our growth and development, wisdom and insight, simply disappears. And there is a sort of humorous absurdity about all of this.

Candlemas – The Mid-Way Point

Today, we celebrate the feast of Candlemas. It’s a feast day which is rich is symbolism. It occurs midway between the Winter solstice and the Spring equinox and therefore marks the time when the icy grip of Winter begins to loosen. Candlemas has been historically a time when farmers begin to anticipate the new season of planting and sowing their fields, turning this day into one of hope for fecundity and fertility. And in the Christian Church this feast commemorates the Presentation of Jesus by Mary and Joseph in the Temple. Traditionally candles are blessed and used in procession, symbolising Jesus as the light of the world. Our readings also make it clear to us that this day is all about birth, death, and resurrection. And this latter constellation of themes is what I would like to talk about today, particularly the notion of death and rebirth. I want to focus specifically on the two characters that we are introduced to in the Gospel reading, Simeon and Anna.

Simeon and Anna: Prepared to Die

Simeon and Anna were elderly people waiting for what is said to be in the text ‘the consolation of Israel’, by which we can probably infer that they were waiting for the Messiah, the one who would come to deliver the people of Israel, not from Roman occupation, but from sin and death. They had lived their lives in a way which was devout and holy and therefore were in a position both to recognise Jesus as the Messiah when he arrived at the Temple and to entrust themselves to him as the one who would save them.

It is remarkable when you think about the words uttered by Simeon: “Lord, now lettest thou thy servant depart in peace, according thy word; for mine eyes have seen thy salvation, which thou hast prepared in the presence of all people.” What does this mean but that he was ready to die because he had seen with own eyes the salvation of God and was able therefore entrust himself to him? To entrust himself to Christ, even as he saw him only as a baby of forty days old? The great scholar of the ancient Church Origen says as much about this passage commenting that Simeon knew that the hope of life to come could only be from ‘the anointed One whom he enfolded in his arms’.

It was as if Simeon, through the power of the Holy Spirit, intuited the truth that is written in our New Testament reading, Hebrews chapter two: Christ partook of flesh and blood so that ‘through death he might destroy the one who has the power of death, that is, the devil, and deliver all those who through fear of death were subject to lifelong slavery’.

Simeon did not fear death. Why? Because he had lived his life in anticipation of seeing the Lord’s Christ and he knew that that Christ would bring salvation for him and for all the nations. His heart and mind were attuned to this reality. And I’m sure it was the same for Anna, who is presented in parallel to Simeon: she had been married seven years before her husband died and then spend the rest of her time serving God in the Temple, worshipping with fasting and prayer night and day.

Departing in Peace

There is relevance here for all of us because Simeon and Anna represent something what we in the modern, western world have largely lost: an understanding of our lives as heading in a particular and ultimate direction. Not, as our original quote implies, towards an absurd and intrusive cessation of our existence in the form of death, but towards God, for whom we were created, by whom we live, and to whom we are destined. Our bodies may decline as we grow older, but our souls are meant to grow in nearness to God until, one day, we depart from this world to see him face-to-face.

The Apostle Paul reminded his readers of this when he was speaking about the difficulties and trials of his life and ministry: "For which cause we faint not; but though our outward man perish, yet the inward man is renewed day by day." I might be tired and failing physically and at the end of my strength, but my soul is strong and getting stronger because I am being renewed inwardly by the power of God and of the Holy Spirit day-by-day.

The world that we inhabit doesn’t see this and so distracts itself from the reality of death. Death will creep up on those who hold to this view as an uninvited guest who will inevitably take everything away. But for the Christian who entrusts himself to Jesus to save him, he will find not terror in death but peace.

How do we get there?

A couple of points of application occur to me in all of this. If you want to end up like Simeon or Anna – and I hope that we all do – how you do it? How can you get to threshold of death and not fear but have peace and even joy in anticipating your reward in heaven with God?

Firstly, do what God calls you to do now, which, in one way or another, is to invest your time, energy, talents, attention, and devotion in his Kingdom. Be righteous and devout, as we are told Simeon was. Devote yourself to worshipping God as Anna did. Invest your resources, material and spiritual, in the things of Heaven. As Christ would go on to say in the Sermon on the Mount, “Do not lay up for yourselves treasures on earth, where moth and rust destroy and where thieves break in and steal, but lay up for yourselves treasures in heaven, where neither moth nor rust destroys and where thieves do not break in and steal. For where your treasure is, there your heart will be also” (Matt. 6:19-21).

That passage is highly relevant, particularly I think the last sentence: where your treasure is there you heart will be. I used to think that meant that what you invest in is a reflection of what you care about: I like, say golf, so I spend my time and money on playing golf. But now I see another dimension to Christ’s words: it is not just a reflection but a determination. That is what you choose to invest your time, effort, money, talents in is the thing that you will some to care about and love: the more time and money I spend on playing golf, the more devoted I am to it. If you choose to invest your resources in the things of this world – such as making money or acquiring material possessions and comfort – then that is what you will care about and that is what you will love. When death comes, therefore, your heart will be broken because you will lose all it.

But, on the other hand, if you lay up treasures in heaven by investing what you have in the things of heaven, then at the point of death you will care less about leaving your material possessions and earthly goods behind and you will anticipate with greater clarity and joy the reward which you are promised by Christ in heaven.

So, if you want to have peace in the face of death, be like Simeon and Anna and invest now, whatever age you are, in the things of Heaven.

But the second thing to say, and in some ways this is the primary thing, is to entrust yourself to the one who can save you from death. See with the eyes of faith that which Simeon saw with the eyes of his body: Jesus Christ the Messiah of Israel and of the nations, come to save you from sin, death, and hell. Entrust yourself to him, day-by-day, and, as you practice these daily acts of trust, your life will become one act of continuously entrusting yourself into his hands, until the day comes when a final act of trust is called for.

These things, as I say, are the things that this world, with all of its material and technological benefits, cannot give and will never be able to give no matter what advances are made. This can only be given by Christ, as truly now as two-thousand years ago.

There is a very moving passage in Walter Ciszek’s well-known spiritual autobiography He Leadeth Me. For those who don’t know Cizsek was an American priest missionary in Soviet Russia who was captured and imprisoned, being forced to do slave labour in a brutal work camp in Siberia. When he was eventually released, he was not allowed to leave Russia and continued to live and minister as a priest there for some time. He observed the continuous atheistic propaganda of the regime and in particular the aversion to speaking of death in that society,

What, therefore, is the Christian difference?

In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.