Today’s hymn from Sing Praise is another devotional song, “Purify my heart”. Although relatively recent (like all the songs in this book – this one was written c.1990) it has become popular in many churches. Unlike yesterday’s song which was corporate (“Father, hear our prayer”) this one is personal (“Purify my heart”) and it fits the theme of Lent, as it asks Jesus (not named but it is obviously He who is being addressed) to “purify my heart” in various ways.
The first
verse asks that I become “as gold and precious silver … as gold, pure gold”. This, and the chorus (addressing Jesus as the
Refiner’s Fire) refer to Malachi, the last book of the Old Testament, where the
Lord’s messenger is said to be coming like a refiner’s fire to “sit as a
refiner and purifier of silver” to refine the descendants of Levi (i.e. the
Temple priests) “like gold and silver until they present offerings to the Lord
in righteousness” (Malachi 3:2-3). In
other words, it is asking Jesus to strip away all the impurities that are
preventing me from serving him as I should.
The second
verse is more direct: “cleanse me from within and make me holy … cleanse me
from my sin, deep within”. It recognises
that sin is not just my relationship with the outer world – the things I say
and do wrong – but also my inner life, my thoughts, desires and attitudes. Those are harder to deal with, and that’s why
I have to ask Jesus to deal with them.
The other prayer in the chorus is that I should be “set apart for you,
ready to do your will”. So the
purification of the inner person is not only for my own sake but so that I can
serve Jesus better.
The hymn I’ve chosen for today is “Lord, now let your servant go his way in peace”. The title is from Luke 2:29 and part of the chapter of Luke’s gospel that tells the story of Jesus from his birth to adolescence and is nearly all we know about his early life. The text is very familiar to anyone who enjoys Evensong in the Church of England. It is one of the Church’s shortest canticles (Bible passages that are usually sung rather than spoken) known by its Latin title “nunc dimittis” and is a setting of the song of Simeon, an elderly Jewish priest. The hymn is James Seddon’s four-part setting of the canticle to a regular metrical tune.
(c) Andrey Mironov CC BY-SA 4.0
The occasion
of Simeon’s song was the ‘presentation’ of Jesus in the Temple, an old Jewish
ritual that allowed a woman to be proclaimed ritually clean forty days after giving
birth to her son (for a girl it was twice as long -eighty days, see Leviticus
chapter 12). With the birth of Jesus arbitrarily celebrated on 25 December,
that makes 2 February the occasion to remember this ceremony, known as Candlemas
because candles are lit as a sign of revelation (enlightenment).
Simeon’s revelation
from God at some time in his life was that before he died he would see the “hope
of Israel” (that is the promised saviour, also known as the Messiah or Christ)
although this hymn doesn’t actually use that phrase. By the same revelation from God, he recognised
in the infant Jesus someone who in later life would be this hope, the one who
would rescue the Jewish people.
But rescue
them from what? It’s generally assumed
that people in his day were hoping for a military or diplomatic leader who
would save them from subjugation as part of the Roman empire and give them the
independence under God that they longed for. But it turned out that Jesus understood his
mission much more in terms of saving them from the twin evils of secularism
(ignoring God altogether) and legalism (trying to follow the letter of the religious
law while ignoring the basic principles of fairness, justice and mercy, the
fault of the Pharisees). He was sent to ‘redeem’ (literally ‘buy back’ God’s
people for God. Later Christian thought has
added further layers of understanding to this concept of redemption, but now isn’t
the time to go into those.
But there’s
more to the story than that. Simeon saw more than the hope of Israel in this
baby. He hailed him also as the “light of
revelation to the Gentiles shown and light of Israel’s glory to the world made
known” in the words of the hymn – other translations are available. Jesus is God’s gift not just to the Jewish
people but to the whole world. Mary had
known that ever since the annunciation, the shepherds at Bethlehem knew
it. But when Simeon proclaimed it in the
Temple, the secret was out. The people
of Jerusalem may have forgotten this incident thirty years later, until the Messiah
returned to fulfil his destiny.
For us, Candlemas
is a time to recognise the light that Jesus brings to our lives. That might be a
recognition of having forgotten God’s call and living life without reference to
his standards, or living by obsolete rituals that are holding us back from
living life as God intended (like the Pharisees), or offering a way out of some
kind of darkness in our life (perhaps depression, addiction, or being controlled
by someone else). Or it might be a time to remember a promise
that God once made that we have not yet seen fulfilled, or failed to grasp
fully, and ask him to fulfil it now. Go
your way in peace, God’s word has been fulfilled.
