“Lord, now lettest thou thy servant depart in peace.”

We have a quaint custom of concluding all services of Christian worship with what is called a “benediction.”  The most familiar is the Apostolic Benediction which goes something like this: “The grace of the Lord Jesus Christ, the love of God the Father, and the communion of the Holy Spirit be with you all. Amen.”

That is what a benediction sounds like, as we all know, but what does it mean?  What good does it serve?

Is it just a sonorous and pious way of saying: “Service is over. Time to go home.”

Sometimes a nervous bridegroom at the wedding rehearsal asks,  “How will we know when the marriage ceremony is over and the time has come to leave?”  And the clergyman assures him that his cue will be plain enough:  “Whenever I hold up my hand like this and pronounce the benediction – then you kiss your bride and march with her down the aisle.”

Yes, the benediction is the sign that the service is over.  But it is set at the end of all services of Christian worship not just to signal us it is time to rise and leave, but also that we may take the philosophy and faith of the benediction over into all life’s experiences, and be ready from our hearts to pronounce the benediction every time we come to the end of an epoch or experience of personal service.  Oh, how important for us to know when to say “Lord, dismiss me now with thy blessing.”

The aged Simeon knew how to pronounce the benediction when it was due.  St. Luke tells that when this kind, elderly man saw the infant Jesus in the arms of his parents at the Temple presentation service, he exclaimed, “Now Lord, let thy servant depart in peace, for mine eyes have seen Thy salvation.”

The wheel of time turns for everyone.  The end of an epoch, a job, a pastorate, a career, comes to its end.  Our human bent is to want to freeze the time, to hold on at a given point, to preserve life at it once was.  But this cannot be.  We need to be able to say when the end comes, whatever or wherever, “Lord, dismiss us with thy blessing.”

Because Simeon was living for no narrow or selfish ends he found it not too difficult to pronounce the benediction on that phase of his life.  He did not curse his fate that he was departing at the dawning of the Messianic age and would not live to see the noontide glory of the results of the Redeemer’s grace in human lives and institutions.  All along he had lived as St. Luke puts it, “for Israel’s hope and consolation.”  He had never considered his life as subsisting for self alone.  The words he uses, “Lord, let now thy servant depart in peace,” are the very words then used for the manumission or freeing of a slave.  It is as if Simeon were saying: “Lord, I’ve finished the term of my servitude.  Now let me be set free from my duties.  I’ve discharged my responsibilities.  Let me go in peace.  I’m grateful that by Thy grace I’ve been brought to the threshold of Thy great new day.

Is there any wonder that the selfish and self-centered soul wants to freeze time at its most personally delectable apex of pleasure and finds difficulty in pronouncing the benediction at that point in life?

Bernhard Anderson said that when the French Enlightenment’s philosophy and phraseology — “We hold these truths to be self-evident – that all men are created equal and endowed with certain unalienable rights – that among these are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness” –became enshrined in our Declaration of Independence that it was, in effect, a declaration of independence from the Calvinist concept of the nature and destiny of man.  John Calvin understood man’s destiny not in terms of pursuing happiness, but in terms of glorifying God and enjoying Him forever.

How much we need John Calvin’s and Simeon’s philosophy and faith today!  As we move from 1996 toward 1997, and begin the count down for the dawn of a new millennium, we have been made painfully aware that for us the security and freedom we used to enjoy is gone.  Not only that, but we are also aware that a new day of political and economic diplomacy has dawned where the United States supremacy in trade and manufacture has been challenged, and even out-stripped; where old standards of protective security for diplomats and travelers in strange countries have disappeared, and where new methods must be discovered for dealing with kidnapping, high-jacking, and blackmail.  Yes, painful though it is for us to acknowledge it, we know that many of the comfortable securities we have known and enjoyed in the past are gone.  We have moved toward a foreboding future.  Is it hard for us to say the benediction at a time like this?

But a benediction is not only a sign of an end and our acceptance of it; it is also an invocation of God’s blessing on a new beginning.  As the worship hour draws to a close the minister holds up his hand to pronounce the benediction.  It is as if he were saying, “We’ve met here to commune with God, to hear and to think about His glory and His marvelous works.  Soon we will be leaving to go to our homes, our work, our families, our pleasures and problems.  But as we go, let us go with God.  Let us not turn away from Him.  May the Almighty companion us.  May God in all the fullness of His power be with us to bless us in the adventure we are now beginning.”

The Apostolic Benediction is a Trinitarian benediction, “May the grace of the Lord Jesus Christ, and the love of God the Father, and the communion of the Holy Spirit be with you all, now and forever. Amen.”

James Stewart said that the early church did not stumble upon the doctrine of the Trinity through the disputations of the scholars but rather that it came out of the experience of ordinary men and women; “They made the discovery that they could not say all they meant by the word, ‘God’, until they had said, ‘Father, Son, Spirit.’”

“I bind unto myself today,” said St. Patrick, “the strong name of the Trinity.”

First take with you the grace of the Lord Jesus Christ.  Grace is unmerited favor.  It is undeserved love.  It is unexpected deliverance.  “While we were yet sinners Christ died for us.”

What have we needed most?  Deliverance from our frustrated, shame-scarred, disappointed past.  What will we need most now as we go into the week before us?  Deliverance, redemption, from our peevish, petty ways, from our small uncharitable habits, from our indulging in anger when we don’t have our way, or covering ourselves up in curtness when we feel inadequate.  Deliverance, deliverance, from what we are and shall be is what we need and the grace of the Lord Jesus Christ – His all sufficient grace goes with us – if we will have Him.

Then take the love of God the Father with you.  Whatever the ending episode we are now leaving, whatever the straight and narrow way into which we have been summoned, His love sill go with us, all the way.

Remember the words of the hymn: “Lord, dismiss us with thy blessing; Fill our hearts with joy and peace.  So that when thy love shall call us, Savior, from the world away, Fear of death shall not appall us, Glad thy summons to obey.  May we ever, may we ever, Reign with thee in endless day.”

“And the Communion of the Holy Spirit be with you all.”  That is the final word.  None of us has said all we mean by “God” until we have said that.  What we need in our daily living is not only God in the eternities, or God in history, but God in us, making our hearts His dwelling place.  That is the Spirit, that is the Communion of the Holy Spirit.

“It is this that in every age has made and still makes the saints, not necessarily a deeper learning, not always a higher culture, certainly not a self-confident dogmatism that truculently condemns all who disagree, or a pugnacious assertiveness that narrows the gates of the kingdom; but something purely supernatural within, something strong and masterful, yet winsome and kindly, the indwelling of the eternal Word, the fellowship of the Unseen, the communion of the Holy Spirit.

“O Christian people, claim your inheritance, your rightful place within the blessing!  Yours can be the grace of Christ, yours the love of God, yours the Communion of the Spirit.  Go forth into the world in the joy and serenity of that high faith and say with that brave soldier of the cross, St. Patrick: “I bind unto myself today, the strong name of the Trinity.”