Grace, mercy and peace be to you from God our Father, and from our Lord Jesus Christ.
Text: (Luke 2:22-40)
Lord, now you are letting your servant depart in peace, according to your word;
For my eyes have seen your salvation that you have prepared in the presence of all peoples,
A light for revelation to the Gentiles, and for glory to your people Israel.
Prayer: Let the words of my mouth, and the meditations of our hearts be acceptable in your sight, O Lord, our Rock and our Redeemer. Amen.
Many people when they come to church want to be taught how to live, or they expect how to be taught how to live. Many people also avoid the church at all costs, because they don’t want to be told how to live!
But the bible first of all is not there to teach you how to live, but to teach you how to die. Because if you know that you can die with certainty, with peace, with confidence, then you can truly live! Every time we hear the word of God, and we hear the preaching of the church, these words are living and active, they come from the other side of death, to show you how to die and how to meet your Maker and Saviour, Jesus Christ.
People are always trying to escape death, but unfortunately for them, death won’t escape them! The death rate in this world is one per person, you know. Check out your local cemetery if you want some proof! And nevertheless, we always want to escape it, as if we are afraid of it.
In our reading today, Joseph and Mary take the baby Jesus to the temple 40 days after he was born. So today, the 2nd of February, is exactly 40 days after Christmas Day. It was a Jewish law that after child-birth, a woman wasn’t allowed to go to the temple for 40 days, and she also had to give a special offering. Normally, people had to bring a lamb, but if the people couldn’t afford a lamb, then they had “to bring a pair of turtledoves, or two young pigeons.” Mary and Joseph couldn’t afford the lamb, so they brought a pair of these birds. This is one of the only passages in the bible where it is explicitly said that Jesus’ family were actually poor people. We get a sense that they weren’t wealthy people, since Jesus was born in a stable, but the reason given in that passage, is that there was no room in the inn. Maybe they were able to afford a room if there was one available. But in this passage, we see that Mary and Joseph couldn’t afford a lamb, so they brought along the cheap alternative that God allows instead.
Also, there was another reason why they came to the temple. The first reason was for Mary to offer the sacrifice for the 40 days after childbirth. But the second reason was to present Jesus to the Lord, because every firstborn child had to be presented to the Lord. Now the reason for this goes back to the time of the Exodus in Egypt, where Moses sent one last final plague to the Egyptians, that the firstborn son in every house would be killed. The Israelites, God’s people, were commanded to kill a lamb and paint the blood on their doorposts, so that when the angel of death saw it, he would pass over their house. This event was always commemorated by the Jews in a special celebration, a special festival, called the Passover. That’s because the angel of death passed over them.
So in memory of all this, every baby boy was presented to the Lord, to remind the people of this event which had happened earlier, and to place the child into the hands of the living God, the God of life, and not into the hands of the angel of death.
So this is what was happening on the 40 days after Jesus was born. And this is the event that we have come to celebrate tonight.
Now while all this is happening, and while Mary and Joseph come into the temple, they meet a man, called Simeon. He was a particularly special man because the Holy Spirit had revealed to him that he would not see death until he had seen the Lord’s Christ.
How did the Holy Spirit tell Simeon all of this? We don’t know. Maybe he was such a humble man that he didn’t go around telling people all the details. But it is a great miracle which is given to Simeon, that when Mary and Joseph come to the temple, he recognises them: he knows who they are. There were probably many couples who came every day for years, one after the other, rich and poor, high and low, all sorts. There must have been thousands of people who Simeon saw walk through the doors of the temple. But on this one day, Simeon recognises this poor family with a pair of pigeons, and he recognises Jesus the Saviour of the World. He picks him out from the crowd and he says, “That’s the one.”
It is important for you too, that you recognise Jesus, and that you pick him out from the crowd. There are so many religions in the world. There are all sorts of people who want to you to buy their cheap religious wares. And all of these false prophets, and false gods, and false teachings about God, are there to eat up your life. You see, when you have a false god, it will always demand a sacrifice. It will take your life away from you. The true living God will give you life, and not just any kind of life, but he will give you a living Jesus. Jesus is the resurrection and the life. This is the life that God gives you.
We on the other hand a sinful. We’re like pieces of metal drawn to the magnet of sin. We sometimes know what’s right, but then we don’t do what’s right. St Paul says in Ephesians 1: You were dead in your sins.
So if when you come to church, you just want to learn how to live a good life in this life, on this earth, then your desire is to learn how to be dead. Why would you want that? Instead, you should learn how to die with Jesus, so that you can receive his life, and learn how to be alive.
And so our friend Simeon in our reading tonight recognises Jesus. He doesn’t recognise him through reason, or scientific deduction. He doesn’t choose Jesus at random. He goes up to the baby Jesus, certain that he is the true Messiah, the true Saviour, and takes him in his arms, through the Holy Spirit.
Simeon can’t believe in Jesus Christ or come to him by his own reason or strength, but the Holy Spirit calls him by the gospel. So we read,
“Simeon came in the Spirit into the temple, and when the parents brought in the child Jesus, to do for him according to the custom of the Law, he took him up in his arms and blessed God and said, Lord, now you are letting your servant depart in peace, according to your word; for my eyes have seen your salvation that you have prepared in the presence of all peoples, a light for revelation to the Gentiles, and for the glory of your people Israel.”
Simeon speaks these beautiful words, a poem, a song. Maybe he sung these words, we don’t know. And their beauty and structure don’t come from St Luke who wrote the words of the gospel, but they come from the inspiration of the Holy Spirit. These are words which the Holy Spirit put into the mouth of Simeon, and it is a song which teaches all people how to die. It’s funny that we always sing these words each Sunday after we receive the Lord’s Supper, and we’ll do the same tonight. Martin Luther said, “When you come to the Lord’s Supper, you should come as if you are going to your death, so that when you die, it will be just like going to the Lord’s Supper.”
Simeon says: Lord, now let your servant depart in peace, according to your word.
It’s not good enough that we say to God that we want to die. There are plenty of people who get sick or old or depressed who say, “I just want to die.” This is not the Christian faith. Death is a frightening thing. It is a judgment upon us, and it brings us into the presence of God, and his judgment. St Paul says, the wages of sin is death.
So Simeon doesn’t say, “Lord now let your servant depart.” Let me die! Put an end to my misery! No, he doesn’t say that.
He doesn’t even say: “Lord now let your servant depart in peace”. The prophet Jeremiah talks about the false prophets who say, “Peace! Peace, where there is no peace.” There are plenty of people throughout the world, who are happy to die in peace, because they think they did what they could, or they lived a good life, or they made a difference to the world. What about God? He knows the secrets of the heart. He knows they we are sinners. He knows the damage and the harm that we have done, even what we have done without us knowing it. We can’t just slap a bandaid on an open wound and call it, “peace!” We can’t just say, “I feel good”, and call it “peace”! We can’t sweep our conscience under the carpet and pretend it doesn’t exist and then pretend to ourselves that we are at peace.
Instead, Simeon says, “Lord now let your servant depart in peace, according to your word.” Faith comes from the word of God. “Faith comes from hearing, and hearing through the word of Christ.”
The peace of God which passes all understanding is the peace that comes from God’s word, and it is the peace that comes from nowhere else.
You see in the Lutheran Church, when we speak the forgiveness of sins, we speak it purely because God says it in his word, and for no other reason. In 1 Peter 3, it says, “Baptism now saves you.” Because the word of God says, “Baptism now saves you”, you can say, “Let your servant depart in peace, according to your word.”
Jesus says to his apostles, “If you forgive anyone their sins, they are forgiven.” And so pastors in the church say, “On behalf of my Lord Jesus Christ, and by his command, I forgive you all your sins”. He said it, I believe it, that settles it. Because the word of God gives the command to the apostles (and then pastors) to speak this forgiveness, you can say, “Let your servant depart in peace according to your word.”
And Jesus says: “Take and eat, this is my body given for you.” “This is my blood shed for you for the forgiveness of sins.” God’s word says it, do you hear? And you say, “Let your servant depart in peace according to your word.”
You have everything that you need.
You have seen the living Jesus wash over your head, you have heard the voice of the living Jesus in your ear, you have tasted the living Jesus in your mouth. “My eyes have seen your salvation”, says Simeon. He has the baby Jesus in his arms. We have our living Saviour Jesus here every Sunday, every time we gather as the church. And from here, Jesus overshadows us with his glory, and he sends out his light. Simeon says, “A light to reveal to you to the nations, and the glory of your people Israel.”
God doesn’t want you to work out with your own reason and your own floundering around how to die, and how to meet him. He himself teaches these things in his word. And it is the task of the church to teach this word for the benefit of all people. And when this word is taught, then we trust that one Simeon after another will come in the power and conviction of the Spirit and take the baby Jesus in their arms and bless God.
Amen.
Now Lord, let your servant depart in peace,
According to your word,
For my eyes have seen your salvation,
Which you have prepared in the presence of all people,
A light to reveal you to the nations,
And the glory of your people Israel. Amen.
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