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In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.
Well, dear brothers and sisters in Christ, maybe you’re thinking deja vu. If you’re thinking that you’ve recently heard today’s gospel lesson, you would be correct. Six weeks ago, the first Sunday after Christmas, we had this exact text with a few verses added on at the end about the prophetess Anna.
As we prepare for sermons, we try to look at what these themes might be in the readings for today, and I wonder what is running through them. I think that one of the maybe obvious themes that we see is this theme of the temple. In the Old Testament lesson, we hear the prophet Samuel being taken to the temple by his mother Hannah, and there he will be given into service to the Lord for the rest of his life.
In the psalm, we hear the psalmist lamenting the fact that he is unable to be in the temple, and he is proclaiming his great desire to be in the temple where the Lord is, to be in the courts of the Lord. And, of course, we hear about Jesus being presented in the temple.
With this text, there’s always this tendency to focus on Simeon, this kind of main character, and what it is he does. And we should and we will talk about Simeon, but there’s also a little more going on here that I’d like us to pay attention to this morning. Perhaps we can get a little hint of it from the epistle text.
What we want to talk about is that our Lord Jesus Christ, in becoming man, made himself fully subject to the will of his Father. In this, for lack of a better term, he did not enjoy any kind of special privilege, so to speak. He wasn’t any different than any other Israelite who came under the law. He had to be subjected to the law so that he could fulfill that same law perfectly. He had to sympathize with us, and in order to do that, he had to become like us in every way, so that he may know our temptations and our suffering.
At first in this lesson, it may sound like Luke is writing that Jesus is being taken to Jerusalem to be purified, especially when he writes, “the time came for their purification.” We might assume that he is speaking of Mary and Jesus. Now, there are other translations; I think the King James renders this as “her purification.” Thus, we would know that this is indeed Mary who is the one who needs to be purified.
However, in our text, we think really Luke is saying Mary and Joseph. Joseph is the husband; he is the one who has this responsibility to make sure that his wife Mary now goes to the temple and goes through this rite. Regardless of what is meant here, we need to talk about this rite of purification after the birth of a child so we can know why it’s even necessary. Right? Why it had to be done in the first place?
Well, Moses had been given instructions by the Lord in Leviticus chapter 14. The Lord said to Moses, “Speak to the people of Israel, saying, if a man conceives and bears a male child, then she shall be unclean seven days.” To this was added an additional thirty-three days before the woman could be taken to the tent of meeting for purification, bringing along with her a lamb for a burnt offering and a pigeon or a turtle dove for a sin offering. The priest would then make the sacrifice on her behalf and give her atonement before the Lord. She would be declared ceremonially clean.
Now, the same was true for female children, but the duration of uncleanness would be double. Moreover, during this time of uncleanness, the woman could not touch anything holy. And she could not come into the sanctuary.
Looking at this, it seems unnecessary to us. I mean, why does the Mother of God need to be purified? Why does Mary, this one who found favor with God, the one who generations would call blessed, why does she have to go through what seems like a humiliating ritual? And what about this prohibition of her touching anything holy? Her hands had held and caressed her son Jesus. She had nursed him, and she had washed him. She was constantly touching a holy thing, the most holy thing. Because what more holy thing could she be accused of touching than God incarnate?
I think that the point of this is, while it is true God could have exempted Mary from this requirement and from this law, He didn’t do this because He didn’t even exempt His own Son from the law. Here is this family traveling to Jerusalem to accomplish all of this, especially the purification. It seems that but that’s not really the only reason they’re going, and it may not be the main reason.
For the Lord had also told Moses, and this was in keeping with His institution of the Passover. For most families, this would not be a literal dedication of the child to a life of service in the church as what we hear in the text from 1 Samuel this morning. It would be more of a symbolic presentation of the firstborn to fulfill the commands of the Torah. Instead, the child would be redeemed or perhaps purchased back, if you will, from the Lord by presenting a sacrifice in his place. And this is what Joseph and Mary were there to do.
Of all the various people there that day, the individuals going about, the families at the temple that day, surely Joseph and Mary were inconspicuous. They had not arrived there with trumpets blaring or with any kind of fanfare. Being poor people, there wasn’t anything elaborate about the way they were dressed or even the way that they carried themselves. In fact, nobody probably paid much attention to them. Nobody really cared about them; didn’t care who they were. Just another poor family coming to the temple to do what was required of them.
Yet, we are told one man notices them. In fact, he is led to them by the Holy Spirit. And what is it that we know about this man, Simeon? Well, Luke tells us he was righteous and devout, meaning that his heart was right with God and that his outward appearance or his countenance and his piety reflected his heart’s condition. One of the persons I read said that Simeon was a true Israelite because he was one of the few who had been waiting for the consolation of Israel.
We always, I think, picture Simeon as a very old man, perhaps on his last leg, on the verge of dying. If you look at images of Simeon on the internet, that’s exactly what you see. Luther actually said that, well, Simeon has to be old because he’s presented to us as this perfect image of an Old Testament prophet. I said this morning in the early service that we don’t know if he was really that old. I talked to Dylan between services; he said, well, you know, some of the ancient church fathers said Simeon was 200 years old. So you can take that for what it’s worth. Regardless, the point is, his age didn’t have anything to do with it. It had to do with his heart.
Luke tells us that it had been revealed to him by the Holy Spirit that he would not die, he would not see death before he got to see the Lord’s Christ. So it is by the Holy Spirit that Simeon is brought into the temple this day to see the Lord’s Christ for himself. You can imagine what Mary thinks when this complete stranger comes up to her. It seems like he almost snatches this young baby out of her arms and starts breaking into what seems like a psalm, this praise.
But it is a prophecy just as much as it is a song of praise because Simeon proclaims that this is the salvation of God. The thing that he sees before him now is for all people, not just for those Jews who are there in the temple doing what they’re supposed to be doing, fulfilling the law’s commands, but he is for all nations. Not just that, Simeon believes because he has spent his entire life believing—not just by sight but by the Holy Spirit. God has given now to Simeon exactly what he has been promised. For Jesus is the consolation that Simeon has waited his entire life to see with his own eyes, to see God in the flesh because flesh was necessary for Christ to become our brother in all respects so that he would be tempted and so that he would suffer.
Our text from Hebrews 2 this morning tells us that in order that Christ could die for all men, he had to become man. As humiliating as it was for our Lord to die, this is the way it had to be to free us from the tyranny of sin and death itself. In this, He became our merciful and great high priest, one who is, as the author says, able to sympathize with our weaknesses but is without sin.
In this priesthood, He now offers himself up as the great sacrifice on the day of atonement, dying so that we may live, so that He may redeem us by His sacrifice. Now, Luke tells us that Mary and Joseph brought that day two turtle doves because they were poor. They were so poor that they could not afford a lamb to be present there as a sacrifice, and yet they did indeed bring a Lamb. The one that would one day be offered as a sacrifice, not for the purification of one person, but for the entire world.
The Lamb of God who would take away the sin of the world, bearing the shame of the cross. Simeon’s spiritual eyes were opened to this long before his physical eyes gazed on the Messiah. He has already found himself freed from this slavery of sin. He now knows that there is nothing else that he has to believe other than the salvation that he sees before him. This is exactly why he can now depart in peace.
It’s why he can die in peace. In just a few minutes, we are going to be called to this altar for the Lord’s Supper, and after the eating and drinking, each table will be dismissed with “depart in peace.” After the entire supper is over, we will sing the Nunc Dimittis, the song of Simeon. I’d like us to think this morning about how we respond to having the Lord’s Supper. Do we really depart in peace? Do we leave this altar with joy and gladness in our hearts? Does it show in our faces?
Shouldn’t our departing in peace signal more than just the end of the service? It certainly had a different meaning for Simeon. He was saying that he is not just leaving the temple in peace; he is leaving prepared to die, content to die. I think it’s interesting that the Nunc Dimittis is part of our funeral liturgy because it makes us think about this duality that we may depart in peace both temporally and eternally.
So I ask you, do you leave this place with the same confidence in your heart that you are now ready to die, young or old? Surely we don’t leave here expecting that. But whether we walk out of here and the Lord strikes us dead on the sidewalk out there or whether He grants us many more years, we should leave with the same consolation that Simeon did. We depart in peace, ready to die ourselves because we know the salvation that the Lord has promised to us, that He has prepared for us, and He has now delivered to us.
Unlike Simeon, we will not ever have this joy and privilege of snatching the Lord Jesus from His mother’s arms and putting Him in our own arms and raising Him in triumphant joy. But like Simeon, we still have the Word of God to believe and to trust. We, too, have the Holy Spirit as a light to reveal Him to us in His holy gospel. Though we can’t take Christ in our arms as Simeon did, we today can receive Him on our tongues and in our mouths.
So we ask ourselves, did any of this really have to happen? Did Mary really have to be purified? Did Jesus really have to be presented in the temple? The answer is, of course, yes, because that’s how God ordained it. That He would put His own Son under subjection and the burden of the law so that He may fulfill every requirement of that same law for us, to make Christ His Son, the propitiation for all our sin, and redeem us by His blood.
Let us rejoice like Simeon that we too have seen the salvation which the Lord has prepared in the face of all people. Our Lord Jesus comes to us today and offers Himself to us so that we may be forgiven and so that we may be strengthened by His word and His most holy body and blood. He purifies us with that same blood, cleansing us from all unrighteousness, so that He can present us to His Father without spot or blemish.
So brothers and sisters, the Holy Spirit has called you here today so that you may see the Lord in His temple. You will taste and see that the Lord is good. By His sacrifice, He has released you from the burden of law and the slavery of sin so that you may depart in peace.
Amen. And the peace of God that surpasses all understanding guard your hearts and minds in Christ Jesus our Lord. Amen.