1st Sunday after Christmas

1^st Sunday after Christmas, 12/27/2020 | Sermon on Luke 2:22-40 | by Paula Murray |

²²When the time came for their purification according to the Law of Moses, Joseph and Mary brought Jesus up to Jerusalem to present Him to the Lord ²³as it is written in the Law of the Lord, “Every male who first opens the womb shall be called holy to the Lord” ²⁴and to offer a sacrifice according to what is said in the Law of the Lord, “a pair of turtledoves, or two young pigeons.” ²⁵Now there was a man in Jerusalem, whose name was Simeon, and this man was righteous and devout, waiting for the consolation of Israel, and the Holy Spirit was upon him. ²⁶And it had been revealed to him by the Holy Spirit that he would not see death before he had seen the Lord’s Christ. ²⁷And he 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, ²⁸he took Him up in his arms and blessed God and said, ²⁹“Lord, now you are letting Your servant depart in peace, according to Your word; ³⁰for my eyes have seen Your salvation ³¹that You have prepared in the presence of all peoples, ³²a light for revelation to the Gentiles, and for glory to Your people Israel.” ³³And His father and His mother marveled at what was said about Him. ³⁴And Simeon blessed them and said to Mary His mother, “Behold, this child is appointed for the fall and rising of many in Israel, and for a sign that is opposed ³⁵and a sword will pierce through your own soul also, so that thoughts from many hearts may be revealed.” ³⁶And there was a prophetess, Anna, the daughter of Phanuel, of the tribe of Asher. She was advanced in years, having lived with her husband seven years from when she was a virgin, ³⁷and then as a widow until she was eighty-four. She did not depart from the temple, worshiping with fasting and prayer night and day. ³⁸And coming up at that very hour she began to give thanks to God and to speak of Him to all who were waiting for the redemption of Jerusalem. ³⁹And when they had performed everything according to the Law of the Lord, they returned into Galilee, to their own town of Nazareth. ⁴⁰And the child grew and became strong, filled with wisdom. And the favor of God was upon Him.                                                                                                                       English Standard Version

The CDC has recently made a welcome change in their guidelines.  Previously, we were advised not to sing for fear we would propel our potentially virus laden breath through our masks and onto or into the masks of the people around us.  Now, we are advised simply not to sing loudly.  The CDC has just finally come around to what many pastors or choir directors have known for decades: few of us adorning the pews or the cushioned chairs of our Lord’s sanctuaries are opera singers.  Most people at worship in our churches just barely sing loud enough for the person standing next to them to hear.  Gusto is not commonly a factor in congregational singing, and I’m not just talking Lutheran churches, here.  Some years ago, as I worshipped the Lord our God within a Roman Catholic parish, they sang the Old Wooden Cross as if they themselves were weakly clinging to its base, just waiting for their last breath so that they might expire and meet Jesus face to face.  There were 500 plus people filling the sanctuary that day and it was barely possible to make out the words of the hymn.  The CDC change is welcome in that it is hard to keep people from singing hymns, even if very quietly, and that is especially the case when those hymns are Christmas carols.

Carols, as hymns do generally, help us give voice to our thanks to God.  “I will greatly rejoice in the Lord; my soul shall exult in my God, for He has clothed me with the garments of salvation….” So says the prophet Isaiah, awaiting the good things coming soon to a battered and broken Jerusalem. We do pray out loud and we are led to proclaim the goodness of faith as we are led through the liturgy, but it is in singing that we find it easiest to “greatly rejoice in the Lord.”  The psalms are laden with “alleluias” and “hosannas” and we know they were sung even if we do not know the tunes to which they were sung. We rarely shout our alleluias, but we can sing them with a bit of enthusiasm, especially if closer to the fellowship luncheon after church than the invocation at the beginning of worship.

The enthusiasm is real, again, if quiet, in part because we learn our faith through our hymns. And, as we sing them, we rehearse what we have learned over and over again as the years of our lives chase one another to our old age.  The words of our hymns become a part of us, molding our faith and insisting that our actions correspond to what we believe.  This is what theologian and writer Eugene Peterson called a “long obedience in the same direction.”  Faith becomes so very deeply a part of our memory that the Word of the Lord is, indeed, written on our hearts.

Faith was, clearly, deeply engraved on the heart of Simeon of the Temple in today’s Gospel reading from the book of Luke.  Day in, and day out, he walked the courts of the Temple, contemplating the Word and Law of God, and living obediently in its percepts.  Trusting in the promises God made His people, He looked for the coming of the Messiah, for however the Holy Spirit spoke with him, Simeone had come to believe that he would be blessed to see the Messiah before he died.  At this point, Simeon is a very old man, and the promise made him surely wore on his heart and on his joints.  But there did indeed come a day when prophecy was fulfilled, and on the 40^th day after the birth of the child Jesus he was brought to the Temple by his parents for, as the text says, the time of Mary’s purification.

I do need to talk about the timing of these texts, for it is unusual.  Some of us may remember that this portion of the second chapter of the Gospel of Luke used to come between the 28^th of January and the third of February, basically, 40 days after the birth of Christ.  The Old Testament, specifically, the 12^th chapter of Leviticus, proscribed a ritual of purification for a woman.  The act of giving birth, natural and desirable though it is, made women ritually unclean according to the Torah, probably because there is blood involved and the child leaving his or her mother’s womb.  Both of those things clearly include the crossing of boundaries, the confines of the skin and the womb, and such crossings made a woman unclean.  A woman who gave birth to a male child was ritually unclean for 7 days, but was also to abstain from worship for another 33 days.  The time proscribed for a woman who gave birth to a girl child was twice as long. When we speak of ritual impurity, we do not mean the woman herself was somehow less than a human being or dirty in some way; simply that because certain barriers had been crossed she needed to be ritually purified.  Again, for a mother of a newborn boy the day on which her period of uncleanliness ended with the purification rite was the 40^th day.

For many generations of the Christian Church new mothers, in line with Scriptural mandate, were to abstain from worship for 39 days and on the 40^th present herself for prayers of purification at the door of her local parish church.  It is only within the last three generations or so that the tradition has declined, probably for ignorance of what was meant to happen and why, and for a certain disdain at anything that differentiates between men and women. Mary’s presumed day of purification is a feast day in the Church as are most significant events in the life of her Son our Lord Jesus Christ.  It is called variously the Presentation of Jesus or the Purification of Mary, or Candlemas, for the associated tradition of blessing the candles to be used over the course of the remaining days of winter.   Whatever it is called, this day of observation is quietly slip sliding away, and what is left of it now appears on the first Sunday after Christmas.

The upshot is to diminish the role of Mary the Mother of our Lord in our celebration of Christmas, and to increase the role of others like Simeone, and to a lesser effect, Anna.  Mary is reduced to the vessel that carried our Lord who pondered her miracle of a Son.  Roman Catholics and the Orthodox can be honestly accused, in some cases, anyway, of making too much of Mary, while non-Catholic Christians make too little.  There must be some middle ground, that recognizes her not only as a walking, talking tabernacle for the nine months she bore Jesus but also as His first disciple.  Like Simeon, hers was a long obedience in the same direction, only she grew in her discipleship as Jesus grew in stature and favor with the Lord.

Simeon, on the other hand, came to the end of his discipleship in that meeting with Jesus, Mary, and Joseph.  God had fulfilled His promises, both to Israel in the birth of the long-awaited Messiah, and to Simeon who was blessed to see the Messiah, to touch His infant cheek, to hold Him, and to bless Him.  Recalling both God’s faithfulness to His promises and the end of his discipleship, Simeon gave his last will and testimony.  “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.”  This is not exactly a rip-roaring performance of What Child Is This, but as last words go it was not a bad way to go out, not at all.  But we do not want to understand Simeon’s witness for his own last hurrah, or as a sacrifice of his life for Israel’s salvation.  No, that role is for the Child in his aged arms.

The role of sacrifice in Israel’s ransom from sin is long standing by this time in Israel’s history.  From the beginning of their being chosen, the corrupting effects of idolatry, sin, and death have been ameliorated by sacrifice.  When Mary went to her purification on the 40^th day, the Law required that she bring a sin offering of a lamb, or if unable to afford a lamb, two pigeons or turtledoves.  Luke tells us that she and Joseph brought the latter.  We are also told that as the first male child “to open her womb,” in other words to be born, Jesus is to be offered in God’s service.  The child so offered is “redeemed,” with a cash offering of 5 shekels of silver.  The firstborn lamb of an ewe is likewise dedicated to the Lord’s service, but as a sacrifice.  (Numbers 18; Exodus 13) The animals are not then redeemed, like male children are, but placed on the altar and sacrificed for the atonement of sin.  If we read carefully, we cannot help but notice that there is no exchange of cash for Jesus.  He is not redeemed at the time of Mary’s purification as would be expected.  We are accustomed to hearing Jesus referred to as the Lamb of God.  Indeed, we sing as much every Sunday.  “Lamb of God,” we sing,” have mercy on us.”  Here, then, is the Lamb of God, whose life will be given for love and mercy’s sake to redeem the world.

In this morning’s reading from Galatians, St. Paul tells us that, “When the fullness of time had come, God sent forth His  Son, born of woman, born under the law, to redeem those who were under the law, so that we might receive adoption as sons.”  Even so simple an event as the meeting of two aged servants of God, Simeon and Anna, and the child Jesus and His family, point not to simple fellowship or witness to the glory of God but to the ransom of the whole of creation from sin and death.  If that is not something to sing about, I do not know what is.