Luke 2:22-40

New Year’s Eve | December 31, A.D. 2023 | Luke 2:22-40 | Andrew F. Weisner

Isaiah  61:10- 62:3

10 I will greatly rejoice in the Lord, my whole being shall exult in my God; for he has clothed me with the garments of salvation, he has covered me with the robe of righteousness, as a bridegroom decks himself with a garland, and as a bride adorns herself with her jewels. 1 For as the earth brings forth its shoots, and as a garden causes what is sown in it to spring up, so the Lord God will cause righteousness and praise to spring up before all the nations. For Zion’s sake I will not keep silent, and for Jerusalem’s sake I will not rest, until her vindication shines out like the dawn,    and her salvation like a burning torch. 2 The nations shall see your vindication, and all the kings your glory; and you shall be called by a new name that the mouth of the Lord will give. 3 You shall be a crown of beauty in the hand of the Lord, and a royal diadem in the hand of your God.

Psalm 111

Galatians 4:4-7

4 But when the fullness of time had come, God sent his Son, born of a woman, born under the law, 5 in order to redeem those who were under the law, so that we might receive adoption as children. 6 And because you are children, God has sent the Spirit of his Son into our hearts, crying, ‘Abba! Father!’ 7 So you are no longer a slave but a child, and if a child then also an heir, through God.

Luke 2:22-40

22 When the time came for their purification according to the law of Moses, they brought him up to Jerusalem  to present him to the Lord 23 (as it is written in the law of the Lord, ‘Every firstborn male shall be designated as holy to the Lord’), 24 and they offered a sacrifice according to what is stated in the law of the Lord, ‘a pair of turtle-doves or two young pigeons.’ 25 Now there was a man in Jerusalem whose name was Simeon; this man was righteous and devout, looking forward to the consolation of Israel, and the Holy Spirit rested on him. 26 It had been revealed to him by the Holy Spirit that he would not see death before he had seen the Lord’s Messiah. 27 Guided by the Spirit, Simeon came into the temple; and when the parents brought in the child Jesus, to do for him what was customary under the law, 28 Simeon took him in his arms and praised God, saying, 29 ‘Master, now you are dismissing your servant in peace, according to your word; 30 for my eyes have seen your salvation, 31 which you have prepared in the presence of all peoples, 32 a light for revelation to the Gentiles and for glory to your people Israel.’ 33 And the child’s father and mother were amazed at what was being said about him. 34 Then Simeon blessed them and said to his mother Mary, ‘This child is destined for the falling and the rising of many in Israel, and to be a sign that will be opposed 35 so that the inner thoughts of many will be revealed—and a sword will pierce your own soul too.’ 36 There was also a prophet, Anna the daughter of Phanuel, of the tribe of Asher. She was of a great age, having lived with her husband for seven years after her marriage, 37 then as a widow to the age of eighty-four. She never left the temple but worshipped there with fasting and prayer night and day. 38 At that moment she came and began to praise God and to speak about the child to all who were looking for the redemption of Jerusalem. 39 When they had finished everything required by the law of the Lord, they returned to Galilee, to their own town of Nazareth. 40 The child grew and became strong, filled with wisdom; and the favor of God was upon him.

Homily

It was about this time of year, give or take a few weeks, that this event happened…  When I was in high school, my daddy and I would kind of trade off driving either a 1964 Ford Falcon, or a 1973 Ford Pinto. (One might get the impression that we were dedicated “Ford” people, but not really.) Most of the time Pop would drive the Falcon, and I would drive the Pinto; he drove the Falcon to work, and I drove the Pinto to school.

On this particular cold, wintery morning, the Falcon had been the last car driven into our car-port, with the Pinto in front of it, so the Falcon was the easier to back-out and drive away. Pop was not going into town for work this particular day, but I was going into town for school, so the reasonable thing for me to do was to take the ’64 Ford Falcon… which was not usual for me to take the Falcon, but not strange, either. And so, I did.

So, off to school I go, driving down highway 52, and veer off – as usual – into Stanleyville to stop off at Lum Tuttle’s café to get myself a sausage biscuit, and a pint of chocolate milk, to have for breakfast while I was driving to school. And so, to Lum Tuttle’s I go, go in, get my vittles, come out, get in the car; wrap that sausage sandwich just right to where the wrapper is pulled down where I can get a bite, but still wrapped around the bread, and the pint of chocolate milk (in one of the old card-board cartons) has been opened, but now reclosed with the straw sticking up out of the top. Thus situated, I crank the car, backed out of Lum’s parking lot, and head down the road toward school. Off I go: sausage sandwich in my left hand, driving with my right; chocolate milk sittin’ on the seat to my right, waiting for a stop-light. And just so I continued… for about a mile and a half, until I came to the long bridge that crossed over highway 52… and I crossed that rather long bridge and,  apparently, I must have put on the brakes, or slightly turned the steering wheel, or some such, I remember not, but whatever I did, Iintended one action, while the car took another … because there was ice on that bridge (!).

The car proceeded to take, moving to the left, a 360 degree turn – a complete turn-around, spinning on the icy bridge. In this process, it jumped up on the median separating my lane  and the two lanes of on-coming traffic; and, actually, for a moment, my car was to the left, in the lanes for the on-coming traffic, but (thanks be to God) none was coming. There was a slight slant to that bridge, going downward, to my left, which the car could have taken, but it didn’t; and, had the car done that – especially after the bouncing of the car that commenced after it had hit the median – (bouncing and moving down-hill) the car could have fallen off of the bridge, falling down 30 or more feet, into the two lanes of traffic below; but it didn’t. In fact, when the bouncing and spinning of the car was all over, the car was situated in the same lane right where it was when the whole mishap began, except just further along the bridge. The front wheels were quite out of alignment  from the way the car had hit the median while spinning, but it was still drive-able.

I sat there, stunned, when this was all over … a car from the on-coming lane, to my left, stopped, and the driver of that car – a man who had seen the whole thing – got out and came towards me to ask if I was ok. I was… except startled, scared, shaken-up a bit. And then I continued driving. I knew immediately – from the feel of driving – that something was wrong with the front wheels. So, about a half-mile down the road, I pulled into a gas station where they had a pay-phone (remember those?) and called Pop – who “just happened to be” home, not on his way to work – and told him I’d had this mishap on an icy bridge. His chief concern – rightly so – was that I was ok. He came from home, traded cars with me; I continued on to school in the Pinto, he took home the Falcon. It later occurred to both of us that, had I gone through that ordeal on that bridge in the Pinto, it was built so much closer to the ground than the larger Falcon: when the Pinto’s tires would have hit the median, it probably would not have bounced: it would have flipped… and turned, and very-well-could have taken that descent, falling off the bridge and down onto the busy traffic of highway 52 below. But, such is not what happened. I did not drive the Pinto; the Falcon was parked behind it to make it more convenient to drive the larger, built-higher, in this instance safer Falcon. There had not been on-coming traffic when my car bounced over into the on-coming lane, traffic that I would have crashed into, and it into me, causing harm to other vehicles and (potentially) to other people. When it was all over, the only real, actual damage, other than the front-wheel alignment of the car, was to my sausage sandwich. It was squashed to the point that you could not separate the bread from the sausage; but not a drop of the chocolate milk had been spilled. Nor, as I have related, was I or anyone hurt at all.

I am not sure how long it was after that – as I recall, it was not long – that I began to see that event, and interpret it, as the miracle that it was. The fact that I was in the car that I was, that it bounced, and did not flip; that there was no traffic coming up behind me, or toward me, such that – when my car was spinning – it would be hit; my car didn’t fall off the bridge (likely a 30-or-more foot drop; of course, had that happened, I would have certainly been killed). Fairly soon, I interpreted: at that particular point in my life, God’s presence chose to protect me and keep me alive (alive for this life, anyway).

God’s presence and power, at least, according to the biblical account, does not choose to jump in and out of our universe; God’s presence and power are always present. In fact, the sausage sandwich of this story becomes somewhat of a symbol. Recall my description when I said, “you couldn’t separate the bread from the sausage.”  So it is with God’s presence and power and his creation: God is pervasive throughout it. There are some places and moments when God’s specific presence can be — is — localized.  One such is: in a stable in Bethlehem; in today’s gospel reading: being presented with his parents in the temple in Jerusalem when he is 40 days old, and being blessed by the righteous old man, Simeon; growing up in Nazareth; teaching by the lake-side-sea-shore in Galilee, and in Jerusalem; hanging on a cross outside the Jerusalem walls; and then emerged from an empty tomb.

Did the other people in the Jerusalem temple, making prayers and sacrifices that day of the Lord’s presentation in the temple, seeing that Baby Jesus being carried-in by Joseph and Mary – did they look-on and say to themselves and each other when they saw Jesus: “Why, looky there, Mabel! Here comes God!” Probably not. The biblical record informs us that two – Simeon and Anna – recognized this baby, and who this family was, while this child’s presence there was, at that moment, a symbol,  and a proclamation, that God can be – is – in this world, “mixed-in” with all the other people and “stuff,” and it will be our – and others’ – eyes of faith that see him. God is truly, genuinely, always here; God has declared and shown that he chooses to live among human beings. When we pause and ponder, our eyes of faith will see him.

And another place that the Church, the apostolic tradition, tells us that God locates himself – an unlikely, seemingly un-powerful place: where he calls us to find him, his presence, “mixed” with particular bread and wine.

Amen: Come, Lord Jesus.

From: The Rev. Andrew F. Weisner, Ph.D.
North American Lutheran Church
Antioch Lutheran Church, Dallas, NC, USA