Bible Text: St. Luke 2:22–40 | Preacher: Rev. Dr. Christian Preus
Merry Christmas!
Simeon is in the Temple in Jerusalem. That’s where the Holy Spirit told him to go to see Jesus. That’s not insignificant. Where do you go to find Jesus? Not where your heart tells you to go. That’s the Disney way – follow your heart. The Christian way is to listen to God, the Holy Spirit. He tells you where to find Jesus. That is first of all in the Holy Scriptures, in the Bible. Why were Simeon and Anna waiting for the Savior? How did they know He would come into this sinful world? How can Simeon sing his great song, the nunc dimittis, what we sing after we eat and drink Christ’s body and blood every Sunday? How does Simeon know that God promised a Savior not only for Israel but for the Gentiles, for all nations, the whole world? God promised it. In the Bible. Jesus says it, “You search the Scriptures, because in them you think you have eternal life, and these are they which testify of Me.” That’s where you find Jesus, in His Word, the Bible. And you find Him in His Church. Simeon went to the Temple. We come to church. Jesus says, “Lo, I am with you always, to the end of the age.” He says that only after He tells His disciples, “Go and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, and teaching them to observe all that I commanded you. And lo, I am with you always to the end of the age.” You find Jesus, God with us, Immanuel, where Baptism is, where the name of Father, Son, and Holy Spirit is placed on you, where His teaching is, where we observe what He has commanded, “Take, eat, take drink, for the forgiveness of your sins.” That’s where you find Jesus, in His Word, and where that Word is preached, in His Church.
What did Simeon find in Jesus? That’s the second question. He calls Jesus a sign. Jesus is of course more than a sign, He is reality. And so before Simeon calls Him a sign, he lays hold of the reality. He takes Jesus, now forty days old, into his arms. He holds His Creator. The almighty God is a little baby. The angels sang this to the shepherds: This will be the sign to you, you will find the baby wrapped in swaddling clothes and lying in a manger. This is the sign of God’s peace, His goodwill toward you. God is not distant from us. He’s with us. He’s Immanuel. He’s taken on our human nature. He’s your Brother. The eternal Son of the Father is forever one of us. He knows your weaknesses, your wants, your needs, your pains, because He has felt them in His own body. It is impossible that God could ever forget you or want anything but good for you since He has united your humanity inseparably to Himself.
When Simeon literally embraces this body, literally holds the baby who is the eternal God in his arms, there is nothing but joy. Simeon can laugh at death because he holds eternal life in his arms. There is no sign, no hint, of anything but peace and joy and exultation in Simeon’s song. He says he can depart in peace, he can die in peace, because never for all eternity will he ever be separated from the God who joined our human race. Death has no terror, no fear, no dread or regret, because the baby laid in the manger and now in Simeon’s arms has come to end death forever. He is God and He will die and destroy death. Simeon holds this baby and says he sees God’s salvation, because this baby bears not only his weakness and his mortality, He bears the sins that separate Simeon and all the world, you and me, from God, and because He bears them, they are no longer on us. God doesn’t just own our human nature, make it His, He takes all our sins, and makes them His, and pays for them with His own suffering. Nothing can separate us from this love of God. You have Jesus and God is with you and for you and will be forever, and He will protect you from all evil and forgive you and bless you on this earth until He takes you to be with Him forever.
That is what you should expect to find in Jesus. Every single time you come to church, every time you speak His holy name, every time you think of the babe in the manger, and the God-man on the cross, every time you hunger and thirst for righteousness because your sins weigh on your conscious, every time you are sick and tired of this sinful world, the pains in your body, the anxiety in your mind, and you come to church or read your Bible, find the Son of God, robed in flesh, who cannot leave you and will not cast you aside, because He is eternally bone of your bone and flesh of your flesh, and forever the Savior who has borne every one of your sins away, bled for them, and lives to be your comfort and peace forever.
But then Simeon calls Him a sign. And not this time simply the sign of peace and goodwill, but the sign that is spoken against. And when you find Jesus in His Word and in His Church, you will also be finding the sign that is spoken against. Why would anyone speak against the babe in the manger? Why would anyone speak against this love of God, that He joined our human race to save us from sin and death and the devil?
Because if God had to become a man, there is something very wrong with us. If He had to come down from heaven, that means we couldn’t rise to Him. And that stings. Look at the opposition to Jesus today, look at how He is spoken against. Take the woke warriors, with their insistence that a man can become a woman and a woman can become a man, take their open celebration of the murder of Charlie Kirk for confessing Jesus, why such hostility? Because they don’t want a Savior from sin. That would mean they are sinning, that they are obligated to live according to the Creator’s law, that they have violated God’s order of creation. To embrace the Christ-child means to admit you need saving from sin, but if you refuse to acknowledge your sin, then the Christ-child is an insult to you. If I think God should accept me no matter what I do or how I live and if I expect God to embrace whatever I decide is good, then why would I need Him to become a man for me?
God becoming a man means there’s something wrong with man. So anyone, not just woke warriors, but anyone, very religious people, very pious people, very conservative people, anyone who thinks he doesn’t really need a Savior will speak against the Christ-child. I’m a good person, I don’t steal, I work hard, I’m faithful to my spouse, I’m kind to people, shouldn’t God reward me with heaven? That was the thought of the Pharisees and the leaders of the Jews in Jesus’ time, the thought that persecuted and killed Jesus. The devil’s thought. I don’t need a Savior. And it’s the thought of most people who call themselves religious today.
It’s the thought of your sinful flesh too. Paul in our Epistle calls it the elemental principles of the world that enslaved us. It’s the thought deeply engrained in us, that I’m basically a good person and belong in heaven. And it is exactly this thought that the incarnation of the Son of God annihilates, makes an open mockery of. God joined our human race, because humanity could not come to Him, we couldn’t make a beginning of it, couldn’t progress in it, couldn’t make an end of it. In no way at all, could we come to Him. He had to come to us. You can embrace Him only when you first admit you need Him completely and totally.
And this hurts. Simeon says a sword will pierce through Mary’s heart also. And it pierces through ours. We see Jesus spoken against. We see people we love and care for reject Him. And we want peace with other people. We want approval and respect from others. And the great temptation is to give up on Jesus, so we can have peace with those who oppose Him. Parents do it all the time. Their kids speak against Jesus, against His Word, and they don’t want to lose their kids’ respect and love, so they drift away from Jesus and His Church. I remember once having a close friend in Iowa City, who when I told him that I believed God made male and female differently, with different and complementary roles, walked out on me and never talked to me again. That hurts. I don’t like it. No one likes it. It is the sword that pierces our hearts.
This happened to Jesus. He said unless you eat the flesh and drink the blood of the Son of Man, unless you trust in Him, you have no life in you. And the majority walked away. And He turned to His disciples and said to them, “Will you leave Me also?” And Peter answered for all Christians of all times, “Lord to whom shall we go? You have the words of eternal life.” The only reason to leave Jesus is if you think you can conquer death by yourself or get rid of your sins by yourself or rise to God by yourself. And that you cannot do.
The answer to our suffering, the answer to us bearing the pain of people rejecting Jesus, this sign of offense, is always to return to the sign the angels sang and that Simeon held in His arms. I cannot rise to God. I know it. The Holy Spirit has convinced me of it. I see my failures every day. I see my sin. I think of death with dread because I can’t conquer it. I feel weakness and pain and anxiety and pride and selfishness. And no matter how I fight against it, I can’t rid myself of it, any of it. But here is Jesus. Here is the Son of God, the Creator of all things, and He became a baby for me. He insisted on doing what I could not do. He became my Brother to do it. To live for me and die for me and win peace with God for me, to forgive me everything bad I’ve ever done, to give me His life, to give me adoption as a son of God, to pour the Spirit in my heart to call on God as Abba Father. You find in Jesus everything you lack, everything good God has to offer, you find your Maker who is forever your Brother, and that is the sign and the reality that God is for you, and for all the world, because He is our Immanuel. Amen.