First Sunday after Christmas

First Sunday after Christmas (C)

December 29, 2024

Text: Luke 2:22-40

            Any preacher will tell you that, after Advent and Christmas, the inkwell seems to have run dreadfully dry.  The effort toward profundity has syphoned all the pastoral energy.  The words… there simply are none left.  The mind is mush.  The tongue is swollen.  Am I just whining?  Probably.  Looking for sermon filler?  You’d better believe it.  But the simple fact of the matter remains: The preacher has come to the end of himself.

            Which is exactly right.  That is exactly how it should be.  What is he doing, anyway, this preacher, making it at all, or in any way, about him?  It is the temptation of every clergyman, in every sermon.  And I’m on the cusp of it, now, this danger of preaching myself.  But I think, perhaps, it’s just possible, that I may have a point here.  We preachers… and we Christians (and this includes you hearers)… in our contempt for the familiar, and our desire, ever and only, to speak and to hear something new… miss the profundity of the simple Gospel message.  As if that message is any less profound when the preacher speaks ineloquently, and in weakness, the same old message we’ve heard from time immemorial.  As if we already know it, and don’t need the reminder.  As if that message depends, in any way, on the bag full of wind behind the pulpit, or the eagerness of the hearers to hear it.  Christ is born for sinners, for every last person in these pews.  For you.  Even for the parson, if he’d just get over himself.  There is absolutely nothing more profound than that.  So, dear Pastor, get out of the way!  You must decrease… in fact, disappear!  Christ must increase, and be our all in all.  Dear Christian, open your ears.  Okay, you know it.  Hear it again, now, afresh, and for you.  Christ has come.  The Savior is born.  God in the flesh.  It is simple, and it is profound.

            Still, there is a text to explicate, a Gospel to be proclaimed, and woe to the preacher who will not proclaim it!  And woe to the Christian who will not hear it, ponder it, and treasure it.  What to say, though; what to say, when the words won’t come…  How about just let the Scripture speak for itself, and that in all its glorious simplicity.  It is Christmas, still, for us this day.  So receiving our Father’s Christmas Gift, let us unwrap it, and savor it, and embrace it with all our heart.  The Gift, of course, is life and salvation in God’s own Son.

            Israel of old receives this Gift.  The Purification.  The Redemption of the Firstborn.  Sacrifices given.  The fulfillment of the Law.  The LORD has come into His Temple, as He promised.  It is more than simply a rite of passage when His parents present Him in the Temple courts.  It is the Old Testament coming to completion!  And the inauguration of the New.  The shadows are giving way to the reality.  The types are culminating, now, in divine Antitype.  The prophecies are all coming true.  The High Priest of our salvation has entered the Sanctuary.  David’s royal Son has arrived to take up His throne.  And the precious heel of Mary’s Boy is poised to crush the serpent’s head. 

            Old Man Simeon receives this Gift.  Quite literally from the hands of Mary, whether she would give Him up, or not (that, incidentally, will be the story of her life!).  He takes the little Lord Jesus into His arms and embraces Him, and prays to Him: “Lord, now lettest Thou Thy servant depart in peace according to Thy word, for mine eyes have seen Thy salvation which Thou hast prepared before the face of all people, a light to lighten the Gentiles and the glory of Thy people Israel” (LSB, pp. 199-200; Luke 2:9-32).  By direct inspiration of the Holy Spirit, he composes a Christmas carol on the spot, a hymn the Church has sung ever since (talk about a Christmas gift!), the Nunc Dimittis, which we sing when we take up this same Lord Jesus in the eating and drinking of His Body and Blood.  This is the One Simeon had been waiting for.  The Spirit had revealed to Simeon that he would not die until he had seen the Lord’s Christ.  Now the Christ Child is here.  And Simeon says that he can die, now, happily, and in peace.  He can depart, because he knows his salvation has come.  And not only his salvation, but Israel’s salvation, and the salvation of the whole world. 

            Mary and Joseph receive this Gift.  Of course, they are the first to receive Him, in the annunciation of His virginal conception, and in His birth in Bethlehem.  But here, they receive Him anew in the preaching of St. Simeon.  And in this way, they show you how you should receive Him ever anew.  In the preaching!  In the proclamation of who He is… that is what Simeon preaches in his song... and what He has come to do... that is what Simeon preaches in his prophecy to the Holy Parents.  “Behold, this child is appointed for the fall and rising of many in Israel, and for a sign that is opposed” (v. 34; ESV).  That is the Law and the Gospel.  All people will fall upon this Child.  Either upon His mercy, by faith in Him, or upon His Judgment in hellish wrath by unbelief.  Indeed, many will oppose Him.  And here Simeon enters upon the preaching of the cross.  They will oppose Him to death.  And you will see it, Mary.  A sword will pierce your own soul as you behold your Baby Boy, suffering, pierced, dying, dead, for the sins of the world.  And you will not see it, Joseph.  You will disappear from the Gospel narrative, apparently dying before Jesus enters upon His ministry.  Some have surmised (and I resonate with this), that in his dying before our Lord’s ministry and sacrificial death, God was mercifully sparing Joseph.  After all, what might Jospeh, the divinely appointed protector of God’s Son, have done when Jesus was arrested and mistreated?  He very well may have stepped in, in an attempt to prevent what must not be prevented, to rescue Jesus when He must not be rescued.  In any case, the Gift is for Mary and Joseph, too.  And note, what is true for them, is also true for us.  This Gift necessarily comes with crosses of our own to bear… sufferings, sorrows, piercing our body and soul, borne in faith, and patience, and hope for deliverance in the Baby born to bear the cross for us, and on the Third Day, to rise. 

            Blessed Anna receives this Gift.  Speaking of bearing the cross in faith, patience, and hope, she had borne her widowhood for decades.  Never departing from the Temple, worshiping with fasting and prayer night and day, waiting, like Simeon, for the One, for Messiah to arrive.  And now, she sees Him.  And she knows.  And she can’t stop thanking God, and speaking of the Child to everyone, all who were awaiting the redemption of Jerusalem!

            Well, isn’t that the Church?  Bearing the holy cross, while awaiting the Lord’s coming again to deliver us from all our afflictions.  Giving thanks always, and in everything, for the coming of the Lord in the flesh.  Receiving Him in the preaching, and in the Holy Supper of His Body and Blood.  Speaking of Him to one another, and to everyone.  Confessing Him.  Praising Him.  Praying to Him.  Living each day in Him.

            We, too, receive this Gift.  We are receiving Him now.  It’s so simple.  And for that reason, we so easily miss it.  We miss the profundity for the simplicity, for the familiarity.  “Yeah, yeah, Christmas.  Jesus born in Bethlehem, wrapped in swaddling clothes, laid in a manger, no room in the inn.  We know.  We know.  We’ve heard it.”  It is especially easy to slip into this on December 29^th, while most of the world has already moved on.  Repent of that.  Resist it, this taking the Gift for granted.  How?  Hear it.  Hear it again.  Hear it afresh.  Treasure it.  Ponder it.  Praise it, like Anna.  Receive it, like Simeon, here at the Altar.  Every Communion is Christmas, which is why we sing Simeon’s carol at Communcion. 

            Well, this preacher is relieved as another intense Advent and Christmas Season comes to a close.  Though we do have one more Christmas service together, next Sunday.  We get to spend the Twelfth Day of Christmas, gathered around the Altar, receiving and unwrapping the Gift!  Hear it one more time, beloved.  Hear it, and take it to heart, this profound truth: Christ is born for sinners, for every last person in these pews.  That is to say, Christ is born for you!  Merry Christmas.  In the Name of the Father, and of the Son X, and of the Holy Spirit.  Amen.