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+ + + In Nomine Jesu + + +
Please join me in prayer: May the words of my mouth and the meditations of our hearts be pleasing in your sight, O Lord, our Rock and our Redeemer. Amen.
Dear Brothers and Sisters in Christ,
Grace to you and peace from God our Father and from the Lord Jesus Christ.
Many if not most of us probably have given presentations at work or school. I remember helping prepare PowerPoint presentations with my nephew and nieces when they were very young. An entirely different matter, of course, is The Presentation of our Lord in today’s Gospel Reading. Joseph and Mary brought Jesus up to Jerusalem not to show cute baby slides from His first forty days of life, but they brought Him up to Jerusalem in order to set Him apart for holy service to the Lord. And, part of that holy service to the Lord includes His presenting us to God. This morning we reflect especially on the first three verses of today’s Gospel Reading, those most related to today’s observance of the feast of The Purification of Mary and The Presentation of Our Lord, and we reflect on those verses with the theme, “Jesus was presented in order to present us”.
For today’s observance of the feast of The Purification of Mary and The Presentation of Our Lord, we have returned to St. Luke’s divinely‑inspired Gospel account, picking up his narration of the events of Jesus’s life before His public ministry, right after its telling of Jesus’s being circumcised and named on the eighth day after His birth. That feast or festival is usually observed either on what we think of as New Year’s Eve or on New Year’s Day. Now, thirty-three days later, we observe the feast of The Purification of Mary and the Presentation of Our Lord, when Joseph and Mary went up to Jerusalem in accordance with the Law—the Law regarding both women after pregnancy and their firstborn sons.
Some of you may recall the practice known as “The Churching of Women” (which, by the way, survives as “The Blessing of Women after Childbirth” in Lutheran Service Book’s Agenda). That practice goes back to the Old Testament proscriptions in Leviticus chapter 12, which levitical proscriptions Joseph and Mary are keeping in today’s Gospel Reading by going to the Temple and offering a sacrifice for her purification. Joseph and Mary’s sacrifice apparently was a pair of birds, one bird for a burnt offering and another bird for a sin offering. While they were at the Temple, they also presented Jesus to the Lord, that is, they placed Him in the Lord’s service, as it were, in keeping with the Old Testament proscriptions in Exodus chapter 13. Exodus chapter 13 did not specify a time frame, but nevertheless in that chapter the Lord commanded consecrating all firstborn males of man and beast, in part to recall the Passover, His delivering Israel from the tenth and final plague that killed the firstborn of Egypt, all those whose houses were not marked with the blood of a lamb. But, apparently instead of offering the sacrifice the Law proscribed to redeem the first-born, Mary and Joseph gave Jesus into the service of the Lord.
Three times in these three verses from today’s Gospel Reading, the Holy Spirit through St. Luke mentions the Law of the Lord given through Moses, and Joseph and Mary are described as keeping it. Given the unique circumstances of Jesus’s conception and birth, commentators on the verses, including The Rev. Dr. Martin Luther, vary as to whether or not Mary needed to be purified and whether or not Jesus needed to be redeemed. Roman Catholics’ view of Mary as immaculately conceived is certainly false, but the Bible itself tells us that Jesus truly was without sin (Hebrews 4:15, for example). Not so “without sin” are you and I. Recently on the radio I just happened to hear what was called a “new” song by the hard-rock group “Devour the Day”. Actually released nearly a year ago, the song, titled “Good Man”, includes these lyrics: “I want to be a good man, I want to see God, I want to be faithful, but I know that I’m not.”
Similarly, we confessed in the liturgy this day, “If we say we have no sin, we deceive ourselves and the truth is not in us, but if we confess our sins, God, who is faithful and just, will forgive our sins and cleanse us from all unrighteousness” (1 John 1:8-9). As God calls us to repent, so we turn in sorrow from our sin, trust God to forgive our sin, and want to do better than keep on sinning. When we so repent, then God forgives our sin, whatever it might be. God forgives all our sin, for Jesus’s sake.
A lamb was specified as both the sin offering for the purification of a woman after childbirth and the offering to redeem a firstborn male. At least one noted Lutheran preacher speculated that Joseph and Mary offered the two birds for her purification, not because they were poor but to indicate that the Son they were giving to the Lord’s service was the Lamb of God. Indeed, as we heard in the Gospel Reading two Sundays ago (John 1:29) and sing in the liturgy every Sunday, Jesus is the Lamb of God Who takes away the sin of the world, including your sin and mine. His parents consecrated Jesus to that service as the Lamb of God, calling Him “holy”, as the angel announcing His birth had previously called Him “holy” (Luke 1:35). As today’s Epistle Reading described (Hebrews 2:14-18), Jesus partook of our flesh and blood so that through His death He might destroy the devil and his power of death and deliver us from our lifelong slavery through fear of death. Jesus was made like us in every respect so that He might be a merciful and faithful high priest in the service of God, to make propitiation for our sins. Because He Himself suffered when tempted, He is able to help us as we are tempted. God forgives our sin by grace through faith in Jesus, Who died on the cross and rose from the grave in order to save us from our sin. God forgives our sin by grace through faith in Jesus, and He does so in specific ways.
Using the same verb that St. Luke uses to tell of Joseph and Mary’s presenting Jesus to the Lord, St. Paul writes of our also being presented to the Lord. Indeed, the theme for this sermon is “Jesus was presented in order to present us”. To the Corinthians, St. Paul writes that He Who raised the Lord Jesus will raise us also and present us (2 Corinthians 4:14). Later in the same letter, St. Paul writes that he as the Lord’s servant presents us (2 Corinthians 11:2). And, to the Ephesians, St. Paul writes that Jesus loved the Church and gave Himself up for Her so that He might present the Church to Himself in splendor, without spot or wrinkle or any such thing, that She might be holy and without blemish (Ephesians 5:25-27). First, however, Jesus cleansed or purified the Church, by the washing of water with the Word, that is, by Holy Baptism. In Holy Baptism, God forgives our sins, rescues us from death and the devil, and gives us eternal salvation. Similarly, after privately confessing our sin, we in individual Holy Absolution have the sins that trouble us most forgiven. Today’s Opening Hymn put it well:
While Your ministers proclaim / Peace and pardon in Your name,
Through their voice, by faith, may I / Hear You speaking from the sky. (LSB 981)
Baptized and absolved, like Simeon, who received the child Jesus in his arms and saw the Lord’s salvation, from this altar, at this rail, we see and receive the Lord’s Salvation in bread that is Jesus’s body and wine that is Jesus’s blood, given and shed for us, for the forgiveness of our sins, and so also for life and salvation. And after receiving that salvation, we sing Simeon’s song, the Nunc dimittis. As Joseph and Mary went up to Jerusalem and into the Temple, so all of this takes place here, where God has promised to be present in His Word and Sacraments. Joseph and Mary, having sacrificed for her purification, presented Jesus to the Lord, and Jesus, in turn, purifies and presents us to Himself and to the Father and the Holy Spirit. So purified and presented, we set ourselves apart as holy for service to the Lord.
Here at Pilgrim we again this morning have an acolyte, an assistant in the Divine Service the origin of which assistance some say goes back to Samuel, whose presentation or consecration to the Lord’s service we heard part of in this morning’s Old Testament Reading (1 Samuel 1:21-28). Although not all of us have roles assisting in the Divine Service, we all present our bodies as living sacrifices, holy and acceptable to God (Romans 12:1). We all serve Him best in the vocations He has given us. We all do not present the parts of our bodies to sin as instruments of unrighteousness, but we all present ourselves to God, as those who have been brought from death to life, and so we present the parts of our bodies to God as instruments of righteousness (Romans 6:12-13, 16, 19). As our second Distribution Hymn will put it, we consecrate to the Lord our moments, days, hands, feet, voice, lips, silver and gold, intellect, will, heart, love—in short our whole lives and selves (LSB 783).
The Purification of Mary and The Presentation of Our Lord are not just past events; they have continuing relevance for us this day and all throughout our lives. We have reflected on how “Jesus was presented in order to present us”, we prayed in the Collect and sang in the Hymn of the Day (LSB 519), and we have realized also that His presenting us leads us to present ourselves. We present ourselves not as a PowerPoint or some other form of presentation but as a placing of ourselves at His disposal, to be His servants in the vocations He gives us. May God truly grant that, as Jesus was presented in the substance of our flesh, so we may be presented to Him with pure and clean hearts.
Amen.
The peace of God, which passes all understanding, keep your hearts and minds in Christ Jesus. Amen.
+ + + Soli Deo Gloria + + +