Sermon - First Sunday in Christmas - Luke 2:22-40 - 2017

Merry Christmas! Yes it’s still Christmas today. Christmas lasts for a full 12 days, ending when Epiphany begins. Thus, today is the first Sunday during Christmas when we read about Jesus who is presented at the temple at 40 days old, as we read: “When the time came for their purification according to the Law of Moses, they brought Him to Jerusalem to present Him to the Lord.”

Isn’t that kind of fascinating? On Christmas Day we read that the Word is God, and the Word became flesh in Jesus, therefore Jesus is God. Yet, Jesus who is the Lord is presented to the Lord. Isn’t the Trinity an amazing thing! Jesus, the second person of the Trinity, the Son, is presented to the first person of the Trinity, the Father. So Jesus who is both fully God and fully man is in today’s reading subjected to the Law of the Lord on account of His being fully human.

But why are we reading this today? What’s the point of it? What significance does it have for us today? Why was it even recorded in scripture? Lutheran theologian Johann Gerhard wrote: Every word of the Bible should be read as if written with the blood of Jesus. Today’s text has been recorded for us in scripture to show us that Christ, who is fully God, became fully human, so as to fully redeem us so that we may be fully human again.

Jesus is fully God: “All things were made through Him, and without Him was not anything made that was made.” In the Athanasian Creed we confess that “The Father is God, the Son is God, the Holy Spirit is God; and yet there are not three Gods, but one God.” The Son is the Lord God almighty through whom all things were made and in Him all things hold together.

It is only through the power of God that the Son has the authority to heal sickness, create the heavens above, be raised from the dead, and forgive sins. Jesus is God. Not just kind of like God, not just a part of God, not just an angel, not a lesser God, but “He is God. Begotten from the substance of the Father before all ages.” Jesus is God. 

We spend so much time focusing on Jesus’ birth and His death on the cross (which are both wonderful things that we must focus on) that we sometimes have a hard time admitting that Jesus is fully God. But He is! The Son of God is God. It’s plainly revealed to us in the scriptures for all to see.

He is God “and He is man, born from the substance of His mother in this age: perfect God and perfect man.” Jesus is also fully man. “When the fullness of time had come, God sent forth His Son, born of woman, born under the law.” Jesus is not just kind of a man, He’s not just partially man, He doesn’t just look like man, but Jesus is fully human. 

Jesus is born of the flesh of Mary. When He was conceived in Mary’s womb, His body grew and developed just like every other baby. At 4 weeks He was about the size of a poppy seed. At 5 weeks His heart began to beat. At 7 weeks His hands and feet which would one day be nailed to the cross started to form. At 10 weeks His fingernails started growing. At 13 weeks He had fingerprints. At 23 weeks He started to dream. At 28 weeks He grew eyelashes. At 35 weeks His kidneys were fully developed. At 40 weeks Mary and Joseph cuddled Him in their arms. 

When He was brought to Simeon at the temple, and “he took Him up in his arms,” He was completely and entirely a baby. For the first few weeks Mary probably didn’t get much sleep as He’d cry when He was hungry or needed a diaper change. So when Joseph and Mary heard Simeon sing the Nunc Dimittis, there’s a reason that Jesus’ “father and His mother marveled at what was said about Him.” 

Although they certainly remembered the angels’ words and were awed by the shepherds’ adoration, those first 40 days after birth were probably not unlike any parent’s first 40 days with a newborn child. So when Simeon rejoiced at seeing “the Lord’s Christ”, Joseph and Mary were once again reminded that their Son is the Son of God, Jesus the Christ. Over the next twelve years “the child grew” as you would expect any child to do.

Jesus is both fully God and fully human in the one person, the second person of the Trinity, the Son of God. This is what is known as the personal union of the Son of God: that Jesus is both fully man and fully God in one person. Jesus who is true God was born of Mary, under the law, subjected to the law, and obedient to the law. When Jesus was brought to the temple at 40 days, this reveals to us that Jesus’ whole life was filled with submission to the law so that He could fulfill the law for us.

Just as Jesus was born of the flesh, so have we. Yet in Jesus’ birth He retained the image of God, while in our conception the image has already been lost. “In sin did my mother conceive me.” So in this life we have been “enslaved to the elementary principles of the world.” We have been enslaved to the law on account of sin which so often rules our hearts. On account of Sin we have lost the image of God, we lost our humanity.

In the wake of a violent and disturbing crime, people are often left wondering how a person could do these horrifyingly disgusting deeds. How could a human do these things? So we refer to the person as pure evil or we call them a monster. We try to find some psychological disorder to label them with. We do anything we can to label the person as subhuman. 

Yet the fact remains that they too were born and grew just like the rest of us. It’s not that they are particularly subhuman, but the truth is that we all are subhuman on account of our sins. Our sinful desires and our wicked hearts make us less than human. An evil unbelieving heart is disturbing and horrifyingly disgusting in the eyes of God, because every sin is an abomination and perversion of what it means to be human. We are subhuman. 

God created us to be His children, to love us and for us to love Him. God created us to be His heirs who will inherit His kingdom, yet in our sin we have chosen to be slaves instead. Slaves to sin and heirs of death. But because of God’s perfect love for us He “sent for 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… so you are no longer a slave, but a son, and if a son, than an heir through God.”

The Son of God, who is fully God, took on Mary’s flesh so as to be fully man. What’s more, Jesus set Himself lower than man, He took upon Himself the sin of all mankind, He became a slave in our place. He obeyed the law and then took our inheritance of death for Himself so that we might receive the inheritance as children of God. Because of Jesus’ incarnation, because He is both fully God and fully man, we are restored to humanity, the image of God is given back to us in the new creation.

Jesus became man so that we would be restored again to humanity. So already, because of your baptism into Christ, because the Holy Spirit has converted you to faith in Jesus’ name, the image of God is being restored to us today. We may not be perfect yet, we may feebly struggle in this life, but in the life to come our humanity, our image, will be fully restored.

We like Simeon are “waiting for the consolation of Israel,” waiting for our comfort and consolation which is yet to come in the new life. But like Simeon we have seen the light at the end of the tunnel, we have beheld His glory as of the only Son from Father full of grace and truth. We have held Jesus in our arms and we behold Him today. The Lord’s Christ has come and He rests within your ears as you hear the Word of God. The Lord’s Christ has come and is laid upon your tongue in the body and blood.

In the sacrament of the altar, the Lord’s Supper, we take up Jesus in our arms. Together with Simeon we bless the Lord as we rejoice while singing the Nunc Dimittis: “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.” It’s no coincidence that we sing those words following the Lord’s Supper, because our eyes have seen the Lord’s salvation.

Yes, it may look like just bread and wine. God’s work in our life may appear simple and boring. The life of the faithful Christian may not make a bestselling documentary. Just as Joseph and Mary, Simeon and Anna, saw just a babe in the temple as was customary for the forty day cleansing, together we have seen the salvation of our God, the redemption of all people. In Christ, the one who is fully God and fully man, yet looks so simple and plain, in Him is our humanity fully restored as we are redeemed from slavery to sin. 

Merry Christmas!