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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. (Amen.)
Today’s Gospel Reading, about the Purification of Mary and the Presentation of Our Lord 40 days after his birth, was also appointed for and read on the Sunday after Christmas. Then, we noted how encountering the events of our Lord’s life not quite in their chronological and scriptural order can be somewhat confusing, and we directed our thoughts to the theme “God in Jesus grew for you”. Now, the other appointed Readings point us to Samuel’s service to the Lord (1 Samuel 1:21-28), to the blessedness of dwelling in the Lord’s house (Psalm 84:1-12; antiphon: v.4), and to Jesus’s service of God as a merciful and faithful high priest, making propitiation for our sins, which is to say, His satisfying God’s wrath over our sins. Other Old Testament passages are also relevant, including Leviticus 12’s provisions for the purification of women after childbirth (Leviticus 12:1-8) and Exodus 13’s provisions for the consecration of the firstborn (Exodus 13:1, 11-16). Presumably those two passages are in mind as the Divinely‑inspired St. Luke in today’s Gospel Reading refers to the Holy Family’s both doing for Jesus according to the custom of the law and their performing everything according to the Law of the Lord. Yet, righteous and devout Simeon and aged Anna do not react to Mary’s purification or Jesus’s presentation, per se, but they react to Jesus’s being the Lord’s Christ, His salvation, a light both for revelation to the Gentiles and for glory to the people of Israel, and the redemption of Jerusalem. So, today, we direct our thoughts to the theme, “Jesus fulfilled the law in order to be the Gospel”.
In today’s Gospel Reading, “law” is mentioned a total of five times and so certainly is a prominent theme in the Gospel Reading. Specifically, as I mentioned, passages from Leviticus and Exodus, respectively, pertain to Mary’s purification and Jesus’s presentation. However, despite those references, Bible commentators do not all agree on precisely what, if anything, the Virgin Mary needed to be purified of or atoned for, nor do Bible commentators all agree on whether Jesus in being presented was consecrated, set apart, or redeemed—all three of those different words are used in Exodus 13—and, if one or all three, Bible commentators do not all agree whether or not a sacrifice was required and whether or not the sacrifice had to be made at the temple, since neither Exodus nor Luke specifically say. Certainly our hearing both the Old Testament Reading about Samuel’s service and the Epistle Reading about Jesus’s service seems to suggest that Jesus was being consecrated or otherwise set apart for service to the Lord and so perhaps remained the Lord’s and so perhaps did not need to be redeemed as did other firstborn sons—though Samuel’s parents offered a sacrifice and Samuel stayed with Eli, but Jesus went with His parents eventually to Galilee. Still, in Jesus’s regard, they performed everything according to the Law of the Lord.
You and I, on the other hand, hardly ever, if ever, perform everything according to the law of the Lord. Even freed from the ceremonial and civil law essentially based on the Ten Commandments, we cannot keep even that underlying moral code. Our thoughts, words, and deeds are not what they are supposed to be, neither toward our neighbors, nor, much less, toward our God. Our actual sins of commission and omission flow from our sinful nature, and, for our actual sin and our sinful nature, we deserve God’s present and eternal punishment. We need the Lord’s Christ, His salvation, a light both for revelation to the Gentiles and for glory to the people of Israel, and the redemption of Jerusalem. Out of God’s great love for us, He calls and thereby enables us to turn in sorrow from our sin, to trust Him to forgive our sin, and to want to stop sinning. When we so repent, then God forgives us. God forgives us for Jesus’s sake.
“Jesus fulfilled the law in order to be the Gospel”. The Holy Family’s doing for Jesus according to the custom of the law truly was in some sense necessary for our salvation, but even that and all of Jesus’s other keeping of the law together still was not sufficient for our salvation: He needed to die on the cross, as He did, for us, in our place. The Lord had closed Hannah’s womb (1 Samuel 1:5), but in due time, after her husband “knew” her, she conceived and bore a son (1 Samuel 1:19-20). All the more miraculously did the Virgin Mary, without “knowing” a man, conceive, carry, and give birth to the holy Son of God (Luke 1:34-35)—figuratively “opening” her womb as her “firstborn”, if not literally violating her virginity. The Virgin Mary’s Son Jesus as true God was from His conception holy in a way that no other person ever could be. As we heard in today’s Epistle Reading, He partook of our flesh and blood, that, through death, He might destroy the one who has the power of death, that is, the devil, and deliver us, who through fear of death, were subject to lifelong slavery, and He became a merciful and faithful high priest in the service of God, to make propitiation for our sins. Rightly did devout Simeon and aged Anna—and rightly do we, by God’s grace—regard Jesus to be the Lord’s Christ, His salvation, a light both for revelation to the Gentiles and for glory to the people of Israel, and the redemption of Jerusalem.
Jesus institutes—and so in some sense “commands” as “law”—the ways that He gives us His salvation—and so all the more are they “promises” or “gifts” of the “Gospel”. The Gospel is applied to each of us individually and so we are forgiven with water in Holy Baptism, with the pastor’s touch in Holy Absolution, and with the bread and wine of the Holy Supper that are the Body of Christ given for us and the Blood of Christ shed for us. All these are not sacrifices for sin but sacraments giving us the forgiveness of sins for the sake of the one-time and for all‑people sacrifice of Jesus on the cross. Whatever purification or atonement the Virgin Mary might have needed after giving birth to Jesus that required the sacrifice of two birds, our purification and atonement for the sake of the sacrifice of Jesus are here in His Means of Grace.
And, as we are so purified, we are changed. As St. Paul writes to the Romans—and to us—instead of presenting the members of our bodies to sin as instruments for unrighteousness, we present ourselves to God as those who have been brought from death to life (Romans 6:13), no longer presenting the members of our bodies as slaves to impurity and to lawlessness leading to more lawlessness, but presenting the members of our bodies as slaves to righteousness leading to sanctification, our being made holy (Romans 6:19; confer Romans 6:16). In this lifetime, our experience of that sanctification is incomplete, though God in some sense views it as complete in us as we are in Christ. With marital imagery, St. Paul writes to the Ephesians—and to us—of Christ’s sanctifying the Church, having cleansed her by the washing of water with the word, so that He might present the Church to Himself in splendor (Ephesians 5:26-27). And, similarly, St. Paul writes to the Corinthians both of betrothing them to one husband, in order to present them as a pure virgin to Christ (2 Corinthians 11:2), and of God’s raising us all with Jesus presenting us with them (2 Corinthians 4:14 [NASB]).
“Jesus fulfilled the law in order to be the Gospel”, not only doing all that we fail to do but also dying and rising for our failures to do it. Thanks to Jesus’s faithful service on our behalf, God forgives our sins by grace through faith in Him. Like Samuel before Jesus and like Jesus Himself, we can and will be blessed, as today’s Psalm said, blessed as we dwell in His house, ever singing His praise!
Amen.
The peace of God, which passes all understanding, keep your hearts and minds in Christ Jesus. Amen.
+ + + Soli Deo Gloria + + +