A lifetime spent seeking and serving Christ

Sermon for the First Sunday of Christmas

Galatians 4:1-7  +  Luke 2:33-40

On Monday, we celebrated the fact of Christ’s birth and the identity of the Child who lay in the manger. In today’s Epistle, we learn the reason why Christ was born. As St. Paul wrote in today’s Epistle, Christ was born of a woman, born under law, to redeem those who were under law. He was born of a woman, just like everyone in the world. And He was born under law, just like everyone in the world. Jews, at that time, were still under the Law of Moses. But everyone in the world since the beginning of creation is born under the moral law, under God’s requirement that we should be righteous and behave righteously, and with the threat of eternal condemnation for being unrighteous and for living unrighteously. In other words, Christ was born just as everyone is born, born as one of us men—why? To redeem those who were under law. To redeem us, because no man in history, except for Jesus, has lived righteously under God’s law, so we needed to be redeemed, rescued, saved from the condemnation that God’s law threatens against sinful men. We were born enemies of God and slaves to sin. But Christ was born the Son of God and the Son of Man, free from sin, in order to redeem us from sin, that we might receive the adoption of sons. Believers in Christ already know this. It’s the reason why we rejoice at Christmas time, no matter what the other circumstances of your life may be, because we have been included in Christ’s redemption through faith and have received the adoption of sons. Unbelievers still need to be told the reason why Christ was born, that they, too, may come into the light of Christ by faith and be saved.

Now, what do you do with this knowledge? You spend your life seeking and serving the Christ who was born to save. What does it look like for a son of God, or a daughter of God, to spend his or her life seeking Christ and serving Christ? We have an example before us in today’s Gospel: two Old Testament saints, Simeon and Anna, who had spent their long lives seeking the coming Christ and serving Him while they waited.

First, we meet Simeon in the Temple, 40 days after Jesus’ birth. We know the timing, because Luke tells us the holy family was visiting the temple that day for Mary’s ceremonial purification and for Jesus’ presentation as the firstborn son, according to Old Testament law, 40 days after his birth. In the verses before our text, Luke tells us that old Simeon had been “waiting for the consolation of Israel.” The Old Testament prophecies about the timing of the Christ’s birth were all pointing to about this time. All the signs were in place, including a ruler in Judea—King Herod—who was not of the tribe of Judah (or an Israelite at all, for that matter). There were rumors floating around the area about shepherds in nearby Bethlehem who had recently told an incredible story about the birth of a very special Child. And Luke tells us that Simeon was somehow informed by the Holy Spirit that he would see the Christ before he died—God’s gracious reward to him for a long life of seeking and serving. When Joseph, Mary, and Jesus entered the Temple that day, Simeon recognized Jesus and rejoiced at seeing Him, prompting him to speak the words which we know as the Song of Simeon, that is, the Nunc Dimittis, where Simeon gave thanks to God and told Him, I’m ready to go now, ready to depart in peace, because the Lord had fulfilled His Word. He had allowed Simeon to see the promised Messiah, the Savior sent from God for all people, the Light who would enlighten the Gentiles and bring glory to the people of Israel.

That’s where our Gospel begins. It says that Joseph and His mother marveled at those things which were spoken about Him. Mary and Joseph knew that the baby they had brought to the temple was special. But clearly they didn’t fully grasp all the Old Testament prophecies that their Son would fulfill, nor did they expect strangers like Simeon to recognize Jesus for who He was.

But Simeon had more to say: He blessed them, and said to Mary His mother, “Behold, this Child is destined to cause the fall and rising of many in Israel. Christ was, as the Prophet Isaiah had said, a sanctuary for some—a hiding place, a place of refuge. But also a stone of stumbling and a rock of offense to both the houses of Israel, as a trap and a snare to the inhabitants of Jerusalem. And many among them shall stumble; they shall fall and be broken, be snared and taken. Many in Israel—and many outside of Israel, too—would stumble and fall, later on, over Jesus’ claim to be the world’s only Savior, His claim to be able to forgive sins, His claim to be sent from God and to be God. They would stumble over His humility and over His suffering and over His refusal to set up an earthly kingdom. They would stumble over the cross, and they would stumble over the resurrection. Those who stumbled over Him fell into everlasting death. But those who found a sanctuary in Him from God’s wrath and from the righteous condemnation of the Law—tax collectors, prostitutes, and sinners of every kind—Jesus would cause them to rise up from death to life, from being alienated from God to the adoption of sons. All of that lay in the future of the little baby lying in Simeon’s arms.

Destined to be a sign which will be spoken against, that the thoughts of many hearts may be revealed. No mother wants to consider that her little baby will one day be hated, mocked, ridiculed, and slandered. But Simeon informed Mary that all such things were in the future for her little baby, and it’s still going on to this day. Jesus would be then and still is now spoken against, both as He reveals sin, which people don’t want to be revealed, and as He claims to be the Lord and Savior of all, which people don’t want to believe. And so the thoughts of people’s hearts are revealed: that they are and remain the devil’s children.

Finally, Simeon warned Mary, a sword will pierce through your own soul, too. What pierces through a mother’s soul more sharply than when her dear child suffers, or worse yet, is tortured and killed? As Mary sat there, thirty-three years later, at the foot of Jesus’ cross, one wonders if she thought of Simeon at that moment and of his terrible prophecy. What was the point of it? Why tell her this now, when her Son is still just a baby? Well, it prepared Mary for the kind of life her Son would lead. What’s more, it was God being utterly truthful and up-front with her, as He has also been with us, that seeking Him and serving Him will not mean a peaceful, comfortable life on earth, for you or for your children, but a life of being hated by the world, even as Christ was hated, and a life of bearing shame and the cross in His name.

All that was taught to Mary and Joseph and to us by the elderly believer Simeon.

Then in our Gospel we meet Anna, a prophetess, and apparently a very well-known one. She was an old woman—either an 84-year-old widow or a roughly 105-year-old woman who had been a widow for 84 years (it’s hard to tell from the wording in the text). The point is, she was very old and had been a widow for many decades. For seven years of her young life she had lived as a dutiful wife, probably into her early twenties. But from her mid-to-latetwenties on, she spent her life, not chasing after men, not dwelling on her loneliness, not engaging in worldly activities, but never departing from the temple, serving God with fastings and prayers night and day. (That doesn’t sound like what young ladies are expected to do today, does it?) At some point she had become a prophetess, chosen by God to reveal God’s Word to Israel, apparently right there in the Temple in Jerusalem, urging people to look forward to the redemption that the Christ would soon bring.

Then she, too, was rewarded for her many decades of faithful service to the Lord. The baby who is God arrives at the Temple to meet her, and, like Simeon, she recognizes Him. She gave thanks to the Lord, and then she spoke of the Child to all those who looked for redemption in Jerusalem. All those decades serving the Lord day and night in His Temple—imagine the people Anna knew, the regular attendees at the sacrifices, the ones who had believed the Lord’s promises to Israel about redemption through the Christ, not from earthly slavery and oppression, but from sin, death, and the devil. To them she was now able to say, “Christ, the promised Redeemer, has been born! And His name is Jesus!”

So what do we learn from Simeon and Anna? We learn a few important things about Jesus Himself: His identity as the promised Christ, His future suffering and its purpose: for the redemption of all people, both Jews and Gentiles. In addition, we learn how to live a long life of seeking and serving the Lord, a long life of faithfulness, of devotion, of studying and clinging to God’s Word, a long life of trusting in His promises; a long life of waiting for the Christ to be revealed (they the first time, we the second time), never giving up hope, never abandoning God’s service, even if the world around us has abandoned it. We learn to keep praying, to keep attending the Divine Service, not as an occasional practice, but as a lifelong, regular habit. We learn to speak the Word of Christ to the people we know, to tell them of the redemption He’s already won, of the redemption He has yet to bring, and of the urgency of seeking Him now in this time of grace. And we learn to give thanks to God for revealing His salvation to us in Christ, whether early or late in life.

What a wonderful example to take with us into the new year! And if you spend the new year seeking Christ in His Church and eagerly waiting for His coming, if you spend the new year serving the Lord in all these ways, you will be rewarded, too, just as Simeon and Anna were, whether your life is long or short. You’ll be rewarded with a strengthened faith, with the strength to meet each new challenge that the year will bring. And, like Simeon and Anna, you’ll get to meet Jesus in person one day, not in terror with the rest of the world, but in thankfulness and joy, to take part in His glorious and eternal redemption. Amen.