You belong to the Lord your God by right, for He is your Creator and Preserver. He is the One who has given you all that you are and have, your body and soul, your reason and all your senses. And He is the One who still takes care of you, who feeds and clothes and shelters you and daily and richly provides you with all that you need to support this body and life. Not because you are good or as though you deserve any of this, but entirely by His divine grace and mercy toward you.
You belong entirely to Him by right, and you have no life without Him. But the problem is that, while you can’t live without Him, neither can you live with Him in your sins and native sinfulness. Not only because you have broken God’s Law and earned His righteous wrath and displeasure; and not simply because you are doing this or that wrong; but because your sin is a disordering of your heart and life from the inside-out. You are not in harmony with God but out of sync with Him who is the Author and Giver of Life; so you cannot abide in His presence, because you are odds with Him, at enmity with Him, until He saves you from sin and death and reconciles you to Himself.
Until He redeems you and reclaims you for His own, you are dead and dying in your sins, both now and forever. But that is not His good and gracious Will. He rather desires that you should have Life with Him; so He does not allow your sin to dissuade Him or prevent Him from saving you.
He comes, Himself, to do so. For having become like you in every way, a Man of Flesh and Blood, conceived and born of St. Mary, He has taken the full burden of the Law upon Himself in your stead; and He has borne the full weight of your sins and the sins of the whole world in His Body, even unto death upon the Cross, whereby He has atoned for all of those sins with His own Blood.
The almighty and eternal Son of God, Christ Jesus, has come in the Flesh and fulfilled the entire Law of God for the justification, sanctification, and eternal Salvation of all the children of Man. Anyway, the Law always was about Him; not as a list of rules and regulations, but as a description of human Life with God. He has lived it. He has done so for you. And in this is your Salvation.
The Law of the Lord that was fulfilled on this day, in particular, the fortieth day of the ChristMass, really gathers up the full scope of God’s Salvation, going back to the Garden following the Fall into Sin. A woman must come to the Temple to be purified after giving birth, because labor and delivery, the birth of a child into the world, brings together both the curse and the blessing in one.
Here is new life, a precious gift from God; and yet, the gift is given and received in the midst of travail, blood and pain, and at least the risk of death for both mother and child, if not death itself. The first Woman and all her daughters suffer this because of the Fall into Sin. And so do you also suffer in your body because of sin. But even so, from out of the suffering God brings forth life.
So, the Law of the Lord commands that birth be acknowledged as sacred, but also as precarious, as the meeting of death and life, in the hope of the Son, the Seed of the Woman, who would be conceived and born to conquer death and establish Life forever. From that first Promise of the Gospel in response to the Fall into Sin, every conception and every birth pointed forward to the One who would come in human Flesh to crush the devil’s head and thus remove the power of death that Satan held like a weapon over all the sons of Adam and daughters of Eve. At the start, every daughter might become the Mother of God, and every son might be the promised Seed, the Savior. Birth was therefore to be honored and sanctified by the Word of God, by sacrifice and prayer.
Over time it was revealed by the Word and promises of God that from the family of Abraham and Sarah, by way of Isaac, then Jacob, the Seed would come, the great Redeemer, the serpent-Crusher. Thus, Abraham’s family was marked by God for this Salvation of the nations, for your Salvation.
And as such, the Lord was with that family and preserved them, even in their sin. He blessed them, and He prospered them. Yet, where did they find themselves? Enslaved in Egypt. Becoming a great nation, but in bondage, subject to Pharaoh, unable to free themselves. Burdened by the Law.
But the Lord did not leave them there. He brought them out of Egypt by His almighty arm, with His powerful, outstretched hand. With ten Plagues He manifested His glory over against Pharaoh, even to the point of that most dire Plague of all, when the Angel of Death passed through the land of Egypt and all the firstborn sons were claimed, both great and small, of both man and beast.
As you know, the Sons of Israel were spared that deadly Plague by way of the Sacrifice given in their stead. The Lord God provided for Himself the Lamb in place of Israel’s firstborn sons. Its flesh fed the people. Its blood covered them. And the Lord brought them out of death into Life.
Consequently, not only as their Creator, but as their great Redeemer, they all belong to Him. Every firstborn son is His. All of Israel is His by right. And as such, He decreed that the children of Israel were obliged to sacrifice their sons to Him. Only, He did not desire their death, but that they should be redeemed from death in recognition of Him; whereas the firstborn sons of Levi would be presented to the Lord and dedicated to His service, to work to the glory of His Holy Name.
So it is that, in the case of each and every firstborn son, Israel was reminded and taught that their life was from the Lord, and their life belonged to Him. Indeed, the entire nation was the Lord’s.
And so it is, also, that Mary and Joseph came to the Temple to do for the Child — and for St. Mary herself — all that the Law of Moses prescribed, a sacrifice for each of them. Except, St. Luke does not describe the redemption of this Son. He is not a Levite, He is from the Tribe of Judah. The Lord is not a priest in the order of Aaron; He is a unique High Priest among men, according to the order of Melchizedek. So, we must assume that Mary and Joseph paid the redemption price for Him, the five shekels of silver required by the Law. But as I said, St. Luke does not record that. For Jesus is not redeemed from sacrifice and service; He is dedicated to Sacrifice and Service. Though not a Levite nor a son of Aaron, Christ Jesus is and ever shall be a great High Priest over the House of God, speaking to God on your behalf, and serving you on behalf of His God and Father. His Body and Life are given to be the once-for-all Sacrifice for the sins of the world.
Hence, He is presented and dedicated to the Lord. And He becomes the Passover Lamb, whose Flesh feeds you, whose Blood cover you. And He becomes your merciful and great High Priest, crucified, risen, and ascended, who ever lives to make intercession for you in the presence of God.
What is more, He abides with His people as the very Glory of Yahweh, as the Presence of God in the Flesh, all the fullness of the Godhead dwelling bodily among us in this Son of Mary, Jesus the Christ. He is here for you in the Temple of His Church, in order to save you and give you Life. He speaks His Word to you, pours out His Holy Spirit upon you, and feeds you with Himself.
To be righteous and devout — to live by grace through faith in Jesus Christ — is to live and abide within His Temple, to dwell within His House, on earth as it is in heaven, and to wait upon the Consolation of Israel in the Liturgy of His Holy Gospel. That is how Simeon and Anna lived — in the House of the Lord. Thus, they heard His Word, received His Gifts, and beheld the Light of the Revelation of the Glory of God in the Face of their Savior. And so is He here for you now.
With Simeon and Anna, and so also with the Psalmist, “One thing I ask of the Lord, that shall I seek, that I may dwell in the House of the Lord all the days of my life, to gaze upon the Beauty of the Lord and to seek Him in His Temple.” This is the most central and important thing in your life on earth. Not to the exclusion of your other vocations, to which the Lord has called you. Nurse your babies until they are weaned. Do your job. Provide for your family. And teach your sons and daughters to pray and confess the Word of Christ. Speak to your neighbors in love. Feed the hungry, shelter the homeless, visit the sick and imprisoned. Do all of this in faith and love, even as you are served and given Life by the Lord Jesus Christ here within the Temple of His Church.
Fathers and Mothers, this is the most necessary thing that you are given to do for your children. You care for their bodies and educate their minds, of course. But you must also present them to the Lord, that they may be served by His Word and Spirit. He does for them what you cannot do. From you they have inherited sin and death. From Him they receive forgiveness and eternal Life.
It is the Lord who catechizes your children unto faith in His forgiveness of their sins. It is the Lord who takes them to be His own, to live with Him in His Kingdom in everlasting righteousness, innocence, and blessedness. It is the Lord who feeds them with Himself, as He also feeds you.
You worry about your children. You strive to care for them and protect them, yet you worry about their health and safety. You worry about their education, whether they are learning what they need to know. You worry about their future and how they’ll provide for themselves and their families. But the Lord knows what they need, and He well provides their daily bread. And He would give them something far greater than life on this earth. He would give them Himself and His own Life.
The problem is that neither you nor your children can even receive this gift of Life from the Lord your God, except by His Word and by the working of the Holy Spirit through that Word. But you are afraid, and you waver in unbelief. It seems like such a dangerous proposition, and it surely is!
When you present yourself to the Lord, you offer yourself up as a living sacrifice, and you may well be called upon to die for the Name of the Lord, to give up your body and life for His Gospel.
So, make no mistake, and do not kid yourself: When you present your children to the Lord, when you bring them to Holy Baptism, when you expose them to the Word of God, and when you allow them to be fed with the Body and Blood of Christ, you commit them to the Cross which kills them.
This is a great irony. You cannot see the Lord’s Christ unless you die; but having died with Him, thus do you live and not taste death forever. Your instinct is to protect your children, that is right. So, do not keep them from the One who alone can save them, but bring yourself and them to Him.
It is God the Holy Spirit who is actively present and at work in this place, in the Liturgy of the Gospel of Christ Jesus. So, for example, Simeon and Anna were not in the Temple by accident. As St. Luke makes plain, everything transpired according to the Word of the Lord — under the guidance of the Holy Spirit, working through that Word and in that Temple. So, those saints were there because God had brought them there. And there they were served by His Word, enlivened by His Spirit to behold that young couple with their infant Son, to believe and confess that He is the Glory of Israel and the Hope of the nations; and to know that, having seen this little Babe, their Life was as it should be. They could live, or they could die, and they were at Peace either way.
So the Spirit does for you and for your children. In Holy Baptism you and they were put to death with Christ Jesus; not to be dead and buried forever, but to be raised up with Him in body and soul. And so does the same Spirit likewise work through the Word, calling to repentance, putting to death and raising to Life, exposing sins and forgiving them in the Name and stead of the Lord Jesus Christ. He enables you to behold in bread and wine that same Lord Jesus Christ, to receive Him unto yourself, to take His Flesh and Blood into your own mortal body, unto Life — to cling to Him who died, knowing that He is risen from the dead, and that you shall rise and live with Him.
That is why the Spirit has brought you here tonight, the darkness and weather notwithstanding. And that is why the Spirit works through you to bring your children to this place, as well, to this Temple of the Lord on the corner of Milton & Dale in South Bend. That you and your children should be purified of all your sins by the very Blood of Jesus Christ, the Passover Lamb of God. That you and your children should be redeemed by the Price that He has paid for you and for all. And that you and your children should be blessed with His Peace through faith in His Holy Gospel.
Here, indeed, is the Consolation of Israel. Here is your Comfort and your Solace in the presence of God, your Savior. In the face of fear and anguish, in the face of sin, death, and the devil, here is your Life and your Salvation in the Face of Jesus Christ, the incarnate Son of the Living God.
In the Name + of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.
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