12/28/2025
Due to meeting some white-out conditions on the road, Pastor returned home this morning, and we've canceled this morning's service.
Please find below the sermon for today, based on Is. 11:1-5 and Luke 2:22-32:
In the name of the Father and of the + Son and of the Holy Spirit.
Forty days after the birth of Jesus, Joseph and Mary go to do as the Law of the Lord commands. Most specifically, they go and do according to the specific command in the book of Leviticus, chapter twelve. That is where we hear the time-frame of seven and then thirty-three more days for the birth of a boy.
But whether for the birth of a boy or a girl, in this case, the prescribed burnt offering and sin offering for the purification and atonement of the mother is the same: “a lamb a year old for a burnt offering, and a pigeon or a turtledove for a sin offering” [Lv 12:6]. But then it is also there in Leviticus that we hear a detail that seems to tell us a little more about the situation of Joseph and Mary with Jesus. The following provision is made in the same passage from Leviticus chapter twelve: “And if she cannot afford a lamb, then she shall take two turtledoves or two pigeons, one for a burnt offering and the other for a sin offering” [12:8].
The gospel reading from Luke jumps right to this part: “to offer a sacrifice according to what is said in the Law of the Lord, ‘a pair of turtledoves or two young pigeons.’” God is at work again and already through what is lowly and despised by the glories of the world, just as He has earlier started teaching us to sing with Mary in the Magnificat: “My soul magnifies the Lord…for He has looked on the humble estate of His servant…He has brought down the mighty from their thrones and exalted those of humble estate” (Lk 1:46, 48, 52).
Not that you’d know this exaltation yet even there in the temple. Not except by the Holy Spirit, grace, and faith. Simeon was not the only one in the right place at the right time. Most importantly, he was in the right place with the right and true faith. And one thing yet more than that, Simeon was given the special revelation and gift that “he would not see death before he had seen the Lord’s Christ.”
God does not give to us to look for special revelations from the Holy Spirit for ourselves. When He has granted them, He has given them primarily for the sake of others | for faith in Christ. So it is with Simeon. Simeon is given as a witness to all, and especially to all believers in Christ, that we would learn from his witness and from his example in the grace of God. Simeon is also granted a song of revelation to be recorded on the pages of the New Testament, that we all may see and believe in Christ with him according to those same words.
He sings the song we call by its Latin name, which language God began using to teach His faith around the world after the fall of once-mighty Rome. “Nunc Dimittis” is simply the Latin translation of the opening words of Simeon’s song, “Now Dismiss.” We also learn to sing it with what has become an older form, and a reverent appropriation, of our own English language: “Lord, now lettest Thou Thy servant depart in peace, according to Thy word…” [LSB 199].
Each element of the song of Simeon brings us good news of who this Jesus is for us, because of who He is for the sake of the world. For one, we who know Jesus may die in peace. That is what Simeon is specifically talking about. He was given specific revelation and promise that he would not die before he had seen the Lord’s Christ. His own eyes have been granted to see and know the poor Child when most saw but did not know Him. Simeon’s revelation and eyewitness testimony now stands in the gospel account for our sake and for our faith.
And note well, that even with the special revelation given to Simeon, he is given a phrase in his song that drops anchor far deeper than only his own experience. He sings and teaches us to sing to God “according to Your word.” This “word” refers to the
special revelation of the Holy Spirit to Simeon first of all, and yet places also that revelation within the full account of the Scriptures: all of the Old Testament and also then the unfolding New, from which we are now hearing his song.
The rest of Simeon’s words are anchored in Old Testament promises, including that Messiah’s coming would be for all peoples, all nations, or Gentiles outside Old Testament Israel. The prophecy of Messiah as the Shoot and Branch and Root of Jesse makes particular reference to coming as eternal King for the sake of the nations, as our reading from Isaiah chapter eleven would go on to say.
And again from Isaiah, as we’ve seen this year, Messiah has also come as a great light, dawning out of Galilee of the Gentiles, of the nations (Is 9). All together, then, we see that God has prepared this salvation in the presence of all peoples, Old Testament Israel at the center of God’s saving work for mankind. And now, salvation is present such that Simeon may hold it in his old, dying hands and see it with his eyes.
For this reason, this Nunc Dimittis has come to be an ordinary part of our receiving of Jesus where He now gives Himself to be known and seen. The words themselves show us Christ, telling us how aged Simeon took our infant Savior up in his arms to sing of Him. All the more, then, though He is at once hidden in bread and wine, there also Jesus has revealed and promised Himself to be seen in the most direct way, for our sake and for our salvation: “Take, eat; this is My body. Drink of it, all of you; this is My blood.” From this presence of our Savior, we may sing with Simeon, “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…”
In addition to our own experience, Jesus Himself speaks of an overlap between “light” and “sight,” such as in the Sermon on the Mount [Mt 6:22-23]. We have seen the Savior, with the eyes of faith in our hearts, receiving and believing the light of the word of promise we have heard and also received into our mouths in the saving Holy Supper. And so we sing with Simeon!
There remains another, most dear frame of reference to this occasion with Simeon. The gospel reading expresses two simultaneous occasions for the holy family’s visit to the temple. The first mentioned is their purification, by atonement for the mother. Remember that they follow the exception for those who cannot afford a lamb, so they offer two turtledoves or pigeons. What proves to be the more significant occasion is the presentation of the Infant.
The command for the presentation of the Child brings us back further yet before Sinai and Leviticus. The presentation of this Child takes us back into the Exodus, when God has finally made pharaoh let His people go free from bo***ge, as He now, by this Child, is freeing us from sin and death, from the power of the devil.
The Passover lambs were bled and burned in place of the firstborn of the people of Israel during the tenth and final plague (so, Ex 12). At the time of that first Passover, God lays special emphasis on the firstborn sons and on their substitution by a male lamb, a year old. “Every firstborn of man among your sons you must redeem,” says the Lord (Ex 13:13). And back yet further when He was first sending Moses back to Egypt, He told him to go to Pharaoh and say to him, “Thus says the Lord, Israel is My firstborn son, and I say to you, ‘Let My son go that he may serve Me’” (Ex 4:22-23a).
Jesus is this true and eternal Son, whose place in the end no lamb will take. Rather, He has come to be the sacrificial Passover Lamb. He bleeds to cover our sin, and roasts whole under the wrath that we deserve on His cross. He has gone through death to raise and bring us with Him into true and eternal life.
So, today our gospel shows us yet more of what it means that we remember this season, that “she gave birth to her firstborn Son and wrapped Him in swaddling cloths and laid Him in a manger,” a sign by which we see and know the Savior and the feeding trough for the faith, for the sheep of God’s flock.
In the name + of Jesus.
Image by William Hole, “There was a man in Jerusalem, whose name was Simeon, Luke 2:22-32,” from The Life of Jesus of Nazareth Portrayed in Colours, c. 1905, Hathi Trust, public domain.
