Purification of Mary, and Presentation of Jesus

[00:00:01] Grace, mercy and peace be to you from God our Father, from our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. Amen. [00:00:12] This hymn, we don't sing this hymn real often. [00:00:16] The tune is familiar. [00:00:18] I don't know. Have I ever sung this hymn? I don't know. [00:00:21] It's in the feasts and festivals section and it's. [00:00:25] Well, it's been written based on this text and the words are really neat. I want to highlight the last verse. [00:00:37] Well, let's start with the first verse real quick. Here in his temple now behold him. [00:00:43] This is Jesus temple that he's being presented in, which is kind of cool. [00:00:50] And somewhere there, end of the second verse looks like the incarnate God Most High. Alleluia, Alleluia. Praise the Lord. Praise the Lord. Lo, look, the incarnate God Most High. [00:01:06] So here's God in the flesh. Look at him. Praise the Lord, Giving him glory. [00:01:14] But it just struck me that he's the incarnate God Most High, the Word become flesh. Who tabernacled among us. [00:01:26] That's the word. Who dwelt among us. [00:01:31] That word dwelled. It's tented, tabernacled. And here he is not in the tabernacle, but in the temple, sort of the solid final version of the tabernacle, so to speak. But he is the tabernacle, right? He says. He says that he's the temple, right? Destroy this temple and I'll rebuild it in three days. And he's talking about the temple of his body. [00:01:58] And actually in our first hymn, I'm going to go there. We're just jumping around in hymns for a second here, and then we'll get on track, so to speak. [00:02:11] Well, now can I even find it in the hymn? I don't know, but the idea. Oh, no, no, no, it's not in the hymn. Sorry. [00:02:21] Here we go. Not that I have to apologize. I've got your attention for a little bit of time here, so I'll just use it. [00:02:31] There we go. [00:02:33] Oh, no, I don't know. We'll just use this one. So in the intro, it. [00:02:40] We have thought on your steadfast love, O God, in the midst of your temple. [00:02:46] Well, what's that? Well, we're not in ancient Israel and we don't go to the temple. [00:02:52] The temple's not even there anymore, physically. Right. But Christ is the temple. He's the dwelling place of God. And so where do we think of God's steadfast love? In Christ? [00:03:04] We have thought on your steadfast love, O God, in the midst of Your temple. All right, now I'm back in him 5. 19. In his temple. Now behold him. [00:03:16] Okay, the last verse. Jesus, by your presentation, when they blessed you, weak and poor. [00:03:22] There. Jesus is. Weak and poor. He's being brought to God in the temple, weak and poor. And that's important because Christ became poor for us. He became weak for us. He didn't have to. [00:03:38] Paul says in Philippians 2, though he was in the form of God, he is God by nature. [00:03:48] He didn't hang on to that or flouted. Is that a word? [00:03:57] Yeah, it just doesn't sound right. [00:04:00] But instead, he humbled himself, he emptied himself, became nothing, took the form of a servant for us and for our salvation. So here he is in the temple in the form of a servant. He's weak and poor. There he is a baby. [00:04:16] It's not like he's being presented to God as like, check this out. No, he's. He's being brought to God in our form, weak and poor. And that's the proper way to approach God, Weak and poor. [00:04:32] If we approach God thinking that we're rich, he's going to send us empty away, right? [00:04:40] As Mary says in her song, we don't approach God with our own strength or rich. We approach him weak and poor. [00:04:51] So that he is our strength and our wealth. [00:04:55] We find those things in Him. That's faith. Faith doesn't come to God already having what it needs. Faith trusts in God because that's what trust is. You don't trust in something you don't need. We trust in God because He has what we need. So there Jesus is being presented to God in just the way that it's proper for us to be presented to God or to present ourselves to God, weak and poor, in order to be filled and governed by him and strengthened by Him. [00:05:40] So he's presented in the temple to God. And you think of that like Paul in Romans 6, saying, Present your members to God as servants of righteousness. [00:05:54] It's like, okay, here, God, here are my hands and my feet and everything that I have to be used by you as instruments. They're your instruments. You use them. [00:06:08] Rather than saying, I've got this. It's mine, and I'm going to do what I want with it. Instead, presenting like being presented to God is saying, here you go. [00:06:21] That's what Jesus did in the Garden of Gethsemane when he's about to be crucified. And he says to God, not like, hey, let me be like, don't take this from me. Let me do what I want. He says, this is scary. He says, if there's any other way, take this cup from me. But then he says, but your will be done, not mine. [00:06:51] Your will be done, not mine. It's the same thing as in the Lord's Prayer when we pray, your will be done. On earth as in heaven. We're presenting ourselves to God to be his instruments. And that's like being the body of Christ, Christ our head, and we, his body. [00:07:10] We are being moved and used by Christ our head. We are fulfilling his will through faith. [00:07:19] That's the. [00:07:21] That's what. That's communicating, that we're the body of Christ. [00:07:26] All right, so Jesus is presented in the temple. And again, this is about. It's about coming to the Lord in faith and becoming his instead of being our own. [00:07:43] Now, this was not easy for Mary and Joseph. [00:07:47] They didn't live in Jerusalem. They traveled to Jerusalem for this. [00:07:53] They traveled to the temple in Jerusalem in order to present Jesus to the Lord. And the difficulty of it was part of the benefit. [00:08:03] So imagine they lived in the north of Israel, in Nazareth. And so to get to Jerusalem, they'd have to. I mean, there were. [00:08:12] Well, there were a few ways to get there. But let's say one of the ways was to go down to the Jordan River Valley. The Jordan flows down from the Sea of Galilee to the Dead Sea, and it's a valley. They have to go down and then, like down in elevation, right to the river. And then go on a map, you know, south all the way to the Dead Sea. And then they'd have to climb. It's a pretty steep climb up to Jerusalem. And all the way, the whole time, they're aimed toward the Temple. [00:08:47] That's where they're headed. So for an entire journey, they are headed 40 days after childbirth, too. [00:08:56] Hope they had a donkey, but even then, you know, that's tough. [00:09:00] But the whole way they're headed to the temple, and that has a teaching function for them. They're turned toward God right now. They are physically. Are they spiritually? Hopefully, that's the goal. It's like when I come and bow to the altar, am I thinking about bowing in my heart to God? Hopefully, that's the goal. It's kind of pointless, except maybe for your benefit, watching me. Maybe you bow, too. [00:09:30] But for myself, it's kind of pointless if my heart's not in it. Because it's not just about the physical. It's about spiritual with the physical. So Mary and Joseph, they're on this journey that's designed to aim them toward God in order to receive from him in faith. You could say receive his guiding action, his governance. Paul says, I no longer live, but Christ lives in me. So that we become God's servants led by him. [00:10:04] There's another way to be facing, too. [00:10:07] There's a choice we can face toward God or toward other things. Just the action of presenting your son to God was a turning away from yourself and your own benefit. Let's say you see that in the Old Testament reading with Hannah. You know, Hannah is. Well, she comes to the temple and is praying to God because she can't have a baby. It hasn't happened. She's barren. But she prays to God with tears for a son and says, if you give me a son, I'll give him back to you. [00:10:45] And so God gives her a son, Samuel. [00:10:49] So she brings him to the temple and Sam, Samuel becomes an important prophet, but she brings him to the temple and gives him to God. And, wow, that's not easy. Her son is her future, but she gives him to God. So the alternative would be for her to say, never mind. I'm just going to secure my future. [00:11:12] I'm going to build my strength through my son. And my son is going to his success and the earthly goods that can be gained from his profitable work or whatever. [00:11:26] That's what I'm going to trust in. You think of building our possessions or any other kind of focus on ourselves, there are two ways to be turned toward God and toward ourselves. [00:11:39] This morning I received a gift from God. Like, if you pray for a sermon illustration, be careful, you might not get what you want. [00:11:51] As I came to church, I felt I had a crick in my neck. And it's just gotten worse and worse over the morning. So that I just want to be looking this way. Actually, I can't look too far down either. But I'm kind of stuck like this. I don't know if you've noticed. All right, I do a little bit of this, but it kind of hurts. And so I'm like, turned in on myself physically right now. And it's this perfect image of. Of our sinful nature that we are inclined toward ourselves and toward earth, toward earthly things. [00:12:21] We would rather sometimes, you know, not in faith, rather put our trust in the fulfillment of our own desires or the pursuit of our own ideas. What seems right in our own eyes or what seems like it's going to work out for our own benefit rather than being turned toward God. And so again, Mary and Joseph, they're headed toward the temple. And this has a teaching purpose for them, for the sake of faith here they are aimed toward the temple. Going to the temple in order to give their attention to God, to be facing God and not other things. So we've been talking about facing one way and not the other. You picture it like this, like facing God, he is valuable, right? Like he's worthy of attention. That's what that says, facing God. All right, so for example, in the intro, it we have thought on your steadfast love, O God. That is to say that his steadfast love is worth paying attention to. [00:13:32] And the prayer is saying, we are aimed toward your steadfast love, O God, in the midst of your temple, as we said in Christ, looking to Christ and meditating on your steadfast love. There are lots of other things we could think about. Why are we thinking about God's love? Because it means everything for us. [00:13:51] Because in Christ, he's forgiven our sins and given us life. [00:13:57] I mean, peace can be found elsewhere. In a sense. We look for peace in the accumulation of possessions or in building up our own honor, which could be sought in wrong ways. Ow. [00:14:15] Don't feel bad for me. [00:14:18] It doesn't matter. [00:14:23] So it's like physical health, absence of pain, all these things. We can look for security in all those things, but those things are secondary. [00:14:35] Those things are not the primary thing worth paying attention to. [00:14:41] You see that in St. Paul, who says all the things that seemed really worth having, that, that I did have, I now consider loss for the sake of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord. It's like I was looking at those things and paying attention to them. He's basically saying he was a Pharisee of Pharisees and all of that. He had it all, honor and such. [00:15:11] And then he loses it all. But that's okay. So he was aimed in that direction, or say, aimed in this direction. [00:15:20] But now Christ has met him on the road. Christ has turned him around so that what he thought was high and exalted is now real low on the priority list. And what he thought was actually worth trampling Jesus and his followers, like, now that's changed, right? So he's flipped around, and now his perspective is totally changed and his opinion of what's worth anything. So now that he's facing Christ and he says, for the sake of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord, now he's finding everything. His comfort, his hope, his glory, his confidence, salvation, all of that in Christ. And these other things, they're still there in a sense. I Mean, he's still got like an earthly worldly reality. He's still got honor or the lack of it. He's still got wealth or poverty. All these things are still realities for him, but he's facing a different direction. And so all those things have been. They've become secondary. And he doesn't mind anymore. In fact, his poverty is now his strength in a sense. Like, the lack just drives him more. It's like it's less distracting now that people aren't lifting him up in their minds. It's less distracting. He can just. Well, might as well not focus on that anyway, because Paul actually does lose it. He loses his honor. He goes from town to town and he's getting beaten and such. [00:17:11] Then he ends up getting killed for his faith. [00:17:14] But actually he hasn't lost anything. He's only gained in Christ. [00:17:22] That's what God wants for us as well, and that's what we have in Christ. [00:17:27] The verse for today is a verse that occurs a couple verses past our gospel reading where Simeon says, behold, this child is appointed for the fall and rising of many in Israel. [00:17:41] The fall and rising of many in Israel. This is a common pattern in scripture. [00:17:49] Mary repeats some of these themes. So does Hannah. It's not in the Old Testament reading, but right after the reading, she gives a song that's just like Mary's song and has the same kinds of themes in it about God casting down the mighty from their thrones. That's from Mary's song. And exalting the lowly. [00:18:08] He's going to be Jesus. This child is appointed for the fall and rising of many in Israel. [00:18:16] That's referring to faith. [00:18:18] So that like what I thought was all exalted. As I looked down, right myself and earthly things, I considered those things to be great. But now I've been made low and recognize what's actually high up. So that looking to his holy mountain, beautiful in elevation, Mount Zion in the far north, the city of the great king. So that looking up to to Christ, the king on his throne, I recognize him as exalted. And the thing worth paying attention to, the one to put my trust in rather than in myself. This is a movement of faith, the fall and the rising of many. [00:19:08] Thanks be to God. This is what Jesus has come for. He's made himself low in order that in him we might be exalted. He who was in the form of God emptied himself, made himself nothing became, took the form of a servant and then was highly exalted.