Luke 2:22-40 - Savor Your Christmas Freedom - December 27, 2020

As our lives move faster and faster bringing more and more obligations and as technology has left little room for escape, it’s no wonder that people are searching for help to deal with it all. This help can be found in “life management” books and seminars and advisers. We even had a seminar at the Seminary which covered the general techniques you can use to help you better manage your life. It consists of organizing your obligations and your time into a series of various boxes, endlessly dividing and subdividing them until every moment of your day is scheduled on paper. I’ve never been able to fit my life into a series of boxes, so I’ve never found this technique helpful – maybe you have, and more power to you. But one thing I am sure of is that no matter how efficiently you organize your life on paper, you’re still the one responsible; you’re still obligated to get everything done. And any time we are obligated to do something, it’s a manifestation of the law – and no manmade scheme can free you from the law. That’s why we’re going to savor Christmas today, because Christmas means that we are free from the many obligations, the many arms, of the law.

What’s the first thing you think of when you think of “the long arm of the law”? Government, right? No matter who you are, the long arm of government reaches into your life. If you own a business, you have mountains of red tape to cut through just to keep operating. If you have children who attend a government run school you have been involuntarily pressed into service as a teacher and tutor and study hall monitor. If you drive a car you must purchase a license, registration and insurance. We all have to pay taxes. And, as if that weren’t enough, this past year has seen government reaching into our lives in an unprecedented way – with officials dictating when and if we can leave our homes, how many people we can have in our homes, and what we must wear on our faces. This year I’ve come to better understand why my grandfather always used to say that some of the most terrifying words in the English language are “I’m from the government, and I’m here to help you.”

But it’s not just the long arm of government that reaches into our lives and seeks to control us. We all have a vocation – which is just a big, fancy term for our role or place in life – as fathers and mothers, as sons and daughters, as employers and employees, as husbands and wives, as brothers and sisters, as friends and acquaintances and church members. How can anyone keep track of and perform all of the demands those various vocations place on us? How do you fit all of those obligations into neat little boxes?

And then there’s the longest arm of all: the Ten Commandments. Fear, love and trust in God above all things. Do not misuse the name of the Lord your God. Remember the Sabbath Day by keeping it holy. Honor your father and mother. Do not murder. Do not commit adultery. Do not steal. Do not give false testimony. Do not covet. And do all of those things perfectly, all day, every day (Matthew 5:48). There’s no cute, color-coded organizational spreadsheet that can possibly enable you or me or anyone to obey God’s Law as he demands. There is no escape from the long arm of the Law. And that’s why people who don’t stop at the manger at Christmas are so stunned when the mystical Christmas spirit suddenly vanishes the moment the last gift is opened. These are the people who Isaiah described as lifting up their idols of wood and praying to a god that cannot save (Isaiah 45:20). Every year they’re shocked to realize that you can obey the unwritten laws of the Christmas gods with all your heart and time and energy and yet that will never change the fact that on December 26th you’re still nothing more than slave to government officials, credit card companies, spouse and children, and, above all, to a holy God.

And that is why it’s good for us to be here today; that’s why we must not leave the Christmas manger so quickly; that’s why we need to stop all our frantic doing and organizing for at least one more hour today to savor Christmas. Because on Christmas, God reached the long arm of his grace out of heaven to us here on earth. To do what? Well, at the risk of sounding hokey or cheesy, to wrestle the long arm of the law into submission.

Arm wrestlers are usually big, muscle-bound men. Well, in this case, God sent a baby. But even as a baby, Jesus began wrestling with the Law on our behalf. Just eight days after his birth, Mary and Joseph brought Jesus to the Temple to have him circumcised and named (Luke 2:21) – according to the Law (Genesis 17:9-14). But it didn’t end there: when the time came for their purification according to the law of Moses, they brought him up to Jerusalem to present him to the Lord. (As it is written in the law of the Lord, “Every firstborn male will be called holy to the Lord.”) And they came to offer a sacrifice according to what was said in the law of the Lord, “A pair of turtledoves or two young pigeons.” However, even as Jesus was presented at the Temple in accordance with the Law (Exodus 13:12), just like every other first born male, his presentation was different in one very important way: he wasn’t presented in order to be redeemed – for he had no original sin to be redeemed from. No, Jesus was presented at the temple as the Redeemer, the One who would take upon himself the full obligation of the Law and the guilt of our sins and failures (Isaiah 53:4-6; John 1:29). Jesus is presented in the Temple as the new Adam, the new representative of the human race, who had come to rip the long arm of the law out of our lives once and for all.

And Jesus’ identity and work didn’t go unrecognized at the Temple that day. Now there was a man in Jerusalem whose name was Simeon. This man was righteous and devout, waiting for the comfort of Israel, and the Holy Spirit was on him. It had been revealed to him by the Holy Spirit that he would not see death before he had seen the Lord’s Christ. Moved by the Spirit he went into the temple courts. When the parents brought in the child Jesus to do for him what was customary according to the law, Simeon took him in his arms and praised God. Now, I fully understand that parents and families rejoice and praise God at the birth of a child, but some random old man? I’ve brought four newborn children here to present them to the Lord for baptism (and while ladies have passed them around like a hot cake) but never once has an old man asked me to hold the child. What got Simeon so excited? This: He said, “Lord, you now dismiss your servant in peace, according to your word, because my eyes have seen your salvation, which you have prepared before the face of all people, a light for revelation to the Gentiles, and the glory of your people Israel. Simeon grabbed up baby Jesus and praised God because he knew that no matter how righteous and devout he was, he could never satisfy the demands of God’s holy law. But by inspiration of the Holy Spirit he recognized that in his arms he held the baby who could and would – not only for himself but for all people, both Jews and Gentiles. It’s no surprise that Joseph and Mary were amazed at the things that were spoken about him.

But what is surprising is that apart from Simeon and Anna, the rest of Jerusalem couldn’t be bothered to stop to notice the baby this poor couple had brought to the Temple. If there was someone who could free you from your obligations, who would do everything you never could, wouldn’t you expect the whole city to be there, waiting their turn to hold the child and praise God? What gives? Wise Simeon explains: listen carefully, this child is appointed for the falling and rising of many in Israel and for a sign that is spoken against, so that the thoughts of many hearts may be revealed. And a sword will pierce your own soul too. In baby Jesus, Simeon saw a polarizing figure, one who would not unite but divide, who did not come to coddle and pamper but to pierce and expose. And while Jesus certainly did that during his ministry – separating desperate sinners from self-righteous Pharisees, the Peters from the Judases, the two thieves on the crosses beside him – he still reaches into our hearts today. Today, a forty day old infant reaches into our neatly packaged and organized lives and reminds us that no matter how much we do, we can’t do enough – by virtue of the simple fact that he wouldn’t have had to come if we could. So 40 day old Jesus forces us to make a decision: are we going to pass by him and keep on futilely wrestling with the law on our own, or are we going to stop and savor the freedom he came to bring?

Today, this first Sunday after Christmas, is a minor fulfillment of Simeon’s prophecy. Today, the thoughts of many hearts [have been] revealed. There are those who are spending this morning taking down Christmas lights and tossing trees to the curb; those who are sleeping in and those who are getting a head start on the coming week. By those actions they have revealed their hearts – that, unlike Simeon, they don’t recognize that Jesus is the gift, the comfort, the solution they really need; that he’s the only one who can free them from the hamster wheel of life under the endless demands of the law. Those who have already kicked Christmas to the curb have been exposed as having no more use for Jesus than as an excuse to decorate, give gifts, and party. Those who darken the door of church once a year on Christmas Eve reveal their ignorance of the fact that while a little baby might make them feel all warm and fuzzy inside, what they really need is for those little hands to grow up and be nailed to a cross to suffer and die for their sins. They reveal that they don’t recognize that they need more than for the long arm of God’s grace to reach into a manger in Bethlehem; they needed the long arm of God’s justice to crush him in their place (Isaiah 53:4-6) and then three days later raise him to life as proof of our justification (Romans 4:25). In that way, this first Sunday after Christmas is something of a preview of Judgment Day, when the thoughts of every heart will be revealed for all to see (Ecclesiastes 12:14). And those who have revealed their hearts today by simply passing by this Christmas Gospel have revealed which side of the courtroom they will be standing on when Jesus returns in glory (Matthew 25:31-46) – and when that day comes, they will finally and sadly realize that they were so busy trying to wrestle the Law on their own that they missed their only chance to escape the long arm of God’s law.

But, thank God, the long arm of God’s grace has proven long enough to reach you and me. Unlike the masses in Jerusalem who took no notice of that little baby boy; unlike the millions today who have better things to do today than gather to hear the Christmas Gospel again – you are standing where Simeon and Anna once stood, in the house of God, to hear and see and receive the salvation and redemption God gives to you before you go back to the endless hamster wheel of life. The longer arm of God’s grace has reached into your heart and revealed to you that no matter how hard you work, no matter how efficient and organized you are, you can’t please God – but that Jesus has for you. While many speak against this baby – you kneel in awe at his cradle and praise him as the Son of God and the Savior of sinners. And, just like Simeon and Anna, none of the credit belongs to you (that would just be one more obligation). The credit all goes to the long arm of God’s grace which reached down in the waters of Baptism to call us to faith (Romans 6:1-7); which reached into our ears with the sweet words of the Absolution; with the assurance that no matter how badly or how often you have failed – YOUR SINS ARE FORGIVEN (Luke 24:46-47); which reaches into your mouth personally through Holy Communion to strengthen you in faith and prepare you for life eternal (1 Corinthians 11:23-26). The arm of God’s grace is so long that he doesn’t only do everything for you, he has even given you the willingness and desire to stop and receive and believe it.

Life management books may help you to organize your life and attain peak efficiency with your time and energy – but they can’t release you from the demands that all of the different arms of the law place on you. But because Jesus’ powerful arm of grace has wrestled the long arm of the Law into submission for us and given us the faith to believe it, we, like Simeon, can depart here in peace. Amen.