Image: From the Menologian of Basil II, ca. 1000
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February 2, 2025: Presentation of our Lord
Luke 2:22-40
Imagine God for a second. Who or what did you picture? An old, bearded man in the sky, like in Michelangelo’s Creation of Adam? A king on a heavenly throne, with lightning flashing around him? Maybe you think of Jesus in the manner of this famous painting by Warner Sallman. Or maybe you think of a dove, in the way that the Spirit descended on Jesus at his baptism. In addition, other images—not particularly scriptural ones—may come to mind. Such as the kindly old man who is there for us when we need him and graciously gets out of our way when we don’t. Or the benevolent gatekeeper who will let me into heaven if I’m good enough during my lifetime. Or the harsh judge always condemning mistakes, ready to punish. We may think of the loan shark, marking sins on a debt sheet. Or the scorekeeper, balancing our good and bad actions like a heavenly Santa Claus.
The thing is, our images of God, even at their best, can only take us so far. What we need is the one true God; the God with skin on, Jesus Christ, who comes to us today as he came to his people long ago. We need a real Messiah for real people.
Today we celebrate the Presentation of our Lord in the Temple. And while it’s not a day we usually celebrate every year, the gospel lesson today is very important for how we understand Jesus—his divinity, his mission, and his humanity.
The first thing to note is that Jesus and his family are very Jewish! Even though they live in Galilee, some 75 miles to the north, they have made another three-day trip south in Jesus’s first forty days of earthly life to offer the sacrifices prescribed in Leviticus 12. Jesus’s mother and earthly father are doing what is proper for him under the law. The sacrifice is also for Mary’s purification, which would have been done 40 days after his birth.
The second thing to note is that the family is poor. The sacrifice of two turtledoves or pigeons was the offering of those who couldn’t afford a lamb.
The third is that Jesus is from a little, poor village in Nazareth, up in Galilee. That means that he lived far from the center of power. His upbringing, rather, was among sharecroppers. Craftsmen. People barely scraping by.
Jesus was born a poor Galilean Jew, living far from earthly power. That is the Savior we proclaim and confess. In the particular person of Jesus of Nazareth, God is fully enfleshed. Fully incarnate, even as an infant.
And that is important. Because our Messiah is not an abstract messiah, able to be manipulated and conformed to our expectations and thoughts about who we think he ought to be. He is not a blank slate to be projected upon. He is Lord’s Christ, incarnate in particular flesh—poor, Galilean, Jewish. And because he is incarnate as a particular person, he can save us in our particular existences, whatever they may be. Whether we are of European, African, Indigenous American, Asian, or Middle Eastern descent. Whether we are male, female, or non-gender conforming. Whether we are straight, gay, or another orientation. Whether we’re rich, poor, or somewhere in the middle. Whether we’re born in this country or born elsewhere. Even whether we’re German, Swedish, or Norwegian! God wasn’t enfleshed in the man Jesus to save people in the abstract. He was enfleshed to save people in their uniqueness. He came to save people whoever they are, wherever they come from, wherever their parents were born, whoever they identify as.
And that is at the root of Simeon and Anna’s recognition of Jesus. Simeon, in his song, recognizes God’s salvation for him and for all. And it isn’t just for Jews. Jesus is the light that reveals God fully to all peoples. All nations. As for Anna, she has been waiting many years for this. Just as her namesake, Hannah, prayed for a child, she has been praying and waiting in the Temple to see God’s salvation for many years. And here, at the end of both their lives, they see him. For his part, Simeon takes the little Lord Christ in his arms, singing that he can finally die at peace.
Of course, we may at times doubt God’s salvation for us particularly. Worse, we may doubt it for others. We may see ourselves or others as not worthy of full human dignity or respect. And when we do that, we fail to perceive God’s image—not just in others, but also in ourselves.
But Jesus is the Savior for all people in their diversity, including you and me. In him, the promises of Isaiah are fulfilled: the light to the nations in Isaiah 49. The gentle servant of Isaiah 42. The universal reach of God’s instruction in Isaiah 2 and 55. In Christ, all nations will gather at God’s holy mountain. In today’s text, it is in the Temple. But by the end of Luke, God’s holy mountain will be an execution site called The Place of the Skull, or Calvary. That horrible place is where God’s love and mercy are made fully known to a world that insists time and time again on its own way, that insists time and time again on excluding others, that insists time and time again that some people are better and more worthy than others. At that hill, God in Christ takes all our hate, all our rage, all our sin upon himself. Not so we would just get off scot-free and continuing living as we have been. When we’re baptized, we die, too: as Luther says, the old Adam or Eve in us is drowned. And every day, we rise again to live before God. This is not some abstract thought experiment for an idealized humanity. This is our salvation and the salvation of all who belong to Christ, regardless of who they are. Jesus is a real Messiah for real people, the Savior of us all. Amen.
© 2025, David M. Fleener. Permission granted to copy and adapt original material herein for non-commercial purposes with appropriate credit given.
