The Presentation of Our Lord & the Purification of Mary

Hebrews 2:14-18; Luke 2:22-32

February 4, 2026 (observed)

Man is held in the thrall of grief. It is an anticipated grief. We see the world perishing. We love, and see we will lose that love.

And we cannot control this. We can try. We can write contracts and pass bylaws but people are sinful, people are fickle. Friends betray us. Always death is coming.

Tonight’s epistle calls this the “fear of death.” It holds us all our lifetime in bondage.

This is why Jesus is born. This is why He is brought to the temple to be presented before the altar.

Monday was the fortieth day of Christmas. On the fortieth day the Israelites were to bring the firstborn son before the LORD’s altar. There the son would be redeemed by a sacrifice. Why did the LORD establish this practice? It was in memory of the tenth plague in Egypt, when the firstborn of the land were slaughtered. Except, those homes covered with the blood of the lamb were spared. So the birth of sons became a perpetual reminder to the people of God’s deliverance, God’s redemption, wrought by blood.

The ten plagues of Egypt were past. Yet the overarching plague of death continued down through each generation. Man held in the thrall of grief.

But in what seemed an ordinary day in Jerusalem – another mother with another baby boy, doing what was always done – Simeon recognized the unrepeatable uniqueness of this mother, and this Boy. Simeon’s speech to Mary and Joseph transforms henceforth the meaning of death. Death becomes departure, terror becomes peace.

For this Child is the divine Logos, the Word made flesh. In this baby Boy, God has taken on flesh and blood, “that through death he might destroy the one who has the power of death, that is, the devil, and deliver all those who through fear of death were subject to lifelong slavery.” We still die. But death’s power is gone.

For the Lord has promised me

That death is but a slumber. [LSB 938:1]

The great theologian David Scaer writes, “Death for orthodox Christians is not the termination of life, but it is God receiving our souls back to himself” [“God as the First Locus in Theology,” CTQ 90:1, p5].

We still feel the power of death. We still are in fear, because there is too much we cannot control. What will happen to my money, my family, my church? Who will take care of my relatives?

All of that is unbelief. The ritual of the presentation of the firstborn was to remind Israel that God holds the power of death … or rather, we should say He holds the power of life. He is life. And this Jesus, this forty-day-old Boy, will speak and declare, “I am the resurrection and the life”; “I am the way, the truth, and the life; no one comes to the Father except through Me.” He is the portal to the Father. He is the Exodus. He is the Passover. And thus He is what our hymn declared: My friend when I am dying.

The Presentation of Jesus means we have an Exodus, we have a Resurrection coming. For we have a Baptism into the blood of the Lamb, we have a Passover meal where the Host is the Meal. He who is brought to the Temple prepares for us a Table, and speaks to us, “Whoever eats My flesh and drinks My blood has eternal life, and I will raise Him up at the last day.” For we are redeemed by the blood of the Lamb presented by Mary and Joseph in the Temple. +INJ+