In the days of the Old Testament, God often showed His presence in a very visible way – but people didn’t actually see God Himself. In our Exodus Bible class we talked about the time that God appeared to Moses in the burning bush, and later, when the Children of Israel began their journey from Egypt to the Promised Land, God personally led them on their journey – but He was hidden within a pillar of cloud by day and as a pillar of fire by night. After the Children of Israel followed God’s detailed commands to build the Tabernacle, we read in Exodus chapter 40 that “the cloud filled the tent of meeting, and the glory of the Lord filled the Tabernacle. And Moses was not able to enter the tent of meeting because the cloud settled on it, and the glory of the Lord filled the tabernacle. Throughout all their journeys, whenever the cloud was taken up from over the tabernacle, the people of Israel would set out. But if the cloud was not taken up, then they did not set out till the day that it was taken up. For the cloud of the Lord was on the tabernacle by day, and fire was in it by night, in the sight of all the house of Israel throughout all their journeys.”
When King Solomon built the great Temple in Jerusalem – a permanent dwelling place for the Lord that was meant to replace the temporary Tabernacle – the Temple was filled with a great cloud of the glory of the Lord, and God took up residence there, just as He had in the Tabernacle. But shortly before the Temple was destroyed some 400 years later, the prophet Ezekiel actually saw the glory of the Lord depart from the Temple. Later, following the exile to Babylon, the Temple was rebuilt, but it just wasn’t the same. It was smaller, it was less ornate – for many who remembered the original Temple, it was something of a disappointment. Although God told His prophet Haggai that he would be with His people in a spiritual sense in this new Temple, it was never again filed with the great cloud that announced God’s presence. But God did promise to fill the Temple with an even greater glory. In Haggai chapter 2 we read that God declared: “Fear not. For thus says the Lord of hosts: Yet once more, in a little while, I will shake the heavens and the earth and the sea and the dry land. And I will shake all nations, so that the treasures of all nations shall come in, and I will fill this house with glory, says the Lord of hosts.”
On the 40th day after Jesus’ birth, the glory of the Lord once again returned to His Temple. As God had promised, His house was again filled with His glory. But this time God the Father was not hidden in a cloud by day or a pillar of fire by night. The presence of the glory of the Lord no longer produced awe and fear and trembling. The glory of the Lord no longer made everyone stop and take notice. This time the glory of the Lord could easily be missed – in fact, it almost certainly was missed by the thousands of people who would be milling about the Temple on any given day. This time the glory of the Lord appeared in the form of a 40-day-old baby boy – held in the arms of his mother.
Mary and Joseph and Jesus had traveled from Bethlehem to Jerusalem because the Law demanded that they do so. This wasn’t just another bothersome Roman law like the taxation that brought Mary and Joseph to Bethlehem – this was the Law of God, which demanded that they go to the Temple on that very day. According to the Law given by God to Moses, a woman who gave birth to a male child had to go to the Temple for purification 40 days after giving birth and make a sacrifice. The Law also demanded that every firstborn son must be consecrated to God. Following the first Passover in Egypt, God told Moses: “Consecrate to me all firstborn. Whatever is the first to open the womb among the people of Israel … is mine.”
When they arrived at the Temple, they found someone waiting for them. His name was Simeon, and he had been waiting for a long time. St. Luke writes that Simeon was “righteous and devout, waiting for the consolation of Israel, and the Holy Spirit was upon him. And it had been revealed to him by the Holy Spirit that he would not see death before he had seen the Lord’s Christ.”
Someone else was waiting, too. Her name was Anna. Anna was 84 years old, and she actually lived right there in the Temple, where Luke tells us that she “did not depart from the Temple, worshipping and fasting and praying night and day.”
Of course, Simeon and Anna weren’t the only two people waiting for the Messiah. Faithful Jewish people in Jerusalem and in Israel and in many parts of the ancient world were waiting for Him. But they had been waiting for a long time. For some, the wait was just too much. The wait seemed like it was never going to end. For others, the wait had led the people to expect a very different messiah than the one foretold by the prophets. There had even been more than a few false messiahs – men who brought hope to the people, only to have those hopes destroyed. In the year 4 BC, a former slave by the name of Simon was briefly believed to be the messiah when he led an uprising against the Romans – but he was quickly defeated. In 6 AD a man by the name of Judas of Galilee – not the same Judas who was a disciple of Jesus before betraying him – was also briefly believed to be the messiah until his rebellion also was crushed by the Romans. There had been other false messiahs before – and there would be many more in the future. But for now, they were still waiting.
Hardly anyone realized it then and there, but the wait was over. This little baby who has held by Simeon on that day – He was the real thing. He didn’t look like a messiah, and He didn’t act like a messiah. But Simeon knew – and Anna knew, too. God had come home to His Temple. The glory of the Lord – the glory of this Son of God – didn’t fill the Temple with a miraculous cloud that hid God from the people as it had in the days of Moses and Solomon. Now God was visible for all to see. And they could see Him right there in the Temple – there in God’s house – because His parents had brought Him to Jerusalem to fulfill the requirements of the Law.
As Lutherans, we are taught in our Catechism classes that the Law of God shows our sin – shows us that we can never life the perfect sinless life demanded by our holy and perfect Creator. The Law requires nothing short of absolute, perfect fulfillment – and promises death for all who fall short of that requirement. Not a single human being was ever able to keep the Law before Jesus was born, and no single human being has even been able to keep the Law since Jesus was born.
Only one could do that – only one could fulfill God’s Law in every respect, in every detail, in each and every day and hour and minute and second of His life. Only Jesus, the sinless true-man-and-true God, could keep the Law. And that’s what he did. For as Jesus would say roughly 30 years later in His Sermon on the Mount, “Do not think that I have come to abolish the Law or the Prophets; I have not come to abolish them, but to fulfill them.”
When Mary and Joseph brought Jesus to the Temple on that day, the Law required them to make a sacrifice of a year-old lamb for a burnt offering and either a pigeon or turtledove for a sin offering. People who were poor and couldn’t afford a lamb – people like Mary and Joseph – could substitute another turtledove or pigeon for the sacrificial lamb. But no matter what, a sacrifice must be made. The Law demanded a sacrifice.
The irony of this is that because Jesus was the only one in all of God’s history who could satisfy every demand of the Law, He also became the only one in all of God’s history who could suffer the death penalty of the Law in our place. Roughly 33 years after Joseph and Mary offered their sacrifice of two inexpensive birds for their sins, Jesus willing offered His holy body as a sacrifice for our sins. He took our place. He died our death. He became our sacrificial lamb – the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world. And by His death, He gained for us a resurrection of eternal life that we could never achieve on our own.
Simeon said, “My eyes have seen your salvation that you have prepared in the presence of all peoples.” Technically, Simeon did a lot more than just see God’s salvation – he held God’s salvation. He held the glory of the Lord in his arms. The innocent and beautiful little baby boy he cradled in his arms – the baby seen and praised by him and by Anna – was, and is, in every respect the glory of the Lord. No longer hidden in a cloud or a pillar of fire. But a baby with eyes and ears and flesh just like us. True God and true man.
When God came home to His temple on that 40th day after Jesus’ birth, His homecoming represented far more than just a return to a stone building located on Mt. Zion in Jerusalem. God had returned in the flesh to His beloved creation. The earth that had become so totally corrupted by sin. Our earth – our home. He came to our home so that we could be redeemed – forgiven of our sins. When Simeon told Mary that a sword would pierce through her own soul, he was prophesying the pain that Mary would feel on another day – this time just outside the walls of Jerusalem – when she would suffer silently as she watched her firstborn son suffer and die on the cross.
But Simeon also prophesied these words of promise and joy – promise and joy fulfilled by Christ’s resurrection on the third day following His death. “For my eyes have seen your salvation,” Simeon joyfully proclaimed, “that you have prepared in the presence of all peoples, a light for the revelation of the Gentiles, and for glory to your people Israel.”
Yes, God has come home. He has come home to us – to our hearts, to our souls, to our lives now and to our lives in all eternity. He came home to save us. And now we anxiously look forward to the day that He will bring each of us home to be with Him in Heaven.
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