Luke 2:25-35

Salvation in Ordinary Wrapping

M. Craig Barnes

December 24, 2006 pm

According to Luke, Mary and Joseph stayed in Bethlehem a little while after Jesus was born.

They had him circumcised on the eighth day according to custom. Then they gave him the name

“Jesus,” as the angel had told them to do. And then they went to Jerusalem, the next city over,

and made their sacrifice in the temple, again, as was the custom. There was nothing unique about

this sacrifice in the temple. It was a ritual repeated by most Hebrew parents after the birth of a

child. So Mary and Joseph were just one more ordinary couple fulfilling an ordinary ritual.

This sounds a lot like your family who just completed the Christmas rituals this morning. If

your family is like most, you have rituals for how you decorate the house and tree, when you open

the presents, how and in what order you open presents, when and what you eat on Christmas

morning, maybe even what music has to be playing as you open presents. Hopefully, you also have

a few spiritual rituals like lighting the candles of the Advent wreath, coming to worship, and

reading Luke’s story of the nativity. You have done it all so many times now that the story is as

familiar as the rituals.

The Christmas story didn’t change this year. Everybody knows the story that is now ordinary

and familiar to us. If there is a miracle at Christmas, it is wrapped in the ordinary – something as

ordinary as a child wrapped in swaddling clothes.

So it is fitting that in the epilogue of the Christmas story we find ordinary Mary and Joseph

fulfilling an ordinary ritual in the temple with their new baby. But while they were in the midst of

their ritual in the temple, the most extraordinary thing happened. An old man named Simeon

came up to them, took their baby into his arms and said, “Now I can die in peace for my eyes have

seen the salvation of the Lord.” And shortly after they got their baby from this man, the whole

scene was repeated by an old prophet named Anna who began to preach in the temple claiming

that this child was born for our redemption. Isn’t this what we all want to happen to us as we

make our way through these familiar Christmas rituals? Don’t we all want something extraordinary

to happen to us this year?

We are told that the parents were amazed. It had actually been a pretty amazing nine

months, and an incredible week in Bethlehem. But the next verse of the text is absolutely fascinating,

and perhaps the most relevant to us today. “When they had finished everything required

by the law of the Lord, they returned to Galilee to their own town of Nazareth.” That’s it? That’s

how it all ends? Having finished the rituals of the Lord, having had an amazing experience with it

all, they just go back home? Yes, that’s how the story goes.

What has really changed by the end of the Christmas story? The shepherds are back to

taking care of sheep. Joseph has to get back to the carpenter’s shop. Herod is still king, and shortly

will kill the male children of Bethlehem just to keep his tyrannical power. But what about those

amazing prophecies of Anna and Simeon? What about the promises of salvation and redemption

and change? Was it all just a meaningless ritual?

After Christmas, do we just now head back to ordinary life under Herod? No, don’t let the

ordinary wrapping of your Christmas gift fool you. Everything changed last night.

Let me describe for you how this Holy Night looked from the perspective of heaven, two

thousand years ago. This perspective is given to us in the 12th chapter of Revelation. That text

says nothing about shepherds or wise men, but it depicts a dragon leading a ferocious struggle in

heaven. A woman clothed with the sun, wearing a crown of twelve stars cries out in pain as she

gives birth. Suddenly the enormous red dragon descends. His tail sweeps away a third of the stars,

and he crouches hungrily before the woman eager to devour her child after his birth. At the last

instant, the child is snatched away to safety as the woman flees into the desert. The dragon is

furious and takes his anger out on the other children who remain behind.

All the world saw was a humble country woman giving birth to her child. Then she fled to

Egypt when she heard of Herod’s anger, which he took out on all the other children of

Bethlehem. From our perspective it is just another year of the tyrant Herod, just another ordinary

year under the tyrants of cancer, boring jobs, and broken hearts. But from the perspective of

heaven there was high drama going on last night. So is there high drama at work in your life.

Don’t be lulled into thinking this was just an ordinary holiday — not when a dragon slayer is

born.

If you saw what heaven saw last night, you would be breathless with excitement over your

life. That is what old Simeon and Anna saw. They looked through the ritual to find the miracle of

a salvation, and saw the high drama of a God who is now with us. Everything has changed with

the birth of our hope. It may not look like so much hope today. It may appear as fragile as an

ordinary newborn child. But the hope will grow. Just as the child became a man who saved the

world, so will the quiet hope grow to save your ordinary life.

The only people who return to the ordinary with joy are those who have finally defeated

whatever dragon they have been battling through life: hurts from the past, broken promises,

broken hearts or broken dreams. I do not know what dragon you have been fighting in life, but I

do know that Christmas can be more than a ritualistic distraction from the struggle.

Today we proclaim the great miracle that the Savior is born. The dragon will not consume

our Savior. The Savior will in time, consume the dragon. For those who believe that nothing is

ordinary again. Amen.