The Presentation
Appointed Lessons
Malachi 3:1-4 * Hebrews 2:14-18 * Luke 2:22-40 * Psalm 84 or Psalm 24:7-10
Scripture quotations labeled NRSV are from the New Revised Standard Version Bible, copyright 1989 by the Division of Christian Education of the National Council of the Churches of Christ in the USA, and used by permission.
The Living Word | Lectionary Preaching Aids
Preaching Today
Bruce Robison: God Keeps His Promises
“Now I can die happy, with a full and peaceful heart, because I know that God’s true word has been fulfilled, God’s salvation and healing, restoring and renewing of all peoples now to be accomplished in and through this Holy Child.”
Tim Cole: The Ordinary and the Extraordinary
“An ordinary baby, and yet one who will be ‘a light to lighten the nations and to be the glory of his people.’ The ordinary and the extraordinary, the human and the divine. In Jesus, God has bound them inextricably together. This is God’s answer to the suffering of the world—his salvation.”
Classic Texts
Amphilochus: This Child
“This child whose life is counted in years is also the one who is proclaimed to be without human genealogy. This infant who babbles is also the one who gives a mouth and wisdom (Luke 21:15). He is the one because of his birth from the virgin, he is the other because of his transcendent nature.”
Martin Luther: Exhibit and Offer Him
The prophecies and passages of scripture do not keep Christ to themselves, but exhibit and offer him to everybody, just as we do with those things we carry in our arms .… Simeon declares that Christ is the light and savior of the world, which also was declared by the prophets.”
Articles
“Taking up the child Jesus is also taking up the cross. This does not diminish the joy of holding him, but shows rather the depths to which love will go to save us.”
Mac Stewart: The Meditation of Simeon
“God is not in the past, in those ‘golden days’ of your life when everything was just right and you were never lonely or sick or scared. God is not in the future, when you will have the successful career and the big happy family and the promise of a relaxing retirement. God is here, now, with you as you are, far more present to you than you are present to yourself.”
Jean McCurdy Meade: A Sword Shall Pierce Your Soul Also
“When the day of Pentecost comes and all there are filled with the Holy Spirit, let us remember, Mary alone of all that company already knows what it is to be filled with the Holy Spirit. … The sword has pierced her, and she surely bears that scar in heaven as much as Jesus bears the marks of his crucifixion, but her doubts and tears are replaced now by confidence and joy.”
