The Presentation of Our Lord and Purification of Mary

Last night (Wednesday, Feb. 3) we transferred the Presentation/Purification feast from its proper date, Feb. 2. Below is the sermon I preached at the Divine Service.

Brothers and sisters in Christ Jesus, yesterday was the Feast of the Presentation of Our Lord and the Purification of Mary, for it was the fortieth day of Christmas, forty days from the celebration of Christ’s birth. The word “purification” refers to the Levitical law requiring women to remain secluded after childbirth—forty days after the birth of a male child, eighty days after the birth of a female child. During the prescribed time, the mother is said to be unclean, abiding in the blood of her purification. She cannot come into the temple. But, Lev. 12 says, “When the days of her purification are fulfilled … she shall bring to the priest a lamb of the first year as a burnt offering, and a young pigeon or a turtledove as a sin offering, to the door of the tabernacle of meeting. Then he shall offer it before the Lord, and make atonement for her. And she shall be clean from the flow of her blood.” This entire practice seems to many to reflect a society with hang-ups about sexuality, and oppressive to women. That is not the case. This particular law shows the ramifications of mankind’s fall into sin. Children that are born are unclean, i.e., unfit to be in the presence of God. They are, from birth, corrupt with sin and wicked. They have no fear of God. They are selfish.

Thus this requirement of the law, the need for purification after the birth of a new sinner, served to remind the people of the condition of mankind, of the continuing consequences of the sin of our first parents. The Lord was not simply inflicting a punishment when He said to the first woman that she would bring forth her children in pain. It was a statement that from the original command to be fruitful and multiply, all women would now bring forth spoiled and poisoned fruit. Our society worships and pampers children. Instead, we might do well to remember that they are not little angels, but more like little devils. Purification is necessary. Pure blood for the wicked blood flowing out of the mother. Pure blood for the evil blood found in the child. A lamb will have to be slaughtered. The neck of a turtledove will have to be wrung. Gruesome? Yes. Hideous? Yes. But that’s what it costs. The innocent for the guilty. There must be payment.

In such a ceremony, then, we should see not oppression or antiquated barbarism. We see grace. God lets the little sinner live. He has provided a way of escape. And for the mother, a path of cleanness.

But today comes to the temple a woman who needs no purification – for she did not conceive through the will or blood of a man. And she bears in her arms a child who is human in every way – in fact, more human than us. For our humanity has become corrupted, but His was unstained. For He was without sin. No sacrifice of purification is necessary, then, for the atonement of this mother. But the Child she bears in her arms is brought to the temple, so that the Law can be fulfilled in its completeness, but also as a sign that He is the sacrifice, the Lamb who will provide atonement for the complete purification of every mother – and every man, and every child.

This is what causes holy Simeon to break forth into joyous song. Not simply because his long wait was finally over, and he could rest. But because in his arms, he was privileged to hold the very Salvation of God – even God Himself, in the flesh.

This is what makes us capable of departing in peace, i.e., dying in the Lord’s grace and confidence. For there is nothing that any longer depends on us. No purification that we need provide. No Law that must be satisfied. There it is, wrapped in the flesh sprung forth from a pure virgin only forty days earlier.

There is, then, no need to be troubled by the many afflictions of this world. There is, then, no need to be in anxiety over our failures, what we will not accomplish, what we ought to have done that we now cannot do, what we have done amiss that we cannot undo. There is no need to fret over our future, or lament the loss of our body’s youthful strength. There is no place for contention in the church, or strife over money and goods; there is no place for fleshly lusts or seeking after pride and power. All is atoned for, all is purified, all is remedied, in the holy Son that sprang from that pure virgin. O Jesus, “I now know You as my life, my help when I am dying.” In You, my death shall now be no more than quiet slumber, until the great Easter comes when I shall sing to You praises without end.

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