Ready to Die? Ready to Live?

[Below you'll find the message shared yesterday morning, December 31, 2023, during worship with the people and friends of Living Water Lutheran Church in Centerville, Ohio. We celebrated the First Sunday after Christmas. It was also the last day of my call as pastor of Living Water. As of yesterday, I am officially retired. I hope you find both the service and the message helpful. It has been an undeserved blessing and joy for me to have been called by Christ and His Church to the ministry of Word and Sacrament these past thirty-nine years.]

Galatians 4:4-7
Luke 2:22-40

Often over the years, when I’ve visited elderly people suffering deeply with no prospect of improvement in their health, they’ve told me.“I’m ready to go, pastor.”

Here’s a question for those of you who are likely healthier and younger than the people who have said this to me, “Are you ready to go? Are you ready to die?

“Well, Pastor,” you may be thinking, “this is kind of an unpleasant question for New Year’s Eve.”

But I ask the question because of the song of praise sung by a man named Simeon in today’s gospel lesson. More on that in a second. We need to look at a bit of background before hearing Simeon sing.

As the lesson begins, Mary and Joseph and the baby Jesus, Whom God has entrusted to their care, are in the temple courts in Jerusalem. They have two reasons for being there.

First, they’re at the temple in obedience to God’s Old Testament Law, Jesus is to be consecrated to God. In Exodus 13, for example, God commands His ancient people, “Consecrate to me every firstborn male. The first offspring of every womb among the Israelites belongs to me, whether human or animal.” (Exodus 13:2)

Second, they’re there in obedience to that part of God’s Old Testament Law which said that the mother of a son was ceremonially unclean, unable to participate in the life of God’s people for forty days after the birth, when she could be purified through the offering of a sacrifice. (Leviticus 12:8)

Now, because we know how this child was conceived–by the Holy Spirit–and Who this child is–God and Savior of the world, it may seem strange that Jesus, the Son of God, needs to be consecrated to God, or that Mary needs purification. After all, what could be purer or more holy than the virgin birth of God into our world?

Well, we’re in the season of Christmas. Do you know what the real miracle of Christmas is? It’s not just that God the Son took on human flesh. The truest and deepest miracle of Jesus’ incarnation is, as the apostle Paul puts it in our second lesson for this morning, “when the set time had fully come, God sent his Son, born of a woman, born under the law…” (Galatians 4:4)

God, Who is holier than the Law and above the Law, intentionally places Himself under the Law–the Law that says we are sinners deserving of death and condemnation–so that He can fulfill the Law perfectly for us and give Himself as the perfect, definitive sacrifice for our sin. For your sin and for mine.

Jesus lived under the Law–God’s righteous commands, everything from “You shall have no other gods before Me” to “You shall not covet”--so that when He died, He could take away all our shame and condemnation, giving us God’s forgiveness, God’s peace, and God’s eternal life for all who trust in Christ!

In our second lesson today, Paul says that Jesus chose to live under the same condemnation of the Law into which you and I are born as descendants of Adam and Eve, “to redeem those under the law, that we might receive adoption to sonship. Because you are his sons [and that includes female as well as male Christians], God sent the Spirit of his Son into our hearts, the Spirit who calls out, ‘Abba, Father.’ So you are no longer a slave, but God’s child; and since you are his child, God has made you also an heir.” (Galatians 4:5-7)

Here is the breathtaking truth: Through Jesus, all who believe in Him are adopted by God as first-born-sons, inheritors of everything that has belonged to Jesus before the universe came into being!

This promise is yours, friends. Jesus lived under the condemnation of the Law so that you don’t have to.

Jesus justifies–that is, declares innocent, guiltless, pure–all who see Him as the promised Savior and believe in Him.

All of which leads us to Simeon, the singer in our gospel lesson. Simeon, we’re told was a man who was, first of all, δίκαιος, righteous, meaning that he was a sinner justified by God, declared eligible for eternity with God not because he perfectly obeyed God’s Law, but because he trusted in the God Who had, centuries before, promised a Savior. Simeon was like Abraham, then called Abram, of whom Moses wrote, “Abram believed the Lord, [that is, Abram believed the promises of Yahweh] and he [God] credited it to him as righteousness…” Simeon was right with God because he trusted God and God’s promises. Luke also says that Simeon was εὐλαβής, meaning he reverenced, was devoted to, and trusted in God’s promises.

Over the years, I’ve assumed that Simeon was an old man. But in fact, nothing in what Luke writes tells us that. I’ve come to like the idea that he was a young man, with his whole future life seemingly laid out before him.

Whether that’s true or not, this man, filled with the Holy Spirit and responsive to the Holy Spirit, is led by the Holy Spirit to the Temple that day when Mary, Joseph, and Jesus come in obedience to the Law. The Holy Spirit had already told Simeon that he would not die before he clapped eyes on the Savior of the world.

And there, in Mary’s arms, Simeon sees Jesus.

Simeon scoops the baby up in his arms and sings: “Sovereign Lord, as you have promised, you may now dismiss your servant in peace. For my eyes have seen your salvation, which you have prepared in the sight of all nations: a light for revelation to the Gentiles, and the glory of your people Israel.” (Luke 2:29-32)

“Now that I see my Savior,” Simeon is saying, “now that I know He is here not just for me, but for all sinners, Jews and Gentiles, I can live and die in peace. I can face death knowing that because of this Savior in Whom I believe, I will live forever in the arms of God!”

Today, Christ comes to you again in His Word and hands you His Gospel promise, “Because of Me, all your sins are forgiven. Not just some of them; all of them. Finally, fully, forever!

He comes to you too in the bread and the wine, His body and His blood, with that same gospel promise to you, “Take and eat; this is My body given for you. Do this, even if you feel far from God or from the believer you mean to be, so that you are re-membered to Me again. And take this cupm which is the new covenant in my blood, shed for you and for all people to bring you the forgiveness of sin.”

Christ comes to you today as surely as He came to Simeon at the temple. In Word and Sacrament, you, like Simeon and Anna, see your salvation in Him.

And because Christ shows all this to you, you can, like Simeon, sing to God, “Dismiss your servant in peace. I can die now. I know the good, eternal future You, Christ, have secured for me.”

That can be our song every time we encounter Christ in worship with God’s people, when we read His Word, when we pray or serve in His name.

If this all sounds morbid to you, it shouldn’t. Listen, friends: It’s only when you are ready to die to this life, knowing that Christ has already overturned the condemnation of the Law and destroyed the power of sin and death over you, that you are ready to live in Christ’s freedom today and through eternity under His loving grace.

You’ll live each day anticipating the moment that will come after you’ve drawn your last earthly breath, when the first one you will see is Jesus and the first thing you’ll hear is Jesus telling you, “Come, you who are blessed by my Father; take your inheritance, the kingdom prepared for you since the creation of the world.” (Matthew 25:34)  

Until that day, Simeon’s song is yours: “Sovereign Lord, as you have promised, you may now dismiss your servant in peace…” Amen

The Promise is for You!

[Here you'll find, first, the video of the 7:00 PM traditional candlelight worship service for Christmas Eve from the people and friends of Living Water Lutheran Church in Centerville, Ohio. Below it is posted the message shared that night. Have a blessed Christmas!]

Luke 2:1-20

Three decades after the first Christmas, the day when Jesus was born, and weeks after Jesus’ death, resurrection, and ascension into heaven, on the first Christian Pentecost, Peter, one of Jesus’ followers, told a crowd: “The promise is for you and your children and for all who are far off…” (Acts 2:39) 

Peter was urging that the men and women, boys and girls, and babies who had just heard the Word about Jesus should repent–that is, turn from sin–and be baptized, trusting in Jesus to be righteous enough and sinless enough to cover their sins and make them fit to stand before God and live under His favor, in this world and eternally.

Every year, in many countries across the world, families and friends gather to celebrate Christmas, the feast of Jesus’ birth. They do so in churches and nursing homes, office parties and private homes, in Christmas movies and Christmas specials. 

But only a fraction of these events, even the ones occurring in churches, have anything to do with Christmas, the day when Almighty God the Son, the second person of the Trinity–Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, laid aside the glory that has been His for all eternity to also be a human being, one of us, in the Person we know as Jesus.

When people gather for Christmas dinners tomorrow, the subject they will most avoid–more than they'll avoid talking about politics or COVID-19, the causes of inflation or Ben Affleck and Jennifer Lopez–is Jesus, the Christ, or the meaning of Christmas for both today and eternity.

But once again tonight, God’s Christmas Word comes to us in the first Christmas sermon ever preached, this one by an angel. And He tells us that the promise of Christmas is not just about some sweet-by-and-by-time-in-the-sky or about the soppy sentimentality of Hallmark movies. This “promise is for you and your children and for all who are far off.” 

Right now. 

Tonight. 

In fact, this is a message it’s urgent for us to hear and absorb at this very moment.

So, let’s listen to the sermon of the angel again tonight. 

The word angel, you know, comes to us from the Greek in which the authors of the New Testament composed their writings. The Greek word is aggelos and it means messenger. 

Angels, servants of God and humanity, are spiritual beings that God occasionally sends into the world in different guises, in order to bring messages to us. On the night of Jesus’ birth, God sent an angel to shepherds caring for their sheep in fields near Bethlehem.

The first thing the angel said in his sermon to the shepherds was this: “Do not be afraid.” (Luke 2:10) There’s a lot of swagger in our world today. People like to talk about the things they’re not afraid of. Christians do this too, confusing fatalism for faith. 

But do you know what we most fear? It isn’t illness or death or poverty. We are most afraid of God and God’s perfection! 

That’s why we don’t like to talk about God at Christmas or any other time.

When we actually come into the presence of God, we see the distance between God in His righteousness and us in our sin and selfish willfulness. We see that, no matter how good we may try to be or seem to be, we’re not worthy to be with God. We remember all the commands of God we break each day: holding other things, like our families, higher than we hold God; murdering others with our anger, intolerance, indifference, and grudges; committing adultery with our minds and words, if not our bodies; and on and on the sorry list goes.

This is why the angel’s words are important for you and me tonight. “Do not be afraid!” 

“I know your sins,” God is telling us through this angel. “But I love you anyway. I want you anyway.” 

The fear of God is the beginning of wisdom, God’s Word tells us. (Proverbs 9:10) But when God comes to us, as He does at Christmas, we needn’t and shouldn't run and hide!

The angel says next: “I bring you good news that will cause great joy for all the people.” (Luke 2:10) The Good News of Christmas is that the baby Jesus, born this night in a cave and laid in a phantne, a stone feeding trough, will also one day be laid in a stone tomb, having paid the price for our sin on a cross. 

The Bible tells us that you and I are sinners from the moments of our conceptions (Psalm 51:5), deserving damnation and death. 

But when the sinless Savior Jesus dies on a cross for us, the price for our sin is eternally paid. 

As we trust in Him, He allows us to live free of the fear of God’s condemnation! 

This is what the angel means when he says that Jesus coming at Christmas “will cause great joy.” 

Joy is life lived in the awareness of God’s grace, God’s undeserved favor and forgiveness. When you know that because of Jesus, you are one with God, you have joy no matter the hard experiences of life! 

A pastor asked for prayers for his family and himself this past week. His wife of 51 years had just died. “We grieve,” he said, “but not as those without hope!” 

We have joy through faith in Jesus, knowing that we still live in His grace, whatever our situation!

Then the angel tells the shepherds and us: “Today in the town of David a Savior has been born to you; he is the Messiah, the Lord.” (Luke 2:11) Messiah, the word in the Hebrew of the Old Testament, or Christos, Christ, in the Greek of the New Testament, are words that mean God’s Anointed King. 

Jesus isn’t a king all about winning elections, wars, approval, or news cycles. The “Son of Man did not come to be served, but to serve, and to give his life as a ransom for many,” Jesus will later say of Himself. (Matthew 20:28) This King rules through the love of God. It’s the same love that caused God to create humanity in His own image; that caused God to not give up on you or anybody else. 

This King has been born to you and for you. 

This King is your Savior, saving you from sin, death, and the devil. He saves all who trust in Him to live with Him today and tomorrow when you have your Christmas feast, as you visit loved ones and friends in nursing homes and hospitals, and every day of your life as you make decisions, fail, succeed, laugh, and cry. Jesus comes to be your Savior tonight and always, friends!

Finally, the angel says, “This will be a sign to you…” (Luke 2:12) God recognizes that the shepherds, accustomed to the false promises and harsh judgments of the world around them, may need more than the angel’s sermon to believe the Christmas message. 

So, through the angel, God gives a sign to confirm it. “You will find a baby wrapped in cloths [like the cloth in which the body of this baby, grown to be a man, will be wrapped after becoming the sacrificial Lamb of God Who takes away the sin of the world] and lying in a manger [like the stone tomb in which He will one day lie and from which He will rise for us].” (Luke 2:12)

What sign will God give you so that you can believe in this Christ child? 

Today, He gives you three major signs by which you can know and believe in Christ: Holy Baptism, by which we go through death and resurrection with Jesus, become God’s own, and the Holy Spirit calls us to faith in Jesus; Holy Communion, in which Jesus comes to us, body and blood, and assures us of the forgiveness of our sin; and God’s Word, in which God speaks to us as surely as the angel spoke to the shepherds on the first Christmas!

“The promise [of Christmas and of God in human flesh appearing] is for you and your children and for all who are far off…” 

This Christmas, don’t avoid Jesus Christ amid the celebrating. 

Receive Him. 

Give your sins to Him. 

Believe in Him. 

Tell others about Him.

Rejoice in Him, knowing that in Christ, you are loved deeply and eternally by God. 

Merry Christmas, friends!

Amen

The Fine Print

[This message was shared during worship with the people and friends of Living Water Lutheran Church in Centerville, Ohio, this morning.]

Luke 2:22-40
Whenever people get new high-tech gizmos, as some of you may have received on Christmas morning this year, their response usually follows a two-step pattern. Step one follows the initial excitement over getting the gizmo: They try to make it do all of the things that they’ve heard it can do. Step two follows the realization that they don’t understand everything about the gizmo: They have to stop and read the instructions, including the fine print, the tough stuff. This can be overwhelming. But the promise is that if we’ll put up with the pain, there will be gain.

Our gospel lesson this morning sort of follows this same pattern. Only both the pain it talks about is infinitely more difficult and the gain is eternally more sublime.

And today, God asks us, “Will we take the pain in order to experience the gain?”

The lesson recounts an incident that took place many weeks after Jesus’ birth. On that night, the shepherds went to the child and confirmed for Joseph and Mary what this couple already believed they’d heard from God, that this baby really was the Christ, the Savior long promised by God. That must have been a moment of quiet euphoria for Mary and Joseph. They weren’t crazy. The two of them truly had been chosen by God to play a part in the salvation history of the world. (Just as you and I have our roles to play in salvation history as we follow Christ and share Him with others.)

Take a look at our lesson, please, Luke 2:22-40. It begins: “When the time came for the purification rites required by the Law of Moses, Joseph and Mary took [Jesus] to Jerusalem to present him to the Lord (as it is written in the Law of the Lord, ‘Every firstborn male is to be consecrated to the Lord’), and to offer a sacrifice in keeping with what is said in the Law of the Lord: ‘a pair of doves or two young pigeons.’”

Under Old Testament law, a woman who had given birth was required to wait several weeks, then be purified--offering a sacrifice--in order to be able once more to fully participate in Jewish religious life. (By the way midwives had to undergo such purification as well. Because Joseph acted as Mary's midwife, some scholars believed that both Mary and Joseph were at the temple to offer sacrifices for purification.)

So, purification was one reason for the visit to the temple. But Mary and Joseph also went there to consecrate or dedicate their child to the Lord, God the Father.

They were soon to learn through two unexpected interruptions, only the first one of which we’ll talk about this morning, that God had them in the temple for other reasons. Have you found yourself in a similar situation? You go somewhere for your reason and then learn that God has you there for His reasons. Our niece told us yesterday about going to the grocery to pick up a few items. But while there, she ran into a friend going through a tough time and spent an hour-and-a-half listening and offering encouragement. On that day in the temple, there were two things that Mary and Joseph needed to be told. That's the reason God wanted them to go to the temple when they did.

Verse 25 and forward: “Now there was a man in Jerusalem called Simeon, who was righteous and devout. He was waiting for the consolation of Israel, and the Holy Spirit was on him. It had been revealed to him by the Holy Spirit that he would not die before he had seen the Lord’s Messiah. Moved by the Spirit, he went into the temple courts. When the parents brought in the child Jesus to do for him what the custom of the Law required, Simeon took him in his arms and praised God…”

This wasn’t part of Mary’s and Joseph’s plan. A stranger, an old man who, it turns out has deep faith has been praying that the Messiah would be revealed to him before he died appears. When the old man sees Jesus, he does a shocking thing, taking the baby Jesus from His parents, he cradled Jesus in his arms. The man’s name is name is Simeon, meaning God has heard in Hebrew. Simeon was overwhelmed with joy because he knew that, at long last, God had heard his prayers. The Holy Spirit had assured him that his prayers would be heard. And on that day, the Holy Spirit moved him to go to the temple courts.

Is there any good or godly thing for which you’ve been praying for years? Or that you started to pray for and then gave up, not because the Holy Spirit seemed to tell you that God wanted you to stop, but because you got tired of praying? Because you were discouraged. Because you felt defeated. Ann and I were talking about that very subject on the way here this morning. There's something we've prayed about for years and nothing seems to change. Have you been there?

Listen: In another chapter of Luke’s gospel, Jesus is quoted telling a parable about a widow who had been wronged by someone in their community and a corrupt judge whose judgments were usually bought and paid for. The widow had no money. She couldn’t pay the judge off. (Any more than you or I can buy God off!) Jesus says though that because the woman would not give up on petitioning the judge to bring her justice, the unjust judge finally gave in and saw to it that the woman got all the money that was owed to her.

After telling this story, Jesus says that if an unjust judge can be worn down to do right by a person and hear their pleas, how much more will our loving God in heaven Who wants to do the right things for us answer our prayers?

There are, as we’ve said before, four answers that God can give to our prayers: no, maybe, wait, and yes. When we pray to God for answers, we’re asking God that His good and gracious will be done. We do the asking, but we leave the answering up to Him. And God will answer prayers offered in Jesus’ name at just the right time.

This isn’t magic. This is faith. And sometimes, God’s answers to our prayers will require us to give up on our imperfect will to yield to His good and perfect will.

Sometimes, God's answers to our prayers will mean turning away from sinful habits we enjoy so that we can embrace the blessings wants to give to us or to those for whom we incessantly pray.

Apparently, in Simeon’s quiet times with God, the Holy Spirit had assured him that he would see the Messiah. Now here Jesus was in the temple courts! You can understand why he scooped Jesus up into his arms!

Then Simeon did what people on whom the Holy Spirit rests always do: Simeon prayed some more! Verse 29: “Sovereign Lord, as you have promised, you may now dismiss your servant in peace. For my eyes have seen your salvation, which you have prepared in the sight of all nations: a light for revelation to the Gentiles, and the glory of your people Israel.”

Years ago, I heard a hospice nurse tell the true story of an old man in her care. As his life ebbed away, the man was in a coma. The nurse knew that the man deeply believed in Jesus, the only One Who can give us everlasting life with God. She didn’t know if he could hear her, but she decided to worship God and sing what she knew was his favorite hymn. “Jesus loves me, this I know / For the Bible tells me so / Little ones to Him belong / They are weak, but He is strong” [You know the words] “Yes, Jesus loves me / Yes, Jesus loves me / Yes, Jesus loves me / The Bible tells me so.”

She had just sung those last lines when the man opened his eyes, pushed himself off the bed, and said, “And don’t you forget it!” In the next moment, he fell back to the bed and peacefully passed from this life.

In the temple, Simeon tells God that he can peacefully die because God had sent the Savior to bring new life not just to God’s first people, the Jews, but also to Gentiles, like you and me, who repent and believe in Jesus!

Mary and Joseph heard in Simeon's prayer further confirmation of Who their child was (and is).

But then came part two, the fine print, the kind of stuff we like to gloss over, the hard part (verse 34): “This child is destined to cause the falling and rising of many in Israel, and to be a sign that will be spoken against, so that the thoughts of many hearts will be revealed. And a sword will pierce your own soul too.”

Anyone who really gets around Jesus sees things about themselves they’d rather not see. Coming into the presence of the “Light of the world” is not an easy thing.

When we come to Jesus, we see our sins in the light of His perfection.

We see our mortality in the light of His eternity.

We see our weakness in the light of His infinite strength.

Like Adam and Eve after their fall into sin, we want to hide.

Like the Israelites in the wilderness, we want to farm out our relationship with God to preachers and Sunday School teachers.

But Jesus wants us to come to Him personally because it’s only when we see our sin and our neediness that we’re ready to turn to Him for life, strength, and hope. 

It’s only when we let Him crucify our sinful natures, that He can bring us to the life God has in mind for us: a life with God filled with His goodness!

Simeon was telling Mary and Joseph, especially Mary, a hard truth: The world would speak against her Son, the world would demean Him. And when she saw Jesus die on a cross, Simeon warned her, the pain in her heart would be like a sword piercing her soul.

Mary and Joseph needed to give up on any thought that they could control the Child, the Savior, Who had come into their lives.

This was the fine print that God chose Simeon to deliver that day in the temple.

It’s our fine print too.

This baby is the Savior of the world, the only One Who can dispense life to human beings who are otherwise destined for death and separation from God.

But like Mary and Joseph, if we’re to take hold of all the grace God wants to give to us through Jesus, we must daily surrender our wills to God’s will and ask God to give us the strength to let go of all that keeps us from following Him.

We need to accept the momentary pain that sometimes seems it will never end in order to experience the eternal gain Christ died and rose to give to those who trust in Him.

We need to daily ask God to make room for Jesus in our lives, because that’s really what faith is: God, through the power of His Word, spoken, preached, taught, and given in Holy Baptism and Holy Communion, clearing out the sin and death in our lives to make room for Jesus.

And as we daily receive God’s grace given through Christ, we, like Simeon, faithfully pray and live and follow and see how God acts to give us resurrection life with Jesus. Amen

[I'm the pastor of Living Water Lutheran Church in Centerville, Ohio.]

Are We Listening?

[This message for the First Sunday after Christmas was shared during worship with the people and friends of Living Water Lutheran Church in Centerville, Ohio.]

Luke 2:22-40
Today, as we continue to celebrate Christmas, I want to focus on a portion of just two verses from this morning’s gospel lesson. They’re words spoken by a man named Simeon to Mary, the mother of Jesus: “This child is destined to cause the falling and rising of many in Israel, and to be a sign that will be spoken against, so that the thoughts of many hearts will be revealed…” (Luke 2:34-35)

Imagine the setting and context in which these words come to Mary. She and Joseph, fulfilling their calling as faithful Jews, have brought their eight-day-old Child to Jerusalem to be dedicated to God and to be initiated as a child of God through circumcision. Especially in light of Joseph’s and Mary’s harrowing trip from Nazareth to Bethlehem to be counted in a Roman census, their trip to the temple would have been a time of joy and thankfulness to God, a bit like what Christian parents today feel when bringing their children to be baptized.

Yet here comes this old man, a party-crasher disturbing their euphoria, giving a disturbing message.

Not everyone was going to love their baby, Simeon tells them.

Can you imagine a harder message for the mother of a newborn to hear?

But Luke explains that this isn't Simeon’s message.

Simeon, Luke tells us in verse 25, had the Holy Spirit upon him, the way every person baptized in the name of God the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit does.

Verse 26 says that the Holy Spirit had revealed to Simeon that he would not die before seeing the promised King-Messiah.

And verse 27 says that Simeon was moved by the Holy Spirit to go to the temple that day.

It’s no stretch to say that it was the Holy Spirit Who also incited Simeon to praise God and, taking the Child from Mary, to say that in Jesus, he saw the promised Messiah, Who would come to be light to people from all nations. The King had come and having seen Him, Simeon said, he could now die in peace.

And it was also the Holy Spirit Who prompted Simeon to deliver His hard message to Mary.

But look here, you might say, guided by the Holy Spirit, messaged by the Holy Spirit, incited by the Holy Spirit...it seems like a bunch of religious mumbo-jumbo.

When I hear the power of the Holy Spirit like that, I feel that we’re living in a time like the one in which the boy Samuel, whose story is told in the Old Testament, lived.

One night, Samuel heard God speaking to him in much the same way that Simeon must have heard God. But young Samuel wasn’t sure what to make of it because “in those days the word of the LORD was rare; there were not many visions” (1 Samuel 3:1).

Why was the Word of the Lord rare in those days?

If you read what precedes that verse in 1 Samuel, you realize that God’s people were in the habit of living as though God didn’t exist or that if God did exist, He was some distant, impersonal, and mute deity.

But that isn’t the God revealed to Israel and then, to the whole world, in Jesus Christ.

The God we know in Jesus is a God Who seeks community and to communicate with those who want Him in their lives. God wants to speak to you and have community with you.

“Here I am!” says the God we know in Jesus Christ. “I stand at the door and knock. If anyone hears my voice and opens the door, I will come in and eat with that person, and they with me.” (Revelation 3:20) God wants to talk with you. He wants to spend your whole life with you.

This God speaks to us, of course, in His Word in the Bible, in His Word as proclaimed by those who know and follow Him.

He speaks to us in the Sacraments of Holy Baptism and Holy Communion.

He speaks to us in His Law, where He tells us that when worship anything besides God, take God’s name in vain, dishonor our families or those in authority, commit adultery, gossip about others, steal what belongs to or covet what others possess, we show ourselves to be sinners in need of the Savior.

He speaks to us in His gospel in which He assures us that sinners can be made new each day and for all eternity when they repent and believe in the crucified and risen Jesus.

But God can also be heard His gentle whispers (1 Kings 19:12) into our spirits as we seek to daily walk with Him.

The other night, after I’d brushed and flossed my teeth and before I tossed myself into bed, suddenly, out of the blue, a name crossed my mind. It was the name of a once-prominent person whose name I wouldn’t have remembered if you’d shown me their picture. In fact, after I heard this name in my spirit, I had to look them up on my smartphone to remember what they looked like.

Why had I thought of this person? After a time, it dawned on me (I can be kind of slow): This person may have needed prayers and God was calling me to pray. I didn’t need details; I simply needed to pray for them.

Someone has said that God the Holy Spirit is a Gentleman: He won't go where He's uninvited. But He will pester God's people--we disciples of Jesus Christ--to issue our prayerful invitations in Jesus' name to intercede in the people's lives for whom we pray. And so, I believe that God was telling me the other night, "Pray for this person, Mark!"

It reminds me of a story that Billy Graham tells of a Christian man who was awakened one night by the thought of a single word, a word from some other language, one that he'd never heard nor read. The man was sure that he had to offer up urgent prayers about this word, whatever it was. And so, he did. Then, when he felt at peace that he'd done what God had called him to do, he went to bed. Months later, a missionary on furlough visited the church of which that man was a part. He stood bolt upright when the missionary mentioned the place where he and his family did their work; its name was the same mysterious word that woke the man up one night. He later spoke with the missionary and learned that there had been a terrible crisis at the moment when the Holy Spirit had prompted that man to pray!

I know well the power of the Holy Spirit! When I was a little boy, I was close with my great-grandmother. She lived across the street from us and I would visit her every day. She spoke with me as if I were a grown-up, talking with me about politics and history and the God we know in Jesus. Once, when I was about six, she and I stepped outside after a spring rain so that she could check on her flowers. Out on her front walk, she looked to the southeast and saw, over what was then called Jet Stadium, a rainbow. She proceeded to tell me the story of Noah, the ark, and the rainbow of covenant God created to assure the human race that He would never again destroy the earth by water.

Years later, I learned that my grandmother's nickname for me was my little preacher. She had neber told me that. But I am sure that as a devout disciple of Jesus who I often found sitting in her rocker reading the Bible, she had sicced the Holy Spirit on me...and here I am today.

These are examples of the kinds of things God wants to do through those who seek to dial into Christ, something I don’t do nearly often enough.

God wants to use believers as conduits of grace, whether it’s through our prayers in Christ’s name or our witness for Christ’s gospel or our proclamation of Christ’s uncomfortable truth.

Simeon was so dialed into God and His promise of a Savior that the Holy Spirit rested on him, leading him as he patiently waited for years to see the Christ, then causing him to give voice to what God wanted to tell Joseph and Mary that day in the temple.

It was a message they needed to hear lest they fall into the trap of thinking that the baby in their arms was just another baby.

Look at Simeon’s words again: “This child is destined to cause the falling and rising of many in Israel…” (Luke 2:34)

A baby, a helpless little baby, would grow to become the cause of falling and rising of many.

What does this message from the Holy Spirit mean exactly?

It describes two different reactions elicited by Jesus.

Some stumble over Jesus and His call to trust in Him so that we can receive forgiveness and life in His name.

In Isaiah 8:14, the prophet says: “He [God] will be a holy place; for both Israel and Judah he will be a stone that causes people to stumble and a rock that makes them fall. And for the people of Jerusalem he will be a trap and a snare.”

Some refuse the God they meet in Christ, saying, “I’m saved by God’s grace and not by anything I do? That’s too good to be true.”

Others refuse Jesus because of their desire to “be like God.”

Others turn Jesus down because they can’t imagine anyone overcoming death and rising again.

For many people, Jesus and His gospel are a stumbling block.

They refuse to believe in Him.

They refuse to be willing to believe in Him. They trip over Jesus and fall away from God for eternity.

Our job--our only job as disciples of Jesus--is to keep sharing Him and His good news with people so that they don’t fall.

That’s because the God we meet in Jesus doesn’t want any of His children to fall away from Him. God loves every child of earth and wants each one of them to experience the victory over sin, death, decay, suffering, and futility He won for us when Jesus died on a cross and rose from the dead. Jesus wants us to rise!

As Jesus says of us in John 10:10: “I have come that they may have life, and have it to the full.”

Jesus has come to give us life: full, extravagant, eternal, fulfilling.

Jesus has come to give us reconciliation with God, with ourselves, and with those around us.

It is all a matter of believing in Him, surrendering in Him, trusting Him to take our sins off of our shoulders when we repent and to set us free when we believe in Him, building our lives on Him alone.

This past week, a friend of ours, husband to one of Ann’s childhood friends, died after a painful battle with cancer. We were with his wife on Thursday, about eight hours after he'd passed.

Our friend had been through a lot of other painful experiences in life.

With those in his background, sometimes, he would ask me tough questions that showed he was wrestling with God.

But his wife told us on Thursday, “He’d made his peace with God.”

Peace with God.

That’s what Jesus Christ was born into this world to give to us.

That’s what Simeon had in anticipation of the Savior he saw with his own eyes at the temple.

That’s what we can share with others when, like Simeon, we open ourselves to the direction of the Holy Spirit, proclaim Christ, and let Him use us for God’s purposes.

The God we know in Jesus is speaking to us; He wants to raise us up, filling us with His life in every aspect of our lives, now and in eternity.

The question is, “Are we listening?” Amen

[I'm the pastor of Living Water Lutheran Church in Centerville, Ohio.]