Hearing, Seeing, and Holding

Luke 2:22-40.

Rev David Domanski

12/29/20245 min read

“And it had been revealed to [Simeon] by the Holy Spirit that he would not see death before he had seen the Lord’s Christ” (v 26, emphasis added). “Lord, now you are letting your servant depart in peace, according to your word; for my eyes have seen your salvation” (vv 29–30, emphasis added). How blessed were Simeon and Anna in our text, for they had the privilege of seeing the infant Christ with their own eyes! Simeon, and perhaps also Anna, even had the joy of holding him in their arms. Oh, that we were each so privileged!

But the truth is that seeing or even holding the Savior is not of first importance. God uses these senses of sight and touch to reach us, but it all starts with our ears. And humanity was created by God to receive the Word of God into our ears as a direct line to our hearts. That’s why hearing God’s voice is the most important thing that we can open ourselves to in this life. The primacy of God’s voice is seen in creation: “And God said” (Gen 1:3).

In the age before industrialization and loud rock concerts, hearing is the sense first given in the womb and the last taken (e.g., Helen Keller on primacy of hearing). Of all the senses we could lose as we age, loss of hearing is the most isolating, and therefore most devastating. Maybe this is why the devil attacks the sense of hearing in garden of Eden, causing Eve to doubt in the Word that God has placed into our hearts through our ears: “Did God really say . . . ?” (see Gen 3:1). The devil knows that spiritual deafness makes us spiritually blind and incapable of holding on to God’s saving promises in Jesus.

And Mary and Joseph in our lesson for today would rather have believed what they saw than what they heard. For they saw in their arms a beautiful baby being adored by well-wishers (vv 25–33, 36–38), but what they heard were the painful words of Simeon’s prophecy that spoke of the boy’s life resulting in division and personal pain (vv 34–35).

So what should we do this first Sunday after Christmas if we know that God’s Word will always be strongly refuted and opposed by the devil, the sinful world, and even our own weak flesh? Should we close our ears to God in an attempt to shut out pain, suffering, and loss? . . . or does God provide us comfort, peace, and assurance through His gifts that appeal to our other senses to strengthen us against the endless attacks of temptations, fear, and doubts?

We are still in the middle of the Church’s commemoration and celebration of the birth of our Savior in human flesh. We sing songs about the shepherds, the wise men, Mary and Joseph, Simeon and Anna, and, yes, US, seeing Jesus with eyes filled with wonder and delight to see the love of God in the form of the holy baby. We have our own model of the Christ Child up here by the altar because it reminds us that our almighty creator shows that He desires peace with us by embodying His forgiveness in the frail and precious frame of an innocent child. And in the Lord’s Supper, we see friendly and familiar signs of God’s love for us in the common and nourishing elements of bread and wine which welcome us in instead of scaring us away. The Father and His Son could have chosen to remind us of the pain and hell that Jesus’ broken body and tortured blood endured so that we might have peace, but instead, we are presented with tokens of God’s peace—a shared loaf of bread and a common cup from which we all dine.

And what comfort it is too that we come to the Lord’s Table with open hands (and hearts!) to have our Lord’s own body and blood graciously placed into them by ministers appointed by Jesus Himself for the very purpose that we may be touched by the Great Physicians healing embrace! At holy Communion, we don’t just touch the hem of our Savior’s garment, but we feel His presence, taste the joy of it, and take His given peace into our very being where it dwells in us now and forever. Yes, God has guaranteed that we can draw comfort and strength from us regularly seeing and holding the body and blood of our beloved Jesus, but our ears are still God’s chosen pathway for allowing us to be blessed with ALL of Jesus’ blessings.

After all, even as we observe in our Gospel lesson, newborns are welcomed by God’s spoken Word (through the Sacraments of the Christ’s Church) to receive God’s favor and Christ’s redemption. Before children can see who is holding them to be welcomed into God’s family at Baptism, they can receive forgiveness of sins, life, and salvation. And even before baptism, as part of God’s plan to welcome us as partakers of His Son’s life, children can hear the Gospel in our mother’s wombs as our family speaks and sings the Word of God. Hearing God’s Word and receiving it is so important that our eternal lives depend on it, and so God speaks to us early and often through our families both at home and at church.

And as we grow beyond our childhood years, our maturity as Christians depends on discerning truth from falsehood by hearing the voice of the same Christ Child we remember today through the prophets and apostles (1 Jn 4:6). It is only by opening our ears and hearts to the Word of God as we mature that we come to understand that the hard saying of Simeon (vv 34–35) was actually the word of salvation to be heard and believed. The sword piercing Mary’s soul would be the cross by which her Son has saved us all. Simeon and Anna join us and all believers in putting faith in that righteousness of Christ that we hear is given to us, despite our fallenness. We see and hold, and especially, HEAR OF God’s continued grace toward us through the actions of the Church as it faithfully administers baptism, confession, and absolution, and regularly welcomes us to share in our Lord’s Supper.

So, even if we don’t have the opportunity to see or hold the Christ Child as Simeon and Anna did, we can see and hold him—through our ears. Jesus is the Word of God, beheld in the manger, held on the cross, seen in the Scriptures, held in the Sacraments, in order that he may be seen in faith and held in our hearts.

How, then, will we keep God’s Word in our ears this week? Remember the words spoken at the font, at Absolution, at the Communion rail, reading Scripture, singing hymns, praying back to God his saving promises, and talking about the Christ Child of the Bible to those who have not yet heard (cf. Norman Nagel, Selected Sermons of Norman Nagel [St. Louis: Concordia, 2004], 35).

This morning the God who comes to save is found in the voice of His Son, who says, “I have been born that I may redeem you and your ears and your eyes and your arms.” And faith in our hearts sings back to our gracious, gift-giving God the words of the Nunc Dimittis: “Lord, now lettest Thou Thy servant depart in peace, according to Thy word” (LSB). Amen.