This Sunday, with Advent being over, we find ourselves in the season of Christmas.  On top of that, Sunday is the last day of the year, and on Monday we start yet another year.  It’s out with the old and in with the new.  There will be a lot of memes showing 2023 as Father Time and 2024 as a newborn babe.

And believe it or not, all of that fits with our passage for this Sunday.  We’re continuing in our series on the life of Christ, Walking with Jesus: A Year with the Savior.  We started this series at the beginning of the Gospel of Luke where we saw the birth of Christ foretold, and now we pick up the story in Luke 2:22-38.  And we have a shift from Old to New here as well. 

So far in the story we have seen the work of God revealed in somewhat ordinary lives.  Clearly, the birth of Christ has started something new, a New Covenant.  But the people we’ve seen up to this point were clearly Old Covenant people.  We started with Joseph and Mary, both descendants of King David.  We met Elizabeth, named after Aaron’s wife, Aaron being the first priest in the Old Testament.  We met her husband Zechariah, a priest who served at the temple.  And we were told that she was going to give birth to John the Baptist, the last Old Testament Prophet.  And other than the angel Gabriel, everyone we’ve met has been pretty ordinary.  And here we meet Simeon and Anna, two more ordinary people, but these folks were older, wise in spiritual things, and devoted to worshiping God.

So now it’s time to come and sit at the feet of two more ordinary saints, though much older and far wiser, and listen to what they have to teach us about Jesus.  And what they have to say really is worth listening to.  See you Sunday, Dr. Dave