Genesis 46:1-6/1 Peter 4:12-19/St Matthew 2:13-23
In the Name + of JESUS. Amen.
There is a sobering effect that this Sunday, the Second after Christmas, has upon the frivolity and lightheartedness of the festive season. It is not meant to be depressing. But it is a cold dose of reality. The Christ Child is born into a world of death. The Church’s celebration of Christmas, all decked in white, is surrounded by the remembrance of the martyrs, draped in red. It is a stark reminder that Jesus came to save His people from their sins. He fled to save His life for the salvation of the world. The Christ Child escaped the brutal rage of this tyrant only to return and, as a Man, allow Himself to be brutally murdered at the hands of another tyrant. This was to fulfill the Scriptures. This was for you.
And while there are appropriate and fitting correlations between Herod’s slaughter of the Holy Innocents and our own inhumane murder of the unborn, this text is not meant to heap guilt upon those who may have, in great weakness, committed the sin of abortion. Whenever God gathers His Church together for worship it is that they might receive and celebrate His love. It is never that they might scold and condemn those who are not present or those whose particular sin is not as your own. The Lord gathers His Church to receive sinners, to bestow His gifts, to be reconciled to those who hunger for righteousness, to strengthen those who bear up under His Cross.
And quite paradoxically, the slaughter of the Holy Innocents of Bethlehem provides us with an important teaching in this vane; it steals us for cruciform character of the Christian life. The catechesis is this: if you want to remain with Christ, you cannot expect anything in this world other than the dear Cross which always brings persecution, distress, and death.
As soon as the world learns that your heart and your mind live in Bethlehem, that the manger of our Lord Jesus Christ is the paradise at which your soul reclineth, you must immediately be prepared to find a Herod pursuing you; seeking to destroy you and snuff you ought. You must therefore seal your good confession with patient suffering; even, perhaps, according to God’s good and gracious will, with your blood.
St Peter admonishes you not to be surprised at the trial and suffering you endure for the Namesake of Christ. He calls it fiery, harkening you back to the wilderness travail of the Israelites and the fiery serpents that the Lord Himself, who led Israel out of Egypt, sent among the people, and they bit the people, so that many people of Israel died (Nu 21:4ff). But in answer to Moses’ fervent prayer of deliverance for the people, the Lord instructed His servant to fashion a bronze serpent and raise it on a pole, and anyone who is bitten, when he sees it, shall live.
Now, St Peter knows this, and the Holy Spirit of Christ who inspired his writing, catechizes you in the way of suffering and bearing the holy Cross. For our Lord Jesus interpreted this passage Himself when He said, As Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness, so must the Son of Man be lifted up, that whoever believes in Him may have eternal life (Jn 3:14-15). There the Holy Innocent One, suffered and died in the place of all the unrighteous, murdered at the hands of a ruthless tyrant and a wicked generation. Yet this evil was not without purpose, but was according to the good and gracious will of the Father who sent His own Child into our fallen world in order to save you. What man meant for temporal evil against the Lord’s Christ, God the Father meant for your eternal good.
And you, beloved, who have been joined to our Lord’s bloody and violent death by way of Holy Baptism into the very Name of Jesus have been given fellowship and full participation in His own dear Body, thus sharing in the very sufferings of Christ, who suffered on your behalf. It is as it was for Joseph and the Mother of our Lord who were entrusted with the care of the Holy Child in His Body. When He was persecuted by His enemies and forced to flee from them it was Joseph and the Child’s Mother who were forced to flee; forced to abandon all earthly possessions, to leave home and family with Him. This teaches us that whoever receives Jesus by faith, as Joseph and His Mother had done, is in no way guaranteed peace and good days.
Instead the Christian, who lays hold of the crucified Lord, will come upon great distress as readily as the Holy Family did. When the world discovers that a person is a faithful Christian, it will hate him, persecute him, and tempt him, doing everything possible to kill the Child in him and snatch Christ out of his heart. The Christian can only go the way of the persecuted Savior before him. He will go the way of the Cross. This is what St Peter means by, If you are insulted for the Name of Christ, you are blessed, because the Spirit of glory and of God rests upon you. In the very Name of Christ, the Innocent One, who was crucified for the sins of the world, and raised for your justification, and has joined Himself to you, in flesh and blood, by water and His Word.
For judgment does begin at the very household of God; in this case, with the Holy Family, who flees to Egypt according to the Word of the Lord revealed to Joseph by a dream. They flee in solitude, but they do not flee alone. They bear the Christ Child with them, the very God who revealed to Joseph His will and Word. They carry, in flesh and blood, the One who appeared to Moses amidst a burning bush, who lead His people Israel out of bondage and slavery in Egypt. They carry all of Israel in One; in the person of Jesus Christ, the Son of God.
He goes down to Egypt with them, even as He had previously revealed to Jacob and his sons, I Myself shall go down with you to Egypt and will also bring you up again, in the assurance and confidence of His gracious presence with them and merciful preservation for them. Therefore, do not fear, beloved. For the Lord your God, in His Son Jesus Christ, goes with us into the gutter, into the dirt and muck of our lives. He is beside us not only on the plain, but in bondage. He places Himself into bondage. He borrows death from us in order to free us from death.
He goes down into Egypt, symbolic of stooping to the depths to take upon Himself our sin, coming into our sorrow and sadness. And He comes out, His own Exodus by way of His Cross and Passion, by which He leads a train of children behind Him. Behold He leads you through the waters of the Read Sea of your baptism. There He has drowned your old Adam and destroyed all that would enslave you. Pharaoh’s chariots are rusting at the bottom of the font. And Herod’s bloody swords have been quenched. The Law and the Prophets are fulfilled. You have nothing to fear; no evil shall be allow to befall you, no plague come near your tent.
It is written, It is fitting that He, for whom and by whom all things exist, in bringing many sons to glory, should make the founder of their salvation perfect through suffering. For He who sanctifies and those who are sanctified all have one source. That is why He is not ashamed to call you brothers (Heb 2:10-11).
Or said another way, when Herod caused the blood bath in Bethlehem, he did not consider himself to be a persecutor of the pious. Instead, he declared the Magi from the East to be deceivers and the residents of Bethlehem to be treacherous receivers of stolen goods. Learn from this to recognize the methods of Christ’s enemies. If you are a Christian, the world will be hostile to you and persecute you because of Christ and the truth. It will nevertheless insist that it has every right to pursue you, that you are only suffering for the sake of your sins, and that you are the instigator and tyrant.
But hear this beloved: suffering is not sinful. Don’t let the devil or your flesh deceive you otherwise. Let none of you suffer as a murderer, neither in thought nor word, as well as deed, or as a thief or an evildoer, or as a meddler, one who gossips and slanders, degrading others’ character and reputation. For the Lord is jealous and the transgression of His Law has consequences. Yet if anyone suffers as a Christian, let him not be ashamed, but let him glorify God in that Name. Bear the Cross our Lord, in His fatherly wisdom and mercy, places upon you. Learn with Jesus to flee from the world, severing intimate friendship with the unbelieving world and its sins and vanities. Be content with what the Lord, in His mercy has bestowed upon you and allowed to befall you. And in faith be prepared to lose anything rather than Christ.
For Herod and all the enemies of Christ and His Church will come to a wretched and miserable end. However clever their plotting to eradicate Christ and His holy Word from the earth, their wisdom will come to shame and they themselves will come to a terrible end. People can drive Christ away, for He will not force Himself on anyone, but they will never be able to push Him out of the world. He and His Church shall endure the very gates of hell.
Entrust your soul to Him who in faith and love created the Church, fashioned her from the riven side of Christ her Head and Bridegroom. You have by grafted into that great nation, the Israel of the Lord by faith. You are surrounded by so great a cloud of witnesses - the patriarchs and prophets, Mary and Joseph and the blessed Apostles, the Church from age to age - therefore endure the discipline with which you have to endure from God your Father who is treating you as His own beloved Son. He did not forsake His children in Egypt or in Bethlehem. He will not leave or forsake you in your suffering. He loves you.
And behold He prepares a Table before you in the presence of your enemies. Here is food for the journey. His Body and Blood suffered, crucified, dead and buried, now raised and glorious, ascended on high for you, given to you here in bread and wine to steal you for the pilgrimage. Lay aside every weight and sin. Come, take and eat. Take and drink. And be comforted with the forgiveness of all your sins and the strengthening of your faith in both body and soul, holding fast to Him who is your true treasure, even Jesus Christ, who with the Father + and the Holy Spirit, one God, be glory now and forever. Amen.
In the Name + of JESUS. Amen.
There is a sobering effect that this Sunday, the Second after Christmas, has upon the frivolity and lightheartedness of the festive season. It is not meant to be depressing. But it is a cold dose of reality. The Christ Child is born into a world of death. The Church’s celebration of Christmas, all decked in white, is surrounded by the remembrance of the martyrs, draped in red. It is a stark reminder that Jesus came to save His people from their sins. He fled to save His life for the salvation of the world. The Christ Child escaped the brutal rage of this tyrant only to return and, as a Man, allow Himself to be brutally murdered at the hands of another tyrant. This was to fulfill the Scriptures. This was for you.
And while there are appropriate and fitting correlations between Herod’s slaughter of the Holy Innocents and our own inhumane murder of the unborn, this text is not meant to heap guilt upon those who may have, in great weakness, committed the sin of abortion. Whenever God gathers His Church together for worship it is that they might receive and celebrate His love. It is never that they might scold and condemn those who are not present or those whose particular sin is not as your own. The Lord gathers His Church to receive sinners, to bestow His gifts, to be reconciled to those who hunger for righteousness, to strengthen those who bear up under His Cross.
And quite paradoxically, the slaughter of the Holy Innocents of Bethlehem provides us with an important teaching in this vane; it steals us for cruciform character of the Christian life. The catechesis is this: if you want to remain with Christ, you cannot expect anything in this world other than the dear Cross which always brings persecution, distress, and death.
As soon as the world learns that your heart and your mind live in Bethlehem, that the manger of our Lord Jesus Christ is the paradise at which your soul reclineth, you must immediately be prepared to find a Herod pursuing you; seeking to destroy you and snuff you ought. You must therefore seal your good confession with patient suffering; even, perhaps, according to God’s good and gracious will, with your blood.
St Peter admonishes you not to be surprised at the trial and suffering you endure for the Namesake of Christ. He calls it fiery, harkening you back to the wilderness travail of the Israelites and the fiery serpents that the Lord Himself, who led Israel out of Egypt, sent among the people, and they bit the people, so that many people of Israel died (Nu 21:4ff). But in answer to Moses’ fervent prayer of deliverance for the people, the Lord instructed His servant to fashion a bronze serpent and raise it on a pole, and anyone who is bitten, when he sees it, shall live.
Now, St Peter knows this, and the Holy Spirit of Christ who inspired his writing, catechizes you in the way of suffering and bearing the holy Cross. For our Lord Jesus interpreted this passage Himself when He said, As Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness, so must the Son of Man be lifted up, that whoever believes in Him may have eternal life (Jn 3:14-15). There the Holy Innocent One, suffered and died in the place of all the unrighteous, murdered at the hands of a ruthless tyrant and a wicked generation. Yet this evil was not without purpose, but was according to the good and gracious will of the Father who sent His own Child into our fallen world in order to save you. What man meant for temporal evil against the Lord’s Christ, God the Father meant for your eternal good.
And you, beloved, who have been joined to our Lord’s bloody and violent death by way of Holy Baptism into the very Name of Jesus have been given fellowship and full participation in His own dear Body, thus sharing in the very sufferings of Christ, who suffered on your behalf. It is as it was for Joseph and the Mother of our Lord who were entrusted with the care of the Holy Child in His Body. When He was persecuted by His enemies and forced to flee from them it was Joseph and the Child’s Mother who were forced to flee; forced to abandon all earthly possessions, to leave home and family with Him. This teaches us that whoever receives Jesus by faith, as Joseph and His Mother had done, is in no way guaranteed peace and good days.
Instead the Christian, who lays hold of the crucified Lord, will come upon great distress as readily as the Holy Family did. When the world discovers that a person is a faithful Christian, it will hate him, persecute him, and tempt him, doing everything possible to kill the Child in him and snatch Christ out of his heart. The Christian can only go the way of the persecuted Savior before him. He will go the way of the Cross. This is what St Peter means by, If you are insulted for the Name of Christ, you are blessed, because the Spirit of glory and of God rests upon you. In the very Name of Christ, the Innocent One, who was crucified for the sins of the world, and raised for your justification, and has joined Himself to you, in flesh and blood, by water and His Word.
For judgment does begin at the very household of God; in this case, with the Holy Family, who flees to Egypt according to the Word of the Lord revealed to Joseph by a dream. They flee in solitude, but they do not flee alone. They bear the Christ Child with them, the very God who revealed to Joseph His will and Word. They carry, in flesh and blood, the One who appeared to Moses amidst a burning bush, who lead His people Israel out of bondage and slavery in Egypt. They carry all of Israel in One; in the person of Jesus Christ, the Son of God.
He goes down to Egypt with them, even as He had previously revealed to Jacob and his sons, I Myself shall go down with you to Egypt and will also bring you up again, in the assurance and confidence of His gracious presence with them and merciful preservation for them. Therefore, do not fear, beloved. For the Lord your God, in His Son Jesus Christ, goes with us into the gutter, into the dirt and muck of our lives. He is beside us not only on the plain, but in bondage. He places Himself into bondage. He borrows death from us in order to free us from death.
He goes down into Egypt, symbolic of stooping to the depths to take upon Himself our sin, coming into our sorrow and sadness. And He comes out, His own Exodus by way of His Cross and Passion, by which He leads a train of children behind Him. Behold He leads you through the waters of the Read Sea of your baptism. There He has drowned your old Adam and destroyed all that would enslave you. Pharaoh’s chariots are rusting at the bottom of the font. And Herod’s bloody swords have been quenched. The Law and the Prophets are fulfilled. You have nothing to fear; no evil shall be allow to befall you, no plague come near your tent.
It is written, It is fitting that He, for whom and by whom all things exist, in bringing many sons to glory, should make the founder of their salvation perfect through suffering. For He who sanctifies and those who are sanctified all have one source. That is why He is not ashamed to call you brothers (Heb 2:10-11).
Or said another way, when Herod caused the blood bath in Bethlehem, he did not consider himself to be a persecutor of the pious. Instead, he declared the Magi from the East to be deceivers and the residents of Bethlehem to be treacherous receivers of stolen goods. Learn from this to recognize the methods of Christ’s enemies. If you are a Christian, the world will be hostile to you and persecute you because of Christ and the truth. It will nevertheless insist that it has every right to pursue you, that you are only suffering for the sake of your sins, and that you are the instigator and tyrant.
But hear this beloved: suffering is not sinful. Don’t let the devil or your flesh deceive you otherwise. Let none of you suffer as a murderer, neither in thought nor word, as well as deed, or as a thief or an evildoer, or as a meddler, one who gossips and slanders, degrading others’ character and reputation. For the Lord is jealous and the transgression of His Law has consequences. Yet if anyone suffers as a Christian, let him not be ashamed, but let him glorify God in that Name. Bear the Cross our Lord, in His fatherly wisdom and mercy, places upon you. Learn with Jesus to flee from the world, severing intimate friendship with the unbelieving world and its sins and vanities. Be content with what the Lord, in His mercy has bestowed upon you and allowed to befall you. And in faith be prepared to lose anything rather than Christ.
For Herod and all the enemies of Christ and His Church will come to a wretched and miserable end. However clever their plotting to eradicate Christ and His holy Word from the earth, their wisdom will come to shame and they themselves will come to a terrible end. People can drive Christ away, for He will not force Himself on anyone, but they will never be able to push Him out of the world. He and His Church shall endure the very gates of hell.
Entrust your soul to Him who in faith and love created the Church, fashioned her from the riven side of Christ her Head and Bridegroom. You have by grafted into that great nation, the Israel of the Lord by faith. You are surrounded by so great a cloud of witnesses - the patriarchs and prophets, Mary and Joseph and the blessed Apostles, the Church from age to age - therefore endure the discipline with which you have to endure from God your Father who is treating you as His own beloved Son. He did not forsake His children in Egypt or in Bethlehem. He will not leave or forsake you in your suffering. He loves you.
And behold He prepares a Table before you in the presence of your enemies. Here is food for the journey. His Body and Blood suffered, crucified, dead and buried, now raised and glorious, ascended on high for you, given to you here in bread and wine to steal you for the pilgrimage. Lay aside every weight and sin. Come, take and eat. Take and drink. And be comforted with the forgiveness of all your sins and the strengthening of your faith in both body and soul, holding fast to Him who is your true treasure, even Jesus Christ, who with the Father + and the Holy Spirit, one God, be glory now and forever. Amen.
RSS Feed