Christmas II
Second Sunday after Christmas
St. Matthew 2.13-23
January 3, 2020
There’s always a bit of a letdown after the holidays. The Bible stories that come after Christmas are no exception. From glad tidings of great joy, we move to King Herod plotting the murder of the infant Jesus. When he cannot ascertain which boy he is, Herod responds with horrific ruthlessness: “Kill them all.”
God warns Joseph of this in a dream. He shakes Mary awake, and there must have been terror in his frantic whisper: “We have to go. Now!” Thank God for the expensive gifts the Magi brought. They will sustain them on the arduous journey to Egypt. Egypt! Where the Jews were slaves long ago. And then, when they finally think it’s safe to come back to Israel, they find out that the son of Herod is now king. Perhaps he will try to kill Jesus too. So they’re on the run again, this time back up north to Galilee, to a town called Nazareth.
It’s not a happy story. Maybe it will get better. Nope – it gets worse. When Jesus grows up, another of Herod’s sons, Herod Antipas – the one who beheaded John the Baptist – will also try to capture Jesus. Our Lord Jesus knew suffering and persecution like no one else.
But in this entire story of suffering, we learn two things. First, Jesus is doing all of this for us. Just as God’s people in the Old Testament, the Jews, were slaves in Egypt, so Jesus will go down into Egypt. But He will not be like they were – grumbling, complaining, not trusting God. Jesus will trust the Father at all times, perfectly and completely, from childhood. Every place where God’s ancient people went wrong, and every place where we go wrong—every place where we stumble, every place where we have willingly transgressed the Law of God—Jesus does perfectly. And not for Himself, but for us, in our place.
Every loss we incur, every pain we endure, every sadness we suffer, every disappointment we feel, every betrayal and lie told against us – He endures it all for us. He takes all our shame, all the wrongs we have done and the wrongs done to us, and nails them to His cross. He also goes through all these trials so that He will know and understand perfectly our troubles and hurts, and be able to help us in the midst of them.
And that brings us to the second thing that this Gospel teaches us: God has a plan. Running from a mad, ruthless king, plodding through the desert to get to Egypt, returning to Israel only to have to run again – this would unsettle the calmest of souls. At each point, the Lord through an angel warned Joseph and guided him.
That was an extraordinary action. In other words, it’s not the ordinary way God deals with us. But it should give us great comfort that, time and again throughout the Scriptures, whether the people realize it or not, God is ordering our days for His purposes. That other Joseph, the son of Jacob, said to the brothers who wanted to kill him, and sold him into slavery, “You meant it for evil, but God meant it for good.” “We know that for those who love God,” St. Paul says, “all things work together for good.” So when you are confused or anxious, you should be comforted that even when things are going bad, God is working them for good. He who promises this to you is faithful.
Sometimes, the bad thing is the good thing, i.e., God uses the affliction to mold us into who He wants us to be. In a work called Fourteen Consolations (AE 42), Dr. Luther wrote,
It is good for us always to be oppressed with some trouble, lest in our weakness we succumb to the offenses of the world and fall into sin. Thus Lot is praised by Peter in II Peter 2 because in suffering much from the evil examples of the Sodomites, he thereby made progress in his righteousness.
In other words, suffering is useful when we use it to progress in righteousness. What does that look like? We realize that the world’s possessions count for nothing, and we place our trust entirely in the God who can save us.
As Joseph and Mary take flight, and as the Child they care for has no home, the image is set before us of who we are, of what our Christian life is really about: we are a people on pilgrimage. This land is not our land, this citizenship is not our citizenship. We are a pilgrim people. The things of this world are temporary, as is our existence in it.
And at the end of our time in this world, there we see the contrast most vividly. The great evil to enter the creation – death – becomes for us the portal of life. “When I am about to depart from this life,” Luther said, “I support myself with this consolation that I believe in God’s Son. And yet I am buried; I am eaten by worms; I am consumed by the most foul rottenness” (Treasury of Daily Prayer). As we approach death, we experience suffering and loss. But the Lord’s plan is for those same lowly bodies to be transformed to be like Christ’s glorious body.
That is the only consolation you have in a world gone wrong. But it is the only one that matters, the only one you need: You are baptized, you believe in God’s Son, your sins are forgiven, God will bring you to everlasting life.