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READINGS FROM HOLY SCRIPTURE:
Jerimiah 31:15-17
Revelation 14:1-5
St. Matthew 2:13-18
Grace to you and peace from God our Father and the Lord
Jesus Christ. (Eph 1)
Merry 4th day of Christmass.
Jesus speaks to us this evening saying,
“Then I looked,
and behold, on Mount Zion stood the Lamb, and with him 144,000 who had his name
and his Father's name written on their foreheads.”
Herod was a hero. He had just uncovered an insurrection. A
rival king was about to be set up against him, who had himself just gone
through conflict after conflict to get to his throne. And in order to prevent
mass riots and more deaths, he initiates public safety executive order HTK 28:
the elimination of ANY with ties to Russ…I mean this fringe extremist
group.
This is how he got regular people to comply to his
murdering.
One advantage the Christian has over something so sinister
is not only finding good in bad, such as our Gospel reading tonight, but being
able to face down the bad. That is, because of the Faith given and the hope it
produces, we can stand in front of governors, princes, even face down the
armies of hell without flinching.
To be sure, we wouldn't stand a chance, but we would not be
run over. Waves of evil hit us like a breakwater, draining its alleged power to
zero. This is the power of the Holy Innocents this evening. They stand as sweet
flowerets, and yet they shatter the feet of the devil who tries to trample
them.
How? Because the only thing the devil can do to them is send
them to their heavenly home. Yes, it is murder and that’s wrong and God did not
create death, but murder is momentary. There is no murder in all God’s holy
mountain, which is the new heavens and the new earth.
Thus, for all Herod’s raging, he actually furthered God’s
cause of taking His faithful to His side forever. You see, evil can only
corrupt, it cannot create or do anything on its own. It is not a created thing,
just a nothing burger attempting to create space where God is not.
Thus, the rage of evil. The frustration of it all that no
matter what is activated, all works out for God’s purpose. The Wise Men find
their King of kings, Jesus escapes, and the Innocents get the express lane to
heaven for all eternity, forever out of reach of the like of Herod.
Life is a win, win, win for Christians. If you survive the
rage of the nations, you win. If you succumb, but get better, you win. If you
succumb and don’t make it, you win. There just is no losing since Christ has
planted His victory cross on the field of battle.
So fight. If these little babies can fight without even
doing anything, so can you. What was so overpowering about the fight of these
Innocents? The Lord had to fight for them completely. The children had nothing
in between themselves and God’s pure strength. They had no regrets, bickering,
bargaining, or whining. Their heavenly Father said, we are doing things this
way. They said, Ok.
We conveniently forget what words mean, when we “offer
something to God” or “put it in His hands”. For some Baptism is too cat’lick so
we “dedicate” our infants instead. Does that not mean that God can now do what
He wants with our children and we have given Him permission?
The Lord has given and He can taketh away. Sin clouds our judgement
so completely that we forgot that we gave everything to the Lord, even our
hearts. And what the Lord gives…
He gives back. This is also what we forget: the Gospel. You
already forgot Jeremiah from this evening, “Thus says the Lord: “Keep your voice
from weeping, and your eyes from tears, for there is a reward for your work, declares
the Lord, and they shall come back from the land of the enemy.
There is hope for your future, declares the Lord, and
your children shall come back to their own country.”
What is this hope? That death is defeated and cannot harm
us. Who is the victorious captain with outstretched arms? Jesus Christ.
In a cosmic twist, God has dedicated His only-begotten Son,
not to Himself, but to us. He offers Him to us and in our sin, we send Him
packing at the point of nail, spear, and cross. He is murdered by our sin and
buried under the weight of our guilt before God.
So, first of all, the promise is made to God’s Son. God's
Child, Jesus Christ, will come back to His own country though He be betrayed,
falsely convicted, and wrongfully executed. Thoroughly alone, there is hope for
His future, because He is both God and man. Though He dies, He rises again,
never to die again.
In this resurrection and victory over sin, death, and the
devil He baptizes. He baptizes you into this victory and gives it to you. This
baptism holds the promise of the Lord, unlike a dedication, because a
dedication does not unite bodies to God.
We dedicate our all to God, but rage when He takes action.
We baptize all under God and rejoice that He graciously keeps us until the last
day. On that day, it will be stay or go. Stay in your sin or go with
Christ.
Going with Christ does mean bearing your cross here, in this
life, which includes suffering. But it is not an alien suffering. It is the
suffering your Savior went through first, in order to bring you out of it
quickly. Have you lost a child? So has your God.
Going with Christ also means leaving this world. What that
looks like is death, but again a fruit of Christ’s resurrection is that death
is now a sleep. As St. Stephen taught us this past Monday, we fall asleep in
the Lord, we do not disappear. We wait with Jesus to be woken up by Jesus.
Whether we live or die we are the Lord’s and our Lord is
living, so we shall live too. Regardless of tragedy, loss, or set-back we are
more than conquerors in Him. Regardless of Herod’s rage, Christ blazes the path
of true obedience, accomplishing His Father’s will to bring to us salvation,
from sin and sorrow to set us free, and to slay bitter death for us that we
might live with Him, and all the company of heaven, big and tiny, forever.
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