“SPAKE BY THE PROPHETS AND EVANGELISTS”
Saint Matthew 2: 13-23
Sunday after New Year: 2 January Anno Domini 2022
Fr Jay Watson, SSP
Even though The Feast of Epiphany has not arrived here at Augsburg, Saint Matthew’s text picks up right after that most Holy event. The Magi are gone; so are your relatives. The gifts have been given; some of yours have already been broken, eaten and drunk, and spent. The poinsettia and frost glitter has dimmed. It’s now cold and bitter and long and dark…and again painfully real—the world; the flesh; the devil.
Oh, the devil was active in St. Matthew chapter two as well. An angel of The Lord, Gabriel no doubt, warns our Lord’s faithful Guardian, to escape to Egypt with The Christ and The Virgin.
A “Liberator” that retreats—“runs away” as the diabolical King Herod might bellow! What? The Prince of Peace flees “by night” from a Despot of Death? Does this seem like “king of kings, lord of lords,” does this seem “wonderful, counselor, the mighty God?”
I’m a Christian you correctly confess. I have been + Baptized you properly trumpet. I receive my Lord in His Holy Word and most blessed Sacrament and I cling to Him like the Syro-Phoenician woman. I pray for deliverance from disease and chronic debilities; I ask for aid for friends and family who are suffering terribly; I desire a world that seems to be actually under His care and dominion…and…and…He seems much of the time to “flee” leaving me in the bondage of Pharaoh’s gaol and works houses.
Ah, the “old Adam” and sinful nature of all of you, of all Christians, so naturally, and tragically, reverts back to “prove it,” “show me,” and the Eve-like slander of “why is God holding out on me?”
But The Spirit, your paraclete—The Lord and Giver of Life—corrects you and restores you with The Word of God, and, The Word made flesh! And you pray and sing today’s Psalm Introit: “Thy testimonies are very sure. Holiness becometh Thine house, O Lord, forever. The Lord reigneth, He is clothed with majesty…Thy testimonies ARE very sure!” That is: “The Word of The Lord endures forever,” and “I Am The Way, The Truth, and The Life,” even when I am being carried in the arms of My most Blessed Mother, riding on an ass, and traveling in the dark to pagan Egypt!
You just celebrated a week ago the Mystery of The Incarnation. Emmanuel! God with you! Believe it. Not a “spiritual feeling and energy—a force” with you, but God made Flesh.
The omnipotent God Who feeds the ravens and Who lets the rain fall on the unjust as well as the just, is content to always be One with The Father and The Holy Ghost, in His own Gospel loving plan and providential care. Let Satan, the prince of the air, rage and roar, your God crushed his slimy serpent head. Let Herod fulminate and bloviate, and threaten and curse, your God, the Infant Messias, is content to sleep at His mother’s breast, again swaddled first in her flesh and blood, and then in His own everlasting Incarnate Body and Blood.
You believe what happened in Matthew chapter 2 and you also believe what happens at this altar during The Christ’s Words of Consecration—no matter what storms and demonic attacks are occurring. Satan is all wind and no rain. Christ Jesus, your Savior is Lord of Nature and stiller of oceans; The one Who parts seas and rivers and Who baptizes you into His heart and family. Yes, even the infant Christ knew what He was doing. No, not intellectually, but according to His plan and desire He was not just Incarnate, but He willingly veiled His Divinity and gloried in His state of humiliation, giving up His power and might and full-use of His Godhood. That would come later during His adult ministry and work. He wrote the Sacred Scriptures and was content to let them “play out” according to His good counsel: “that it might be fulfilled which was spoken of The Lord by the prophet, saying, out of Egypt have I called My Son.” He has written you own individual life, with all it’s ups and downs, joys and sorrows, victories and defeats, and is Graciously content to bestow them upon you…let them be “played out”, for it is no play…it was, is, His Person and Work: for you!
Herod would have killed “the wise men” had God not protected them. Herod did slaughter the “Holy Innocents” of Bethlehem and her “coasts.” But the Elect of The Lord, like the thief on the cross, nonetheless go to be Jesus, in “paradise,” whether they are slaughtered at under two years of age or whether they die in adult hood or old age.
The Word of The Lord endures forever.
We fight Satan’s evil schemes whether carried out by Herod or modern abortionists. We fight death and de-humanization because He Who first loved us, and Who suffered and died on The Cross for us, has given us Life and His Love of Life—even life in the womb and near the ending tomb.
“In Rama,” in Wichita and Topeka and Kansas City, “was there a voice heard, lamentation, and weeping, and great mourning, Rachel,” and today’s fathers, grand-parents, siblings, and deceived mothers, “weeping for her,” and their, “children, and would not be comforted, because they are not.”
Jeremy the Prophet wrote Jesus’ Words. But Jesus Himself wept for all the children, for all the lambs, entrusted to His loving care. He wept on the tree when He died for all this sin, for all your sins, and in His Resurrection, Ascension, and Presence now today, He has comforted “Rachel,” He has comforted the mothers of the “Holy Innocents,” and He comforts all of you (and yours) who have lost loved ones, who yourselves and themselves have been lost for a time. Jesus has wiped away your tears. The dreams are over. He speaks to you through His Son.
Those who seek your life are still out there and still dangerous. But Christ is born! Christ has defeated death and damnation in His own suffering and death. Jesus lives. You live in Jesus, and you have been brought with The Virgin, The Guardian, i.e. The Holy Church, into the land of New Testament Israel.
His Word has been fulfilled.
In the Name of the Father and + of the Son and of The Holy Ghost
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