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+ + + In Nomine Jesu + + +
Please join me in prayer: May the words of my mouth and the meditations of our hearts be pleasing in your sight, O Lord, our Rock and our Redeemer. Amen.
Dear Brothers and Sisters in Christ,
Grace to you and peace from God our Father and from the Lord Jesus Christ.
Into America’s celebration this past week of the Nativity of Our Lord Christmas Day, Democratic presidential‑hopeful South Bend, Indiana, Mayor Pete Buttigieg thrust a controversy over whether or not Jesus was a “refugee”. Then, his rival Democratic presidential‑hopeful U‑S Representative Tulsi Gabbard of Hawaii responded, from her Congressionally‑unique perspective as a Hindu, emphasizing Jesus’s message of, as she described it, true happiness and a purposeful life in loving God and loving others. Today’s Gospel Reading, with its own interplay of politics and religion, might be used in support of the claim that Jesus was a “refugee”, but whether or not Jesus was a “refugee” is not today’s Gospel Reading’s point, nor is the point of today’s Gospel Reading (or arguably of any other Bible passage, for that matter) that we can attain true happiness and a purposeful life by our loving God and others. Rather, today’s Gospel Reading uniquely narrates the Child Jesus’s flight into Egypt and eventual return to Galilee, where He had been after His conception and before His birth (Luke 1:26-27; 2:4, 39). In the process of that narration, the Gospel Reading both highlights three Old Testament prophecies that the Divinely‑inspired St. Matthew understands the events to have fulfilled and “showcases”, as it were, Joseph’s continued faithfulness in his role as Jesus’s guardian, despite the suffering through which that faithfulness put Joseph, Mary, and Jesus. Set as today’s Gospel Reading about Joseph as Jesus’s “adopted” father is, with the other appointed Propers for the First Sunday after Christmas in this year of our three‑year Lectionary Series, including the Epistle Reading about God’s adopting us (Galatians 4:4-7), there is a theme of adopted children. So, this morning we consider today’s Gospel Reading under that theme of “Adopted Children”.
The Lectionary series thrusts into our celebration of the twelve‑day Christmas Season this consideration of Joseph and Mary and Jesus’s suffering, as God both actively accomplished and passively permitted all that was necessary for us and for our salvation. They had already left Nazareth for the registration in Bethlehem where Jesus was born (Luke 2:1-7). Eight days later, Jesus was circumcised, likely there in Bethlehem (Luke 2:21), and, thirty-two days later, they made the short trip to Jerusalem for Jesus’s presentation and Mary’s purification (Luke 2:22-38). Then, whatever life they afterward had established in Bethlehem was disrupted with the coming of the wise men, whose failure to take word back to Herod made him furious and order the death of all the appropriately‑aged children in Bethlehem and its region (confer Matthew 2:8). Joseph and Mary and Jesus’s hundreds‑of miles flight from their home country into Egypt (another part of the same Roman Empire) and their eventual return to Galilee might have been helped by the gold and frankincense and myrrh that Jesus received from the wise men, but their trip and establishing life in Egypt, only to have it disrupted with the move back to Israel, still would not have been easy for them, much less would life have been easy for those in Bethlehem and its region whose generation of sons were lost, perhaps not unlike the loss of a generation of children from the school explosion in New London, Texas, just down the road from us here in Kilgore.
Into our celebration of the twelve‑day Christmas Season and our everyday lives, God actively thrusts or passively permits our suffering. We ourselves might be afflicted, or a loved one might be afflicted. Discord and strife, even over matters of morality and the Christian faith, disrupt our families. Visits that might generally be positive can still have lasting negative consequences, such as the loss of a job and possible relocation. We may not take it all in stride, as today’s Gospel Reading at least presents Joseph’s doing. If we do not sin in that way, we certainly sin in other ways, for we are sinful by nature. Today’s Old Testament Reading (Isaiah 63:7‑14) describes how God’s “expectations” of the people of Israel were dashed by their rebellion, and we are no less sinful than they were, and so, like them, we deserve death and eternal damnation, unless we heed God’s empowering call to repent and believe and so receive His redemption through Jesus Christ.
Into our suffering, death, and damnation, God thrusts His Son in humble human flesh, in order to live the life that we fail to live and to die the death that we deserve. Contrary to Representative Gabbard’s understanding of a sort of works righteousness, the essence of the New Testament is Christ crucified for you! Jesus was not always withdrawn nor did He Himself always withdraw from threats against His life. Rather, out of the Lord’s steadfast love (or “mercy”), compassion, love, and pity recounted by the Old Testament Reading, Jesus went to the cross to die in our place and so to redeem us. Thereby He, as we sang in today’s Psalm (Psalm 111; antiphon: v.9a, b), sent redemption to His people, freely, as a gift. When we turn in sorrow from our sin, trust God to forgive our sin for Jesus’s sake, and want to stop sinning, then God forgives us. God forgives us our balking at the suffering that He sends or permits, and God forgives us all of our other sin, whatever our other sin might be. God forgives us through His Word, especially in its sacramental forms.
Today’s Epistle Reading describes how God sent forth His Son to redeem us who were under the law, so that we might receive adoption as children, sending the Spirit of His Son into our hearts. We can especially point to Holy Baptism as where that adoption takes place, God’s giving birth to us from above of water and the Spirit (John 3:3, 5), forgiving our sins, rescuing us from death and the devil, and giving eternal salvation to all who believe His promises related to Baptism (Small Catechism IV:6). We who are so baptized do not despise but seek out God’s gift of individual Holy Absolution, privately confessing to our pastor the sins that we know and feel in our heart for the sake of his forgiveness as from God Himself. And, so baptized and absolved, we receive in the Sacrament of the Altar bread that is Christ’s body given for us and wine that is Christ’s blood shed for us, for the forgiveness of sins, life, and salvation. This meal is our food for our way through this life, with all of its suffering and afflictions.
So baptized, absolved, and fed in the Supper, we adopted children of God know that, as St. Paul writes to the Romans, for those who love God, God works all things, including our suffering and afflictions, together for the good of conforming us to the image of His Son Jesus, in order that He might be the firstborn of many brothers and sisters (Romans 8:28-29). Unlike Herod, we do not slaughter children under our care, but, like Joseph, we might serve as guardians for or adoptive parents of those in need of care. Such family developments may come with their own suffering and afflictions, but we bear such suffering and afflictions willingly and joyfully, and, with daily repentance and faith, we seek God’s forgiveness for when we do not do so, as we seek His forgiveness for when we sin in any other way. We receive God’s forgiveness from Him, and we extend our own forgiveness to our brothers and sisters in Christ.
All who repent and trust in Jesus for their salvation are God’s adopted children, and this morning we have considered today’s Gospel Reading, with its interplay of politics and religion, under that theme of “Adopted Children”. Far more important than both Mayor Pete Buttigieg’s debatable claim that Jesus was a refugee and U‑S Representative Tulsi Gabbard’s wrong take on Jesus’s central message, we have recognized both God’s plan for our salvation and the suffering that He uses for our good along the way. We have comfort in our mourning and in all of our afflictions! God has delivered us from the death and damnation we otherwise deserve, and, even if He does not reveal His plan to us as He revealed parts of His plan to Joseph, God nevertheless has a good and gracious plan for us, and He is in a position ultimately to bring it about for us.
Amen.
The peace of God, which passes all understanding, keep your hearts and minds in Christ Jesus. Amen.
+ + + Soli Deo Gloria + + +