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This Week's Sermon THE FIRST SUNDAY after CHRISTMAS 30 December 2007 "Not a Snow Globe Christmas" Matthew 2:13-23 LSB Series A Vicar Heath A. Trampe Soli Deo Gloria!

Wouldn't life be great if we all lived in a snow globe? We'd be perfectly crafted, rosy cheeked, and exceedingly happy porcelain versions of ourselves in a winter wonderland. We'd all live in a peaceful little village with no concept of danger. Children are sledding, animals are playing with scarves around their necks, and merriment ensues. Does this sound like your life? If not, then why are you satisfied with a snow globe version of Christ's infancy? We all love to put manger scenes up in our houses and front yards, and this is a good practice (please keep doing so), but what makes us think that this is what Christ's infancy was really like? Everyone appears to be so happy and secure, and the manger looks so cozy and inviting. Perhaps the very moment of Christ's birth was like that, but as we read in our Gospel for today, things changed in a hurry. King Herod is terrified at the birth of Christ and seeks to kill Him. Jesus spends a portion of His youth on the run, and many children are killed in the pursuit of this newborn Savior. It's unlikely that you'll ever see any of these events depicted in a manger scene, but they are the reality. These horrible events should grant us more comfort than the smiling baby Jesus, however, because they show us that

I. Like Israel, God delivered Him from Egypt and the wrath of His enemies.
--Unlike Israel, Christ fulfilled the Old Testament through His perfect obedience and death and resurrection.
II. God will not be thwarted.
--Though Christians, like Christ, are hated by this world, even so we are loved and protected by our heavenly Father.

St. Matthew wrote his Gospel for the Jews, who were to be the first to receive Christ's message. Since his audience would be very familiar with the Old Testament, Matthew uses more Old Testament quotations than Mark, Luke, or John. This was to show that his writing was simply a continuation of the Old Testament and not a separate and unrelated work. In light of these facts, we can see great significance in what he includes in today's pericope.

From the start Christ is sent to Egypt by an angel who appeared to Joseph in a dream. This saved him from the wrath of Herod, who was wise enough to know that this Christ child posed a threat to him and foolish enough to try to kill Him. At the end of this section of the text, a quotation from Hosea is used "Out of Egypt I called my son" (Hosea 11:1). A Jewish reader would immediately make the connection between this event and the first Exodus from Egypt in which God delivered Israel from the wicked Pharaoh. God sent Moses to Pharaoh with many signs and wonders and eventually killed a great number of the Egyptians to free His people. Once freed from the clutches of Pharaoh, the Israelites quickly turned from God to idols and lived rebelliously. The very next verse from Hosea speaks volumes: "The more they were called, the more they went away; they kept sacrificing to the Baals and burning offerings to idols" (Hosea 11:2).

I've mentioned more than once in my sermons that whenever God saved Israel from the hands of their captors, they would turn right around and forget all about God almost immediately. Any Jew who read this quotation from Hosea would be forced to shudder at this stark picture of his ancestors' disobedience. But when applied to Christ, this means something entirely different.

God also saved Christ from the hands of His enemies on several occasions, many of them when the Jews sought to kill Him. There was only one way that Christ could make perfect satisfaction for our sins. He had to actively preach and perform miracles in front of the Jews and Gentiles, but He also had to die on the cross for the sins of all. Becoming an earthly ruler in the process wasn't part of the plan. This, however, is what the Jews wanted. This is also how Satan tempted Christ throughout His ministry, first in the wilderness, but later on through the lips of His beloved disciple Peter. So great was this temptation that Jesus cried out "Get behind me, Satan! You are a hindrance to me. For you are not setting your mind on the things of God, but on the things of man" (Matthew 16:23). There was only one path for Jesus, and this began at His infancy, even when His family was fleeing Herod. Matthew saw these connections by the power of the Holy Spirit, and they have been recorded so that we might also read them and believe.

Is life as a Christian easy, even at Christmastime? It's common knowledge that people get even more stressed out this time of year because of increased spending and travel. The months of January through November, however, also hold many pitfalls and challenges for a Christian, and our enemies are everywhere. These are the devil, the world, and our sinful nature, which, according to the Small Catechism, "do not want us to hallow God's name or let His kingdom come". You see, that would mean the end of all evil and sin, which would destroy our enemies completely. They, however, are alive and well and a constant force in our lives.

Why would anybody hate a Christian? Our religion is a peaceful one. We believe in loving our neighbors and treating others as we would treat ourselves. We're the first ones to admit that we do all of these things imperfectly, and in many ways, we're outwardly no better than our heathen neighbor. We, however, have the promise and the hope of eternal life in Christ Jesus, and this joy manifests itself in freeing us from the terror of death and the devil. Others, however, see Christianity as a threat.

Atheism and agnosticism are two different things, but they both serve to thwart the spread of Christianity. Whether people are militantly against Christ or just don't know what to believe, they are making a stance against God. One of the blockbuster movies this Christmas season is The Golden Compass. Whether or not the movie makes this clear, Philip Pullman, who wrote the Dark Materials books, including The Golden Compass, has a real vendetta against the Christian church. He has even stated that his books are "about killing God" (The Atlantic Monthly, December 2007, p. 69), and are a response to Christian books like CS Lewis' Chronicles of Narnia. At the end of his trilogy, a young girl by the name of Lyra, seeking to put an end to the oppressive ecclesiastical structure, ultimately kills God. Why would we want to put a book of this nature into the hands of our children? We will do so because the movie was entertaining, not realizing that one of the movie's purposes is to sell books, which are of a much darker and serious nature. And this is just one example of the oppression against our church. You'd think that the Christian church, in the wake of the great Da Vinci Code controversy, would be more careful.

Does it make any sense that people would hate Christians as a whole? Only when one considers the words of Christ to His disciples: "If the world hates you, know that it has hated me before it hated you" (John 15:18). Christ goes on to explain why they would hate Him in the first place: "The word that is written in their Law must be fulfilled: 'They hated me without a cause.'" (John 15:25). There you have it, the only reason Christ is hated and persecuted is to fulfill Old Testament prophesy concerning the Messiah. And since we are His followers, we can expect the same treatment that He received, rejection and hatred for who we are. The world fears us because Christ is in us, and that will never change. The first to experience this wrath were the male infants of Bethlehem. We call this event the slaughter of the holy innocents, and these children were the first to be killed on account of Christ. But fear not, for their reward is great. Their deliverance from this 'vale of tears' that we call life was swift and glorious.

Life viewed through a snow globe is nothing like the reality. You will be hated for your faith in Christ. The Da Vinci Code and The Golden Compass are just two of many attempts to overturn the Christian church. Our society is sweeping us into the corner, calling us narrow minded and taking the symbols of our Messiah out of every public facet. However, just as Christ's narrow escapes from death as an infant, our snow globe view of life must be shattered to fulfill what was said by the prophets. After all, Isaiah didn't prophecy the coming of a smiling politician, but a "man of sorrows, and acquainted with grief" (Isaiah 53:3). And how could we ask for anything else when we learn that this grief was our own? Jesus lived in sorrow because He was carrying the sin of the whole world on His shoulders. His death, and the death of our sin, is made perfect in our baptisms, where we become one in Christ's righteousness, and are carried through this bitter valley until we share yet another fate with our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ, eternal life in heaven. Amen.