The sermon for January 2 was based on Matthew 2:13-23.

Grace to you and peace from God our Father and from our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. Amen.

The more sobering themes of Christmas converge in today's Gospel. The fear that gripped Joseph and Mary and the Shepherds has returned. The bewilderment that threatened to overwhelm poor Joseph when he discovered his wife to be with child is also back and the bloodbath that began with the commemoration of St. Stephen's martyrdom continues in the slaughter of the Innocents and the death of Herod.

Everyone in today's Gospel has reason to be afraid, everyone that is except Jesus. Mary and Joseph are afraid for their lives, the life of Jesus and the life of the children among whom they live. Their neighbors are afraid for their lives. The king is afraid for his throne and thus his life too. The famed angel of death has come to Israel at precisely the moment of Jesus' birth. Life and death have arrived together. The Law and the Gospel cannot be isolated from one another.

The two basic ways in which we deal with fear are exemplified by Herod and Joseph. King Herod, when he feels insecure, lashes out and seeks to destroy the threat. He'd killed a great many potential threats before he turned his bloody gaze toward Bethlehem. He is a powerful man and he uses his power to make himself feel safe. Joseph is a poor and powerless man. When he's cornered he freezes. He was going to quietly divorce Mary before the angel warned him not to. Now he flees for his life and even when he returns from Egypt, he decides to hide out in Nazareth. I don't mean to say that Joseph is a coward. The angel told him to flee. Nevertheless, his flight is still one of the two ways we humans are inclined to react when threatened.

You might be like Herod. You might be like Joseph. You might be like each of them in different circumstances, Herod in the Home and Joseph on the job. More important the question of who you are most like is the question of what threatens you most. We're afraid of a lot of things: not being loved and admired, being uncomfortable, not being the best, what people think of us, weakness, poverty and impotence. We are afraid to follow our dreams and to look ourselves in the eye. At the bottom of everything, though, we are afraid of being wrong. We live in a continual dread of not being good enough. It is hardwired into our beings. We dread failure.

Even children from the most loving and supportive households have a fear of failure. Deep in even the most unbelieving soul is the certainty that sooner or later we will be called before an unassailable judge to give an account of ourselves. We either run from that judge as did Adam and Eve or we lash out at the Judge as did Cain and Herod and so many others. The assaults on God aren't always obvious. Those who reinterpret Scripture to suit themselves are among the most violent to the Word of God, striking at Him with no less fury than those who crucified Him. At the same time they are among the least obvious in their rage. They are the professors at old and sometimes even Lutheran seminaries, they are devoted and dedicated churchmen. They are deeply religious and charitable laymen. But they cannot stand to let the Word say what it does and they rage against it in their own way. They are accompanied by their more passive counterparts, those who simply ignore the uncomfortable parts of the Bible and focus on the parts they like. These are the people who hide from the Law and shrink from the Gospel. They pay attention only to the bits that talk about being nice and head for the hills at the first sign of trouble.

Not everyone, though recognizes that God is their judge. Many people who feel the eyes of a judge upon them think they are being judged by their fellow men and react against them instead. Some are abrasive and aggressive and hostile, challenging everyone before they can be challenged. Some are shy and shrinking, withdrawing from any possible confrontation. Still others react to the possibility of criticism by offering elaborate excuses for their inadequacies. "I can't follow my dream and fulfill my potential because I don't have the money or the support or because I have too many other obligations." "I can't succeed because I inherited a weakness or a suffered a setback that left me crippled." There is an endless pool or excuses from which to draw and some people, if they are desperate enough, will actually make their excuses come true. There are people who so desperately need an illness as an excuse that they become sick. There are people who so need poverty as an excuse that they keep themselves poor. There are people so desperate to escape judgment that they rush headlong into self-destruction, taking matters into their own hands, a kind of prolonged suicide by one poor decision after another.

Just as the people in our Gospel had reason to be insecure, so do we. I would like to tell you that there will be no judgment, that the feeling you have of being watched is some kind of evolutionary hangover. But there will be a judgment day and each of us will be weighed in the scales of God's incontestable justice. You might have grown confident in your good behavior and are no longer inn fear of such judgment but consider the words of our Epistle. St. Peter casually equates being a busybody with being a murder. Verse 15 Let none of you suffer as a murderer, a thief, an evildoer, or... as a busybody in other people's matters. God sentences murders and busybodies to the same insufferable hell.

Ironically, Jesus is afraid of nothing. Of the people in our Gospel only Jesus is certain to suffer the pain of hellfire and damnation, of separation from God the Father. Herod could have been saved. St. Mary and St. Joseph were surely saved. Only Jesus was doomed to judgment and he was not afraid. He was not afraid because He knew in way that none of us do, the unfathomable goodness of God the Father. He knew of God's unique ability and willingness to draw good from evil and turn misfortune into blessing. He knew the creative power of God.

Where we are destructive and negligent God is creative and attentive. The baby Jesus who was carried off into Egypt by a frightened mother and guardian was the very Jesus' whose voice rang out over the chaos at the beginning of time and brought order to all that is. He who raised the dead with a mere word and transformed water into wine has promised to transform our lives. He begins with the painful truth. In response to our fear of being wrong and of not being good enough He says this. You are correct. You are always wrong about everything all the time. You are never right and even when you are on the right path you aren't right enough. You don't love intensely enough. You don't give cheerfully enough. You don't sacrifice yourself for the good of others and neither do you defend the integrity and honor of the Lord with the vigor required of His children and heirs. Put simply, you are not good enough in any way shape or form.

There is no where to hide from this declaration. You cannot blame you sickness or your past or even the devil for it. You can run your whole life and never escape this brutal truth. You can lash out. You can burn the Bible and ignore the Ministers of the Gospel. You can invent a God of your own and worship her as you please but it won't make you righteous. Having already been condemned, having been born already condemned your only hope is to be forgiven, to have the very same God that condemned you to hellfire spare you from it. This, of course, is the Gospel. This is what we're all about here in the Church. We are not here to seek glory. We are not here to gather accolades or titles or the respect of our fellow men. We are here to be forgiven and to tell others that they need no longer live in fear of divine judgment. This is the Church.

One of the weirdest part of life in the Church is that Jesus didn't stop us from sinning and falling short. He forgave us for sinning and falling short. Contemplation of this little fact is my life's work. Jesus did not make me perfect He simply treats me as if I were, for the sake of His own self-sacrifice. He will one day make it impossible for me to sin but that is a promise yet to be fulfilled. In the mean time what am I to do? I am to do what you are to do. We are to go forth and do the very best we can, knowing that it will not be good enough. We are to go out into the world and fall flat with enthusiasm and confidence in God's ability to do good through us and in spite of us. Rather than fear those who do better work than ourselves, we should praise them and seek to learn from them. Why should we be intimidated or hostile? Did we seriously think that we could do anything properly? We know better. Our lives in this world are degrees of failure. We are children and our finest and most noble accomplishments are nothing more than the kind of thing that God might hang on his refrigerator but never on His dining room wall.

The real wonder of life for those of us who accept the reality of our sinfulness and God's surpassing goodness is in how He turns our failures into blessings for ourselves and others. He turns mere water into Holy Baptism. He turns bread and wine into Flesh and Blood. He turns the touch of hand and a word of forgiveness into a declaration of life everlasting. He likewise turns our fear of failure into a strength. Knowing that we cannot achieve perfection frees us to achieve as much as we can and opens us up to the fact that we are being employed by God. Chisels and paintbrushes are neither arrogant nor disappointed. They are what they are and the are content to be used according to the purpose for which they were made.

We are people and not mere paintbrushes but we are free to be just as content. Because we do not need to fear those who seem better then ourselves we can embrace those who frighten us and learn from them. We can be merciful to those who seem worse than us because we are different only in degree and maybe not even that. We can try to persuade those who disagree with us rather than destroy them. We can love those who hate us because we know that we deserve some part of that hate and that we ourselves are just as likely to be angry for no good reason as those who are so angry with us.

We can be like St. Paul who very often pointed out that he was probably a better person in most ways than just about anyone he was likely to meet. He even says such tings from time to time. Yet even though he was a clearly superior human being he knew full well that he was also the chief of sinners and therefore free to confess his failings and show mercy to others.

Contrary to everything we hear these days about positive reinforcement and self-esteem, the way to be truly confident and strong is to admit right up front and with complete sincerity that we are failures who will need even our best work to be redeemed and made useful by God, which is precisely what careful and orthodox Christians do at the beginning of every Divine Service, every Church Year and every New Year. Amen.

The Peace of God, which passes all understanding, keep your hearts and minds in Christ Jesus. Amen.

Last Updated: 7/15/2008