Following God into a New Year: A Meditation on Matthew 2 for New Year's Day

And when they were departed, behold,

the angel of the Lord appeareth to Joseph in a dream, saying,

Arise, and take the young child and his mother, and flee into Egypt,

and be thou there until I bring thee word:

for Herod will seek the young child to destroy him.

When he arose, he took the young child and his mother by night,

and departed into Egypt: And was there until the death of Herod:

that it might be fulfilled which was spoken of the Lord by the prophet, saying,

Out of Egypt have I called my son.

 

Our Gospel text for today records a dramatic series of events in the lives of the Holy Family, but events through which God safely shepherded them.  In just a few short verses we learn that in addition to the struggle of Mary and Joseph traveling to Bethlehem where Jesus was born in the overflow lodging of a stable, they would next have to flee into Egypt to avoid the murderous intentions of the brutal King Herod.  Eventually they would return after Herod’s death, but the intervening years would be spent working and making their living through labor in a strange land among foreign gods.  Yet it was God who brought them through all these travels, hazards, and labors, eventually returning them to the land of Israel, though it was Nazareth in the region of Galilee.  Neither Mary nor Joseph knew all the details of their journey when they began it, but they did know the God who made them, sustained them, and guided them into their future.  For as pious as they were, only God knew their hearts, what they could bear to know in each moment of their lives, and what He was planning to accomplish through them.

 

Truth be told, many of the years we experience look very different at the end than we envisioned in the beginning.  In the closing days of 2021, who could have honestly predicted all the ups and downs, triumphs and defeats, joys and sorrows and transitions which would be unveiled even in our own lives, much less within our families, communities, and the world at large?  At the beginning of 2022 God said to the world what He has been saying from the beginning—hear Me… trust Me—even as He alone knew the paths which would unfold for us all.  He did not disclose all the details of the journey which laid before us, but He did provide the principles upon which all could safely navigate that journey while traveling with Him.  Like the wise men who likely spent over a month in caravan traveling to worship Jesus from roughly 600 miles away, only to add both courting and evading the mad King Herod before getting home again; or Joseph taking Mary to be his wife before realizing he would have to ply his trade to support his family in Egypt for some number of years; or Mary who rejoiced to be the handmaid of the Lord, well before she knew the path it would lead her down to Bethlehem, Egypt, Nazareth, and Calvary.  Like us, the great saints did not know all the details of the times which lay ahead of them, but they knew the God who promised to walk with them through everything yet to come.

 

2023 sits similarly before us as did the prior year.  We have changed a bit, perhaps, in the previous years, gaining some relative combination of gratitude, knowledge, and regret.  If we are honest with ourselves, we did not use all the days of 2022 the way we should have, nor did we live every precious moment of life we were given last year to the fullest.  We said things we wish we hadn’t, thought things we wish we didn’t, and did things we hoped we wouldn’t.  We missed opportunities to do good to those who needed it, and most especially to those who persecuted and troubled us.  We failed to speak words of grace and mercy and truth to souls who needed to hear them, when words of malice, scorn, and deception flowed far easier from our lips and keyboards.  We didn’t know all the details of the path which laid before us in the prior year, but can any of us think we would have done better with the time we were given, if we had?  We lived in fear when we should have lived in courage, were unbelieving when we should have had faith.  We applauded corruption when we should have rejoiced in virtue, and preferred justice more readily when it benefited us than when it might have benefited our neighbor.  2023 opens before us the way 2022 previously did, and though we don’t know the details of all that will emerge in the future, we know what we will need at the end of 2023 is what we need even now:  Grace.

 

And of course, this is what God knows we need, too, which is the whole reason He sent His Son to dwell among us, to die for us, and to rise again for us.  God knew what we really need to traverse every year of our lives is the grace which flows from Him alone, and which He makes present to us by His Word.  That Word, like the dream which called Joseph into and out of Egypt some many centuries ago, is the Word of Promise which creates the faith necessary to receive it unto eternal life.  Joseph didn’t ask God what to do with his new bride and stepson—God spoke to Joseph, and called him into a life of faith and fellowship and service in Him.  There is no way for us to predict what crazy politicians we’ll have to avoid in the coming year, anymore than we can know all the places we’ll go, the people we’ll meet, or the work we’ll do as the days and months flow by.  What we do know is that God has spoken to us, given to us His Law and Gospel, that we might know how we should live in any place, at any time, and in any circumstance.  We know the commands of love to God first and then our neighbors, and we know the saving grace of His love for us poured out through His Only Begotten Son.  We know that His Word is sure, His promises of forgiveness, life, and salvation immutable, and His presence with us inescapable.  We know that we are baptized into Jesus Christ, forgiven and free, endowed with His authority to forgive sins and witness to His saving Gospel before all people.  We cannot know all that God will bring about, we do know God, and we know that He is faithful and true.

 

As we press into this next year, we know that the days ahead will be tumultuous, because the days of every year have been before us, and the days of every year will be ahead of us.  But we also know that God is With Us, that He is neither surprised nor thwarted by the events of the future anymore than He was by the events of the past, and that He has gathered His people to Himself by grace through faith in Christ alone, so that they might not fear any time they are given or into which they are sent.  We need not fear king or pauper, land or sea, night or day, for the Maker of them all is for us, and His Word is both our guide and our sure hope.  Be of good courage, therefore, no matter where your feet are set to roam in this coming year, for the grace which envelopes you at the close of 2022 shall be there to hold you in 2023, and unto ages of ages to come.  Amen.

 

The Earth Belongs to God: A Meditation on Psalm 24 for the 4th Sunday in Advent

The earth is the Lord's, and the fulness thereof;

 the world, and they that dwell therein.

For he hath founded it upon the seas,

 and established it upon the floods.

 

Who shall ascend into the hill of the Lord?

or who shall stand in his holy place?

He that hath clean hands, and a pure heart;

who hath not lifted up his soul unto vanity,

 nor sworn deceitfully.

 He shall receive the blessing from the Lord,

and righteousness from the God of his salvation.

This is the generation of them that seek him,

that seek thy face, O Jacob. Selah.

 

Lift up your heads, O ye gates;

and be ye lift up, ye everlasting doors;

and the King of glory shall come in.

Who is this King of glory?

The Lord strong and mighty,

the Lord mighty in battle.

Lift up your heads, O ye gates;

even lift them up, ye everlasting doors;

and the King of glory shall come in.

 Who is this King of glory?

The Lord of hosts,

 he is the King of glory. Selah.

 

 

David made a bold and prophetic claim as he penned the 24^th Psalm, declaring that all creation belongs to God.  Unlike many of the pagan religions of his time (or those now), the God of Israel was not just a local potentate for the Jews with rules and ceremonies exclusively for them.  Rather, the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, was and continues to be the only One with authority over the whole world, because He alone brought forth and established the whole world.  The God of Israel was not vying with some pantheon of contestants for a celestial throne, or somehow stuck between the river gods of the Nile and the Euphrates, or the desert gods of Egypt and Babylon.  The God of Israel, the One whose Name revealed in ancient Hebrew reflects the bedrock ground of eternal existence, is the rightful possessor of all things which He alone created, and which He alone preserves until the Last Day.  For the people of Israel this was a declaration that made certain their salvation in their God, for His Word would endure forever by virtue of His perfect goodness and omnipotent power.  As the King of Glory, the Lord of Hosts who is strong and mighty in battle, there is no power on earth below or heaven above that contest His divine will.  When the God of Israel saves, as Jesus would later explain in further detail, no one can take that soul out of His hand.

 

Today’s world doesn’t look much different now than the world of David’s day, even though his reign over Israel was roughly 3000 years ago. There are certainly advances in technology, industry, communication, and travel gleaned from countless experiments and lessons learned about the elements of our world, but the nature of the world remains much the same.  There are political leaders and pawns, armies and economies, heroes and villains, entertainers and craftsmen, parents and children, and a huge variety of every vocational occupation under the sun.  The strong still sometimes seek to oppress the weak, self-interest still motivates broad swathes of humanity, even as the self-sacrifice of others provides a vision of something higher to pursue than money, food, power, and pleasure.  That city in the Midwest might look more wholesome than that city over on the coast, and some people in some places may seem more God-fearing than others.  The mistake easily made is that only the parts of the world that strive to follow God’s Word belong to Him, while the others all belong to someone or something else.  And while it’s true that the devil and his minions hold great sway over this world through the manipulation of corrupt men, the reality is that the whole world and everything in it—the fullness thereof—belong inextricably to the Lord God Almighty.

 

So, no matter how dark or evil the world may look in one place or another, that part of the world and everyone in it belongs solely to God.  Whether it is the horrors which took place in Moscow, Idaho, or the moral insanity of San Francisco, California; the oppression of tyrants in Rwanda or Afghanistan or China or Venezuela; there is nowhere in this world that does not belong to God, be it is a cathedral in Rome or a meth plant in Mexico.  And what is so tremendously hopeful about this ancient, Biblical truth, is that not only does the whole world belong to God, it is entirely His, and His alone, to save.  Just as there is no place in all creation that is excepted from the rightful possession of God, from the furthest flung star in the heavens to the farthest flung hamlet on this globe, there is also no creature, no person so far flung that they can escape His domain.  No person in the Outback of Australia is any further removed from God’s reign than any person on the steppes of Mongolia, or the urban jungles of London, Amsterdam, and New York.  The soul living under a bridge in Los Angeles is just as much a possession of the God of Israel, as is the bureaucrat working under the Department of Health and Human Services, or the plumber striving under the architecture of a skyscraper, or the student laboring under a university’s library stacks.  Every soul, in every place, at every time, belongs to God, and it is God alone who can save them all.

 

This is why the mystery of Christmas is so glorious, that the ancient Prophets and the New Testament Apostles can speak of it as the greatest of lights which pierces so deep a darkness.  No matter how hard and lost and confused any soul may be, that soul is precious to the God who made it, who sustains it, and who has done all things necessary to save it.  There is no soul anywhere on this orb, at any time or in any place, which is beyond the jealous possession of the God of Israel.  When Jesus declared that God so loved the world that He sent His Son to save it, He left no caveats or exceptions to that divine will.  Jesus, God-With-Us, is with us precisely because He so jealously loves us. In His very person, Jesus united our humanity with His divinity, so that the bond between God and Man could never be undone—then took that unity to the Cross, where His sacrifice of unfathomable love might be poured out upon the whole world.  And before His Ascension to the Father, His instructions to His Disciples were to preach this Gospel of love, forgiveness, and life in His Name to all creatures, to make disciples of all nations, baptizing and teaching them to observe every Word He has given them.  The joy of Christmas is not that God has come to save some peculiar people in one remote corner of the world, or only to save those seem to be the most conspicuously pious, but that He has come to save every single soul, no matter how soiled or sullied.

 

The blessings of Christmas are not just for Christians, anymore than the Gospel of Jesus Christ is merely for people inside a certain type of building.  The blessings of Christmas are for all people, that the Lord of Hosts, strong and mighty, has come to seek and to save all people, calling every soul to return to Him in faith and repentance that grace upon grace may abound.  Hope has dawned upon the whole human race, upon all creation, for the King of Glory has come!  Throw open the gates of your mind, fling wide the doors of your heart, that the Lord of Glory might come in to commune with you, to forgive you and heal you, to set you free from the prison of lies by which the devil has befuddled you, that you may sing the triumph of your Saving, Incarnate Creator unto ages of ages.  Soli Deo Gloria!  Amen.

 

  

Hope and Joy: A Meditation on Isaiah 35 for the 3rd Sunday in Advent

The wilderness and the solitary place shall be glad for them;

and the desert shall rejoice, and blossom as the rose.

It shall blossom abundantly, and rejoice even with joy and singing:

the glory of Lebanon shall be given unto it, the excellency of Carmel and Sharon,

they shall see the glory of the Lord, and the excellency of our God.

 

Strengthen ye the weak hands, and confirm the feeble knees.

Say to them that are of a fearful heart,

Be strong, fear not: behold, your God will come with vengeance,

even God with a recompence; he will come and save you.

 

The Prophet Isaiah preached the Word of God to the people of Judah during a tumultuous time, when the Assyrians had conquered and laid waste the northern 10 tribes of Israel, and Babylon would eventually conquer the remaining southern tribes of which Jerusalem was the capital.  He bore witness to the coming judgement of God upon His people for their abandonment of His Word to follow other gods and evil ways of life, but he also bore witness to God’s grace, redemption, and mercy.  In chapter 35, God’s Word to faithful King Hezekiah was one of deliverance from the hand of the resurgent Assyrians who would attempt to overthrow Judah as they had Israel, and a promise that in days to come there would be refreshing of the earth in righteousness, joy, and blessedness.  Not only did God fulfill His promise to Hezekiah by turning back the Assyrian siege of Jerusalem, but He was also faithful to bring forth the Messiah who would make all things new some 600 years or so later.  Knowing that God will always fulfill His Word and always in His own time, the people of God continue to look forward to the final return of our Savior, the resurrection of the dead, and the refreshing of all creation.  And in the times intervening between the present day and the Last Day, the people of God live in God’s gracious and providential presence with hope and joy, regardless of the rising or falling tides of darkness in the world.

 

Authentic hope and joy are inextricable from each other, because both flow from the same unassailable Word of God.  What is hope, but to know the promises of God for His people, that He has come to give them life more abundantly than any fallen mind can imagine?  And what is joy, but the solid confidence that hope must be fulfilled by that same promise?  When Jesus arrived incarnate on that first Christmas morning, He came to fulfill all the prophetic promises that He gave to the Prophets in ages past.  He is the One who caused the crippled to jump and dance, the blind to see, and the deaf to hear; to preach forgiveness and grace by way of repentance and faith in His Word; to declare and then perform in His own flesh and blood the Vicarious Atonement for the sins of the whole world; to rise victorious on that first Easter morning, lavishing His gifts of forgiveness, life, and salvation upon all who would trust in Him.  His disciples moved out into the world full of hope and joy, grace and faith, to proclaim the Gospel of Jesus Christ to everyone, in every land, and in every culture, toppling the rule of demons and demonically inspired men.  The hope and joy the disciples were given could no more be taken away from them than the very Word of God could be overthrown.  No matter what circumstances they found themselves in, whether persecuted, imprisoned, detested, or even martyred, they could still count it all joy for the sake of the Promise they had received in Jesus.  They knew that the Promise of the Gospel was forever, and that the sufferings of the present age were only fleeting moments against the backdrop of eternity.

 

In our own day, we would be wise to remember the hope that moved Jesus’ first disciples to become Apostles, and turned the dark, pagan world upside down.  Like King Hezekiah, the Apostles could find no hope or joy in the trappings of politics, of venerable social institutions, in the trappings of ceremony and ritual, or in the ambitions of waxing and waning empires.  The hope of the people of God does not rest on politicians or political parties, the balance of power in Congresses or Parliaments, the sobriety of Justices or the exercise of Executive Administrations.  The hope and joy of God’s people rests solely and immovably upon the Word of His Promise.  While it may look like wicked men move the world toward their own ends, the truth is that God continues to guide the world and all creation to the ends He established before the world began.  The evil will rise up and bear their own guilt, often doing tremendous harm within the boundaries they are given, but God alone can make all things work out for good, particularly for those whose trust abides in Him.  This of course does not mean that His saints are entirely preserved from suffering, persecution, and even death, for all mankind is appointed once to die and then to appear before God for judgment.  Rather, it is that His people are preserved in and through every tribulation and even in their final Judgment, while those who persecute His people will go to their own everlasting punishment.  The hope and joy of God’s people is such that it cannot be shaken by wounds and injuries of contemporary circumstance, because it is rooted in the Everlasting Gospel of Jesus Christ.

 

In our age, as in many ages before us, people have wandered away from the sure Promises of God, and in leaning upon their own understandings, have lost their hope and joy.  Many have been deceived to follow their own passions with wanton abandon, and have found only misery and death.  Others have been convinced that politicians will save them if only they were granted more money and power to guide and provision their lives, but find like the peoples of all tyrannical lands that they have become merely slaves.  Some have trusted in academics, philosophers, administrators, and experts to shepherd their lives, only later to find themselves abused and misguided for the enrichment of their guides.  Still others have trusted in science and technology to solve the profound questions of human purpose and the dignity of life, later to discover that endless addiction to media and a bottomless pit of pharmaceuticals have provided little quality or quantity to achieve the goal of a good and wholesome life.  The increasing hopelessness and joylessness of the world around us, as evidenced by the calamitous rise in brutal crimes, mental illness, substance addiction, suicide, population collapse, and civilizational decay, does not so much rest on the failures of the solutions people have tried to apply to their problems, but to their abandonment of the only true source of hope and joy which is given to mankind by their Creator.  Passion, politics, academia, science, and technology can all be used well in accordance with the Word of God, but apart from God’s Word, they become poisoned fonts and fetid pools that leave their drinker’s thirst unquenched.

 

As we press toward Christmas, we come face to face once again with the hope and joy of God’s promise for His people.  Jesus, the very Incarnate Word of God, comes to dwell among us, that we might live and move and have our being in Him.  His Promise is made sure and irrevocable through the work of His Cross, so that the gifts He gives cannot be stolen by any power of fallen men.  To us, a Child is born—to us, a Son is given!  To us is given the Word of forgiveness, eternal life, and salvation, which is in itself victory over every sin, over all death, and over every power of hell.  This is the hope and joy of God’s people which endures and shines in every age through those same people who are commissioned to bear witness to the Word which gives them reason for such hope and joy.  We, who are blessed to live in that Word of Promise, full of joy and hope by grace through faith in Jesus Christ alone, are also sent to share that Word with everyone we meet.  And in so doing, we may just see our darkening, pagan world turned upside down once again.  Soli Deo Gloria!  Amen.

 

Repentance and Preparation: A Meditation on Matthew 3 for the 2nd Sunday in Advent

In those days came John the Baptist, preaching in the wilderness of Judaea,

And saying, Repent ye: for the kingdom of heaven is at hand.

For this is he that was spoken of by the prophet Esaias, saying,

The voice of one crying in the wilderness,

Prepare ye the way of the Lord, make his paths straight.

And the same John had his raiment of camel's hair,

and a leathern girdle about his loins; and his meat was locusts and wild honey.

 

Then went out to him Jerusalem, and all Judaea,

and all the region round about Jordan,

 And were baptized of him in Jordan, confessing their sins.

But when he saw many of the Pharisees and Sadducees come to his baptism,

he said unto them, O generation of vipers,

who hath warned you to flee from the wrath to come?

Bring forth therefore fruits meet for repentance:

And think not to say within yourselves, We have Abraham to our father:

for I say unto you, that God is able of these stones to raise up children unto Abraham.

And now also the axe is laid unto the root of the trees:

therefore every tree which bringeth not forth good fruit

is hewn down, and cast into the fire.

I indeed baptize you with water unto repentance.

but he that cometh after me is mightier than I,

whose shoes I am not worthy to bear:

he shall baptize you with the Holy Ghost, and with fire:

Whose fan is in his hand, and he will throughly purge his floor,

and gather his wheat into the garner;

but he will burn up the chaff with unquenchable fire.

 

There are few biblical words that raise hackles in our age quite so quickly as the command to Repent!  The Greek word which underlies the English translation here is a combination of turning or changing, and of mind or thinking—thus St. John the Baptist’s command to all who would hear him was to literally turn your mind! or change your thinking! in light of the reality that the Kingdom of God is at hand.  “At hand” is an old Hebrew idiom brought forward in the Greek and directly translated into English, which means literally that the subject is within reach or immediately in the hearer’s presence.  This combination of phrases in St. John the Baptist’s preaching make inescapably clear that the proper preparation of one’s mind is critical to being in the presence of God—or perhaps more directly, that the condition of one’s mind will determine how one is met by God when He approaches.  While phraseologies of the time sometimes used the imagery of the heart as the seat of the emotions and the head as the seat of knowledge, the mind is here directly related to the convictions and commitments which inform a person’s life, and from which flow their words and deeds.  John made that link directly when he ordered the religious leaders who came to be baptized to bring forth fruits worthy of repentance, since a truly changed mind must by necessity bring forth a changed life.  In the immediate context of this passage, Jesus had already come and had been walking among the people of Judea somewhat unnoticed, thus making the Kingdom of God very near at hand, and the condition of meeting Him an immediate reality.

 

In our contemporary context, the Church waits in a liturgical way for the coming of Jesus at Christmas, but in a very real and tangible way, we all know that He has already come.  Roughly 2000 years ago, the Word of God became incarnate in Jesus, born of the Virgin Mary in the real and gritty town of Bethlehem.  He came as the old Hebrew Prophets had foretold, lived His early years in submission to His earthly parents, and after about 30 years presented Himself to His cousin John for Baptism and the inauguration of His preaching ministry.  We know that path ended about three years later on a Roman Cross, before He emerged three days later resurrected from His tomb and triumphant over every enemy of mankind.  Some 40 days after that, having given His Word and authority over sin, death, hell, and the devil to His Apostles, He ascended into Heaven in preparation for His final return at the End of Days, then sent the Holy Spirit to empower His people until His return.  The indivisible Triune God, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, has thus been with His people and His Kingdom has come into this world, marked by the gathering of His saints in faith around His Word and Sacraments.  Thus, even as we celebrate another coming Christmas with the trappings of Advent and recreating all the joy of His first arrival, we know that we dwell with Him even more closely at hand than did the first hearers of John the Baptist, and that His final coming is imminent even if presently unknown.

 

Living in the presence of Jesus and His Kingdom come, makes many demands upon our earthly minds, and consequently upon the totality of our very lives.  We are in the presence of the King who spoke the universe into existence, who thundered the Law from Mount Sinai, sent fire upon Mount Carmel, who preached and healed upon the mountains surrounding Jerusalem, who died for the sins of the world upon Mount Calvary, and who breathed out His Gospel of peace and forgiveness to His disciples before ascending into heaven from the Mount of Olives.  This is the very God who will come again in glory as the disciples saw Him go up, returning to make final all that He promised.  The condition of our minds, of our convictions, our trust, our commitment, is the very basis upon which we meet the King of Glory, who is very much at hand.  His Word comes to us demanding the faith which that Word itself creates, and thereby issues the grace which forgives and enlivens all who will abide in Him.  That Word comes to change our minds, to reform our convictions, to make firm our commitments, so that authentic repentance of the mind will become a change in how we act, speak, and perform the duties which God has given us in our time and place.  It is a Word which gives the life it promises, so that fallen men might rise up as children of God who live and move and find the entirety of their being in the unending life of their Savior.

 

And though the command of St. John the Baptist to Repent! and the power of God’s Word to create what it demands are unconquerable, they are not coercive.  There is no one who is forced to love God as their Creator, Savior, and Sustainer, nor to turn their minds from evil to His righteousness, for authentic love can never be coerced.  The appeal of God to man is one of love, and the only way to receive that divine love, is to love and trust Him in return.  There will come a day when all the appeals of God to man shall cease, when the last efficacious preaching of His Gospel will ring out over the corrupted earth, and the Day of Grace will become the Day of Judgment at His final return.  In that Day, those who refused to let their minds be reformed by His Word will see Him as the One

 Whose fan is in his hand, and he will throughly purge his floor,

and gather his wheat into the garner;

but he will burn up the chaff with unquenchable fire.

On that Day, there will be no bickering or debating about pointless nuances of theology, politics, philosophy or anything else—only the living reality of God’s Kingdom fully come, those who live by grace through faith in Jesus, and those who do not.  As the old saying goes, there are only two ways to meet God:  either as Savior, or as Judge, and the crux of that distinction rests on faith.

 

In this Advent season, hear the Word of God come to you, that your mind may be changed from fascination with evil, earthly things, to an unassailable trust in the loving promises of God.  May His Word so transform your heart and mind into the image of His Son, that your whole person cannot help but bring forth fruits worthy of so great a repentance, reflecting outward the divine love which His Word pours into all who will trust in Him.  Hear the Incarnate Word calling to you across the expanse of eternity, so that you might dwell with Him forever in the blessedness of His presence.  For even more urgent today are the words of St. John the Baptist:  The Kingdom of God is at hand.  Repent, turn to Him, believe His Word, and live forever in Jesus, forgiven and free.  Amen.