"They Shall Come Back"

In the Name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.

“Herod, when he saw that he had been tricked by the wise men, became furious, and he sent and killed all the male children in Bethlehem and in all that region who were two years old or under, according to the time that he had ascertained from the wise men.” Thus took place the slaughter of the boy children of Bethlehem, known to the Church throughout the ages as the Holy Innocents. These otherwise innocent children had committed no extraordinary sin, except that they had been born the same gender as our Lord.

Herod had been tricked, and he became furious. And then he sent an order and had all the male children under two in the region of Bethlehem killed. It is unclear the extent to which those two facts were connected. Given Herod's violent history, it is entirely possible that he may have had the Innocents slaughtered regardless of the word sent back by the Magi.

Death-Defying Life

In the Name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.

Water, blood, and Spirit crying,

By their witness testifying

To the One whose death-defying

Life has come, with life for all (LSB 597.1).

So you just sang, and so you have witnessed once again this morning. The Life of the World who has defied death has come and brought life for all, for this little child, and for each one of you so joined together in Christ through these holy waters. The three-fold witness of which St. John speaks testifies to the life that has conquered your death and now lives in you.

The miracle of Baptism is a great wonder. Consider this – this morning, this child awoke as an unbeliever, lost and condemned, enslaved to sin, death, and the devil. Now, having entered the font and having been washed with the waters of regeneration, this same child is now a purchased and won child of God, free from all guilt and shame, whose will is now held in captivity not to death but to Christ Jesus our Lord.

You, who have been baptized into the death and life of Jesus, also awoke this morning. You awoke with the sins and evil desires of yesterday drowned and dead, left behind in the blessed font of our Lord. You awoke with the forgiveness, life, and salvation which were first poured upon you from such a font as this. You awoke to walk in the newness of life to which you awaken every day of your life, because your life is secure in Him who is the Life and Light of all things.

The Wisdom of the Wise Men

In the Name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.

After Jesus had been born in Bethlehem of Judah, in the days of Herod the King, look at that – Magi from the east arrived in Jerusalem. They wanted to know where to find the one born King of the Jews, because they had seen the rising of a star, or some other astrological phenomenon, and they wanted to fall down before this child, who was no longer a babe in arms, but a toddler.

At this question, Herod the Great – perhaps better called Herod the Terrible – was greatly troubled, and all Jerusalem with him. They were not troubled in sympathy with their great leader; they were shaking in their boots because when Herod was troubled, bloodshed happened.

Herod gathered together the smart people, the theologians of Judah, and asked them, “Where is the Christ to be born?”, and they told him, according to the words of Micah the prophet, that the Ruler to shepherd Israel would come out of Bethlehem in the land of Judah. The greatest would come out of the least. And Herod laid plans to discover this new usurper, with the Magi's unwitting help.