# Der Lutheraner_St. Louis Missouri_1852 08 31_S4
# AI translation — CHI Digital Archive (demonstration)

4

merely to save His life, this agrees ill with what the angel said of Him at Christmas: "which is Christ the Lord, in the city of David." Just as little is His name of JESUS glorified by the fact that for His sake "all the children that were in Bethlehem, and in all the coasts thereof, from two years old and under" are slaughtered. And since at last He is carried back quite in secrecy to Nazareth, and He, the promised "Branch out of the root of Jesse" (Is. 11, 1.), the long-awaited Son of David, may not even remain in the tribe to which He belongs according to His human nature, every trace seems also to have vanished of the wondrous radiance which shone about the Christ-child in spite of His lowliness. — But we know that it does not at all depend upon how it appears to us. Could God have sent His dear Son into the world in such a manner as we men might wish, and as would be worthy of His glory, there would have been no need of redemption. Were the world such that it could bear the splendor of the heavenly brightness, it would not lie in wickedness. God's power would indeed be great enough to compel it to tolerate His kingdom, even though this exposed its nothingness. But that would be no willing submission of those who go out from the world and confess themselves to Christ. As the world once is, it cannot exist without showing itself an enemy of God. Not until it shall have perished, like Sodom and Gomorrah, will its enmity cease to threaten the kingdom of Christ. But the time had not yet come then, when God was first to spend His own blood to reconcile the world to Himself, as indeed it has not yet come now. From this it follows sufficiently that the powers which rule in this world could not bow before the Christ-child, and that He therefore had to lack the honor which was nevertheless His due.

This suffices to set us at rest as to how it was possible that Christ became a fugitive from a wretched man, the godless Herod, and also, after His preservation from his murderous designs, kept Himself hidden in Nazareth, that remote corner of Israel.

Let us now look more closely at our Gospel, and we shall find that we have not merely to come to an understanding concerning its contents, lest it give offense to our faith, but that it is rich enough in light and comfort to bring us to an understanding of much that might otherwise all too easily vex, sadden and discourage us. For it teaches us:

How the Church, like the LORD, without detriment to her glory, lodges in this world.

I., She scarcely remains before it:

1., on account of persecution,

2., on account of great want,

3., on account of still greater timidity.

II., She nevertheless rules in it:

1., through the host of angels,

2., through the obedience of the pious,

3., through God's judgments of punishment.

I.

1. Herod wants to kill Jesus. His murderous plot is so well calculated that it can be hindered only by a miracle. For human power may not withstand the prince, not even the godless Herod. Kings have their Judge above. — This is not the only attempt to destroy the Christ-child. The prince of this world, whose instrument Herod was only, whom this Herod only represents as his faithful servant, since he himself is nothing more than a powerless man, snorts until the last day with much greater bloodthirstiness against the little flock of the believing children of God than he did then against the Christ-child in Bethlehem. And just as little as in this persecution does a higher hand intervene in the others to avert them. The world has free course in its wickedness. Who restrained it from stoning Stephen and from scattering the Christian congregation at Jerusalem like a frightened flock of sheep? Who hindered it from beheading the Apostle James with the sword? Who put a stop to the shedding of blood with which the whole earth ran, when the Roman Empire rose against the LORD and His Anointed? Who checked the raging of the heretics, set bounds to the wrath of the Antichrist in Rome and his funeral piles? Who has forbidden the unchained flesh of rebellious nations, of haughty scoffers, of godless writers and shouters, in the last days, to threaten God with a fearful battle-howl? Who has held back the devil from finally recruiting, out of the shattered ranks of the Christian nations, out of the midst of the throngs of the baptized, an army which in shameless mockery of everything holy, in insolent denial of every trace of the image of God, has not its equal among the most furious enemies of Christendom in the old heathen world, which, by the terror which it spreads before it in the world in the most manifold manner, here with the fist, there with the weapons of fleshly wisdom, presumes to scare the Christ-child out of the world?

2. That Jesus must flee shows already how He scarcely remains before the powers that rule in this world. Now, however, His preservation takes place in such a way that He thereby suffers a still deeper humiliation. For it is committed to a poor child of man. "Arise," says the angel to Joseph, Mary's espoused husband, and take the young child and his mother unto thee." The almighty God, the Creator of heaven and earth, is laid in the lowly arms of a common man, that He may be cared for and preserved. Upon his obedience to the word of the angel it now depends whether the Son of God shall be saved. Princes do not enforce it, no authority threatens the guardian of Jesus, in case he should be minded to omit, for the sake of one who is not his child, to undertake hardships and dangers. Whom must not this also convince that Jesus scarcely remains before the world? — But this is only an image of the preservation of our Church until the last day. While the powers of this world threaten her and seek to exterminate her from the earth, she can nevertheless not, and shall not, dispense with the human arm. She needs such guardians as Joseph was, merely to remain in this world. The LORD receives for Himself and His disciples sustenance from godly women, who took care of Him in His poverty and thereby testified their thanks for the rescue of their souls. The newly gained members of the Church lay their possessions at the feet of the apostles and thereby hand to them the treasure out of which the congregation of God shall take what it needs, that the apostles may preach the Word to it, and the poor receive their necessities, who, because they have become Christians, are forsaken by the world. In the most various congregations the apostles gather alms, that in the time of great tribulation the mother congregation at Jerusalem might not die of bodily hunger, because it had stilled the spiritual. So it has gone on: those who preach the Gospel must live by the Gospel. That it may be preached, charitable gifts, as free-will offerings of the love of Christ, must found and maintain nurseries of faithful ministers of the Church. God, only in quite especially severe hours of trial, reaches by the hand of an angel the baked bread to Elijah. In general He directs the body of His believers to the use of the ordinary means, by which the unbelievers also are sustained. And since precisely those through whose service the confession of the faith is to be maintained and the Church built up on and on, if they will not neglect their work, have themselves no access to the only source of the nourishment and necessities of this body and life; therefore the Christ-child is committed to the poor of this and that Joseph, so that His life depends upon the free-will obedience of those who with the Word of God accept also the command of the same: "Take the young child unto thee!" The Church therefore does not always have equally distressed days, just as the LORD Jesus was invited as a guest by rich and poor. While at times even her own children seem to show her the door, or at least give her to understand that Jesus must live by Joseph's favor, now and then even the princes of the earth are her nursing-mothers, and lay down crown and scepter, together with the purple of royal glory, upon her altars. But even this change shows how distressed, even in the most glorious days, the