Even this is included in God’s plan

Sermon for the Sunday after New Year

1 Peter 4:12-19  +  Matthew 2:13-23

It’s quite a story we have before us in today’s Gospel. You have the villain, King Herod, hell-bent on snuffing out the Baby who was God. You have the hero, Joseph, charged with protecting that Baby and His mother. You have the angel as the messenger sent to guide the hero. The conspiracy. The chase. The escape. The horrific slaughter of the innocents. The death of the villain. And the victorious return of the holy family to lead a quiet, somewhat secluded life until Jesus, the real Hero of the story, was ready to step onto the scene and face the real villain, the devil. As we said on Christmas Eve, this story is no work of fiction. It’s a true story, made up of real, historical events. It’s the story of stories that, either directly or indirectly, influences every fictional story ever told.

Speaking of fictional stories, have you ever wondered why their authors, the very best of authors like C.S. Lewis or Tolkien, wrote great evil into their stories? Whether it’s the white witch or Sauron and Saruman and the armies of orcs, there is often great evil introduced into the story, and terrible atrocities are committed. And, at least with the great authors, it isn’t just for the sake of having a realistic story or keeping audiences or readers interested. Evil is introduced in order to highlight the good—great good standing in stark contrast with great evil. You don’t realize how good the light is until you’ve compared it with the blackest darkness. In fact, often times it’s the evil in the story that prompts flawed heroes to face and to overcome their own flaws and to become more courageous and more honorable than they’d ever thought possible.

Still, fictional writers are the ones responsible for putting the evil into their stories. The authors make each and every decision for their characters. Not so with God.

God is the great Author of this story. He invented the story and all its components and all its characters, not just the ones recorded in Holy Scripture, but everything and everyone in the universe. God also controls the story, but He has given the characters some amount of freedom in the roles they play, freedom to choose certain things, for good or for ill. It had to be that way if we were to be real characters, made in the image of God, able to love and be loved. It was true for the holy angels. It was true for the angels who left their holy station and chose to rebel against God. It was true for Adam and Eve, too, the first human beings. They were free to choose good or evil, to follow God or to walk away from Him. God, the Author, didn’t introduce evil into the story or force anyone to act wickedly in it. Instead, He worked with the free choices of angels and of men and wove them into His master plan for good.

Our choices, as descendants of a fallen Adam and a fallen Eve, are much more limited. We’re born “dead in sins and trespasses,” spiritually blind, weak, and hostile to God. We aren’t free to choose the good—not the truly good—until God chooses to bring His Gospel to us and convert us and give us a new birth from above, and even then, our choices are still hindered by our sinful flesh. But even now, God, the Author of the story, weaves our every choice into His master plan for good.

We have a brilliant example of that in today’s Gospel. The main events were all prophesied ahead of time: Herod’s plot to kill Jesus, the slaughter of the children of Bethlehem, the holy family’s flight to Egypt, and their safe return to Nazareth. All of it was carried out in time, everything happening just as God had planned, even though no one in the story was aware that they were carrying it out at the time, no one aware that they were serving God’s plans, and no one “forced” to do anything against their will.

Take Joseph. He was a righteous man, a believer in the God of Israel who had promised to send His Son and had now sent Him, not only into the world, but into Joseph’s keeping. He loved God and desired to serve Him. So God gave him the opportunity to serve by fleeing to Egypt with his family.

Take Herod. He remained in his natural condition, dead in sins and trespasses. He still hated God, even as he ruled over God’s people. And because he hated God, he became irrationally jealous of the baby who had been born “King of the Jews,” afraid that his own reign would be threatened by this Child. But God used Herod’s hatred and irrational fear to get His Son down to Egypt. That had to happen, not only because it was prophesied to happen, but because Jesus had been born to be Israel’s Substitute—the One who would obey where Israel disobeyed, the One who would succeed where Israel failed. His infancy had to be sort of a mirror image of Israel’s infancy as a nation. That’s how the story had to play out, complete with all the foreshadowing that one expects in a fine story.

But Herod’s evil didn’t stop at seeking to kill Jesus. It spilled over toward all the children of Bethlehem two years old and younger. He had them all slaughtered, since he didn’t know which One had been born King of the Jews.

Here we pause and ask, how could the Author let innocent children be slaughtered like this? How could He let evil have this victory? It’s really no different than asking how God can allow any of the evil in the world to prosper. And He does. He allows all sorts of evil to go on in the world, including allowing godless mothers and their godless doctors and godless politicians to literally get away with murder—millions upon millions of children slaughtered in the womb, before they can even draw a breath. How can He do this?

Remember, the answer goes back to God’s decision to create angels and men who could love Him and be loved by Him, allowing them to make certain choices of their own. God is not the enemy of our race, who introduced or who fosters the evil. The devil is. And the deluded or outright wicked members of our race who side with the devil have joined him in the hatred of our race. That hatred sometimes involves murder. It also involves condoning or promoting or engaging in sex outside of marriage, one of the most destructive things people do. It involves governments tyrannizing churches and Christians and law-abiding citizens. That’s happening all around us these days. It involves even things like teaching evolution in school. Do you realize how much hatred of our race it takes for people to drive children away from their Creator, to convince them that they are the masters of their own fate, answerable to no one—except for the government, so that the government stands in the place of God? That’s pure wickedness.

Why does God allow it to prosper for a time? It’s part of His plan, the plot of the story, which includes human responsibility for our actions. But it also includes His desire that all men should come to repentance and be saved, so He bears with us with great patience. And God’s plan also involves those who are yet to be born, whom He knows will hear His Gospel and be brought to faith by His Spirit, people whom He foreknew from eternity as His precious sheep who will join us one day in this Holy Christian Church. If the Author were to intervene now, to root out all the evil from the world, then the story would end before those elect children of His could be born and reborn. They would be excluded from His kingdom. And that’s a price God is unwilling to pay.

So the story goes on, with righteous and unrighteous living side by side. Some of the unrighteous will yet join the ranks of the righteous before the end. And even the righteous struggle daily with their own unrighteousness and the weakness of their flesh. But that doesn’t mean that the Author just lets the story unravel as we each do whatever we want.

In the end, things work out as they need to, as God takes the good intentions of His believing children and the evil intentions of the devil and his allies and weaves them into His master plan. In the end, Herod dies, as he must. Those who oppose God, those who mistreat His people—they have been given their day. But their plans are bounded, limited by God. They can only do so much and no more. And after they’ve tried and tried to unseat Christ from His throne, they die, sometimes a horrible earthly death, like Herod died, but always a horrible eternal death. Meanwhile, Baby Jesus is kept alive and brought back to Israel, to Nazareth, just as the prophets foretold, even as they foretold the slaughter of the children in Bethlehem, which teaches us just how dark evil can be, just how wicked and destructive all sin truly is, so that we learn to mourn for our part in it, even as we learn to rejoice in the light of Christ and in God’s undeserved love for a race that is as depraved as ours is.

In the end, God’s plan keeps His Son alive as an infant so that He can grow up and die as a man, bearing the sins of the world on His shoulders, making atonement for the sins of all. In the end, this Gospel of Christ reaches the ends of the earth, and the Church is built, and the Christ returns, and judgment is pronounced, and this chapter, where wickedness and righteousness dwell together, is ended, and the new story of eternal life begins for those who have persevered in the faith.

Until then, what role has the Author assigned to you? He hasn’t told you most of it. Not everything has yet been revealed, how this or that fits into the plan, how God is even now using man’s evil to accomplish His good purposes. But enough has been revealed in Scripture, hasn’t it?, to make you aware that there is a good plan and to persuade you that God really is working all things out for good to those who love Him? His plan has already brought millions into His holy Church, and millions also into His heavenly kingdom after their earthly struggle was finished. His plan has brought you into contact with the Gospel and with the cleansing waters of Holy Baptism.

What is your role? All are called to daily contrition and repentance. All are called to keep God’s commandments. All are called to keep hearing the Gospel, gathering together with fellow Christians, and receiving the Sacrament of His body and blood. But each person’s role is also unique. Each one will have daily opportunities to be either big heroes who do grand, impressive deeds, or little heroes who do small but still essential deeds for the playing out of God’s story. And, yes, God will use the evil in the world to help you overcome your own flaws and to become more courageous and more honorable than you’d ever thought possible. Even this is included in God’s plan—the plan that ends in eternal glory and joy and life for all who have fought the good fight of the faith and who finish the race still trusting in Christ Jesus alone for the forgiveness of their sins.

What a story! And you get to be a part of it! May God grant you the wisdom to discern your part and the faith and the courage to play it! Amen.