I hope you had a happy St. Michael and All Angels day yesterday, a day to reflect on angels, including the fallen angels whom Michael battles. On this topic, our pastor preached an illuminating sermon. As he said, ” the war in heaven has now come down to earth.”
We also had a baptism. In the bulletin was printed Luther’s admonition to the baptismal party, which included this startling sentence: “Remember, therefore, that it is no joke to take sides against the devil and not only to drive him away from the little child, but to burden the child with such a mighty and lifelong enemy.”
Think of that. The Baptized have been delivered from the devil, but that makes them the devil’s special enemy, with Satan always trying to thwart God’s grace and win them back.
You have got to read the sermon linked above, which dives deeply into this. A sample (Logan is the name of the baby we baptized):
So given the danger that surrounds us everyday, how could we put little Logan into such a difficult and precarious situation? How could we give him such a mighty and lifelong enemy, and rejoice in doing so? Well, we do, and we can, because although the battle rages on, the war has been won. Because the gifts of God are greater than the schemes of the enemy. Because the great dragon that was thrown down to the earth, was defeated by a baby boy who at one time was the same age as Logan and nursed at His mother’s breast. A baby boy wrapped in swaddling clothes and laid in a manger. A baby boy the news of whose birth the angels announced and celebrated. A baby boy who was not only a baby boy, like Logan, born in the natural way, but the Son of God, conceived by the Holy Spirit, and born without sin. A baby boy who is the King of angels, come to do what no angel could do. For while Michael and his angels tossed the old, evil foe down from heaven, it was a baby boy named Jesus who defeated him once and for all.
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