Mystery Made Known
Christmas 2 - January 5, 2014
Watch the sermon at YouTube here
Dear Lord,
So far I've done all right.
I haven't gossiped,
haven't lost my temper,
haven't been greedy, grumpy, nasty, selfish, or overindulgent.
I'm really glad about that.
But in a few minutes, God,
I'm going to get out of bed.
And from then on,
I'm going to need a lot more help. Amen.
~Source Unknown
So, here we are. By the church calendar, it's the 12th day of Christmas, but by the calendar the rest of the world lives by, it's the 5th of January. This is the season of new starts, of resolutions made, intended to be kept. This is the chance to start fresh, to make something better of ourselves this year.
And as we gather here on this morning with our bright hopes and promises to ourselves, I suspect that some, if not most of us, really relate to the prayer I just read. So far, so good. We're five days in, and we're doing pretty well. We haven't lost our tempers, or been greedy or grumpy or selfish yet. We haven't overindulged, at least since just after midnight on New Year's Eve, but not since we woke up on New Year's Day. Things are off to a good start. But...
But we know that we're just getting started. Metaphorically, we haven't gotten out of bed yet. But when we do, we know we're gonna need a lot more help. We won't necessarily be able to keep to whatever resolutions we made – to exercise more or eat healthier, to quit smoking, to be more generous with our money or our time, to be more patient with the kids or our spouse – especially as we hurry on the way out the door to church! And some of us, even though we just got started – well, we've already fallen down on the job. Tempers have flared. We've complained about the cold, or our families, or the boss, or our teachers. We've told the dog off for getting under our feet. We've started to worry about how we'll pay off the bills that are starting to come in from our Christmas celebrations. In many and various ways, this fresh start just serves as a reminder of how broken we are, of how flawed we are – that we are not the kind of parents or children or spouses or friends or workers or just plain people that we would like to be. Our misdeeds, as The Message calls them, are all too evident to us, as we realize that we fail to measure up, even to our own standards.
And so, perhaps it is a mystery, as we gather this morning, to hear these words first written to the church in Ephesus. I have to tell you that whenever I prepare to preach, I look for both the law and the gospel in whatever the passage is. And sometimes it's easy to find both, but probably more often than not, it's really easy to find the law, the trouble, the ways people are held to account by God or struggle in their relationships with each other – and it's not always so easy to talk about what the gospel, the grace, the good news about what God is doing is. But this passage from Ephesians, it's the complete opposite of that. It's filled from start to finish with praise for God and excitement and joy over what God has done and is doing. The author just can't contain himself. Listen again to just a snippet, as shared in The Message version of the Bible:
“Long before he laid down earth’s foundations, he had us in mind, had settled on us as the focus of his love, to be made whole and holy by his love. Long, long ago he decided to adopt us into his family through Jesus Christ. (What pleasure he took in planning this!) He wanted us to enter into the celebration of his lavish gift-giving by the hand of his beloved Son.”
Long ago, before the foundation of the world, God was thinking of us. Long ago, God decided to adopt us as children, as heirs, through Jesus. Not counting our misdeeds against us, God chooses us and sets us free in Jesus. Abundantly free! Despite the fact that none of us measure up, even by our own standards, God has been working out God's divine plan for each of us and for all creation from the beginning, to save us, to reconcile us, to shape and mold and transform us to be the people we were first created to be, way back in the beginning.
Now I know that most of us have already moved past Christmas in our minds and hearts and lives. But since it is the 12th day of Christmas, let me remind you that what we get from this Ephesians reading (and the gospel of John too) is that Christmas isn't just about Jesus being born as a baby 2000+ years ago. No, what this book reminds us is that Christmas is not just about Jesus' birth, but about who we are, and who God claims us to be. In Jesus, we are born into new life. We are adopted into God's family. “It's in Christ that we find out who we are and what we are living for.” In Jesus, God takes the mystery of all of this and how it could possibly be true, for me, for you, for creation – God takes this mystery and makes it known to us. God sends Jesus to take on human flesh and blood to make it clear once and for all how deeply we are loved, how much God cherishes us, how utterly God longs to be in relationship with us. So no matter how harshly we judge each other or ourselves, no matter how much we may think we're not worth it, we hear God saying to us in Jesus: “You are my beloved child. You are mine. You are here for a reason. You have a purpose. You are signed, sealed, and delivered by the Holy Spirit.” Or, to use more traditional, formal language, “You were marked by the seal of the promised Holy Spirit.” And this is just the first step, the down payment of all that God has in mind for us.
So go from this place this morning, knowing that you are cherished. You are beloved. You are set free. And if you see someone else wrestling with the mystery, someone who isn't sure what they're here for or if it could possibly be true that God loves them - remind them of God's ancient plan to make them whole and holy. Invite them to the lavish celebration of our adoption through Jesus. Go – Make the mystery known!
Amen.
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