Second Sunday of Christmas 2021
Jeremiah 31:7-14
Psalm 84
Ephesians 1:3-14
Matthew 2:1-12
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Let us pray.
Almighty God, your blessed Son fulfilled the covenant of circumcision for our sake, and was given the Name that is above every name: Give us grace faithfully to bear his Name, and to worship him with pure hearts according to the New Covenant; who lives and reigns with you, in the unity of the Holy Spirit, one God, now and forever. Amen.
We just prayed the collect from January 1. Before we move on to our lessons, I want to highlight a holy day you may have missed this last week. January 1 – New Year’s Day – is always the Feast of the Circumcision and Holy Name of Jesus. January 1 is eight days after Christmas Day.
In Leviticus 12:3, the Torah requires that a male Jewish newborn be circumcised on the eighth day. Traditionally, this is when a Jewish boy is named. And that’s what happens with Jesus, according to Luke 2:21. Just as instructed by the angel, Mary and Joseph name the boy Yeshua, that is Jesus, at his circumcision. With his circumcision, Jesus is brought into the covenants of Israel, the covenants God made with Abraham, Moses, and David.
There is no other Holy Day of the Church calendar that says as loudly: Jesus is Jewish. He begins life as a Jewish man, dies a Jewish man. He is resurrected as a Jewish man!
Sometimes I hear people say, “Yes, we all know Jesus WAS Jewish.” That “was” can mean two things: Jesus is still dead or Jesus is alive but ceased to be Jewish at some point.
Did Jesus cease to be Jewish when he died? If he still bears the marks of his crucifixion, as Thomas verified, then he still bears the mark of his circumcision. He still bears the scars of our salvation, and he still bears the mark of his Jewishness.
Why does this matter?
We as Gentiles who worship the God of Israel are told by Paul that we have been grafted into Israel (Romans 11), we have been added to the commonwealth of Israel (Ephesians 2). As a result, we read the Old Testament – like the promise in today’s Jeremiah passage – as if it is for us. We read God’s benefits in Psalm 103, for another example, as if it is for us. These passages were written by and to Israelites thousands of years ago. How can we who are foreigners to the Torah, read the Hebrew Scriptures as our own? We can only do that because the God of Israel, through Jesus, Son of David, Son of Abraham, has adopted us into his covenant people.
This should have a profound effect on how we deal with our Jewish neighbors. We are to love ALL our neighbors and even our enemies. But our Jewish neighbors are family, even if they do not yet recognize that Jesus is the long-awaited Messiah of Israel.
I will leave you to contemplate that. Now… on to today’s lesson.
Today’s Gospel lesson tells us the story of the Magi, how they traveled from “orient land” bearing gifts to the newborn King of the Jews. In the Magi, we have the first non-Jews to acknowledge Jesus’ kingship and to worship him.
The Magi gave Jesus gold, frankincense, and myrrh. Yet what the Magi did not quite see, what Mary perhaps could glimpse, were the gifts that this baby boy was carrying for humanity.
In our Ephesians passage, Paul lists for us gifts that the Father has for those whom he has adopted.
Ephesians 1:3-14 forms the longest sentence ever found in ancient Greek.[1] “One commentator called it ‘the most monstrous sentence’” because it runs on and on.[2] We may not see the run-on in our versions as most English translations break up passage into several sentences.
Paul used to dictate his letters to a secretary, and sometimes Paul would get carried away in what he was saying, and his sentences would run on. That poor scribe. He must have been really good at shorthand!
John Stott says, “As Paul dictates, his speech pours out of his mouth in a continuous cascade. He neither pauses for breath, nor punctuates his words with full stops. Commentators have searched for metaphors vivid enough to convey the impact of this opening outburst of adoration. … It is ‘a golden chain’ of many links … ‘a kaleidoscope of dazzling lights and shifting colours’… ‘a snowball tumbling down a hill, picking up volume as it descends’ … [a] ‘rhapsodic adoration comparable to the overture of an opera which contains the successive melodies that are to follow’.”[3]
This section of Ephesians is a benediction, a blessing. Paul is not blessing his readers but God: “Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who has blessed us in Christ with every spiritual blessing in the heavenly places…”
What we have here is liturgy, not unlike the benedictions said in a synagogue.
For what is Paul praising God? For the multitude of gifts he “lavishes” on us in Jesus Christ. This passage is very rich, and we have a short time. This is the word the LORD has set before us at the start of the year, so please forgive me if I go a touch longer than normal
After the year that was 2020, what is God saying to us as we start 2021? God says he has many gifts for us in this Christmas season. Yes, friends, those of you who have already taken down your trees and nativities, it is still Christmas for a few more days.
God has many gifts for us. One of those gifts is NOT a promise of a good year. Nope. Sorry.
What he does promise us is eternal life in Jesus Christ. When does eternal life begin? Eternal life begins now.
God has bestowed to us “every spiritual blessing in heavenly places.” God has opened to us “every benefit of knowing God and everything we need to grow spiritually,”[4] whether we are in a pandemic or not. God has given us everything we need to know him, to engage with him, to grow into the likeness of his Son. THAT is eternal life. Notice I said ‘grow’ into the likeness of Jesus… not instantly become. So let us be patient with ourselves, as well as with each other.
Let’s go over this list of Christmas gifts the Father has given us.
Verse 4 – God chose us in Christ before the foundation of the world that we should be holy and blameless before him. This resonates with Revelation 13:8: “the Lamb of God slain before the foundation of the world.” God chose to make us holy and blameless before he made the world. Before Adam and Eve sinned, the atoning sacrifice was prepared. God predestined the sacrifice that makes us holy and blameless, the sacrifice that does not just forgive our sin but transforms our sinful nature into Jesus’ divine nature.
Verses 5 & 6 – God also chose ahead of time to adopt us as children through Jesus Messiah. This choosing was through his grace. What is God’s grace? It is God’s kindness. He lavishes us with kindness through Jesus the Beloved.
Have you ever had a friend that just lavishes you with kindness? Always pays for the meal. Always has a gift. Always has an encouraging word. We get embarrassed by that…. Maybe because we know we can’t properly reciprocate. We realize we don’t have it in us to be that kind back. That is the grace of God. It’s a level of kindness that humbles us because we are too poor to be kind in that same way.
Verse 9 – This grace, this kindness reveals to us “the mystery of his will.” Can we know the mind of God? Not of our own. But God shows us his mind, his will, in how he treats us in Messiah. God’s heart is for us to know him as he knows us. His gift is that he made a way for us to know him; he cleans us up so we are presentable to approach his table and his throne.
Verse 11 – In Jesus we have received an inheritance. What are we inheriting? The same thing Jesus inherits – heaven and earth united under one King. Paul says in Romans 8 that the Holy Spirit testifies that those of us in Christ “are children of God, and if children, then heirs—heirs of God and fellow heirs with Christ.” Fellow heirs?! This verse always bowls me over. That’s beyond kindness. The phrase “embarrassment of riches” fits here. We are embarrassed, we are humbled by this sort of inheritance.
The verse goes on: “heirs of God and fellow heirs with Christ, provided we suffer with him in order that we may also be glorified with him.”Are we suffering? Just about all of us suffered something in 2020, are suffering still. It’s OK to admit it. Some of us lost dear ones. Some of us lost jobs. Some of us lost smaller things. It doesn’t mean those things don’t hurt. Allow yourself to mourn the losses of 2020, big or small. That suffering – the suffering of broken relationships, of persecution, of sickness – joins us with Jesus, and then he lavishly shares his inheritance with us.
We inherit so much in Jesus. Jesus shares his heavenly and earthly inheritance with us. How wild is that? But the clause in the will is we must suffer with him.
We are disciples of the Cross. Yes, the Cross is the instrument of our salvation, of our healing, of our restoration, of our sanctification. But it is still an instrument of torture, of pain, of execution, of death. “Pick up your cross and follow me,” Jesus says.
The good news is, that like Jesus, we have a hope and a joy set before us. On the other side of our suffering is the Resurrection. Until we get there, Jesus walks with us in our suffering, sharing his divine life with us.
Verses 13-14 – The final Christmas gift on Paul’s list is the down payment on our inheritance: the Holy Spirit. When we hear the Gospel and believe it, when we trust in the person of Jesus and his work, we are sealed with the Holy Spirit. We are empowered by the Holy Spirit. That is how Jesus shares his divine life with us now, in this broken world. It is by the Holy Spirit that we are able to love our enemy, to forgive 70 times 7 times, to eat at the heavenly banquet table.The Holy Spirit is the guarantee that we will receive our portion of Jesus’ inheritance.When? When the heavenly Kingdom of God is once and for all established on earth, as we see at the end of Revelation. When heavenly Jerusalem meets earthly Jerusalem and heaven and earth are renewed.
There are still many promises in the Scriptures that await their fulfillment, like no more tears, swords being converted to plows, the nations at peace with one another under the Son of David ruling from Jerusalem. The Holy Spirit assures us those things will come to pass at the end of time.
To recap, the Father’s Christmas gifts for us in this new year are “every spiritual blessing in heavenly places,” which enable us to grow spiritually and know God:
- Forgiveness of our sins
- Adoption as children
- Kindness on a scale that can only humble us
- A revealing of God’s will and his person
- A share in Jesus’ inheritance, when we suffer with Jesus
- The Holy Spirit, down payment on our inheritance, our Comforter, and minister of Jesus’ divine life.
Let us, with Paul, bless God for the multitude of gifts he “lavishes” on us in Jesus Christ. We bless him whenever we are able to eat the Eucharist. The word Eucharist is from the Greek for thanksgiving.
For right now, as little children, let us offer a simple blessing.
Let us bless the LORD.
Thanks be to God.