"A Place in the Mosaic"

 

Ephesians 1:3-14

January 4, 2026

 

³Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who has blessed us in Christ with every spiritual blessing in the heavenly places, ⁴just as he chose us in Christ before the foundation of the world to be holy and blameless before him in love. ⁵He destined us for adoption as his children through Jesus Christ, according to the good pleasure of his will, ⁶to the praise of his glorious grace that he freely bestowed on us in the Beloved. ⁷In him we have redemption through his blood, the forgiveness of our trespasses, according to the riches of his grace ⁸that he lavished on us. With all wisdom and insight ⁹he has made known to us the mystery of his will, according to his good pleasure that he set forth in Christ, ¹⁰as a plan for the fullness of time, to gather up all things in him, things in heaven and things on earth. ¹¹In Christ we have also obtained an inheritance, having been destined according to the purpose of him who accomplishes all things according to his counsel and will, ¹²so that we, who were the first to set our hope on Christ, might live for the praise of his glory. ¹³In him you also, when you had heard the word of truth, the gospel of your salvation, and had believed in him, were marked with the seal of the promised Holy Spirit; ¹⁴this is the pledge of our inheritance toward redemption as God’s own people, to the praise of his glory.

 

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            I hope it’s not too late to talk about New Year’s.  My general thinking is that it should be alright to do that up to either January 7^th or the second time you catch yourself writing last year’s date on something.  Either way, it seems like it may still be a good time to look at one little phrase that comes up at the start of Ephesians but that you’ll find in quite a few places in the Bible, especially the New Testament.  That phrase is “in the fullness of time”.

            It presupposes a belief that is there in the Old Testament as well, and that is most clearly expressed in Ecclesiastes 3:1 –

“For everything there is a season, and a time for every matter under heaven.”

Life is not static.  The world does not stay the same.  Change comes – some of it for the better and some of it for the worse – and what seems like loss to one person is gain to another.  Trying to keep up with everything is both necessary and futile.  The sage who wrote Ecclesiastes admits,

“I saw all the deeds that are done under the sun; and see, all is vanity and a chasing after wind.” [Ecclesiastes 3:14]                                     

I know that feeling.  It hits me every time Microsoft decides to update.  It comes along every time Facebook changes its analytics system to make its numbers more obscure.  It stares me in the face every time some sort of awards program announces the year’s winners and I haven’t seen the movie, heard the song, and have no idea who that person is holding the trophy and thanking her hairdresser.

            It is easy to get the feeling that the world is totally out of control, because it is.  Yet at the same time, there remains a sense that

“For everything there is a season, and a time for every matter under heaven.”

If only we knew what season comes when, and whether we are doing things in the right way at the right time.

            Back around 2014 or 2015, David Stauffer and I spent three or four days attending a program at Princeton called a “Ministry Incubator” where we refined and presented our plans to develop an online church.  We envisioned a web site with streaming on Sunday mornings and chat rooms (this was before Zoom took off) for Sunday School classes and prayer groups.  We wanted a phone-friendly app version.  The earliest way we figured to introduce new people to the site was to put up posters with a QR code in coffee shops.  At the end of the week, the funders chose to back a group in South Jersey that was doing outreach through food trucks and some other project I don’t remember.  

Then came 2020.  What were we doing?  What was everyone doing?  A version of what we had tried to do, but with better technology.  What had we learned?  That we could do much of what we do online – if we must.  Administrative functions might actually be more efficient, but even those are lacking without one-on-one relationships.  More than that, very few people want to, and some people cannot, do church activities online.  As for study, there are now all sorts of places online with resources that are better-produced than we would have been able to provide, but that lack real interpersonal connection and may or may not present content drawn from reputable sources.  Nor does a random “influencer” know what’s going on in the viewers’ lives or what approach or topic would be most helpful to whoever stumbles on their “product”.

Did we learn too soon or too late?  Maybe it was a little of both.  Or maybe it was just in time.  Maybe it was in the fullness of time. 

Ephesians says that we can entrust those types of questions to God.  It isn’t that we are doing anything wrong when we ask them.  It’s inevitable.  When someone loses their job because someone far away made bad decisions or when somebody dies young or when a friendship ends or when the insurance company denies a claim or anything like that happens, there will always be what-ifs.  The same is true when things go unexpectedly well, but we tend not to ask about why somebody is naturally optimistic or unusually talented or born into a good situation.  There we just sort of take things for granted and say, “Thank you.”

Ephesians holds to the assertion that God has an ultimate purpose.  We only see pieces of a great mosaic that he is putting together and we cannot make out the overall design because we stand too close to it.  More than that, we are actually a part of it, so our own vision is even more limited than we think.  Yet even so, we have been given a glimpse into what is happening beyond our awareness, and it is something creative and beautiful, and all held together by Christ, who is the one, essential piece in the mystery of the universe.

“With all wisdom and insight he has made known to us the mystery of his will, according to his good pleasure that he set forth in Christ, as a plan for the fullness of time, to gather up all things in him, things in heaven and things on earth.” [Ephesians 1:8-10]

Moreover, he has chosen the rest of us to be part of it all along with him.

“In Christ we have also obtained an inheritance, having been destined according to the purpose of him who accomplishes all things according to his counsel and will…” [Ephesians 1:11]

Where and how and when we best fit into the picture, God knows.  But that we fit, and that all people have a place and a role, that can itself be a great consolation and is in fact a great honor.

            A long tradition among Wesleyan denominations, whether United Methodists or A.M.E. or A.M.E. Zion or the Methodist Church of the Caribbean and Americas or the Peruvian Methodist Church or so forth, has been to share together at the start of each year with a prayer of renewed commitment to taking our place with one another and with all God’s people within the framework of God’s plans rather than our own, trusting everything to him and finding our purpose in his.  Called a “Covenant Prayer” and written by John Wesley, you’ll find it in our Hymnal at #607.  I invite everyone now to take a moment and read it over and consider it.

            After a few moments to read it and to reflect, I will invite everyone who is ready to do so to pray it silently while I pray it aloud, so that there is no pressure.  There is a time to prepare, as there is a time to commit, a time to ponder and a time to move forward.  Nobody can determine that time but each person listening to God in their own heart.  Let the timing for all things be God’s, whose help and whose love is available in each moment.

            [Silent prayer, concluding as follows:]

“I am no longer my own, but thine.
Put me to what thou wilt, rank me with whom thou wilt.
Put me to doing, put me to suffering.
Let me be employed by thee or laid aside for thee,
exalted for thee or brought low for thee.
Let me be full, let me be empty.
Let me have all things, let me have nothing.
I freely and heartily yield all things
to thy pleasure and disposal.
And now, O glorious and blessed God,
Father, Son, and Holy Spirit,
thou art mine, and I am thine. So be it.
And the covenant which I have made on earth,
let it be ratified in heaven.  Amen.”

"Nazis: Bad. Klan: Bad. ISIS: Bad. Jesus: Good."

Romans 1:1-7

December 21, 2025

 

“Paul, a servant of Christ Jesus, called to be an apostle, set apart for the gospel of God, which he promised beforehand through his prophets in the holy scriptures, the gospel concerning his Son, who was descended from David according to the flesh and was declared to be Son of God with power according to the spirit of holiness by resurrection from the dead, Jesus Christ our Lord, through whom we have received grace and apostleship to bring about the obedience of faith among all the gentiles for the sake of his name, including you who are called to belong to Jesus Christ,

To all God’s beloved in Rome, who are called to be saints:

Grace to you and peace from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ.”

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            Most weeks the sermon I preach in church is the same as the one that appears online.  This week is different because the choir will be presenting their annual Christmas cantata – which will be both beautiful and joyful. This sermon, the one preached online, is less so, but is meant to speak to the uglier world of online discourse where hateful and shameful attitudes are more and more given free rein.  Hate crimes are fueled by hate speech that goes unconfronted.  I would rather sound alarmist about growing intolerance and find myself wrong than be right and later have to explain my silence.

 

            It feels ridiculous to me, and I hope to you, as well, but such are our times that I feel compelled to point out that Nazis are bad people, that bigotry toward any ethnic or religious group is wrong, and that attacks on “the Jews” mean an attack on a man

“who was descended from David according to the flesh and was declared to be Son of God with power according to the spirit of holiness by resurrection from the dead, Jesus Christ our Lord”. [Romans 1:3-4]

No, Judaism does not accept the identification of Jesus as the Messiah.  No, Judaism does not accept Christian descriptions or definitions of Jesus as holding as one identity both God’s divinity and our humanity.  But his ancestry and belonging among the people of Judah, the Jews, is not in question in either Judaism or Christianity – nor in Islam, for that matter.  So when the Proud Boys marched through Charlottesville on May 13, 2017 or when the American Nazi Party marched in Skokie, Illinois in April of 1978 or when Nick Fuentes or Kanye West spout their hatred of Jews or their admiration of Hitler online, they are announcing hatred (from a Christian perspective) of the most blasphemous type.

I leave it to the imams to address those who shoot innocent people on a beach in Australia or massacre children for their genetic background in the name of Islam to take their own stand.  I can speak only for Christianity here, and pray that, on our part, we Christians show no one anything but, as Paul says,

“Grace … and peace from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ.” [Romans 1:7]

At the time of year when Christians celebrate the birth of Jesus in Bethlehem of Judea, we read accounts of that birth that come from two gospel writers.  Matthew, one of Jesus’ direct disciples, opens his gospel with, as he names it,

“An account of the genealogy of Jesus the Messiah, the son of David, the son of Abraham.”  [Matthew 1:1]

That’s his opening summary; he fills in a lot of names between these as he goes on.  To him, Jesus’ life was the culmination of Israel’s history to that point.  The end of Matthew’s gospel then has Jesus sending out his followers from Jerusalem into the surrounding, gentile regions and into the entire world.  “Go, therefore,” he says,

“and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, and teaching them to obey everything that I have commanded you.  And remember, I am with you always, to the end of the age.”  [Matthew 28:19-20]

Christian faith is rooted in the experience of Abraham and his descendants, and grew from that soil into the world at large.

Luke’s gospel provides a genealogy as well.  Luke was a Greek doctor who traveled with Paul around the eastern Mediterranean.  The book of Acts describes some of their adventures, surviving shipwreck in Malta, where they would be mistaken for Greek gods, arguing with philosophers in Athens, and Paul’s final imprisonment in Rome.  So when Luke begins his own list of Jesus’ ancestors, he gives it a wider scope than Matthew does, going back to

“Shem, son of Noah, son of Lamech, son of Methusaleh, son of Enoch, son of Jared, son of Mahaleel, son of Cainan, son of Enos, son of Seth, son of Adam, son of God.” [Luke 3:36b-38]

“Shem” was held to be the progenitor of all peoples of the Middle East.  Linguists refer to Hebrew and Arabic and a handful of other languages as “semitic”.  People who express hatred of the ethnic groups who speak them are called “anti-semitic”.  Broad-brush condemnation of Israelis or Palestinians alike are anti-semitic. 

 That’s a side-point, though.  More relevant to Luke’s summary of Jesus’ background is that he shares the common humanity of all people, Jew or gentile.  That was a message no doubt important to Luke the Greek, who traveled around with a Pharisee named Saul who went by Paul and held Roman citizenship and who fought with other apostles to make sure that the gentiles would (literally, not just figuratively) have a seat at the table when God’s people sat down to meals together, including the meal we now call “the Lord’s Supper”.

Look at the nativity scenes you see at this time of year.  Yes, some wait until Epiphany to add the figures of the Wise Men.  Once everybody is in place, though, on one side you see the shepherds who were in the fields outside Bethlehem when Jesus was born, outsiders in many ways, but no doubt native to the neighborhood.  On the other side you see the Wise Men, Zoroastrian officials from Persia, strangers to Palestine from beyond even the Roman world.  In the center you see the baby in the manger

“Jesus Christ our Lord, through whom we have received grace”, [Romans 1:4b-5a]

whose miraculous birth and whose holy presence in the world draws them – all of them – together to adore him.

Luke tells another story connected to Jesus’ birth.  It’s about the first time that Mary and Joseph took him to the Temple in Jerusalem.  He tells how they met an old, pious man named Simeon who had been told by God that he would see the Messiah before he died.

“Guided by the Spirit, Simeon came into the temple; and when the parents brought in the child Jesus, to do for him what was customary under the law, Simeon took him in his arms and praised God, saying,

‘Master, now you are dismissing your servant in peace,

     according to your word;

for my eyes have seen your salvation,

     which you have prepared in the presence of all peoples,

a light for revelation to the Gentiles

     and for glory to your people Israel.’” [Luke 2:27-32]

 

To that, the proper response is, “Amen,” and look forward to the day it is heard coming from every direction.

"A (Possibly) Fair Comparison"

 

Luke 1:46-55 A

December 14, 2025 

And Mary said, “My soul magnifies the Lord, and my spirit rejoices in God my Savior, for he has looked with favor on the lowliness of his servant. Surely, from now on all generations will call me blessed; for the Mighty One has done great things for me, and holy is his name. His mercy is for those who fear him from generation to generation. He has shown strength with his arm; he has scattered the proud in the thoughts of their hearts. He has brought down the powerful from their thrones, and lifted up the lowly; he has filled the hungry with good things, and sent the rich away empty. He has helped his servant Israel, in remembrance of his mercy, according to the promise he made to our ancestors, to Abraham and to his descendants forever.”

 

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            There’s a man with some financial and social difficulties and probably some learning difficulties – although he’s been out of school for a long, long time – who drops by the church every few months.  His background is one you sort of have to piece together over time, because he isn’t a big talker, and doesn’t say a lot about himself.  From what I gather, most of his life he has done general labor and warehouse work, but a few years ago (when Amazon and its competitors took over the scene), employers started to challenge their workers develop skills that would integrate previously-assigned tasks with distribution programming platforms designed to facilitate product delivery.  They developed innovative technical resources to optimize their staffing costs through a leaner personnel profile.  In other words, they fired people like him who couldn’t handle computerization.  He hasn’t been able to get back on his feet very well since then.  He’s a very gentle soul and has withstood far more than he deserves to have faced with a good deal of determination and grace.  Sometimes it gets to him, and I don’t doubt it goes far deeper than he lets on.

            I don’t usually mention names but in his case I will, because it’s Elon.  Yes, this man shares a name with the richest man in the world.  In fact, he had it first.  Talk about irony.  You can’t make this stuff up.

            Jesus said not to judge lest we be judged ourselves, so it is with awareness of my sinfulness when I say this (but I will): I’ve never met, and never expect to meet, the other Elon; and it may be unfair of me to judge only by what I’ve seen in the news or on social media; but if I had to spend any real time around one Elon or the other, I know which one I would pick.  I know which one I would trust more and which one would be a better friend.  Of the two men, though, I am sure which one Mary’s song, the Magnificat, speaks to more directly.  And I am sure that one does not drive a Tesla.

“Mary said, ‘My soul magnifies the Lord, and my spirit rejoices in God my Savior, for he has looked with favor on the lowliness of his servant. Surely, from now on all generations will call me blessed; for the Mighty One has done great things for me, and holy is his name. His mercy is for those who fear him from generation to generation. He has shown strength with his arm; he has scattered the proud in the thoughts of their hearts. He has brought down the powerful from their thrones, and lifted up the lowly; he has filled the hungry with good things, and sent the rich away empty. He has helped his servant Israel, in remembrance of his mercy, according to the promise he made to our ancestors, to Abraham and to his descendants forever.’” [Luke 1:46-55]

            It is a great mistake to equate either poverty or riches with virtue or with closeness to God, although both have been done.  One of the great heresies of modern Christianity is called the “Prosperity Gospel”.  Here I’m going to rely on a definition from the Britannica, so I don’t end up giving it my own bias.  Britannica calls it,

“the teaching that faith—expressed through positive thoughts, positive declarations, and donations to the church—draws health, wealth, and happiness into believers’ lives. It is also referred to as the ‘health and wealth gospel’ or ‘name it and claim it.’”[1] 

There’s another, older expression of that.  It comes in the notion that God blesses the faithful with material prosperity, so if someone is rich they must therefore be righteous.  If, however, they fall on hard times, then that may indicate that they have sinned and God has withdrawn his blessing.  There must be something morally wrong with a man who could not change with the industry that employed him.

The Bible tells the story of a man named Job.  He loses his wealth, and his health, and his children.  His wife is so upset that she tells him just to curse God and lay down and die.  Then his friends show up and, trying to be helpful, tell him that he must have done something to make the Lord angry, so he should just admit his fault and throw himself on God’s mercy.  Job himself insists that he hasn’t done anything to bring the losses upon himself, and demands that God appear to explain it all.  The scary part, even scarier than his sufferings, is when a whirlwind bears down on him and out of the whirlwind the Lord himself speaks and tells Job to stop assuming he could even begin to know the way the universe works.  Job backs down and shows genuine humility.  But God also commends Job for his adherence to him in the face of all he had undergone.  Then a new set of blessings is given to him, restored wealth and new children – all of which would comfort him, though there could never really be compensation for, or replacement of, those whom he had lost.

All blessings come from God.  Start with the basic blessing of life itself, then add friends and health and talents and abilities and opportunities and being born in the right place and time and on and on.  Some people possess none of that, a few possess a small portion, even fewer possess much, and no one possesses any of it forever, at least not on earth.

            With the coming of Christ, though, there is the beginning of justice.  Mary would know, like Job, the loss of her son.  She would be standing right there watching, present at his death no less than at his birth.  She had known the labor pains, and she would know the emotional and spiritual pains of watching his slow execution.  She would also know how he loved her to the end, in his own suffering asking John to care for her, doing what little he could at that point as the poor and powerless have always done, sticking together all the way through the valley of the shadow of death.  So also she would know the joy of God’s restoration of his life at his resurrection. 

“My soul magnifies the Lord, and my spirit rejoices in God my Savior, for he has looked with favor on the lowliness of his servant. Surely, from now on all generations will call me blessed; for the Mighty One has done great things for me, and holy is his name.”

Who is rich and who is poor?  It depends.  But don’t think you can tell based on one aspect of life alone, and certainly not by a credit rating.  Whom has God blessed and who has missed out on the blessing?  Who is up and who is down?  Who is full and who is empty?  Is it Elon or is it Elon?  Is it the one who can smile even when his phone bill is larger than his weekly earnings or the one who cannot be happy with just one rocket ship?  Is it Elon or is it Elon?  Who is it who sees the mighty hand of God at work and knows both his justice and his mercy?  Is it Elon or is it Elon?  It could be anyone or (even better) everyone.

And when the day arrives – and it will – that we see everyone know the Lord’s ways, may all our souls together magnify the Lord and rejoice in God, our Savior.

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[1] Prosperity gospel | Definition, Preachers, History, Theology, & Criticism | Britannica

"Faith, Hope, and Love"

 

Romans 15:7-13

December 7, 2025

 

Welcome one another, therefore, just as Christ has welcomed you, for the glory of God. For I tell you that Christ has become a servant of the circumcised on behalf of the truth of God in order that he might confirm the promises given to the ancestors and that the gentiles might glorify God for his mercy. As it is written,

“Therefore I will confess you among the gentiles
    and sing praises to your name”;

and again he says,

“Rejoice, O gentiles, with his people”;

and again,

“Praise the Lord, all you gentiles,
    and let all the peoples praise him”;

and again Isaiah says,

“The root of Jesse shall come,
    the one who rises to rule the gentiles;
in him the gentiles shall hope.”

May the God of hope fill you with all joy and peace in believing, so that you may abound in hope by the power of the Holy Spirit.

 

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            Let’s do a quick review to see who was paying attention in Sunday School.  Fill in the blank.

“Faith, hope, and love abide – these three.  And the greatest of these is    love .” [I Corinthians 13]

“  Faith   is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things unseen.”  [Hebrews 11]

“For in   hope  we were saved.  Now   hope  that is seen is not    hope  .  For who hopes for what is seen?  But if we   hope  for what we do not see, we wait for it with patience.” [Romans 8:24-25]

Right.  Of those three, hope is the middle child, the one that is always there in the background but who generally gets the least attention.  Not that hope is totally ignored.  Here’s the state flag of Rhode Island.  And here are regular guests on the old Prarie Home Companion: the Hopeful Gospel Quartet.  But we don’t really pay a lot of attention to hope as a concept or as a virtue, and I think there’s a good reason for that.

            We speak of hope glibly when things are going well.  Hope comes into serious play, though, when things are going badly.  There are points where we actively start to look for hope and sources of hope, at first within ourselves and then beyond ourselves in sort of a sliding scale.

                        I hope there’s something good in my email.

                        I hope there’s nothing bad in my email.

                        I hope my email stops telling me there’s an error.

I hope I can figure this out.

                        I hope my email hasn’t been hacked.

                        I hope none of this affects my other accounts or programs.

                        I hope my entire computer isn’t infected with malware.

                        I hope somebody answers the assistance number; I’ve been waiting for an hour.

                        I hope this nightmare ends before Christmas.

I know that sounds trivial, but tell me you haven’t been there.

Now transfer that to a larger background, and translate it into the experience of Israel.  In fact, you can sort of track this progression throughout the words of the prophets over a period of centuries.

                        I hope that the national leaders begin to acknowledge the Lord’s ways.

                        I hope that their malfeasance doesn’t weaken our society.

                        I hope that our enemies don’t take advantage of our division.

                        I hope that the invaders can be driven away.

                        I hope we survive this occupation.

                        I hope God hasn’t given up on us.

Don’t bother.  It’s hopeless.

 

That last thought comes from the prophet Jeremiah in the book of Lamentations, where he says to God,

 

“Why have you forgotten us completely?

           Why have you forsaken us these many days?

Restore us to yourself, O Lord, that we may be restored;

           renew our days as of old –

unless you have utterly rejected us,

           and are angry at us beyond measure.” [Lamentations 5:20-22]

 

Yet there is a step beyond hopelessness.  There is one more word, one where somebody says, “I hope to have some hope again someday.”

 

            The prophet Isaiah spoke that word to his people.  He looked at the destruction that he had seen.  No less than Jeremiah, he had beheld the horrors that went with the overthrow of a kingdom and the demolition of the Temple where his people met the glory of God, cutting them off from the source of their very being, taking away their identity as his people, undercutting their belief in God’s power, seemingly to belie his profession of love toward them and to emphasize that he didn’t care what happened, if he even existed.  Isaiah knew that, too.

 

            Then he spoke, saying,

 

“A shoot shall come out of the stump of Jesse,

and a branch shall grow out of his roots.” [Isaiah 11:1]

 

That’s Jesse, the father of David.  Hope was there.  After all that had gone on, you cannot keep God from beginning again.  Hope is built into the very nature of things, and cannot be kept down any more than you can keep a stump from putting out a new shoot.  There’s a Rose of Sharon bush out back, next to the kitchen door.  I don’t know how many times I have cut it back or even phacked at its roots, and every spring, it starts up again.  Kudzu, honeysuckle, forsythia, bamboo – take your choice – they find their way back, no matter what you try.

 

            God had a purpose for the people of Israel and Judah to prepare the way for the coming of his Son into the world, and that would not be hindered.  God has a purpose for the coming of his Son into human hearts among people of all nations, and for his Spirit to live in all of human life regardless of tribal or national or personal histories.  Neither will that be hindered.  Even when tragedies come along that steal hope away, and that level everything back to the ground, hope will grow again, watered by faith, and rooted and grounded in love – not our love for God, which can come and go, but God’s love for us and for his whole world, which is steadfast.

 

            Name the disaster.  Name the source of despair.  Name the tragedy.  There is hope when we hear these questions asked honestly and not just avoided or brushed off.

                       

“Who will separate us from the love of Christ? Will affliction or distress or persecution or famine or nakedness or peril or sword? As it is written,

‘For your sake we are being killed all day long;
    we are accounted as sheep to be slaughtered.’

No, in all these things we are more than victorious through him who loved us. For I am convinced that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor rulers, nor things present, nor things to come, nor powers, nor height, nor depth, nor anything else in all creation will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord.” [Romans 8:35-39]