Written by Gordon McPhee
Matthew 2: 1-12
Ephesians 3:1-13 [MSG]
This is why I, Paul, am in jail for Christ, having taken up the cause of you outsiders, so-called. I take it that you’re familiar with the part I was given in God’s plan for including everybody. I got the inside story on this from God himself, as I just wrote you in brief.
As you read over what I have written to you, you’ll be able to see for yourselves into the mystery of Christ. None of our ancestors understood this. Only in our time has it been made clear by God’s Spirit through his holy apostles and prophets of this new order. The mystery is that people who have never heard of God and those who have heard of him all their lives (what I’ve been calling outsiders and insiders) stand on the same ground before God. They get the same offer, same help, same promises in Christ Jesus. The Message is accessible and welcoming to everyone, across the board.
This is my life work: helping people understand and respond to this Message. It came as a sheer gift to me, a real surprise, God handling all the details. When it came to presenting the Message to people who had no background in God’s way, I was the least qualified of any of the available Christians. God saw to it that I was equipped, but you can be sure that it had nothing to do with my natural abilities.
And so here I am, preaching and writing about things that are way over my head, the inexhaustible riches and generosity of Christ. My task is to bring out in the open and make plain what God, who created all this in the first place, has been doing in secret and behind the scenes all along. Through followers of Jesus like yourselves gathered in churches, this extraordinary plan of God is becoming known and talked about even among the angels!
All this is proceeding along lines planned all along by God and then executed in Christ Jesus. When we trust in him, we’re free to say whatever needs to be said, bold to go wherever we need to go. So don’t let my present trouble on your behalf get you down. Be proud!
Isaiah 60:1-3 [MSG]
“Get out of bed, Jerusalem!
Wake up. Put your face in the sunlight.
God’s bright glory has risen for you.
The whole earth is wrapped in darkness,
all people sunk in deep darkness,
But God rises on you,
his sunrise glory breaks over you.
Nations will come to your light,
kings to your sunburst brightness.
“The Big Reveal”
Introduction:
You’ll have to forgive my sermon title this morning. I chose it before Google revealed to me that it also refers to a line dance, an eyelash curler, a modern rock band, and most notably, a book touted as an Illustrated Manifesto of Drag. None of which we’ll hopefully be discussing this morning. Instead, we focus on the Epiphany, the church celebrates twelve days after Christmas, on January 6th—the first manifestation, or revealing, of Jesus, the Messiah, to the world.
Often, it refers to the visit of the Magi as recorded in Matthew 2:1-12, which is our Gospel reading this morning. It can also be about Jesus revealing Himself as God to His disciples in the miracle at Cana, recorded in John 2:1-11, and the Baptism of Jesus, in Matthew 3:13-17, Mark 1:9-11, Luke 3:21-22, and John 1:29-34, which reveal Jesus as part of the Trinity. We often like the Magi story because it allows us to discuss Jesus being revealed to the Gentiles, specifically the wise men from the East. However, modern thought suggests they may have been Jews still living and serving in foreign courts after the 70-year exile to Babylon. It’s known that many did not return to Jerusalem, which would explain their interest in astrology that pointed to the birth of a king in a faraway country like Israel.
This morning, though, I’d like to examine what Paul has to say in his letter to the Ephesians, which we will read a little later. Paul reveals that the Gentiles are as much a part of the work of Christ Jesus as the Jews are. But his revelation, for us, isn’t only that everyone is equally included in God’s plan of salvation, but his big reveal is through whom this revelation is coming to the world.
Sermon:
On January 5th last year, I have to pause and get used to calling 2025 last year I was here leading the Epiphany service and I discovered, dare I say, had an epiphany, that I preached on the same scripture the previous year. You see, Epiphany only has one set of readings; it doesn’t rotate through year A, B, and C. I could, I suppose, have saved myself a lot of work and just used last year’s homily, but Susan faithfully puts them up on the website for comparison, so my secret would soon have been revealed.
Fortunately, by that time, I had experienced a whole new epiphany regarding what Paul was saying to the Ephesians; one of the useful things about scripture being that the Holy Spirit reveals different truths to different people at different times in consideration of the same words, and of that I am no exception.
S1 “This is why I, Paul, am in jail for Christ,” (Eph 3:1)
As always, we must start with context, and our context starts with Paul’s opening phrase, “This is why I, Paul, am in jail for Christ.” The ‘This’ is explained in chapter 2. Paul explains that his mission was to reveal to those he refers to as ‘outsiders’-non-Jews-that they too are included in the reconciling work of God, through the Holy Spirit, in Jesus Christ.
S2 “You knew nothing of that rich history of God’s covenants and promises in Israel, hadn’t a clue about what God was doing in the world at large.
Now because of Christ ... you who were once out of it altogether are in on everything.” (2:12-13)
“You’re no longer strangers or outsiders. You belong here, with as much right to the name Christian as anyone.” (19)
This placed him at odds with fellow Jews and, in particular, Jewish Christians, who wanted to retain that particular status as God’s chosen people within a faithful Jewish community.
It was a hot theological issue over keeping the Torah, the law of Moses, and things like circumcision and ritual sacrifice at the Temple. It was also a hot political issue for Jews who looked to a messiah to come and restore the Kingdom of Israel as it was in the days of David and Solomon. And let's not forget the problems this fomented with a Roman system of polytheism in which one’s loyalty to Rome and the Emperor meant recognizing his divinity. Paul was in jail because what he proposed poked at just about every established civil accommodation of the time.
S3 “The mystery is that people who have never heard of God and those who have heard of him all their lives … stand on the same ground before God.
They get the same offer, same help, same promises in Christ Jesus.” (3:5-6)
Does this put a damper on Paul’s message? Not in the least. At the end of our reading, he says to the Ephesians, “So don’t let my present trouble on your behalf get you down. Be proud!” He wants them to be proud that his message is being heard and getting a reaction. As Paul puts it, those who have no knowledge of God “get the same offer, same help, same promises in Christ Jesus” as those who grew up immersed in it. That would be quite a message to preach on today. It was an epiphany at the time, so much so that Paul was spending time imprisoned as a result.
This message of salvation through Jesus the Messiah, which was once relegated to this insignificant and peculiar ethnic group within the Roman Empire, was now a message of renewal and freedom for everyone throughout the Empire and beyond. It was a message of hope for the whole world, superseding boundaries of barbarian and civilized, Jew and Gentile. And as much of an epiphany this is as I mentioned in the introduction, there is something even more that Paul wants to reveal to the Ephesians, and I’m sure to us as well.
S4 “This is my life work:” (7a)
“When it came to presenting the Message to people who had no background in God’s way, I was the least qualified of any of the available Christians. God saw to it that I was equipped, but you can be sure that it had nothing to do with my natural abilities.” (7-8)
He attests that spreading this good news is his life’s work. As he confesses, it's not because he’s the man equipped for the job. For Paul, it was, as he puts it, “a real surprise,” a true epiphany if you will. In the story of Paul’s first steps as a Christian, as recorded in the Acts of the Apostles, he experienced considerable trouble and limited success in his efforts to reach out to his fellow Jews in Jerusalem. Things got so bad that Paul finally returned to his hometown of Tarsus and was not heard from again until Barnabas sought him out to join the Gospel work in Antioch.
Paul, I feel certain, assumed that his vast learning, as he himself put it, as a Pharisee of the Pharisees, should have made him an ideal candidate to bring the Gospel to the Jews. And I dare say, we would all agree. If we were staffing our church outreach program, Paul would be the number one choice for the messianic mission to the Jews. But as Paul witnesses, God had a different, better plan. In fact, it was a gift, not a program.
S5 And so here I am, preaching and writing about things that are way over my head, the inexhaustible riches and generosity of Christ.” (8)
“My task is to bring out in the open and make plain what God, who created all this in the first place, has been doing in secret and behind the scenes all along.” (9)
It wasn’t dependent on his own capabilities or knowledge. God was the one directing the work and ensuring Paul was equipped for it. Not through his own natural abilities, this was a work of the Holy Spirit. “So here I am,” he says, “preaching and writing about things that are way over my head.” My goodness, this is Paul the Apostle, the most prolific New Testament theologian whose letters have established the creed and witness of the Christian Church for the past two thousand years. He testifies that the things he is professing, “the inexhaustible riches and generosity of Christ,” are way over his head.
And yet, as he says, the task is to “bring out in the open and make plain what God … has been doing in secret.” Listen to this carefully now. All this work, “the inexhaustible riches and generosity of Christ,” which we know to be the eternal plan of salvation wrought by Jesus at the cross, produced by the Holy Spirit in the resurrection and which will be fulfilled in the coming again of Christ as King of kings is being accomplished by God through the Holy Spirit in secret, with no help from us.
Paul’s job, and the job of the Church, and our job, “is to bring out in the open and make [it] plain.” Paul got it, do you? We’re not here to save the world; God’s already got that. As Paul confessed, and we should too, we’re not qualified. God is the one who created all this in the first place. He set the universe in motion, the stars in their courses, from which they haven’t moved, and the sun and moon in the sky to give light to the day and the night. And He made Paul, and He made you, and He made me.
S6 Through followers of Jesus like yourselves gathered in churches, this extraordinary plan of God is becoming known and talked about even among the angels! (10)
And here’s Paul’s really big reveal, the epiphany that made being in jail alright. This incredible secret that is being accomplished by God the Holy Spirit every day is being revealed to the world through us. “Through followers of Jesus like yourselves gathered in churches.” The word translated as "churches" is "ecclesia," which doesn’t refer to an institution. It’s a gathering of people with a common ground and purpose, like citizens or a family gathering to make decisions or share a common grief or joy.
Every time we come together, two or three or more, gathered together because of our common faith in the Lord Jesus Christ, “this extraordinary plan of God is becoming known and talked about even among the angels!” What is being revealed is God’s love for the world. That he is faithful to fulfill everything that he planned from the initiation of his creation, not a molecule will go astray, because he is sovereign and able to complete all his intentions.
The great epiphany is that the world is coming to know of this through us. God hasn’t asked us to bring salvation to the world, but to reveal to the world the salvation that he has already brought to us in Christ Jesus. We are the messengers, the lights of God’s message to the world. Christ is the light of the world, but that light shines through us. But we need to show up. We need to be there when someone who needs the light seeks it. Because it is through us, the world will come to know Jesus.
Not for their sakes, as God’s work is their salvation, he’ll see to that. But we deny ourselves the blessing and opportunity to reveal what God is doing for them in secret. Paul ends this section with some very encouraging words to the Ephesians. “When we trust in him, we’re free to say whatever needs to be said, bold to go wherever we need to go. … Be proud!”
The opening verses of our reading from Isaiah 60 this morning, I think, are a fitting rallying cry for a church that is to reveal “this extraordinary plan of God.”
“Get out of bed, Jerusalem!
Wake up. Put your face in the sunlight.
God’s bright glory has risen for you.
The whole earth is wrapped in darkness,
all people sunk in deep darkness,
But God rises on you,
his sunrise glory breaks over you.
Nations will come to your light,
kings to your sunburst brightness.
Isaiah 60:1-3 [MSG]
Amen
