Second Sunday after Christmas | January 4th 2026 | The Rev. Nat Johnson
Second Sunday of Christmas: January 4, 2026
Jeremiah 31:7-14 | Ephesians 1:3-6,15-19a | Matthew 2:13-15,19-23| Psalm 84
The Rev. Nat Johnson
Nearly two months ago, I shared in a sermon a quote attributed to Karl Barth, a 20th-century theologian, and contemporary of Dietrich Boenhoeffer. He said, the people of God ought not consider themselves a religious society concerned only with certain themes, but should remember that they are in the world and therefore need both the Bible and the Newspaper. On the one hand, Barth is insisting that Christians are called to be faithful readers of Scripture, to allow the words of our Bible to penetrate our souls and open us to the truth of God. On the other hand, he is also insisting that as we do so, we cannot bury our heads in the sand and ignore what is happening in the world around us. For Barth, Scripture is the lens through which we are called to critically engage with the news of the world’s happenings and the interpretive framework through which to understand our place in them.
Yesterday, many of us woke up to the news of the U.S. launching an attack on Venezuela and capturing their president and his wife. Later in the day we heard our own president proclaim his intention of “running the country” and “re-establishing” their oil industry. This assault comes as the administration continues to try to shift the nation’s attention away from Epstein, away from the failed attempts to establish peace between Ukraine and Russia, away from the countless laws they have broken as they’ve invaded U.S. cities with National Guard, detained and deported American Citizens, and stripped entire people groups of their rights to healthcare, living wages, and the promise of the pursuit of life and liberty.
Our Gospel reading today tells part of the story that we hear in full on the Feast of Holy Innocents. The message of the angel that Joseph heeds is a warning to flee from the tyrannical paranoia of a puppet king who fears losing his seat of power when he hears of Jesus’ birth. In the larger narrative, the magi who follow a star to seek the birth of a new king go to Herod and ask the whereabouts of this child. Herod does not take the news well and devises a plan to eliminate the problem. After consulting his priests, he sends them on their way and asks that they return with confirmation of the child’s location so that he, too, might go and worship this new king. But the magi are warned in a dream not to comply and so, after finding the child and presenting their gifts, they return home another way. When Herod realized he had been defied, he sent his guards and law enforcement to find and kill all of the children under the age of two in and around Bethlehem. It was this that the angel had warned Joseph about and from which Joseph, with Mary and Jesus, escaped to Egypt.
The Bible and the newspaper – on this day, we hear stories from both sources of corruption and tyrannical paranoia, of fear and violence inflicted on the innocent. If you’re anything like me, it is hard not to get overwhelmed by such stories, to feel helpless in the face of such surmounting trauma and uncertainty. I don’t know how we combat such gross overreach and disdain for human life – at least, on the grand global scale on which it all plays out. But I do know that there is something to be said about seeking refuge, about doubling down on the conviction that what we often see around us, what we often hear in the news, is not the desire of the God I serve and worship. So how are we to navigate the perilous changes and chances of this world in light of the Good News we find in scripture?
I think we get a clue about this in our second reading today. Ephesians is a letter that is drenched in prayer, calling its readers to a posture of prayer, to a search for a common identity bathed in prayer. It speaks of unity that transgresses but does not erase difference, a unity that is founded not in any earthly or human category but in the gracious disposition of a God who desires all things to find their true identity in their belovedness and in God’s peace.
The opening chapter is one long sentence in the original language, setting the rest of the content of the letter in a blessing of God while simultaneously inviting the letter’s hearers do the same. At the same time, the blessing allows the author to narrate God’s drama of salvation, a drama that began before the foundation of the world, reaching its goal and climax as all things are caught up into Christ. This drama of salvation is cosmic in scope, inclusive of but transcending the individual soul.
The opening blessing then moves into a prayer on behalf of the Ephesians. The writer prays that they will not only understand the significance and scope of God’s story of salvation but come to recognize their particular place within it. He explains that the alienation from God and one another they experienced before Christ has been overcome by God’s gracious act of redemption in and through Christ. The writer points to the Ephesian’s incorporation into the body of Christ as a tangible sign of God’s astonishing plan to bring all nations and peoples into communion with God’s chosen people through the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus. This vision of unity and reconciliation finds its source in God’s revelation, in the plan of the fullness of time as it is revealed in Jesus, the beloved of God. It is a plan that by no means is dependent upon the recipients’ participation but that nevertheless invites their cooperation through the embodiment of divine wisdom that shapes their common life and demonstrates the unity already effected in Jesus.
This cooperation, the writer tells them, is fleshed out in their living in a manner worthy of their calling, in their developing certain habits, practices, and dispositions intended to maintain the “unity of the Spirit in the bond of peace.” Living in a manner worthy of their calling will require the Ephesians to break from their past, to leave behind the habits, practices and dispositions that characterized their life apart from Christ. This kind of life will run countercultural and impact every aspect of the Ephesians’ lives – in the common life they share as a community dedicated to God and in their individual lives as they bear witness to the redemption and peace they have graciously received from God in Christ. The writer admits that living a life worthy of their calling will put them at odds with those in the world who still operate in an economy of violence and oppressive power, and so he encourages them to put on the armor of God, relying not on their own strength but on the strength of God.
Throughout the entire letter, the instructions given to the Ephesians are shrouded in prayer and blessing, demonstrating that the wisdom bestowed and the call to worthy living is not based on human wisdom or strength but on the very grace and blessing of God so freely given.
In our present moment, it might be difficult to hear the blessing and its content in the opening chapter we read a few moments ago. We might balk at words like “chosen” and “destined” because of the ways these have been coopted by various strands of Christian nationalism and expressions of Christianity hellbent on a gospel of exclusion. But the letter to the Ephesians invites us to hear these descriptions anew, to consider once again our own designation as chosen by God in Christ, as beloved of God in Christ.
Perhaps this morning you carry with you a sense of pain or suffering, of failure or rejection, of shame or guilt. Perhaps you hold the good news of God at a distance, acknowledging God’s love for you and for the world in generic terms, as an intellectual concept rather than a lived reality. Perhaps you come today weary and wary from all that is wrong in the world. If this is the case for you today, I encourage you to hear afresh the astonishing claim of the blessing that opens this letter to the Ephesians:
God has given us every Spiritual blessing in the heavens – this blessing is not about material possessions; it is not about health or wealth, but about God’s loving embrace of us – of you and of me and of all things. To receive this blessing is to accept a love that is deeply and abidingly personal. It draws us out of the safety of generic love. It closes the distance of a generic God who loves us in generic ways and draws us into a relational love that binds us to Godself and heals all sources of alienation. It dares us to see that this love is at once temporal and encompasses a cosmic goal, inclusive of all things in heaven and on earth, a love that seeks to heal and restore and unite.
This can be difficult for us to imagine – particularly in our present moment where violent rhetoric, hatred, and division enfold all aspects of our political and social world.
It can be difficult to imagine that there really is a way out of the vicious cycles of division, the constant state of wars, the destructive motives of the world’s powers and principalities. The hope to which we are called and the good news we are called to embody by living a life worthy of our calling is indeed the scandal of the gospel!
If we can dare to believe in our belovedness, if we can dare to hope in God’s plan for the fullness of time, we will discover a power that enables us to see beyond the impossibilities of this world, to imagine beyond the unimaginable of our present moment. We will discover that we are empowered to live a different truth than what is professed by the world around us, a truth that is expressed in prayer and praise, in grace and peace, in creating a community of refuge and hope for all who bear the weight of the cruelty of this world. This is the inheritance that we receive, an inheritance that shapes and colors our lives by the beauty of God’s glory and blessing.
Today, let us accept the grace and peace offered to us in Christ Jesus. Let us open wide our arms to God’s declaration that we are beloved, that we have a place in God’s story of salvation, that we are blessed so that we might also bestow God’s blessing. May it be so!