January 2, 2022 ~ Second Sunday after Christmas ~ Sermon & Zoom Worship Video Link

https://us02web.zoom.us/rec/share/Hzs4uvO9pn8Ow9_AQrYPfMuSzYMYaAXAxl9VPpIylzKWhGH0yA6NgQv3f7LDzFEr.8YNwf8baHr2v5pbf

2^nd Sunday of Christmas                                                                     01/02/22—Highland—Meute

“For the Fullness of Time”

Jeremiah 31: 7-14; Ephesians 1: 3-14

Pearl: Christ is the center (Dietrich Bonhoeffer) who completes God’s destiny for creation.

Function: To proclaim that Jesus Christ was, is, and will be the linchpin, the centerpiece of God’s redemption of all things.

Time is on our minds at the start of a New Year. We rehearse the last year and even others years prior to that. And these last couple of years will go down in history as being some of the most challenging.

1. We also look forward to the New Year at hand and wish for and hope for good things to come.
2. We mark time at the New Year and reflect.
   1. Marking time is a posture for soldiers and for marching bands. When you mark time you stay in one place with your feet moving up and down. You are moving but you are staying in one place.
   1. Marking time is a good thing to do at the New Year. While marking time you are alive and ready to move but you are waiting for the impulse to march.
      1. You are reflecting on where you have been and you are thinking about where to go.
      1. Many times come in life to mark time.
         1. When you are expecting a child you mark time.
         1. When you are preparing to marry you are marking time.
         1. When you bury your loved ones you mark time.
         1. As a church while you reassess your identity and mission you mark time for a season.
3. Young people can’t wait to be 16 or 18 or 21.
   1. Older people can’t believe they are in their 80’s and 90’s asking the question, “Where did the time go?”
4. We have a unique relationship with “time.”
   1. By the way do you remember all the fuss when we switched over from the 20^th century to the 21^st century? It was called the Y2K bug and there was great concern over how computers would deal with a shortcut that was built into the original software programs. The change was expected to create problems for infrastructures, such as those for banking and power plants.
      1. All kinds of effort was put into preparing for Y2K and making the transition.
      1. As a member of the clergy I was a part of a local emergency management task force set up to prepare for Y2K on the local level. I guess they wanted a clergy person to attend to the apocalyptic aspects!
   1. Thanks to all of the preparation, it went fairly smoothly, as I recall.
      1. I do remember that New Year’s Eve! Our children were 11, 9, and 4, and Nancy and I gathered them in the bell tower of the church and rang that bell with gusto at the New Year and the New Millennium!
5. The scriptures say that “in the fullness of time, God sent his Son” (Galatians 4:4).
   1. That takes “time” to a whole new level! What is the “fullness of time?”
      1. And more importantly, what is God’s sense of the “fullness of time?”
      1. From the New Testament Greek word, pleurow, translated as “fullness” is the idea of “completion.”
   1. From God’s own wisdom and from God’s sense of his own salvation history, he determined that it was “time” to send his Son our Savior.

Christ, your Savior, “fulfills, completes” in every sense of the word.

Your Savior, Jesus Christ, is the center, he is the linchpin of salvation history.

1. The Apostle Paul wrote significant things about this. In these opening verses of Ephesians, he wrote that basically “everything would be brought together and summed up in him, everything in deepest heaven, everything on planet earth” (Peterson, The Message).
   1. The English Standard Version of the bible translates it this way: “…a plan for the fullness of time, to unite all things in him, things in heaven and things on earth.”
2. Your Savior, Jesus Christ, fills all in all!
   1. When I was examined on the floor of Pittsburgh Presbytery for ordination as a Minister of Word and Sacrament, one of my mentors stood up to ask me a question.
      1. This is a nerve-wracking part of the process toward ordination. Finally you are brought before the Presbytery to read your statement of faith. It is a theological statement of faith. You are required to address several topics in your statement.
      1. My mentor was a close friend. He married Nancy and me. I worked for him in the college chapel program for three years.
      1. Shortly before my date in front of the Presbytery he told me about his senior thesis from when he was in seminary. It was on this very idea of Christ being filled with divinity and filling all in all. He told me verbatim the very question he was asked on the floor of Presbytery.
         1. I listened with some interest but it kind of went in one ear and out the other.
      1. When my mentor friend stood to ask a question much to my alarm he asked the same question: “In the pleurotic (filled state), was Christ closer to the monophysite or the dyophysite view of his essential nature.” You see, I still have it memorized!
         1. There I stood before the entire Pittsburgh Presbytery, a large group at that time, and you could hear a pin drop, all were so shocked at the difficulty of the question I was just asked.
         1. Since I had already heard the question, I should have been fine, but I forgot the answer. I guessed at an answer and satisfied my questioner, mentor!
      1. That memory came as we consider how Christ was the fulfillment of time and also that salvation history was fulfilled in him.
3. Your Lord Jesus, through his entire being, completes and fulfills.
   1. Through Jesus we are complete. We are filled and fulfilled.
   1. All creation is completed and fulfilled in Jesus Christ.

How does Christ fulfill and complete you?

1. As Paul wrote in verse 3 of Ephesians, chapter 1, through Christ we receive every spiritual blessing!
   1. As our preeminent guide, Christ is the source and essence of spirituality.
      1. In Christ we have salvation.
      1. Through Christ we know the love and grace of God.
      1. From the example of Jesus we know:
         1. How to pray
         1. How to live
         1. How to love
         1. How to serve
         1. How to worship
         1. How to care
         1. How to fight, and so on.
2. The teachings of Christ show the Way of God.
   1. We find our greatest wisdom in the Gospels of Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John.
3. Jesus fulfills you and completes you because he has granted his Spirit to you to remind you of everything that he taught.
4. He fulfills us because we live in his name. That is, we live in accordance with the mind and with the heart of Jesus.

Christ, your Savior, fills and fulfills, in every sense of the word.

There is a present and future dimension to Christ’s fulfillment of all things.

1. Sending the Son to be born was done at God’s timing to fulfill salvation history.
2. God will send him again at which time we believe that he will finally, and totally complete making everything right. God’s redemption of all things will finally be completed in total.
   1. In and through Jesus Christ you and I have access to both of these dimensions!
   1. We have access to eternity which includes all dimensions.
   1. Since Christ Jesus fulfills all in all, through him we can access his fullness and we can know God!
      1. Since Christ Jesus fulfills all in all, through him we can know God’s Ways.
      1. Heaven and earth will complement each other in a unity never before known.
         1. They will no longer repel against one another but unite in complete oneness.
3. This will be all because of Jesus Christ, who fills all in all.
   1. At the end of the first chapter of Ephesians, verse 23, we read: “[God] has put all things under his feet and has made him the head over all things for the church, which is his body, the fullness of him who fills all in all.”

We especially perceive the reality of the fullness of Christ who fills all in all, at the Communion Table. See the Communion Table as a portal into eternity.

Come to the Table today, on this first Sunday of the New Year, with fresh hope and with fresh determination to follow the One in whom the fullness of God was pleased to dwell, and to follow with every ounce of strength and energy the One who completes and perfects all that God creates: Jesus Christ, your Savior and your Lord.