January 4, 2026 | Word Out!
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READINGS AND SERMON
First Reading: Jeremiah 31:7-14
7 Thus says the Lord:
Sing aloud with gladness for Jacob,
and raise shouts for the chief of the nations;
proclaim, give praise, and say,
“Save, O Lord, your people,
the remnant of Israel.”
8 See, I am going to bring them from the land of the north
and gather them from the farthest parts of the earth,
among them the blind and the lame,
those with child and those in labor together;
a great company, they shall return here.
9 With weeping they shall come,
and with consolations I will lead them back;
I will let them walk by brooks of water,
in a straight path where they shall not stumble,
for I have become a father to Israel,
and Ephraim is my firstborn.
10 Hear the word of the Lord, O nations,
and declare it in the coastlands far away;
say, “He who scattered Israel will gather him
and will keep him as a shepherd does a flock.”
11 For the Lord has ransomed Jacob
and has redeemed him from hands too strong for him.
12 They shall come and sing aloud on the height of Zion,
and they shall be radiant over the goodness of the Lord,
over the grain, the wine, and the oil,
and over the young of the flock and the herd;
their life shall become like a watered garden,
and they shall never languish again.
13 Then shall the young women rejoice in the dance,
and the young men and the old shall be merry.
I will turn their mourning into joy;
I will comfort them and give them gladness for sorrow.
14 I will give the priests their fill of fatness,
and my people shall be satisfied with my bounty,
says the Lord.
Second Reading: Ephesians 1:3-14
3 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, just as he chose us in Christ before the foundation of the world to be holy and blameless before him in love. He destined us for adoption as his children through Jesus Christ, according to the good pleasure of his will, to the praise of his glorious grace that he freely bestowed on us in the Beloved. In him we have redemption through his blood, the forgiveness of our trespasses, according to the riches of his grace that he lavished on us. 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. 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, so that we, who were the first to set our hope on Christ, might live for the praise of his glory. In 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; this is the pledge of our inheritance toward redemption as God’s own people, to the praise of his glory.
Gospel: John 1:1-18
1 In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. He was in the beginning with God. All things came into being through him, and without him not one thing came into being. What has come into being in him was life, and the life was the light of all people. The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness did not overtake it.
There was a man sent from God whose name was John. He came as a witness to testify to the light, so that all might believe through him. He himself was not the light, but he came to testify to the light. The true light, which enlightens everyone, was coming into the world.
He was in the world, and the world came into being through him, yet the world did not know him. He came to what was his own, and his own people did not accept him. But to all who received him, who believed in his name, he gave power to become children of God, who were born, not of blood or of the will of the flesh or of the will of man, but of God.
And the Word became flesh and lived among us, and we have seen his glory, the glory as of a father’s only son, full of grace and truth. (John testified to him and cried out, “This was he of whom I said, ‘He who comes after me ranks ahead of me because he was before me.’ ”) From his fullness we have all received, grace upon grace. The law indeed was given through Moses; grace and truth came through Jesus Christ. No one has ever seen God. It is the only Son, himself God, who is close to the Father’s heart, who has made him known.
Sermon
Grace to you, and peace, from God, the source of life, and from Jesus, who is that life and light in the world. Amen.
“You are enough in Christ.” It’s a message I could hear every single Sunday.
You are enough in Christ.
At the beginning of Advent, the Christian New Year, that is, the first season of the church, I shared with you three Christian New Year’s resolutions. I resolved to be more grateful, I resolved to be more charitable, and I resolved to be more hopeful.
I am here this morning to confess to you that I have fallen short in all three resolutions, particularly the last, with regard to the events that have transpired recently in Venezuela. I am not as hopeful as I would like, I am not as charitable as I would like, and I am not as grateful as I would like.
More recently, that is, since the beginning of the church year, I saw a clergy post on Facebook. It says the following:
“New Year’s (speaking now of the secular year) is the Annual Festival of “We’re Not Good Enough.” The annual festival of we’re not good enough. We’re not skinny enough, we’re not young enough, we’re not nice enough, we’re not smart enough, and when it comes to being a church, we’re not big enough. It is “the Unholy Day of the Little Law,” what the Gospel of John refers to is the law of Moses, but in this case, the “little law” that always accuses us.
Today and every day, in spite of this little law, hear this: Christ is our enough. Christ is your enough. In Him alone, we are 100% pleasing to God.
Now, isn’t that a welcome message? In Him alone, we are 100% pleasing to God.
Philip Melanchthon, who is Martin Luther’s right-hand man in the Protestant Reformation, used the word for this kind of being-enough, “acceptance,” more than 10 times in the defense he wrote to the Augsburg Confession, the founding document of the Lutheran faith.
You are accepted in Christ. You are embraced in Christ. Christ is your enough.
Now, I’m sure it would be easy to add to the list of little laws that always accuse us, ways that we are “not enough” of something. I’m not a parent, for example, but I was thinking what it is like to be a parent. Do you find yourself accusing yourself of falling short? Do you find yourself saying “I could have done better?” Do you find yourself saying “I could have done more”?
Or, perhaps, the same is true for those of you who are grandparents or siblings or friends; in any of these cases, we can add to that list ways in which we are not enough. The point is simple. Most of us are pretty good at internalizing the various ways we fall short, the various ways we don’t measure up, the various inadequacies we have when it comes to standards.
I’m not talking here about genuine repentance, about how we fall short of loving God and our neighbor. I’m talking about the ways we pick at ourselves, the inner critic who, for some of us at least, never seems to shut up!
Now, when I shared my New Year’s Christian resolutions with you, I had no idea I would be setting myself up for failure. Now, don’t get me wrong; I think it’s good to ask God to help us be more Christ-like in the various ways that I named: more charitable, more hopeful, more empowered by faith, more able to see Him in our neighbor, especially the least of these, the poor, the immigrant, the outcast.
And in fairness to myself—this is a little act of self-justification— I did talk about, in that sermon, asking the Spirit to empower us to be these things, not relying simply on ourselves and our own free will.
But in making resolutions, as I’ve been saying, we set up goals that can place an unhealthy burden on ourselves. They can turn on us. They become the standards by which we fail to meet our own expectations, let alone God’s.
Now, over the past year or two or three, you have heard me talk about a book that I have been writing. Do you know how many times I have failed to meet the deadline for this book? And in each case, I tell the editor, I tell myself, “I will have it to you by May 1.” “I will have it to you by July 1.” “I will have it to you by December 1.” And now “I will have it to you by January 1.” The book is almost done, but it’s been a really dreadful experience in so far as I keep beating myself up for expectations I set that I have not met.
And when it comes to beating ourselves up: I, as some of you know, am not a sports fan but recently, I watched 49ers game. I’m from California. (I’m sorry, that’s how I’m going to vote.) I saw a 49ers game where the opposing team made an error that eventually cost them the game. And I thought about the guy that made that error. And I thought about how everybody was cheering on the 49ers for winning that game, and what a great game it was. What it must have been like for that guy to go home that night, and think about the error he ostensibly made—perhaps it was the result of other reasons—that cost his team that game and a chance in the playoffs.
That kind of burden, that kind of expectation that we set upon ourselves, whether it’s a pastor writing a book or a football player in a game, can be devastating. This is why I feel it is so important that we are constantly reminded and reassured of God’s grace.
And so this morning, I want you to hear the message I have preached many times from this pulpit, a message I hope you hear when you receive the bread and wine of Holy Communion, or perhaps one you notice when you’re singing one of our hymns:
No matter what, God loves you in Jesus Christ.
No matter what, you are enough in Him.
And nowhere, nowhere, in my opinion, in Scripture is that more clear than in the first and second chapters of Ephesians, our Second Reading for today.
Now, if it were up to me, I would do a 40-minute sermon on all the theological intricacies of this text. I would talk about the various ways we can distinguish predestination from philosophical determinism. I would talk about the difference between predestination from a Lutheran versus a Calvinist perspective, I would distinguish the Word of God as a living voice rather than a dead letter on the page, which the author does in first Ephesians, that is Ephesians 1:13...
But I’m going to set aside all of that and simply point out a few things in this letter, I’d like you to ponder. Take a look, if you will, at the Second Reading.
Number one, we are saved by grace. We are saved by grace. God’s love is so great, this author writes, that you and I were loved from the beginning. In verse 4, the author writes, “he chose us in Christ.” He destined us in Christ.
And for what reason? No reason at all, but simply for God’s good pleasure! God loves us because God loves us. That’s why the author of John’s gospel talks about the love that God lavishes upon us. God’s love is abundant. It’s reckless. It’s a fierce, reckless force that enters the world, claims us, takes us, sets us free from the shackles of sin so that we can live the life that God intended. We are, this author maintains, saved by grace. God, in his language, loved us from the beginning.
Now, when it comes to being saved by grace, for my money, that message is no better captured than in Galatians 4:9, where Paul writes, “Now, however, that you have come to know God…”
Now, let me stop there for a second. I am so sick of people in our culture who talk about having to come to know God or to accept God, as if salvation is based upon our decision. Ephesians makes it clear: that decision has already been made! That decision is fully, 100% in God’s hands, such that “all we need to do,” as the theologian Gerhard Forde says, “is shut up and listen!” We are loved—period. We are accepted in Christ—period. We are set free to try again in Christ—period.
Paul finishes this sentence by correcting himself again. He says, “Now, however, that you have come to be known by God, how can you turn back to your old ways?” The knowing, the loving, the choosing is all up to God, and the message, again and again, is that God loves you, and there is nothing on this earth you can do about it! You have been claimed!
This is all part of God’s plan, which is what the author talks about secondly, in the letter, that “God has made known to us a mystery of his will in Jesus Christ.” Now, we’re not talking about the idea that everything happens for a reason, that everything that unfolds in the course of history is part of God’s will. We’re talking here about God’s plan for salvation. Again, that God loved you so much from the beginning, that God, from the beginning, accepted you in Christ, and that God has now made known that plan of God’s love for you through His son.
How else, a person might ask, do we know that God loves us? We know it because it’s been made known through Christ. We hear about it. That’s something that I mentioned earlier. The Word of Truth, which this author identifies as the good news of our salvation, was never meant simply to be the dead letter of a page in a Bible that you can read. It’s meant to be declared! It’s a living voice. It’s a lovingvoice that says, not simply, “the Bible tells us,” but, “You are loved.” You are claimed. You are embraced in Jesus Christ.
So set your hope on Christ. The Scripture says, “For in Him is your salvation.” So we are saved by grace, or chosen, to use this author’s language. This chosen-ness reflects part of God’s plan for our salvation that is formed from the beginning. It is made known to us in and through Christ—how else would we know that God loves us— and we hear about it through the word of truth, through the Spirit-empowered declaration that “God loves you in Christ, no matter what.”
Here’s then the question: Who cares? Why does this matter? Well, in my view, this message affects the way that we live, and, more importantly, the way that we feel about ourselves. You’ll notice toward the end of this letter, the author talks about an inheritance we have received in Christ: an inheritance. It’s not that salvation belongs to us alone. It’s that, for this author, we are the first to hear about it. We are the ones who know, from early on in our lives, that God has claimed us. And for my money, I would much rather know that at the beginning of my life than right at the end, in a deathbed conversion.
So the inheritance is good news: to know how it all ends. And the church is important because you can never, and let me rephrase that, I can never hear this word of grace enough: that in God I am loved, that in God I am claimed, that in God, through Christ, I am accepted.
So, hear it now once more: God loves you in Jesus Christ.
God lavishes God’s love upon you.
God accepts you when your culture will not.
God claims you when you will not, and God loves you in spite of all the faults you and I may have.
It’s easy to set up ourselves for failure or remorse by making New Year’s resolutions we can’t keep, or resolutions and goals that place a burden on us and cause us harm. At worst, New Year’s is indeed “the Annual Festival of Not Being Good Enough.”
But in Christ, you are enough. In him, your God accepts you and me, so that together we can accept ourselves. This morning, whether at communion, whether in the hymns for the day, or whether quietly in your heart: ponder God’s love for you, and how you, in Christ, are enough.
In Jesus’s name, Amen.