Adopted Hope

[A reflection on the readings of the Second Sunday after Christmas, January 4, 2026, which may be read by following this link: https://www.episcopalchurch.org/lectionary/christmas-2/]

Usually, in my weekly musings, I look at the Gospel appointed for the Mass of the Day, read and reflect, and write.

We get a choice of no less than THREE passages today, and the one I pick may not be the one you hear...or the one I hear because I see the Sunday bulletin AFTER writing this...

So I will look at the Epistle today from the letter St. Paul wrote to the Church in Ephesus.

At first blush, this seems a rock-solid justification for radical Calvinism. The issue, as I see it, is the assumption of personal, particular election and not the choice of the society of the Church as a whole as being chosen before the foundation of the world and adoption of the society of the Church as a whole as being the Children of God. Regardless of where you fall in that debate, the upshot is clear, the Church and by extension its members is honoured with every spiritual honour bestowed upon us through the agency of Our Lord Jesus Christ.

Okay, that is a bit much to take in, and my sentences have run on as long as some of St. Paul's when he got the bit in his teeth (but then that was the style of the day, so we can excuse him; I have no such excuse). The upshot is that the Church, which God has appointed to be His adopted children, possesses that favour because of Our Lord Jesus Christ. This same Jesus, being God the Word taken on humanity through submission to actual gestation and birth and growth and development, has by the perfect union of divine and human natures brought humanity into favoured status with God, not because Jesus forced God's hand but because God WANTED this reconciliation. So, when He rebuilt our nature and brought it through death into life, all of us who take on that new nature get to share in the same honours bestowed upon the humanity of Jesus not because Jesus forced God's hand but because God WANTED to do this because He could not just let us wander aimlessly into nothingness without giving us a path back to Him away from the Abyss, if we really wanted it.

The challenge is recognising these honours as we slog along through this dark and dreary world that is anything BUT friendly to God. It is hard to see the light when the darkness tries to encroach on every side. St. Paul's prayer for Ephesus, and in turn for us, is that God give us the wisdom to see the blessings that are given to us now, that we can call upon for strength and encouragement now, that we have hope now when all seems hopeless. God has made this all possible by coming among us as one of us, to reconcile us to Him and rescue us at the last from the encroaching everlasting night and bring us into the eternal day of His presence.

All because He wants to do this, and always has, even before the foundation of the world.