Everything that exists — Artemis, the 9/11 hijackers, COVID, the 24-hour news cycle — is a character in the Jesus show, not the other way around, and that was settled before the world began.
Central Image
The Jesus Show: the candy factory wasn't the I Love Lucy show, it was just where one episode was set — Artemis, COVID, fate, and every rival claim on history's meaning are characters in episodes, whether they know it or not.
The Turn
The Ephesians were as certain they knew the plot as the people who flew planes into buildings on a Tuesday morning — and they were just as wrong.
Outline
Situating the Ephesians
Paul is writing from prison to the third-largest city in the Roman Empire — a city that exists because of the Temple of Artemis. 150 feet wide, 450 feet deep, 60-foot columns. The bank of the city. Two civic parades per week in her honor. The Ephesians knew exactly what the world was about. Paul writes to set that straight.
The Father, Not the Fates
Every pagan in Ephesus, including Zeus, had to bow to fate — the force that could undo you regardless of how hard you worked or planned. Paul opens his letter: "apostle by the will of God." Not by the fates. Not by luck. You were chosen before the foundation of the world, predestined for adoption in love. God works everything according to the counsel of his will — meaning he takes advice from exactly one person: himself. Nobody is going to surprise him, nobody is going to stay his hand, and your fate is in his hands, not theirs.
The Spirit, Not the Security Blanket
Ephesus had a thriving magic economy — Ephesian letters, amulets, potions, little pouches people kept as insurance. Christians still had them. When a revival finally broke out in Acts, the church burned their magic books and it cost them the equivalent of 50,000 days' wages. Paul's answer to all of it: you have been sealed by the Holy Spirit of God. That is your security. Not a mojo pouch. Not whatever the current emergency tells you to reach for. God's own mark is on you, and no fate, no demon, no crisis gets past that.
Artemis, and What She's Actually There For
Artemis was the heavy hitter. She wore the zodiac as a necklace — symbol that she alone could break the chains of fate even Zeus couldn't. The whole city was built around her. Paul's answer lands in one pattern repeated over and over: in Christ. Not in Artemis. Not in anything else — in Christ. Artemis exists for one reason: so that Christ could crush her worship under his feet for his own glory. She thought everyone was in the Artemis show. She was a character in an episode.
The Mystery: Everything Unites in Christ
The "mystery" God has now made known is this — he has a plan for the fulfillment of all time to unite every single thing in Christ. Everything that has ever existed, does exist, or ever will exist, only matters as it relates to Jesus. The difference between now and the final chapter is that now we know it and then everybody will. COVID is a character in an episode. The 9/11 hijackers thought they knew the plot. The Ephesians thought they knew the plot. All of it is an episode. The show is still running.
At the Table: You're Not a Background Extra
Communion talk, part two of the sermon. Adoption as a son in the Roman world meant becoming an heir — not a face in the crowd, but someone with a seat in the house. Paul said this to a congregation that included slaves, people Roman law didn't even count as persons. Every one of them: adopted as a son, an heir, welcome at the table — and God is the one doing the serving. The church is not a footnote to history. The body of Christ is the thing through which God is working his will in the world, right at the center of the only story that's actually running.
The Landing
You are not a background extra. We are the body of Christ in the world, gathered right in the middle of the story that was settled before the foundation of the world — and we come to this table every week because that is what it means to belong to him.
Questions to Think About
- Toby opened by saying if you don't know what story you're in, you don't know what part you're supposed to play — what story have you been living as if it were the main one lately?
- Paul stacks chosen, predestined, sealed, and adopted all into fourteen verses. What was Toby's point in piling all that language up — who was he arguing against?
- Paul says "in Christ" so many times in that passage it sounds almost awkward. What was he doing with that repetition — and what was it pushing Artemis out of?
- The Ephesians had their mojo pouches, their Ephesian letters, their little security blankets — what's yours right now?
- Is there something you've been treating as the main show — a diagnosis, a political situation, a thing you can't stop watching — that the Jesus show framework would reframe as a character in an episode?
- Toby said Artemis exists only so Christ could crush her worship under his feet for his glory — she's just a character. What do you do with the people for whom 9/11 wasn't an episode in a larger story, it was the end of theirs?
- Toby said we're not background extras, we're right at the center of what God is doing — but does this church actually operate that way, or does it operate like a small group of people trying to stay afloat?
- This week, the next time you catch yourself in the anxiety of whatever the current show is — COVID, the news, whatever it is — stop and say out loud: this is a character in the Jesus show. Just do it once and see what it does.