"Shine"

Rev. Matthew Miller

FROM THE PROPHETS Isaiah 60:1-6 Click here to watch the sermon "Shine"

Over the past week, our family along with a good number of people around the world watched the conclusion of the fantasy series Stranger Things on Netflix. Set as it was during my formative years in the 1980’s, I had a particular fondness for this show. Especially the way in which the Duffer brothers, who created it, incorporated all kinds of references and visuals from classic 80’s movies. For thematic reasons, however, my favorite movie from 1980 did not make the cut. That is the comedy classic The Blues Brothers. What can I say, it’s a guilty pleasure. And my appreciation for it has only grown with its cameos by some of the greatest soul singers of the late 20^th century: Cab Calloway, Ray Charles and the inestimable queen, Aretha Franklin.  Whenever Epiphany comes around on the church calendar, most people talk about the Magi and their visit to the baby Jesus, but I can’t help thinking about The Blues Brothers. Because in the movie, Jake and his brother Elwood, despondent over the imminent closure of the orphanage in which they were raised, visit church for some sense of direction. And there in the pulpit is none other than the godfather of soul himself, James Brown, rousing the faithful for God. In the midst of their raucous worship, James Brown looks to the pair standing at the back of the church and asks, “Have you seen the light? Have you seen the light?” Suddenly a ray of heavenly light shines through the church’s stained glass and falls upon Jake, who starts to glow. He sees the light and knows what he and his brother must do to save the only home they’ve known. For the rest of the movie, their best explanation to those wondering what they are up to is, “We’re on a mission from God.” It’s meant to be funny and slightly irreverent, but if you’re looking to understand what our celebration of Epiphany is all about, you could do a lot worse than the Blues Brothers. The word Epiphany comes for the Greek word epiphaneia, which means disclosure, manifestation, unveiling, or appearance. Something long obscured is revealed and understood at last. Five Sundays ago we began the season of Advent with words from the prophet Isaiah. They were early words from his prophetic witness to Jerusalem as it faced the coming judgment of God. Into their fear of destruction God spoke through the prophet of a coming day when the nations that surrounded them would stream to Jerusalem to learn the ways of peace. It was God’s promise of something not yet seen. Now on the other side of the waiting days of Advent, an angel’s words to a frightened young woman and to her fiancé have given way to the birth of a savior in the most unlikely of places. We have watched as the news of his arrival spread, announced first to laborers in the field who in turn told more people what they heard and saw- a babe lying in the straw of a feed trough. The hush of that silent night has in turn given way to the return of normal. Or what we have come to accept as normal. Christmas is well and good, with words of peace on earth and good will to all- but normal is the world as it really is, the workaday, ordinary world filled with senseless tragedy, neighbors being disappeared, and illegal regime change. But normal isn’t all bad, even when it’s hard. At least it’s familiar. It’s what we know, what we expect, because we’re always a little anxious about what to expect, what we don’t know. After all that the past week or two has had to offer from family visits and meals shared, to the rigors of having kids out of school- isn’t there a part of us that looks forward to getting back to work, getting back to the regular routine, getting back to normal.  Only, the news of this birth continues to grow. In this baby, God, the creator of all that is, has come among us as one of us. And the news is bigger than just a manger. Once we’ve welcomed the possibility of something like that into our world, no one who hears it can ever really go back to normal. What can be normal in light of that? Even Isaiah’s words have changed. Words of promise about a day to come are transformed into an invitation to respond to the light that has arrived among the people, to see what was for so long only a promise made real before their very eyes. What was unveiled for the people of ancient Israel was their restoration from exile and their return to Jerusalem. They had come a long way from those words spoken in the waning days of Judah’s kings. Through the horrors of a city besieged and the nightmare of its destruction. Through the pain of being forced from their homes and marched into long years in a foreign land. They find themselves allowed to return at long last to reclaim the promise of God’s presence in that holy city. God has kept God’s word, God has brought them home. But not all of them have seen the light. Because more than likely returning to Jerusalem was itself an act of faith. After 70 years, exile begins to look pretty normal and Jerusalem a shadow of its former self. The temple of God’s presence was gone. The king’s palace was gone. The wall that could not protect them was gone. Just how is this the fulfillment of God’s promise?  Time and again the thing that trips up the people of God is our habit of expecting God to do and be something a little more to our liking, but wholly other than who God truly is. We keep looking for earthly power and majesty to make things right while failing to see the light that shines before us. We fail to remember the lesson that Elijah learned at the mouth of the cave as the Lord passed by, that God is not in the great wind that splits mountains, or in the earthquake that shakes the very foundations, or in the fire that threatens to consume. Rather, God is in the sound of sheer silence- in that still small voice that whispers, “Arise, shine, for your light has come.” There was a man who was a University professor of religion who absolutely adored his grandchildren. Being a doting grandfather, he wanted to give them exactly what they wanted. So, he sidled up to them long before and said, “what would you like for Christmas?” One of them said, “we’d like the world…” He realized after a moment that what they wanted was a globe, so he went out immediately and bought them one. Christmas morning he gave it to them. They unwrapped it and he noticed that they weren’t nearly as excited about it as he thought they’d be. So that evening, he sat on the bed beside them and said, “I gave you the world this morning- and yet I see that it wasn’t exactly what you had in mind. Somehow, I missed it. If you’ll only tell me how I missed it, I’d like to make it up to you…” One of the little girls said, “you gave us a dark world- we wanted a light world.” He suddenly realized that they were talking about an illuminated globe, with the light inside. So he said, “I’ll see if I can do something about that.” The next morning he got up and went back with all the post-Christmas rush, stood in line at the store to get his money back. He discovered that the store where he bought the original globe didn’t have the lighted one. So, he trudged around in the slush and the snow, and four hours later he finally found the kind they wanted. He bought it and gave it to his grandchildren and they were delighted! A colleague of his at the university asked about all this a few weeks later as his friend related the story and his difficulties getting the right kind of globe. “What did you learn from all this,” he asked. “I learned,” he replied, “that a lighted world costs a lot more.” It's true, a lighted world does indeed cost more. The light that shines on the exiles at their return is a light that will lead them from their despair at God’s absence to the hope of God’s presence; from dismay to wellbeing. But like the light of Christ that dawns in Bethlehem, it is not a light, strictly reserved for a select group of people. This light that penetrates the thick darkness of the world is one that transforms those upon whom it shines. To see it is to stand in awe of what it means- that God is here, God is among us. In that glow we ourselves begin to radiate some of that same light as we rejoice in its presence. That is bound to attract some attention- to not only bring the exiles home, but to draw all the world to this radiant light. For Isaiah, it is the people of the nations beyond Israel and Judah’s borders, people like those magi from the east-astrologers of a foreign religion whose calculations nevertheless lead them to Jesus. And it is for the non-Jewish outsiders of Paul’s day who thrill to the news of sins forgiven and death overcome. Yes, a lighted world indeed costs more because its light has a way of shining on unbelievers- on the nations, on the Magi, on the gentiles, on people like Jake and Elwood Blues- people on the outside who are able to see what those on the inside are frequently blind to. The coming of this light means that normal can never be normal again, and the established order of things is about to be radically re-ordered according to the purpose of God and not this dark world. It’s no wonder so many of us choose to remain in the dark. A lighted world means giving up any claim that we think we have on what God is doing, and seeing at last that the claim is God’s to lay upon us and all who would come, regardless of where they come from. The light that shines is Christ Jesus himself, whose life is the light of all people, who would have us so shine that all the world might at last see this light in themselves that has dawned in his coming.