Living in the Light
Isaiah 60:1-6[1]
I find that, all too often, I suffer from a kind of spiritual
“Attention Deficit.” I come to church and worship with great hymns and hear in
the Scriptures the great truths and promises and hopes of our faith. Then I get
distracted by matters that press upon me with their urgency and demand my
attention. Before long, it seems as if I can completely forget it all. I don’t
think I’m alone in that problem. I think one of the great challenges in our
world so full of screens and lights and sounds and demands is to find a way to
remain focused on our faith. It’s so very easy to let all the distractions of
our lives cause us to forget the heart of our faith. At times, the light of the
Gospel that shines at Christmas gets blurred by all that clamors for our
attention.
To some extent, we see this with the “rush” to get things “back to
normal” around the house after Christmas. Even though the “Christmas season”
lasts from December 25 to January 5, many of us have stripped our homes of all
vestige of Christmas before the New Year rolls around. The practical person in
me understands that. After all the “hustle and bustle” of Christmas
preparations, we want things to “get back to normal.” But the pastor in me
wonders if that’s precisely part of the problem. For many of us “normal” means
going about our daily routines, doing business as usual, and not really paying
much attention to the message of our faith that we have supposedly been
“celebrating” at Christmas.
In fact, the season of Epiphany is meant to reinforce the faith
that we intend to celebrate at Christmas. I think we don’t really know what to
do with Epiphany. We don’t really know what “Epiphany” is about. Today is the
“festival of Epiphany.” It’s the day that we commemorate the arrival of the
magi. But the “season of Epiphany” lasts from now until Len. The word
“epiphany” itself is not one we use much. “Epiphany” literally means
“revealing,” or “unveiling.” In this case, it’s a time for us to focus on the
ways Jesus revealed himself during his ministry. It’s a time to reinforce our
faith that Jesus truly is the light that has come into the darkness.
In our lesson from Isaiah for today, the prophet calls the people
of Israel to rejoice over the light that had come to brighten their prospects.
In this section of Isaiah, the prophet is addressing a people who have come
back from exile with the promise of restoration. But the reality of what they
encountered fell far short of their expectations. Jerusalem lay in ruins. Much
of the “infrastructure” that supported life had been destroyed. They were
surrounded by enemies who were more established and more powerful. They
struggled to keep those enemies at bay, let alone to rebuild their city, their
homes, their crops, and their lives.
As is often the case in when we are in dire straits, the people
turned to religion as a source of security. But there is a big difference
between religion as a way of life and religion as a crutch. When you’re strong
enough to walk on your own, you may keep the crutch around, but you don’t use
it much. That was the case with the people of Israel. The prophet challenged
them at many points with the hollow way in which they supposedly worshiped the
Lord. They seemed to pay a great deal of attention to the external trappings of
their religion, like observing the Sabbath. But all the while they ignored what
God desired from them: showing mercy to those in need, practicing true justice
in public life, and honoring God from the heart.
Since this was the case, the prophet declared in the name of the
Lord that God would come to set things right. God would establish true justice
in the land, justice that applied equally to the rich and the poor. God would
intervene to halt the various forms of violence that were practiced by the
powerful: cheating workers of their wages, stealing assets and resources from
the most vulnerable, and all of it to support a lavish lifestyle they thought
they deserved. And the prophet promised in the name of the Lord that when God
restored the land by banishing violence and establishing true justice, his presence would be like a light that would drive out the darkness, and and they would find the truly “good life”
that only God can give.
Although the people of Israel experienced God’s work in their
lives in that they had been released from captivity, the circumstances seemed
to distract them from the light that had dawned in their lives. They had
forgotten the core of their relationship with God. If you’re like me, you may
have to admit that we’re more like them than we would like to think. We need to
be reminded continually of the promises that lie at the heart of our faith.
That’s why we gather for worship: to remind ourselves of our faith and to
refocus our lives toward practicing it. I don’t know about you, but if I don’t practice
worship on a daily basis, I can easily lose myself and my faith.
Epiphany is about
unveiling what Advent and Christmas promises: that “all flesh shall see the
salvation of God” (Lk. 3:6); that “the glory of the Lord shall be revealed, and
all people shall see it together” (Isaiah 40:5). That’s why we celebrate Epiphany. It’s a time
to remind ourselves that in Jesus a light has dawned that will never go out.
Although we may have taken down all the Christmas decorations, perhaps it’s
fitting to select a candle to light during the season of Epiphany in order to
help us remember our faith. However we accomplish it, this is a time for us to
keep our attention on the light of Christ so that we can refocus our lives
toward following him. As we do so, the hope is that we will find ourselves
living in the light that has dawned for us all in Jesus.
[1]©2019
Alan Brehm. A sermon delivered by Rev. Dr. Alan Brehm on 1/6/2019 at Hickman
Presbyterian Church, Hickman, NE.
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