Arise, Shine
Isaiah 60:1-6; Matthew 2:1-12
January 5, 2020
Emmanuel Baptist Church; Rev. Kathy Donley
We have been reading portions from Isaiah for the last month. You remember that the book of Isaiah is a collection of writings to several generations of Israelites. We are near the end of the book. This part is addressed to those who have returned from exile in Babylon. Or, more correctly, to those who left the land of Babylon in which they were born in captivity, to return to the land of their parents and grandparents. Their return was anticipated as an occasion of great rejoicing, but the reality has been different. Those who were brave and strong enough to make the journey discovered a ruined Jerusalem, populated by the descendants of those who had not been exiled, barely eking out a living. Resettling the land involved a series of obstacles including poverty and famine. So, when the prophet said, “Arise, shine, for your light has come” the people might not have believed he was really talking to them.
But, in fact, he was. This is a plea to set aside their weariness, their despair, to renew their strength for the task at hand. Many of us are weary. Many of us are soul-sick, concerned to our core about the looming devastation of our planet, the indifference to the plight of other creatures, the intentional infliction of cruelty and suffering by humans onto other humans, the spiraling escalation of violence and enmity, bringing us perhaps to the brink of yet another war. If I were to suggest that Isaiah might be talking to us, would we believe it? Would I believe it?
I confess that I am weary and then I wonder about the people of Syria, locked in calamitous civil war for the last 8 years. Weary does not begin to describe it. Is this a word for them? Or is this a word for Palestinians who have been resisting the loss of their land and identity for longer than I have been alive? Or for indigenous people across the globe being assassinated as they engage in struggles to sustain water and forests and life for us all. Or for farmers in Honduras forced to leave their homes and land after 5 consecutive years of drought? Is this a word for them? Is this the year when things will change? Is it their time to rise? Is it ours? I do not know. It may be as hard for us to imagine that the light of God might come to us as it was for Isaiah’s listeners. It was probably equally difficult for Matthew’s hearers to imagine that it could happen in the time of the Roman empire.
In his book, Theology of Hope, German theologian Jürgen Moltmann said that sin is often fundamentally understood as pride, when humans want to be like God. But, he says that is only one side of it. He writes, “The other side of pride is hopelessness, resignation, inertia, melancholy. . . Temptation consists not so much of the titanic desire to be as God, but in weakness, timidity, weariness, not wanting to be what God requires of us”.[1]
The late Peter Gomes was a professor at Harvard Divinity School and minister at Harvard’s memorial church. In a sermon for New Year’s Day, he said, “It is very difficult to tear ourselves away from Bethlehem. There is a time to lay down one’s cares and duties and run to Bethlehem and the manger, a time to follow the star . . . a time to flee for refuge from the troubles of the world. There is also a time to return, to begin where we left off . . . for we have come from an encounter with the world of the possible in the midst of the impossible. We have seen God and survived to tell the tale, moving about not knowing that our faces shine with the encounter, bearing the mark of the encounter forever and marveling in the darkest night of the soul at that wondrous star-filled night.”[2]
Gomes is remembering Jacob who wrestled with God and lived to tell the story. He is recalling that when Moses met God on Mt Sinai, his face was shining and he didn’t know it. Encounter with God transforms us in ways we don’t expect or even recognize. “Rise, shine, your light has come,” says Isaiah. We’re not sure he is talking to us. Maybe he is not. Maybe this word is not for us just now. Regardless of whether or not this is a word from the Lord for us in this moment, it is our time to be faithful. It is our time to resist the temptation to weakness, timidity and weariness, our time to return to where we left off. But how?
Looking carefully at the story in Matthew 2, we might notice two things, two things to remember and hold onto as we pick up where we left off and continue into this new year.
We might notice that the Messiah enters the world and the world does not change. Brutality is still in charge after Jesus’ birth as much as it was before. Jesus and his family will flee from Herod’s violence.
Scholar Richard Swanson says, “Matthew knows that refugee stories often tell us of desperate midnight escapes. Matthew knows that sometimes even parents and children get separated in the dark and never again find each other. Because Matthew listens, he tells a story of messiah that does not pretend that the world is pretty and calm. God is with us in the bodies of refugees. God is with us in the corpses lying in the street. God is with us in the desperate midnight escape. And in each case, God is with us, not because everything turns out alright in the end. God is with us precisely because it does not turn out alright.”[3]
That’s one thing to hold onto.
A second thing we might notice are the actions of the magi. It says that upon entering the house, they knelt down and paid him homage. Paying homage to Jesus Christ is the dominant, recurring theme of this narrative. The phrase occurs at the beginning, the middle, and the end of the story (verses 2, 8, and 11). The Greek word there was commonly used to describe the custom of prostrating one’s self at the feet of a ruler. To kneel or lie down in front of someone, is an act of humble devotion and deference.[4]
The magi do not immediately present their gifts. The first thing they do is pay him homage. Only after this act of worship, only after giving themselves completely to Christ, do they present their material treasures. Preaching professor Thomas Troeger believes that the order of their actions—homage first and gifts second—is significant. Gift giving can be a way of controlling others. If the first thing the magi did was present their gifts, they may have appeared to be in command of the situation. There they would stand with precious goods in their outstretched hands. They would appear like rulers presenting treasures to each other on a state occasion while meeting in the middle of a ceremonial room, each of them on their feet and facing the other in order to assert their equality. But that is not what the magi do. They first express their relationship to Christ as humble, devoted servants, physically kneeling. First homage. First worship. First giving of themselves utterly and completely to Christ. Then their material gifts.[5]
Paying homage to Jesus means offering our entire selves. It means surrendering to what God requires of us. It means that we give ourselves without any sense that we can control God or use God’s name to bless our purposes and schemes. It might mean that we wait, longer than we would choose, for our time to rise and shine.
But we wait and we worship, because the one we worship is Emmanuel, God-with-us. Not the conquering hero, but the refugee seeking shelter, the parent separated from the child. In fact, God in Jesus is with us as victim of our anger, our vengeance. This is the one to whom we pay homage.
Alan Paton is the author who wrote Cry, the Beloved Country about the system of apartheid in his home of South Africa. Once, he gave guest lectures at Harvard. In the question and answer time afterwards, a woman stood up and asked, “Given all that you have said and we have heard, are you optimistic about the future of your country?”
Paton paused and then scowled and then said, “Madam, I am not optimistic, but I remain hopeful.”[6]
Voltaire said optimism was “the madness of maintaining that everything is right when it is wrong.” Hope is something different. Hope is knowing that God is working on a grander scale than we can see. Hope is worshipping the One who is with us, in spite of the fact that not everything turns out alright. Hope is trusting that God is with us precisely because it does not turn out alright.
Beloved ones, let us not give in to our weariness, but let us remain hopeful. Amen.
[1] Jürgen Moltmann, Theology of Hope: On the Ground and Implications of a Christian Eschatology (New York: Harper and Row, 1967), p. 22
[2] Peter Gomes, Sermons: Biblical Wisdom for Daily Living (New York: Harper Collins, 1998), p. 24
[4] Thomas H. Troeger, in Feasting on the Word Year A, Volume 1, David Bartlett and Barbara Brown Taylor, general editors, (Louisville: Westminster/John Knox Press, 2010), p. 215
[5] Troeger, Feasting on the Word, p. 217.
[6] Peter Gomes, The Scandalous Gospel: What’s So Good about the Good News? (New York: HarperOne, 2008), p. 210