Glory
Commentary
Object:
William Beebe, the naturalist, used to visit fellow nature-lover, Theodore Roosevelt.
Often, after an evening of good conversation at Roosevelt's Sagamore Hill home, they
would walk across the lawn in the darkness. They would look up at the stars, point out
the constellations, and carry on a conversation something like this: "There's the spiral
galaxy of Andromeda! Did you know it was as large as our own Milky Way? It is over a
hundred billion stars, and every one of them is larger than the sun -- 750,000 light-years
away. And there are a hundred million more galaxies like it out there!"
The numbers would get larger, the facts and figures more spectacular. Eventually they would shuffle on in silence, lost in wonder. Finally, Teddy Roosevelt would say, "Now I think we are small enough. Let's go to bed!"
"Creation was the greatest of all revolutions," said Chesterton. When young Anne Frank was hidden in an Amsterdam attic during WWII, fearful of the dreaded Nazi revolution and longing for a day in the park with her friends, she wrote this note in her diary: "The best remedy for those who are afraid, lonely, or unhappy is to go outside, somewhere where they can be quite alone with the heavens, nature, and God. Because only then does one feel that all is as it should be."
Even in the harshest of storms, as David once noted, the magnificent power of God is displayed. After Sir Ernest Shackleton returned from one of his Antarctic expeditions, he told of the intense suffering he and his two partners had endured: extreme pain, numbing cold, haunting starvation, consuming exhaustion. When rescued, barely alive, all they had left were two axes and a logbook.
"But in memories we were rich," said Shackleton. "We had pierced the veneer of outside things. We have seen God in his glory!"
There are only a handful of truly great words in the English language, says one scholar. They are the words without synonyms, the words that can't be explained, the words that sound like what they mean. And one of those words is "glory."
Only the hushed whisper of that word can describe God. Only the thundering roar of that term can tell what happens when God passes by. And only the shout of that cry fits the emotions that erupt in God's presence: "In his temple all cry, 'Glory! Glory!' "
But bright lights can dim eyesight, and the constant bombardment of God's glory can turn our timid spirits toward the dark places.
One person has put it this way. Imagine a family of mice who lived all their lives in a large piano. Music filled their piano-world, swelling all the dark spaces with sound and harmony. At first the mice were impressed by it. They drew comfort and wonder from the thought that there was someone close to them -- though invisible to them -- who made the music.
They loved to think of the great player whom they could not see. Then one day a daring mouse climbed up part of the piano and returned very thoughtful. He had found out how the music was made. Wires were the secret; tightly stretched wires of graduated lengths that trembled and vibrated. The mice had to revise all their old beliefs: none but the most conservative could any longer believe in the unseen player.
Later, another explorer carried the explanation further. Now the secret was hammers, numbers of hammers dancing and leaping on the wires. This was a more complicated theory, and it showed that the mice lived in a purely mechanical and mathematical world. The unseen player came to be thought of by the mice as a myth.
But the pianist continued to play. And those who hear the music cry, "Glory!"
It is glory that we need to see today, on Epiphany Sunday. Isaiah's eyes of a prophetic heart sought it at a dark distance. Paul claimed it was the energy that grabbed his soul and shaped his life. And when the scholars from the East compared their astronomical observations one night, they knew that it was stirring and about to illuminate in a big way, and nothing was more important than tracking down its source.
Isaiah 60:1-6
It was a night to remember: five school buddies at a friend's home overnight. Pizza and popcorn (more than I had ever before stuffed into myself), a late movie on television, and then the stories. Who could tell the scariest tale? We outdid one another with false bravado.
Was it just my imagination? Sure, it was night outside, but wasn't the darkness creeping closer? What lurked in the shadows just beyond the weakening glimmer of the lamps? Our bodies were tired but our minds raced with fear.
We've all been there -- dark nights -- ghostly fears -- terrifying images. And even when we "grow up," something haunting often lingers at the edges of our brightest days. Francis Bacon said, "Men fear death as children fear to go in the dark; and as that natural fear in children is increased with tales, so is the other!"
When the German poet, Goethe, lay dying, his last words were a terrified shout: "Light! Light! I need more light!" The final fears of short-story writer O. Henry (William Sidney Porter) came out this way: "Turn up the lights! I don't want to go home in the dark!" And those who have faced death and loneliness nod silently with F. Scott Fitzgerald's lament: "In the real dark night of the soul it is always 3 o'clock in the morning."
There is much in Isaiah's grand prophecy that dances in delight. His own call to prophetic ministry and his commissioning took place in the temple, seared with the brightness of God's glory and the angels' brilliant dances (Isaiah 6). The coming of a royal deliverer to the people was foretold in the colors of morning sunlight (Isaiah 9:1-2). The new age of messianic perfection included scenes of wonderful harmony throughout creation, dressed in the warmth of a green and sunlit park (Isaiah 11-12). Those who are fortunate enough to participate in it will mob the streets of Jerusalem on a morning lit with celebration (Isaiah 35).
But the light that comes as a symbol of God's presence emerges from the shades and shadows of fear: fear of loneliness (Isaiah 40), fear of rumors (Isaiah 36-37), fear of alienation from family (Isaiah 32), fear of crime and violence (Isaiah 52), fear even that religion itself is useless and faulty (Isaiah 44). And in the dark night of his soul, Isaiah shares with us the tales that have kept us awake, too: "Why don't my children call or visit anymore?" "How will I cope with this divorce?" "I don't know how I'll make ends meet until my next unemployment check." "Why did God allow this to happen to us?"
Where is God? "Oh, that you would rend the heavens and come down!" cries Isaiah (64:1). In the blackness, in the bleakness, we need to sense God's presence. We need to know that he is there, even if, like Job, we don't understand what's happening around us and inside us. "The restless millions wait for the Light," says George Bernanos, "Whose dawning maketh all things new."
Caught in a darkness at sea, too terrifying for words, a darkness that crawled and oozed and grabbed and stuck, the children of C. S. Lewis' Narnia world sailed their ship, the Dawntreader, in circles of fear. "If you've ever loved us at all," cries Lucy to the skies, "send us help now!"
And in a growing speck of light that seemed, Lucy thought, to look a lot like a cross, the battle of the powers whirled around them, until darkness and fear melted before his brightness.
"God is light," said the apostle John, echoing Isaiah's song in these verses. And no darkness in this world has ever held back his dawning!
Ephesians 3:1-12
The great Wagnerian tenor, Lauritz Melchoir, tells of his younger days when he was studying music at Munich. One afternoon he was in the garden of his boardinghouse, practicing an aria. Just as he finished the lines, "Come to me, my love, on the wings of light!" a young woman dropped out of the sky and landed right in front of him.
They were both rather startled, but soon they laughed at the comedy of it all. Her name was Maria Hacker, and she was working as a stunt artist with a Bavarian movie company. She had just parachuted from an airplane when a gust of wind blew her off course. There she was, miraculously answering his call! The plot was too good to waste, so they decided to get married.
Not all invitations are as dramatic as the one Melchoir sang. Nor do people always respond so delightfully to them. Early last century, a newly wealthy couple moved into a beautiful mansion in an exclusive section of Newport, Rhode Island. They wanted to be a part of the local high society. They planned a gala housewarming event and sent invitations to all the names on the social register. Then they waited for the guests to arrive. And waited. And waited....
Local high society had decided to ignore these newcomers, and no one showed up at the party. The wife was furious. She shouted curses at her neighbors, and then she made a vow: "This house will rot before I open it again to anyone!"
The woman kept her word. She and her husband moved to New York City and took rooms at the Astor House Hotel. The beautiful mansion was left boarded up and uncared for, an eyesore to remind the community of an invitation spurned.
Sometimes, though, people don't attend functions because they're not invited. Not long ago, a woman began coming to our worship services. She had never been in a Christian church before. Why? "No one ever invited me," she said. This woman lived in a city dotted with churches; Christians walked on every street. But she could state with simple honesty, "No one ever invited me before."
Paul wrote his letter to the Ephesians from prison in Rome after experiencing some narrow escapes from his enemies. A number of enemies were still after Paul's life, some because they saw him as a threat, and others because they were suspicious of his religion. Paul thought: If they only knew. If they only understood what my religion is all about. If they only felt the power and the love and the care of my God. Ephesians 3 is Paul's great testimony, and even greater invitation.
There was a new song written while I was in high school. It was one of the first that spoke to us as teens about the things that Paul says in Ephesians 3. We used to sing it around campfires at night. I remember the light going on in some eyes when the singers "saw" and "tasted" and "felt" the love of God for the first time. The song included these words: "That's how it is with God's love, once you've experienced it: You spread his love to everyone -- you want to pass it on!"
I remember one fellow was in tears. He was having his first religious epiphany. He looked at the friend who brought him along. "Thanks for inviting me," he said.
Has anyone said that to you recently?
Matthew 2:1-12
The famous psychiatrist, Viktor Frankl, remembered a day when he must have felt like the magi who sank into the darkness of astronomical gazing every dark night. It was during WWII. Frankl was on a work gang, just outside the fences that hid the horrors of Hitler's infamous death camp at Dachau. "We were at work in a trench," wrote Frankl. "The dawn was gray around us; gray was the sky above; gray the snow in the pale light of dawn; gray rags in which my fellow prisoners were clad, and gray their faces."
Frankl tells how he was ready to die. It was as if the gray bleakness had claws, and each moment they dug deeper and colder into his soul. Why go on? What could be the purpose in "living" if, indeed, he was even still alive at this moment? There was no heaven, no hell, no future, no past. Only the clutching grayness of this miserable moment.
Suddenly, to his surprise, Frankl felt "a last violent protest" surging within himself. He sensed that even though his body had given up and his mind had accepted defeat, his inner spirit was taking flight. It was searching. It was looking. It was scanning the eternal horizons for the faintest glimmer that said his fleeting life had some divine purpose. It was looking for God.
In a single instant, two things happened to Frankl that simply could not be mere coincidence. Within, he heard a powerful cry, piercing the gloom and tearing at the icy claws of death. The voice shouted, "Yes!" against the, "No" of defeat and the gray, "I don't know" of the moment.
At that exact second, "a light was lit in a distant farmhouse." Like a beacon it called attention to itself. It spoke of life and warmth and family and love.
Frankl said that in that moment he began to believe. And in that moment he began to live again.
One can almost read the story of the magi in Frankl's words. They were scientists and they were religious leaders. But all of history had become, for them, endless cycles that blurred day into night and dusk into repetitive dawn. The grayness of their recurring bleak days was stifling. The loneliness of moments swallowed up by time overwhelmed him. Is there a reason to carry on? Is there meaning beyond the drudgery of today's repetitive struggles? Is there hope and is there God?
Then it happened! One night a new star was born. One night a brightness outshone the darkness of the heavens. One night they had an epiphany of transcendence.
Racing to find the object and source of the new and powerful revelation they stumbled into a dusty, foreign village, seemingly stuck in the same grayness of the old country.
But there in a small face the shadows parted, and they knew that among the cycles of repetitious life on earth there was a linear beam of divine grace. As David called out in one of the psalms, "Send forth your light and your truth!" Don't leave us alone! Give us some sign! Light a candle in the window and take us home!
On this Epiphany Sunday, while we make the journey with the magi, perhaps the homely words of John Greenleaf Whittier say it best:
A tender child of summers three,
Seeking her little bed at night,
Paused on the dark stair timidly,
"O Mother! take my hand," said she,
"And then the dark will all be light."
We older children grope our way,
From dark behind to dark before:
And only when our hands we lay,
Dear Lord, in Thine, the night is day,
And there is darkness nevermore.
Reach downward to the sunless days,
Wherein our guides are blind as we,
And faith is small and hope delays:
Take Thou the hands of prayer we raise,
And let us feel the light of Thee.
Application
Canadian musician, Murray McLaughlin, wrote a New Year's song a decade or so ago. He wrote it because he was tired of all the news reports that kept telling how evil and corruption and criminal activity seemed so strong. He wrote it because he wanted life to give the little guy the break for once. He wrote it with the hope that whatever powers there are in the universe to balance the scales of justice might lean in the direction of those who love peace and joy and goodness. The words included hopes for justice and truth and peace the strength to do the right thing. It is worth checking out at http://www.geocities.com/Colosseum/Field/7738/mclaugh_letthegoodguyswin.txt.
Maybe Murray McLaughlin doesn't know for sure who he's praying to, but there is no doubt, from the scripture passages on this Epiphany Sunday, about who listens to a song like that.
Alternative Application
Matthew 2:1-12. The story of the magi is such a wonderful tale to recount. It should not be defused and disarmed by technical explanations of what magi were, nor scientific hypotheses as to what might have caused the spectacular light in the sky. Instead, this passage should be preached as a journey motif. We all live in a seemingly closed system world where science and rationalization atomize our existence until skepticism is all that is left. But then a transcendent light breaks through and we need to journey. We need to find a source of meaning that we cannot box or contain. As Joyce Kilmer wrote:
Because the way was steep and long,
and through a strange and lonely land,
God placed upon my lips a song
and put a lantern in my hand.
And suddenly we know the way home.
Preaching The Psalm
Psalm 72:1-7, 10-14
This psalm hits the reader with a laser-like precision. Only the most delusional or those awash in denial could miss the point here. Our faith is not one that can be spiritualized to the point of irrelevancy. Our faith has both calling and consequence here and now in the midst of the world's turmoil and craziness. More than that, our faith is bold enough to call the powers of the moment to account. It is a call that has not diminished over time.
"Give the king your justice, O God." These words, and those that follow make it clear that the "principalities and powers" (Colossians 2:15) subscribe to a different operating definition of justice than does God. So it is that the call comes to grant the king God's justice. The tone is oppositional, and it is perhaps worth updating.
Grant the president your justice, O God. Not the justice of disappearing civil rights; not the justice of Guantanamo or Abu Graib, but your justice! If we take our faith seriously, what are we to do with sentiments such as this? There can be no denying that the current "king" has what one radio commentator called a "complex and adversarial relationship with the truth." Nor can it be denied that the nation is bogged down in an immoral and unjust war that is devastating to God's children in Baghdad and Boston -- in Tikrit and Taos.
There's no question about it. This psalm is a summons to the faithful. It is a wake-up call to those who claim a faith in the God of Israel, the God who comes most powerfully to us in Jesus of Nazareth. This God desires justice and fair treatment to the poor, and places the responsibility for this in the hands of the faithful. This God, in fact, would rather we not waste our time in church if our worship does not lead us to acting for justice and for peace (Isaiah 58:2-11; Amos 5:21 ff) in the world.
In a time when churches around the nation wrestle with mission and direction, these words need to be heard. In a day when the church is an object of ridicule because of its hypocrisy, these words need to be lived. And in a day when oppression and violence are "standard operating procedure," our God calls us as never before to take a stand, to speak and act, not for the justice of the king, but for God's justice, in our communities, in our nation, and in our world.
The numbers would get larger, the facts and figures more spectacular. Eventually they would shuffle on in silence, lost in wonder. Finally, Teddy Roosevelt would say, "Now I think we are small enough. Let's go to bed!"
"Creation was the greatest of all revolutions," said Chesterton. When young Anne Frank was hidden in an Amsterdam attic during WWII, fearful of the dreaded Nazi revolution and longing for a day in the park with her friends, she wrote this note in her diary: "The best remedy for those who are afraid, lonely, or unhappy is to go outside, somewhere where they can be quite alone with the heavens, nature, and God. Because only then does one feel that all is as it should be."
Even in the harshest of storms, as David once noted, the magnificent power of God is displayed. After Sir Ernest Shackleton returned from one of his Antarctic expeditions, he told of the intense suffering he and his two partners had endured: extreme pain, numbing cold, haunting starvation, consuming exhaustion. When rescued, barely alive, all they had left were two axes and a logbook.
"But in memories we were rich," said Shackleton. "We had pierced the veneer of outside things. We have seen God in his glory!"
There are only a handful of truly great words in the English language, says one scholar. They are the words without synonyms, the words that can't be explained, the words that sound like what they mean. And one of those words is "glory."
Only the hushed whisper of that word can describe God. Only the thundering roar of that term can tell what happens when God passes by. And only the shout of that cry fits the emotions that erupt in God's presence: "In his temple all cry, 'Glory! Glory!' "
But bright lights can dim eyesight, and the constant bombardment of God's glory can turn our timid spirits toward the dark places.
One person has put it this way. Imagine a family of mice who lived all their lives in a large piano. Music filled their piano-world, swelling all the dark spaces with sound and harmony. At first the mice were impressed by it. They drew comfort and wonder from the thought that there was someone close to them -- though invisible to them -- who made the music.
They loved to think of the great player whom they could not see. Then one day a daring mouse climbed up part of the piano and returned very thoughtful. He had found out how the music was made. Wires were the secret; tightly stretched wires of graduated lengths that trembled and vibrated. The mice had to revise all their old beliefs: none but the most conservative could any longer believe in the unseen player.
Later, another explorer carried the explanation further. Now the secret was hammers, numbers of hammers dancing and leaping on the wires. This was a more complicated theory, and it showed that the mice lived in a purely mechanical and mathematical world. The unseen player came to be thought of by the mice as a myth.
But the pianist continued to play. And those who hear the music cry, "Glory!"
It is glory that we need to see today, on Epiphany Sunday. Isaiah's eyes of a prophetic heart sought it at a dark distance. Paul claimed it was the energy that grabbed his soul and shaped his life. And when the scholars from the East compared their astronomical observations one night, they knew that it was stirring and about to illuminate in a big way, and nothing was more important than tracking down its source.
Isaiah 60:1-6
It was a night to remember: five school buddies at a friend's home overnight. Pizza and popcorn (more than I had ever before stuffed into myself), a late movie on television, and then the stories. Who could tell the scariest tale? We outdid one another with false bravado.
Was it just my imagination? Sure, it was night outside, but wasn't the darkness creeping closer? What lurked in the shadows just beyond the weakening glimmer of the lamps? Our bodies were tired but our minds raced with fear.
We've all been there -- dark nights -- ghostly fears -- terrifying images. And even when we "grow up," something haunting often lingers at the edges of our brightest days. Francis Bacon said, "Men fear death as children fear to go in the dark; and as that natural fear in children is increased with tales, so is the other!"
When the German poet, Goethe, lay dying, his last words were a terrified shout: "Light! Light! I need more light!" The final fears of short-story writer O. Henry (William Sidney Porter) came out this way: "Turn up the lights! I don't want to go home in the dark!" And those who have faced death and loneliness nod silently with F. Scott Fitzgerald's lament: "In the real dark night of the soul it is always 3 o'clock in the morning."
There is much in Isaiah's grand prophecy that dances in delight. His own call to prophetic ministry and his commissioning took place in the temple, seared with the brightness of God's glory and the angels' brilliant dances (Isaiah 6). The coming of a royal deliverer to the people was foretold in the colors of morning sunlight (Isaiah 9:1-2). The new age of messianic perfection included scenes of wonderful harmony throughout creation, dressed in the warmth of a green and sunlit park (Isaiah 11-12). Those who are fortunate enough to participate in it will mob the streets of Jerusalem on a morning lit with celebration (Isaiah 35).
But the light that comes as a symbol of God's presence emerges from the shades and shadows of fear: fear of loneliness (Isaiah 40), fear of rumors (Isaiah 36-37), fear of alienation from family (Isaiah 32), fear of crime and violence (Isaiah 52), fear even that religion itself is useless and faulty (Isaiah 44). And in the dark night of his soul, Isaiah shares with us the tales that have kept us awake, too: "Why don't my children call or visit anymore?" "How will I cope with this divorce?" "I don't know how I'll make ends meet until my next unemployment check." "Why did God allow this to happen to us?"
Where is God? "Oh, that you would rend the heavens and come down!" cries Isaiah (64:1). In the blackness, in the bleakness, we need to sense God's presence. We need to know that he is there, even if, like Job, we don't understand what's happening around us and inside us. "The restless millions wait for the Light," says George Bernanos, "Whose dawning maketh all things new."
Caught in a darkness at sea, too terrifying for words, a darkness that crawled and oozed and grabbed and stuck, the children of C. S. Lewis' Narnia world sailed their ship, the Dawntreader, in circles of fear. "If you've ever loved us at all," cries Lucy to the skies, "send us help now!"
And in a growing speck of light that seemed, Lucy thought, to look a lot like a cross, the battle of the powers whirled around them, until darkness and fear melted before his brightness.
"God is light," said the apostle John, echoing Isaiah's song in these verses. And no darkness in this world has ever held back his dawning!
Ephesians 3:1-12
The great Wagnerian tenor, Lauritz Melchoir, tells of his younger days when he was studying music at Munich. One afternoon he was in the garden of his boardinghouse, practicing an aria. Just as he finished the lines, "Come to me, my love, on the wings of light!" a young woman dropped out of the sky and landed right in front of him.
They were both rather startled, but soon they laughed at the comedy of it all. Her name was Maria Hacker, and she was working as a stunt artist with a Bavarian movie company. She had just parachuted from an airplane when a gust of wind blew her off course. There she was, miraculously answering his call! The plot was too good to waste, so they decided to get married.
Not all invitations are as dramatic as the one Melchoir sang. Nor do people always respond so delightfully to them. Early last century, a newly wealthy couple moved into a beautiful mansion in an exclusive section of Newport, Rhode Island. They wanted to be a part of the local high society. They planned a gala housewarming event and sent invitations to all the names on the social register. Then they waited for the guests to arrive. And waited. And waited....
Local high society had decided to ignore these newcomers, and no one showed up at the party. The wife was furious. She shouted curses at her neighbors, and then she made a vow: "This house will rot before I open it again to anyone!"
The woman kept her word. She and her husband moved to New York City and took rooms at the Astor House Hotel. The beautiful mansion was left boarded up and uncared for, an eyesore to remind the community of an invitation spurned.
Sometimes, though, people don't attend functions because they're not invited. Not long ago, a woman began coming to our worship services. She had never been in a Christian church before. Why? "No one ever invited me," she said. This woman lived in a city dotted with churches; Christians walked on every street. But she could state with simple honesty, "No one ever invited me before."
Paul wrote his letter to the Ephesians from prison in Rome after experiencing some narrow escapes from his enemies. A number of enemies were still after Paul's life, some because they saw him as a threat, and others because they were suspicious of his religion. Paul thought: If they only knew. If they only understood what my religion is all about. If they only felt the power and the love and the care of my God. Ephesians 3 is Paul's great testimony, and even greater invitation.
There was a new song written while I was in high school. It was one of the first that spoke to us as teens about the things that Paul says in Ephesians 3. We used to sing it around campfires at night. I remember the light going on in some eyes when the singers "saw" and "tasted" and "felt" the love of God for the first time. The song included these words: "That's how it is with God's love, once you've experienced it: You spread his love to everyone -- you want to pass it on!"
I remember one fellow was in tears. He was having his first religious epiphany. He looked at the friend who brought him along. "Thanks for inviting me," he said.
Has anyone said that to you recently?
Matthew 2:1-12
The famous psychiatrist, Viktor Frankl, remembered a day when he must have felt like the magi who sank into the darkness of astronomical gazing every dark night. It was during WWII. Frankl was on a work gang, just outside the fences that hid the horrors of Hitler's infamous death camp at Dachau. "We were at work in a trench," wrote Frankl. "The dawn was gray around us; gray was the sky above; gray the snow in the pale light of dawn; gray rags in which my fellow prisoners were clad, and gray their faces."
Frankl tells how he was ready to die. It was as if the gray bleakness had claws, and each moment they dug deeper and colder into his soul. Why go on? What could be the purpose in "living" if, indeed, he was even still alive at this moment? There was no heaven, no hell, no future, no past. Only the clutching grayness of this miserable moment.
Suddenly, to his surprise, Frankl felt "a last violent protest" surging within himself. He sensed that even though his body had given up and his mind had accepted defeat, his inner spirit was taking flight. It was searching. It was looking. It was scanning the eternal horizons for the faintest glimmer that said his fleeting life had some divine purpose. It was looking for God.
In a single instant, two things happened to Frankl that simply could not be mere coincidence. Within, he heard a powerful cry, piercing the gloom and tearing at the icy claws of death. The voice shouted, "Yes!" against the, "No" of defeat and the gray, "I don't know" of the moment.
At that exact second, "a light was lit in a distant farmhouse." Like a beacon it called attention to itself. It spoke of life and warmth and family and love.
Frankl said that in that moment he began to believe. And in that moment he began to live again.
One can almost read the story of the magi in Frankl's words. They were scientists and they were religious leaders. But all of history had become, for them, endless cycles that blurred day into night and dusk into repetitive dawn. The grayness of their recurring bleak days was stifling. The loneliness of moments swallowed up by time overwhelmed him. Is there a reason to carry on? Is there meaning beyond the drudgery of today's repetitive struggles? Is there hope and is there God?
Then it happened! One night a new star was born. One night a brightness outshone the darkness of the heavens. One night they had an epiphany of transcendence.
Racing to find the object and source of the new and powerful revelation they stumbled into a dusty, foreign village, seemingly stuck in the same grayness of the old country.
But there in a small face the shadows parted, and they knew that among the cycles of repetitious life on earth there was a linear beam of divine grace. As David called out in one of the psalms, "Send forth your light and your truth!" Don't leave us alone! Give us some sign! Light a candle in the window and take us home!
On this Epiphany Sunday, while we make the journey with the magi, perhaps the homely words of John Greenleaf Whittier say it best:
A tender child of summers three,
Seeking her little bed at night,
Paused on the dark stair timidly,
"O Mother! take my hand," said she,
"And then the dark will all be light."
We older children grope our way,
From dark behind to dark before:
And only when our hands we lay,
Dear Lord, in Thine, the night is day,
And there is darkness nevermore.
Reach downward to the sunless days,
Wherein our guides are blind as we,
And faith is small and hope delays:
Take Thou the hands of prayer we raise,
And let us feel the light of Thee.
Application
Canadian musician, Murray McLaughlin, wrote a New Year's song a decade or so ago. He wrote it because he was tired of all the news reports that kept telling how evil and corruption and criminal activity seemed so strong. He wrote it because he wanted life to give the little guy the break for once. He wrote it with the hope that whatever powers there are in the universe to balance the scales of justice might lean in the direction of those who love peace and joy and goodness. The words included hopes for justice and truth and peace the strength to do the right thing. It is worth checking out at http://www.geocities.com/Colosseum/Field/7738/mclaugh_letthegoodguyswin.txt.
Maybe Murray McLaughlin doesn't know for sure who he's praying to, but there is no doubt, from the scripture passages on this Epiphany Sunday, about who listens to a song like that.
Alternative Application
Matthew 2:1-12. The story of the magi is such a wonderful tale to recount. It should not be defused and disarmed by technical explanations of what magi were, nor scientific hypotheses as to what might have caused the spectacular light in the sky. Instead, this passage should be preached as a journey motif. We all live in a seemingly closed system world where science and rationalization atomize our existence until skepticism is all that is left. But then a transcendent light breaks through and we need to journey. We need to find a source of meaning that we cannot box or contain. As Joyce Kilmer wrote:
Because the way was steep and long,
and through a strange and lonely land,
God placed upon my lips a song
and put a lantern in my hand.
And suddenly we know the way home.
Preaching The Psalm
Psalm 72:1-7, 10-14
This psalm hits the reader with a laser-like precision. Only the most delusional or those awash in denial could miss the point here. Our faith is not one that can be spiritualized to the point of irrelevancy. Our faith has both calling and consequence here and now in the midst of the world's turmoil and craziness. More than that, our faith is bold enough to call the powers of the moment to account. It is a call that has not diminished over time.
"Give the king your justice, O God." These words, and those that follow make it clear that the "principalities and powers" (Colossians 2:15) subscribe to a different operating definition of justice than does God. So it is that the call comes to grant the king God's justice. The tone is oppositional, and it is perhaps worth updating.
Grant the president your justice, O God. Not the justice of disappearing civil rights; not the justice of Guantanamo or Abu Graib, but your justice! If we take our faith seriously, what are we to do with sentiments such as this? There can be no denying that the current "king" has what one radio commentator called a "complex and adversarial relationship with the truth." Nor can it be denied that the nation is bogged down in an immoral and unjust war that is devastating to God's children in Baghdad and Boston -- in Tikrit and Taos.
There's no question about it. This psalm is a summons to the faithful. It is a wake-up call to those who claim a faith in the God of Israel, the God who comes most powerfully to us in Jesus of Nazareth. This God desires justice and fair treatment to the poor, and places the responsibility for this in the hands of the faithful. This God, in fact, would rather we not waste our time in church if our worship does not lead us to acting for justice and for peace (Isaiah 58:2-11; Amos 5:21 ff) in the world.
In a time when churches around the nation wrestle with mission and direction, these words need to be heard. In a day when the church is an object of ridicule because of its hypocrisy, these words need to be lived. And in a day when oppression and violence are "standard operating procedure," our God calls us as never before to take a stand, to speak and act, not for the justice of the king, but for God's justice, in our communities, in our nation, and in our world.
