God self-revealed
Commentary
I once counted 27 electrical switches that I touch to get the day going: lights, alarm clocks, burglar alarms, coffemakers, porch lights for the newspaperperson, more lights, and more lights. We take lighting so for granted that it is hard to picture life pre-electricity. The lamplighter had to come around at evening. People guarded the flicker of flame overnight, since fire was hard to start. They squinted over oil lamps and candles. We fear, as they did, the dark streets and are overwhelmed under the thick black moonless and starless prairie nights. We shudder in the elevator jammed during a brownout or, the seniors among us will remember, "we" cowered during blackouts.
Picture the ancients, then, lightless, waiting for dawn and morning, for activity and protection, for revelation -- since the religious usually had the gods coming to activity with the light. And the people of Israel were again and again promised light, a mysterious force they associated with the revelation of God. Light in a pillar before them on Exodus. Light on Sinai for the revealing of the Law.
And now, light for the glory of restored Israel. We Christians, with the help of Matthew's Gospel, adapt the language of this light to the showing forth of God when Jesus comes. Lift up your eyes to see. At first glance blinding, we grow accustomed to seeing and enjoying it as divine glory.
Ephesians 3:1-12
Epiphany is a "sight" festival: we "see" kings on the horizon and follow them to a hut. We "see" the light in Isaiah. And we "see" the "plan of the mystery hidden for ages in God who created all things."
Some of us who preach are physically blind, perhaps born blind. Therefore light has to be described as a reality and we take it on faith, imagining it. More of us who listen are similarly blind; sensitive preachers will not assume that everyone in hearing range can see with eyes. Does that mean that epiphany is not universally preachable?
Not at all: epiphany is about the universal. Lying awake abed in pitch darkness, we can see with the mind's eye while the physical eye of the sighted rests. Awakened by what we hear during preaching or feel when reading Braille, we similarly still see in the mind's eye. We were not there when the words of Isaiah were uttered; we were not there to see when the New Testament writers talked about a mystery unveiled.
But we see, in the sense we use when the light of the mind dawns on us or in us: "I see, I see, aha! I see!" What we see as a fulfillment of Isaiah's word to Israel and of Ephesians' word to the church is the stream of people, millions and billions by now, drawn to the spiritual Jerusalem and now the Gentile world. We see (as in, "Ah! now I see; now I get it!") that God is active in the unveiling in Jesus Christ.
Matthew 2:1-12 Whatever else gets talked about during this Epiphany festival of light and of Gentile attraction to the story of Israel, in the end the mind's eye focuses on "wise men from the East." Without them, children's Christmas pageants would be spartan, unlustered, uncluttered except for shepherd staves that keep being dropped. With them we get to see gold, chests for frankincense, bundles of myrrh, to hear Amahl and the Night Visitors, to sing "We Three Kings," sometimes remembering who it was they were to see.
Epiphany is a good time to think of how unsettling that small "who" of this story had and has to be. As Matthew tells it, the first unsettlement came to King Herod, the necessary villain who has most to lose if a new "King of the Jews" is on the scene. As W.H. Auden tells it in a Christmas oratorio, Herod gives voice to this unsettlement of mind and heart when he hears that this king is to rule through grace.
Grace! What a horrible thought. Herod is a liberal, a law- abiding sort who follows convention, so why should he be challenged? Every corner newsboy would say, "I like to commit sins. God likes to forgive them. Really, the world is admirably arranged." It turns out that this king did rule by grace and still does. It therefore also turns out that epiphany, the disclosure of the light of his coming, is still unsettling to power and the powers. Sometimes, including our own.
Astrophysicists tell us of black holes, matter "out there" in the vast, vacant interstellar spaces, which are so heavy, so dense, that nothing can move through them, even light.
However trim and slim we may be, however little the human race or the Christian church weigh in the scheme of all the weight of the universe, they, too, can represent a spiritual black hole through which the divine light does not penetrate.
That the light is an expression of a God being self-revealed is clear in the first reading today. That this light is to be associated with the bringing of justice is no less clear. Yet justice manifestly is not being done in cases too numerous to mention in every community, to say little about the globe as a whole. Human ignorance, apathy, willfulness, and greed stand in its way. A black hole of density.
That the light is an expression of a God being revealed in Jesus is equally clear, and, as Peter experienced it, that expression is for all people. Manifestly, not all people have heard it or found it credible. Something must be blocking it. A black hole of density, again the result of human resistance or indifference.
That the light is an expression of God's own pleasure is clear from the story of the baptism of Jesus. Yet there are temptations to go elsewhere for the sound and sight "show"; to this year's best-selling alternative therapy, this decade's New Age promises, and anything of this decade that will soon pass. Black holes. The Word penetrates.
FIRST LESSON FOCUS
By James A. Nestingen
Isaiah 60:1-6
There is nothing like being away to teach you the beauty of being at home. Going to college, serving in the military, moving, even a short vacation can transform what has previously appeared ordinary, suffusing the smallest detail with its light.
Absent, the heart begins its roll call, slowly rehearsing to itself lists of the precious: the people, be they family or friends, and the memories associated with each of them; the rooms in the house, the living room, the kitchen, along with the furniture, an old chair in which papers have been read day after day, the smells of supper; the diversions of the household, a stereo, a game drawer, the ball game on the radio.
And then begins the litany of countdown: "the day after tomorrow it will be the day after tomorrow that we're leaving." Time slows down, the days dropping off the calendar as though in freeze-frame until finally it is right. In the meantime, the heart dallies, going over the opportunities, the rituals, the renewals that go with going home.
Finally, there is the homecoming itself: the excited greetings, the sweeping examination -- "you've moved that old chair," "when did you paint the cupboards?" "it smells so good in here, as though nothing has ever changed" -- and the expiring tension of finally being able to relax: "Home at last. Thank God. There's nothing like it. It's fun to go but it is always better to get back."
Still in the exile but at the same time caught up in the promise of return, Isaiah here speaks of the sacred space of his people: Zion, the holy hill on which the temple stood in Jerusalem. Torn by extended absence but surging with hope, Isaiah addresses the geographical point as though it were a person, a beloved intimate. Only in such love does it make sense to tell a hill to arise, to open its eyes and rejoice in being covered with (or by) a herd of camels. But to love itself, a love urgent with homecoming, it is sense itself.
There's an important difference to note here. The hope of Israel is amongst other things but inextricably a hope of sacred space -- the land promise to Abraham and to Abraham and Sarah's children forever. By the time of the prophet, this promise had come to have a specific focus: the temple, where God had promised to dwell.
The hope of Epiphany is something else again -- no land, neither space, but a person, Jesus of Nazareth, to be crucified and raised from the dead. In him, God promises a relationship deeper and yet more portable than the land. And so Epiphany begins its examination, surveying not lands but this one, born of Mary, fresh from the stable and his early life, ready now to enter into the waters of the Jordan to surface in the lights with which his ministry begins.
Picture the ancients, then, lightless, waiting for dawn and morning, for activity and protection, for revelation -- since the religious usually had the gods coming to activity with the light. And the people of Israel were again and again promised light, a mysterious force they associated with the revelation of God. Light in a pillar before them on Exodus. Light on Sinai for the revealing of the Law.
And now, light for the glory of restored Israel. We Christians, with the help of Matthew's Gospel, adapt the language of this light to the showing forth of God when Jesus comes. Lift up your eyes to see. At first glance blinding, we grow accustomed to seeing and enjoying it as divine glory.
Ephesians 3:1-12
Epiphany is a "sight" festival: we "see" kings on the horizon and follow them to a hut. We "see" the light in Isaiah. And we "see" the "plan of the mystery hidden for ages in God who created all things."
Some of us who preach are physically blind, perhaps born blind. Therefore light has to be described as a reality and we take it on faith, imagining it. More of us who listen are similarly blind; sensitive preachers will not assume that everyone in hearing range can see with eyes. Does that mean that epiphany is not universally preachable?
Not at all: epiphany is about the universal. Lying awake abed in pitch darkness, we can see with the mind's eye while the physical eye of the sighted rests. Awakened by what we hear during preaching or feel when reading Braille, we similarly still see in the mind's eye. We were not there when the words of Isaiah were uttered; we were not there to see when the New Testament writers talked about a mystery unveiled.
But we see, in the sense we use when the light of the mind dawns on us or in us: "I see, I see, aha! I see!" What we see as a fulfillment of Isaiah's word to Israel and of Ephesians' word to the church is the stream of people, millions and billions by now, drawn to the spiritual Jerusalem and now the Gentile world. We see (as in, "Ah! now I see; now I get it!") that God is active in the unveiling in Jesus Christ.
Matthew 2:1-12 Whatever else gets talked about during this Epiphany festival of light and of Gentile attraction to the story of Israel, in the end the mind's eye focuses on "wise men from the East." Without them, children's Christmas pageants would be spartan, unlustered, uncluttered except for shepherd staves that keep being dropped. With them we get to see gold, chests for frankincense, bundles of myrrh, to hear Amahl and the Night Visitors, to sing "We Three Kings," sometimes remembering who it was they were to see.
Epiphany is a good time to think of how unsettling that small "who" of this story had and has to be. As Matthew tells it, the first unsettlement came to King Herod, the necessary villain who has most to lose if a new "King of the Jews" is on the scene. As W.H. Auden tells it in a Christmas oratorio, Herod gives voice to this unsettlement of mind and heart when he hears that this king is to rule through grace.
Grace! What a horrible thought. Herod is a liberal, a law- abiding sort who follows convention, so why should he be challenged? Every corner newsboy would say, "I like to commit sins. God likes to forgive them. Really, the world is admirably arranged." It turns out that this king did rule by grace and still does. It therefore also turns out that epiphany, the disclosure of the light of his coming, is still unsettling to power and the powers. Sometimes, including our own.
Astrophysicists tell us of black holes, matter "out there" in the vast, vacant interstellar spaces, which are so heavy, so dense, that nothing can move through them, even light.
However trim and slim we may be, however little the human race or the Christian church weigh in the scheme of all the weight of the universe, they, too, can represent a spiritual black hole through which the divine light does not penetrate.
That the light is an expression of a God being self-revealed is clear in the first reading today. That this light is to be associated with the bringing of justice is no less clear. Yet justice manifestly is not being done in cases too numerous to mention in every community, to say little about the globe as a whole. Human ignorance, apathy, willfulness, and greed stand in its way. A black hole of density.
That the light is an expression of a God being revealed in Jesus is equally clear, and, as Peter experienced it, that expression is for all people. Manifestly, not all people have heard it or found it credible. Something must be blocking it. A black hole of density, again the result of human resistance or indifference.
That the light is an expression of God's own pleasure is clear from the story of the baptism of Jesus. Yet there are temptations to go elsewhere for the sound and sight "show"; to this year's best-selling alternative therapy, this decade's New Age promises, and anything of this decade that will soon pass. Black holes. The Word penetrates.
FIRST LESSON FOCUS
By James A. Nestingen
Isaiah 60:1-6
There is nothing like being away to teach you the beauty of being at home. Going to college, serving in the military, moving, even a short vacation can transform what has previously appeared ordinary, suffusing the smallest detail with its light.
Absent, the heart begins its roll call, slowly rehearsing to itself lists of the precious: the people, be they family or friends, and the memories associated with each of them; the rooms in the house, the living room, the kitchen, along with the furniture, an old chair in which papers have been read day after day, the smells of supper; the diversions of the household, a stereo, a game drawer, the ball game on the radio.
And then begins the litany of countdown: "the day after tomorrow it will be the day after tomorrow that we're leaving." Time slows down, the days dropping off the calendar as though in freeze-frame until finally it is right. In the meantime, the heart dallies, going over the opportunities, the rituals, the renewals that go with going home.
Finally, there is the homecoming itself: the excited greetings, the sweeping examination -- "you've moved that old chair," "when did you paint the cupboards?" "it smells so good in here, as though nothing has ever changed" -- and the expiring tension of finally being able to relax: "Home at last. Thank God. There's nothing like it. It's fun to go but it is always better to get back."
Still in the exile but at the same time caught up in the promise of return, Isaiah here speaks of the sacred space of his people: Zion, the holy hill on which the temple stood in Jerusalem. Torn by extended absence but surging with hope, Isaiah addresses the geographical point as though it were a person, a beloved intimate. Only in such love does it make sense to tell a hill to arise, to open its eyes and rejoice in being covered with (or by) a herd of camels. But to love itself, a love urgent with homecoming, it is sense itself.
There's an important difference to note here. The hope of Israel is amongst other things but inextricably a hope of sacred space -- the land promise to Abraham and to Abraham and Sarah's children forever. By the time of the prophet, this promise had come to have a specific focus: the temple, where God had promised to dwell.
The hope of Epiphany is something else again -- no land, neither space, but a person, Jesus of Nazareth, to be crucified and raised from the dead. In him, God promises a relationship deeper and yet more portable than the land. And so Epiphany begins its examination, surveying not lands but this one, born of Mary, fresh from the stable and his early life, ready now to enter into the waters of the Jordan to surface in the lights with which his ministry begins.
