Keepers Of The Light
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For January 6, 2019:
Keepers Of The Light
by Dean Feldmeyer
Isaiah 60:1-6, Matthew 2:1-12
Epiphany is the season when we celebrate the phenomenon of illumination, especially spiritual illumination, the illumination that Jesus brings to our lives, making visible God’s presence, God’s forgiveness, and God’s acceptance. Scripture calls us to become keepers of that illumination, as we spread light through truth telling.
But, alas, the world does not love illumination. As the Gospel writer, John, makes so clear: This is the verdict: Illumination came into the world, but people embraced shadows and gloom because they had no interest in God’s values or priorities. (John 3: 19 -- my paraphrase).
Time Magazine underscored this profound truth in the final weeks of 2018, when they named “The Guardians,” journalists who have suffered imprisonment and even death for seeking and telling the truth, as 2018 persons of the year.
If, Professor Julian Birkinshaw of the London Business School, writing in Forbes magazine, is right, that “we are living in a post-truth world, where alternative facts and fake news compete on an equal footing with peer-reviewed research and formerly-authoritative sources,” then we have truly rejected the light and embraced the deepest gloom of the human condition.
What, then, are we Christians who are called to be keepers of light, to do?
In the Scripture
“In the time of King Herod…” (Matthew 2:1a)
Cue the organ music, minor keys. Dim the lights. Things just got real.
This is Herod the Great whose “greatness” was predicated upon his architectural achievements, not on his view of social justice. His was not a kinder, gentler Judea. Historians, Jewish, Christian, and secular tend to view his reign with equal horror, noting that it was permeated with extreme violence which he visited upon not just foreign threats but members of his own family as well, if he suspected they were even minutely disloyal.
And, of course, he would, shortly after today’s Gospel lesson, become the author of what scholars refer to as the “Massacre of the Innocents,” when he ordered every male child 2-years-old and younger in the vicinity of Bethlehem, murdered, an act that even the most skeptical of biographers accept as wholly in keeping with his personality.
After a 37-year reign, he would, eventually, (1-4 CE) die of an unknown but painful and, some say, morally appropriate, debilitating disease or combination of diseases that caused breathing problems, convulsions, rotting of his body, and worms.1
So the setting into which Jesus is born is already pretty much enveloped in shadows and gloom. Physically, mentally, morally, spiritually, if it wasn’t already so dismal, we would have to create gloom in which to enfold it. Kinda nasty, right?
But wait! There is a tiny, little spark of light. And if you are in the East, say Persia, or Iran, or even India, and you happen to be studying the astrological signs in the stars you just might notice it. It’s a star that’s just a little bit brighter than all the others and it is pulsing or vibrating or something, beckoning, calling you to come a little closer and behold that which is fueling the illumination which it is sending out.
Only “a little closer” turns out to be hundreds of hundreds of miles but what are a few hundred miles when you are trying to find a little illumination in a world that seems determined to entomb itself in shadow?
So, these “wise men” decide to follow that light. Wise, indeed.
Hold that thought. We’re going to revisit it in a few minutes.
But, first, Isaiah.
This morning’s passage is taken from the first six verses of the 60th chapter of the book, that portion of the book which scholars refer to as “Second Isaiah,” or “Isaiah of Babylon” or “Isaiah of the Fall.” These are the chapters in which the prophet speaks words of comfort and promise to the Children of Israel who are being held in exile “by the rivers of Babylon.”
It is a time of dismal gloom and dark shadow for the People of God and Isaiah’s dominant metaphor is that of light. He references it eight times in the passage: glory (2), shine, light (2), brightness, dawn, radiant. (NRSV)
Isaiah’s promise to the people of God is that illumination will, eventually, break into the spiritual gloom that is their life and, that precious light will illuminate the true relationship that exists between God and God’s people. And that relationship will be so moving, so beautiful, so powerful that all the nations will have no choice but to fall down before it in awe and wonder and sing praises to both God and Israel.
Illumination, true illumination, the kind that comes from God, reveals truth.
And that is good, because truth is a thing of God, a thing divine.
A world that rejects the light, rejects truth. And a world that rejects truth, rejects God.
In the News
October 5, 2018.
President Donald Trump is pictured, during a photo-op, with a group of generals, all of whom appear to be confidently calm and collected. Trump, while speaking to his press pool makes a cryptic remark that has never been fully explained by the White House.
“Maybe it's the calm before the storm,” he says to the gaggle of reporters. “Could be. The calm before the storm. We have the world's great military people in this room, I will tell you that. And we're going to have a great evening. Thank you all for coming.”
A reporter requests clarification about what Trump means: “What storm, Mr. President?”
“You'll find out. Thank you, everybody,” the president said.
Trump’s tone sounded confident: Perhaps he was secure in the knowledge of some future revelation he couldn’t quite name -- possibly something that could damage his political enemies. (The remark came shortly after a gunman, whose motives have never been uncovered, murdered 58 people in Las Vegas, and in the context of a heated back and forth with North Korea over that country's buildup of intercontinental ballistic missiles. Could it have referred to either of those?)
Or maybe the remark was just a troll carried out by a man with a documented history of playing games with the press. Still, some of his supporters took notice, and it began to cultivate a sense of expectation: When would “the storm” hit? What would it reveal?
About three weeks later they get their answer, or they get an answer, at least, and it comes from the strangest of sources. It comes from an anonymous source who calls him/herself “Q.” And the self- described, all-knowing, all seeing “Q” has managed to tie “the storm” to rumors of arrests, coups, plots, intrigues and, to quote Newsweek, “pretty much anything.”2
No conspiracy theory is so bizarre, no alleged plot so ridiculous, no old, debunked fear put far enough to rest, that it will not be credited to “the storm” that is to come.
And the whole thing might have died long ago, in its crib, so to speak, were it not for the help of Alex Jones’s highly trafficked, extreme right-wing website InfoWars, which has never seen a lie or a fairy tale it didn’t love. Mike Cernovich, a pro-Trump social media figure who helped spread the admittedly fake news story about a democrat-led human trafficking ring out of a Washington pizzeria has been noticeably absent from posts about “the storm” as has his friend, Jack Posobiec, who also promoted #Pizzagate. They also promoted several demonstrably false stories involving “antifa,” but that hasn’t kept it from becoming what Newsweek calls the “biggest fake news story of 2018.”3
No matter how demonstrably false a story is, if it hurts someone we don’t like, we will choose to believe it.
Could this be what it means to hate the light and embrace the shadows in 2019?
Our president has, according to the Washington Post Fact Checker, spoken 7,456 “false or misleading statements” in the first 700 days of his presidency.4 (That’s more than 10 a day for those keeping score at home.)
Not only are we no longer outraged or angered by such a disclosure, we aren’t even surprised. We have come to expect such duplicity from those who claim to lead us and we have willingly let them lead, dismissing their dishonesty with a wink and a nod.
How is this possible? How, in a nation that claims to hold and elevate such biblical values as honesty and forthrightness, can we simply not care? How is it that we have come to live in what William Davies, associate professor in political economy at Goldsmiths University of London, wrote of in the New York Times back in 2016 as “the age of post truth politics?”
Jason Stanley, professor of philosophy at Yale University, said, in December that it would be easy to blame it all on Donald Trump but the president would not be able to so grossly devalue truth without the support and complicity of his voters and other supporters who, themselves, value their opinions and feelings above such things as empirical evidence and verifiable truth.5
Besides, it isn’t just politicians.
The #Metoo movement has shown that lying, especially about the treatment of women, is ubiquitous in Hollywood. Recent actions by prosecuting attorneys and attorneys general have re-focused our attention upon pedophile priests and the bishops and cardinals who have lied and conspired to protect and hide them. And social media moguls seem to be changing their stories almost daily as congressional investigators seek to pin them down to one believable account about how the vast mountain of data they collect about us has managed to make it into the hands of others without our permission.
Abby Ohlheiser, who covers digital culture for The Washington Post, observes, “We’ve gotten an all-you-can-eat buffet of reporting on the platform: its data sharing with other tech companies; data sharing with political consulting firms; and hiring of a PR firm to go after its competitors and critics.”6
Russia, it seems, has created a cottage industry for people who are able to tell believable, or even unbelievable lies about Hillary Clinton on the internet.
Christopher Blair, of Waterboro, Maine, pulls down about $15,000 a month writing a blog called TheLastLineOfDefense.org. The blog, which started as a joke, contains hundreds of fake news articles, one more insanely unbelievable than the next. His headlines make your run-of-the-mill supermarket tabloids look like pillars of sanity. And there are more than fourteen disclaimers on the web site that remind readers that nothing they are seeing, here, is actually true.
Yet, he has, at last count, over 6-million readers who refuse to accept the disclaimers and choose, instead, to believe every ridiculous, crazy word they see in the blog posts.
It’s not that they are being innocently duped. They are choosing to participate in the devaluation of truth by choosing to believe what is obviously and verifiably false. It’s just that they prefer the obviously false to empirical truth.7
As with any other commodity, scarcity creates value.
And few are the things that are rarer these days than truth.
No wonder Time Magazine has named “The Guardians,” journalists who have risked and sacrificed their freedom and their lives in the pursuit of truth, as the persons of the year for 2018. These are rare and valuable people, people worthy of our respect and honor.
In the Pulpit
In his essay, “The Church as Social Pioneer,” Christian ethicist, H. Richard Niebuhr, offers what he considers to be the appropriate response of the church of Jesus Christ to the sin, separation, and estrangement that threaten to destroy our world:
“Church is that part of human society and that element in each particular society, which moves toward God, which as the priest acting for all men, worships Him, which believes and trusts in Him on behalf of all, which is the first to obey Him when it becomes aware of a new aspect of His will…
“In ethics it is the first to repent for the sins of a society, and it repents on behalf of all…It does this not as the holy community separate from the world but as the pioneer and representative. It repents for the sin of the whole society and leads in the social act of repentance” by holding accountable those who would devalue truth and shrug off the damage done when dishonesty becomes acceptable.
In other words, when we become aware of sin or a particular sin that is eating a the core of our culture, the first thing we do is repent of it, ourselves. That is, we turn our back upon it and abolish it within the church. And we do this not as a separate community acting on our own but as a social pioneer, acting on behalf of the whole culture.
So, when we discover that lying and deceit are being accepted as normative in the culture we repent for the sin of the whole society and lead in the social act of repentance by refusing to accept lies and by identifying those who do, by becoming truth tellers and rewarding those who join us as truth tellers. When the institutions of society are subject to question because innocent suffering illuminates their antagonism to the honesty and truth, then the church undertakes to change its own relationship to truth telling and to lead society in doing the same.
We, the church of Jesus Christ, honor truth and esteem those who join us in doing so.
We become the leaders and the models for the greater culture.
Like the magi of yore, we become the followers and the keepers of the light.
1 Zavada, Jack, " King Herod the Great: Ruthless Ruler of the Jews," ThoughtCo., Sept. 24, 2018.
2 Hayden, Michael Edison, How‚"The Storm‚" Became The Biggest Fake News Story Of 2018, Newsweek, Feb. 1, 2018.
3 Ibid.
4 In 710 days, President Trump has made 7,645 false or misleading claims, Washington Post, Dec. 30, 2018.
5 Devega, Chauncey, "Donald Trump is destroying truth": Scholar Jason Stanley on the rhetoric of American fascism, Slate, Dec. 11, 2018.
6 Ohlheiser, Abby, 3 ways to live with Facebook, Washington Post, Dec. 20, 2018
7 Saslow, Eli, ‘Nothing on this page is real’: How lies become truth in online America, Washington Post, Nov. 17, 2018.
SECOND THOUGHTS
Both Sides
by Mary Austin
Isaiah 60:1-6
The good guys wear white hats, and the villain always wears black. That’s how we can tell them apart. After centuries of training in these images, we connect moral rightness with white and evil with dark. These images have a long cultural history and our minds have been trained over the years to make these connections. “Day, Light, and Good are often linked together, in opposition to night, darkness, and evil. These contrasting metaphors may go back as far as human history, and appear in many cultures, including both the ancient Chinese and the ancient Persians.” And so, when Epiphany comes, we rejoice in the coming of God’s light, vanquishing the darkness.
These images, though, are deeply painful for people of color, when they hear that dark is something to be avoided. The idea that darkness is something less than the light carries a painful sting. As we preach about images of light and dark, we need spirit-filled illumination about how those words sound to all kinds of people. Our culture connects darkness with evil, sin, crime, backwardness and childishness. If we limit ourselves to saying that light is good and dark is bad, we fall short of the depth and mystery of God.
The message of Epiphany is that the message of Jesus comes to all people, including the Gentiles, who are embodied in these mysterious visitors from the east. God’s gifts, through Jesus, are available both to people on the inside, and to the people who wouldn’t usually be included. The light of God’s presence comes to all. Isaiah promises that, and Matthew shows its fulfillment in the journey of the magi to Jesus. When we preach about that, we have to be sure not to get in our own way by making our images only relevant to a few people.
One way for our preaching to reflect the breadth of God’s gift is to attend to how we use words about light and dark. Adele Halliday writes about being on the receiving end of these images, saying that “people who are dark-skinned (such as myself), people who hold internalized notions of darkness as always evil, and people who have grown up in a context where everything black is referred to as impure can find it difficult to enter into these biblical texts and rituals. People who are seen to personify evil can find it difficult to refer only to light as goodness.” She suggests that, just as we are always seeking to understand the depth and breadth of God in new ways, we can broaden our understanding of light and darkness. “Surely we can expand our vocabulary so that darkness does not always equate evil, and light does not always equate good. After all, in reality, such a simplistic dichotomy does not exist. In reality, darkness can be seen as comfort as a refugee is fleeing a time of war and unrest; light in this circumstance, could lead to death. Darkness could be seen as a wonder to explore, full of Holy Mystery; light, could be seen as a harsh reality, revealing a blinding light.”
Epiphany reminds us that maybe our understanding of darkness needs more depth. Barbara Brown Taylor, the author of Learning to Walk in the Dark, says that Christians have been misguided about darkness. We need to understand the gifts available in the darkness, she says, and to redeem our theology of the dark. Light is good, and so is the dark as a place of growth and presence. “Once you start listening to how people use the words dark or darkness, it doesn’t take long to realize that the references are 99% negative. I don’t know how that happened in every day speech. Maybe it’s a linguistic fossil leftover from our days in caves or maybe it is a predictable association for people who’ve become addicted to light. Where scripture is concerned, I don’t think Christians have misunderstood much of anything. From Genesis to Revelation, darkness is used a synonym for ignorance and sin and evil and death. But there are also narrative passages that form an easily missed minority report.” She notes that God is at work in many seasons of darkness. “In Genesis, darkness existed before God even got to work as a primal substance. Everything was made by God from dark. In Exodus, God promises to come to Moses on Mount Sinai in a dense or dark cloud. Here, darkness is divine and where God dwells. Abraham meets God in the darkness, Jacob wrestles an angel in the middle of the night, and angels announcing Christ’s birth to the shepherds at night. There’s so much that happens in the dark that is essential to the Christian story.”
Taylor suggests a wider definition of darkness. “Darkness is everything I do not know, cannot control, and am often afraid of. But that’s just the beginner’s definition. If I am a believer in God, then darkness is also where God dwells. God may also be frightening and uncontrollable and largely unknown to me, yet I decide to trust God anyway.” There is, she says, healing in the dark, along with liberation.
I feel indebted to the people who have educated me about how these words fall on their ears and hurt their hearts. In the season of winter, in my own life, I crave more and more and more light. I turn on all the lights when I’m in a room, and I move my light box around the house to get even more light. I long for as much physical light as I can get, and I love Epiphany for its promise of God’s light. But I have the privilege of not having my skin color connected to evil, crime and worthlessness because of its color. I see now that my view has been too narrow to do justice to the mystery of Epiphany.
We can talk about light not just as an end to darkness, but also as illumination for our spiritual blind spots. Light can reveal shadows, or banish gloom. Light can be warmth in a cold place. Light and dark exist together, each revealing the other. The magi come as travelers who add another perspective to the story of Jesus, and I am grateful to the people who have added another understanding to my views of light and dark. For all forms of illumination in our world, I am thankful. We can be most true to the story of the magi, and Epiphany’s light, when we consider this story from all sides.
ILLUSTRATIONS
From team member Tom Willadsen:
Epiphany or Twelfth Night or “Can we take the damn tree down now?”
My family were sticklers about observing the Christmas season. We put our tree up later than anyone else in the neighborhood because Mom insisted that it stay up and decorated until January 6, Epiphany or Twelfth Night, depending on who was naming the day. My brother and I even got presents on Epiphany, long past the time our friends got presents. (In later years, Mom confessed that Epiphany presents were those she hadn’t found in her closet on Christmas Eve.)
Observing Epiphany per my family’s tradition turned me into a criminal. The first year I was married, the community garbage collection engineers picked up Christmas trees on January 3. Having missed the deadline, our tree remained on our apartment’s balcony for months. Finally, in mid-May I stuffed the tree into the back seat of the Cavalier late at night and abandoned it in the nearest city park, where the woodland creatures would frolic in delight. That’s how I rationalized it. Mainly, the guilt I felt at dumping the tree illegally and the fear of getting caught showed me I was not cut out for a life of crime. Better I should stay in ministry, I reasoned.
Another family tradition was trying to get the tree to stand up straight in our decades old tree stand. My brother would lie on his side while Mom and I would steady the tree for him to screw into the stand. For some reason this task was never completed without screaming, swearing and my brother getting copious parallel scratches on his face. Putting the damn tree up was the only context in which one could safely drop the D bomb without fear of punishment in our family. It never occurred to us to buy a straight tree or a more stable tree stand. Tradition, you know.
* * *
The First Nowell
The church I served for 19 Christmases had a tradition. We always sang The First Noël the Sunday between Christmas and January 1. I was always on vacation that week, and I cannot stand that hymn. I have a well-rehearsed rant about it. There is no other hymn in the Presbyterian hymnal that is less true to scripture.
First, in our hymnal its title is “The First Nowell.” This alone is insulting. It’s as though Presbyterians do not know that the two little dots over the “e” in “Noël,” a tréma, indicate the absence of a diphthong. [Memo to self: “Absence of a Diphthong” great name for a rock band!] Someone familiar with this convention reads the title as it appears in our hymnal as though we are about to announce a severe water shortage, rather than the birth of baby Jesus.
I am not unfamiliar with the work of the brilliant late 20th century British philosopher, Robert Plant, who once opined, “You know, sometimes, words have two meanings.” In our hymnal it is certain that “Nowell” refers not to the holiday of Christmas, but to a song associated with that holiday. It is, however, curious to me that in the first Christmas song which gives this hymn its title the angels “did say,” rather than “did sing.” Perhaps the composer of this hymn means to suggest that the first Christmas carol or “noël” was rapped.
And suddenly there was with the angel a multitude of the heavenly host, praising God and saying,
Yo, bum rush da manger/
Da savior’s born!!
Second, the lyrics are not true to scripture. The shepherds did not look up and see a star; they looked up and saw an angel. [Luke 2:9] The magi saw a star. [Matthew 2:2] The star was not shining in the East; the magi were in the East when they saw the star. There is no mention in either Luke’s or Matthew’s accounts of Jesus’ birth that the light “continued both day and night,” though we will sing exactly that. The song says there were three wise men. Scripture only mentions that the wise men were plural. There could have been two or twenty. Scripture describes them only as “wise men from the East.” [Matthew 2:1] They brought three different gifts: gold, frankincense and myrrh.
Third, the lyrics are inscrutable. “On a cold winter’s night that was so deep.” How does one measure the depth of a night? There is nothing in Luke’s gospel to suggest what the temperature was when the angel appeared to the shepherds. (I know today’s Gospel reading is from Matthew, but this noël, the song, not the holiday, mixes images from Luke and Matthew.)
Fourth, the inscrutable, un-Biblical lyrics are mind-numbingly repetitive. When the Presbyterians have finished singing this tune, they will have sung “Noël,” excuse me, “Now-ell,” 25 times. This song alone will make us want to pack up the holly, douse the candles by the window, and shriek “humbug!”
Fifth, this is a Christmas carol about a Christmas carol; it’s a meta-carol. Songs in praise of songs irritate me. Whether it’s Bob Seger, now 73 years old, singing the praises of “old time rock & roll” or Billy Joel crowing “It’s Still Rock and Roll to Me” or country star Trace Adkins’s solipsistic “Songs About Me,” I hate the idea of music in praise of music. Admittedly, the text of “The First Nowell” is ambiguous, as the singer sings “nowell” 25 times it could be in praise of the holiday or the holiday song -- perhaps it is both, why split hairs when singing the same word over and over?
If you’re not a snob about French orthography, comme moi, or if your congregation has a high tolerance for repetition, go ahead and select this hymn as a fine closer for the Season of Christmas. I’m just gratified that I used “solipsistic,” “absence of a diphthong” and “inscrutable,” in an article citing Robert Plant, lead singer of Led Zeppelin. Maybe put these illustrations in storage and pull them out earlier in the season of Christmas next year. As of January 6, there are only 351 shopping days till next Christmas!
[Presbyterians who use the 1990 Presbyterian Hymnal will find that “The First Nowell” is the only hymn in the index of scriptural allusions that references the birth narratives of both Luke and Matthew.]
* * *
Isaiah 60:1-6
Covered in camels?
This passage is overflowing with the bright light of a new age dawning. The nations of the world are attracted to the light of Zion as moths to a flame. The heart of Zion throbs with joy. In verse six there’s even a reference to two of the three baby shower gifts the magi carried to Bethlehem.
“A multitude of camels shall cover you.” [60:6] Camels all the way from Midian, Ephah and Sheba. While it’s not certain what the borders of these regions were, the first two are likely in the west portion of the Arabian Peninsula and Sheba may be as far away as Yemen, at the southern end of the Arabian Peninsula.
The point is that great wealth is forecast to travel a great distance with Jerusalem/Zion as its destination. To be covered with camels is to receive great wealth. Imagine modern examples of great wealth. Perhaps winning the Publisher’s Clearinghouse Sweepstakes would be equivalent to being covered with camels.
* * *
Ephesians 3:1-12
Rich variety
Remember we’re still in the season of Christmas. Paul or whoever is talking about grace in a way that people often think of gifts at Christmas time, “according to the gift of God’s grace.” God’s wisdom is described as having “rich variety.” And grace is described as “the boundless riches of Christ.” There is abundance here, just as in the Christmases we just celebrated 12 days ago. The riches here are, however, of a different quality. These riches have been awaited for generations and at last, their treasure is revealed to all people in the person of Jesus Christ.
Last Easter I defined λογος as “intention.” Perhaps that’s appropriate as a way for us today to think of Christ on Epiphany. Our task is not only to recognize and accept this gift, but to embrace it. And let it embrace us.
* * * * * * * * *
From team member Ron Love:
Ephesians 3:9 “to make everyone see”
Psalm 72:4 “defend the cause of the poor”
The international recognized symbol for autism is a puzzle piece. The symbol was developed 55 years ago. Since then we have come to a better understanding of autism, so the symbol has now come to mean “Autism Awareness.” Those who wear or display the puzzle symbol are now saying autism is a real illness that affects real people.
The puzzle piece logo was first created in 1963 by the National Autistic Society. It was created by Gerald Gasson, a parent and board member for the National Autistic Society in London. The board believed autistic people suffered from a “puzzling” condition. They adopted the logo because it didn’t look like any other image used for charitable or commercial use.
The puzzle piece is so effective because it tells us something about autism: our children are handicapped by a puzzling condition; this isolates them from normal human contact and therefore they do not “fit in.”
Since then, the interlocking, mutli-colored puzzle piece has become the international symbol of autism. Its significance has become multi-faceted. For some it represents the mystery and complexity of the disorder, for others it represents the mechanical nature of an autistic’s persons thought process. The colors can represent the diversity of individuals who suffer from autism. For everyone, the bright colors represent hope.
* * *
Isaiah 60:5 ‘your heart will thrill and rejoice”
Matthew 2:11 “gifts”
In a dispute between the president and congress over funding for his wall, President Trump has temporarily shut down the government. Not all agencies have been closed, but some, like the national parks, have. Some of the parks are remaining open with state funding and charitable contributions. Bryce Canyon and Zion National Park are in Utah, and are remaining open to the public by way of state funding.
Utah governor Gary Herbert, a Republican, said, “Many travelers have planned their visit for months in advance and have travelled from all over the world to be here. We want them to return home with memories of magnificent vistas and welcoming people, not locked doors.”
* * *
Acts 8:15 “receive the Holy Spirit”
Half the users of smartphone spend between three and seven hours per day on their mobile devices. Adults, 69%, and teenagers, 78%, check their phones hourly. Lisa Checchio, the chief marketing officer for Wyndham Hotels, knew there was a serious problem when hotel managers had to request additional beach chairs to accommodate guests who would sit and stare at their phones all day. The average resort guest was bringing three devices and checking them once every 12 minutes, or roughly 80 times a day.
The hotel instituted a policy, now being followed by other resorts, to create incentive programs for guests to give up their phones for a few hours each day. These include special offers and discounts. A guest will put his phone in a sealed pouch so he will always have it with him, but only a hotel staff member can unlock the pouch.
These policies reflect the mission of the resorts to promote wellness and relaxation. Checchio said, “Everyone wants to be able to disconnect. They just need a little courage.”
* * *
Psalm 72:1 “justice”
The newspaper comic strip Close To Home is written by John McPherson. Though the many reoccurring characters have no names, if the comic is read daily and long enough the reader does become familiar with the unique personality of each individual.
In a recent publication two men are walking through the fires of hell. Looming over them is an oversized Satan, complete with horns and pitchfork. Walking in front of the two men is a snowman. As one companion says to the other, “You think WE’VE got it bad! How’d you like to be THAT guy?!
* * *
Acts 8:15 “Holy Spirit”
Ephesians 3:3 “mysteries”
Mary conceived Jesus as a virgin. Her conception is known as the Doctrine of the Incarnation, where Jesus was God’s word that became flesh and dwelt among us. But, as a virgin, absent of sexual intercourse, how could Mary ever become pregnant? This will remain an unanswered question. Though, the artists of the middle ages gave us their perspective on how Mary was impregnated. In their paintings you will often see a tiny glow touching Mary’s left ear. That brilliant glow is the Holy Spirit speaking to her. It is God’s word entering into her soul -- into her womb. When God speaks it is always a creative act.
* * *
Acts 8:15 “Holy Spirit”
Ephesians 3:3 “mysteries”
Matthew 2:1 “wise men”
In the newspaper comic Peanuts by Charles Schulz, Charlie Brown and Linus are leaning with their elbows on a brick wall. It is winter, as both are wearing stocking caps. Linus begins a discussion with a question and a thought, “I have a theological question…When you die and go to heaven, are you graded on a percentage or a curve?” Charlie takes no time in offering his answer to this deep and troubling question, when he tells Linus, “On a curve, naturally” Linus, seeking assurance, asks, “How can you be so sure?” Charlie again has no hesitation in responding to this question, telling his best friend, “I’m always sure about things that are a matter of opinion.”
* * *
Ephesians 3:3 “mystery”
Ephesians 3:9 “to make everyone see”
Matthew 2:9 “ahead of them, went the star”
The movie On the Basis of Sex is now playing in movie theaters. The movie is about United States Associate Supreme Justice Ruth Ginsburg, and how she overcame sexual serotypes and sexual discrimination to reach the position she presently holds. For a woman who was born in 1933 the obstacles she encountered in her career were formidable. The movie’s leading role is played by actress Felicity Jones, who portrays Ruth Bader Ginsburg. Ginsburg, who has seen Jones in other roles, approved of her selection. Ginsburg, realizing it is a movie, knew she had little control over the director’s adaptation of her biographical story. Though the director, Mimi Leder, was required by Ginsburg to be absolutely precise in her presentation of the law.
* * *
Matthew 2:11 “gold, frankincense, and myrrh”
There is an unofficial holiday each year known as “National Returns Day.” This is the day of the year for the most holiday returns. In 2018 for the first time the day has fallen before Christmas. This year there are more gift returns before Christmas than after Christmas. Because of increased sales on Black Friday and on Cyber Monday, more items have been purchased causing more early returns. In 2017 National Returns Day was on January 3, in 2018 it fell on December 19. Kathleen Marran, UPS vice president of U.S. marketing realized the day has been inching toward December for a number of years. But regarding 2018 she said, “It’s crossed over, finally.”
* * *
Isaiah 60:1 “your light has come”
Acts 8:15 “receive the Holy Spirit”
The word atheism means “without God.” The atheist is the person who says that there is no God.
Carl Sagan was one of the world’s most famous atheists. Sagan was an astronomer who narrated and co-wrote the award-winning 1980 television series Cosmos: A Personal Voyage. At the time, Cosmos was the most widely watched series in the history of American public television. The program has been seen by at least 500 million people across 60 different countries. Sagan summed up atheism when he declared on the program, “The Cosmos is all that is or ever was or ever will be.”
Isaac Asimov was another famous atheist. Asimov was a prolific writer. He wrote or edited more than 500 books and an estimated 90,000 letters and postcards. Asimov wrote science fiction and, along with Robert A. Heinlein and Arthur C. Clarke, he was considered one of the “Big Three” science fiction writers during the twentieth century. Asimov once said, “Emotionally, I am an atheist. I don’t have the evidence to prove that God doesn’t exist, but I so strongly suspect he doesn’t that I don’t want to waste my time.”
An atheist does not know that “the Lord is near.”
* * *
Acts 8:17 “laid their hands on them, and they received the Holy Spirit”
Patricia Lockwood is a poet and the daughter of a Catholic priest. Her father, Greg, was a married Episcopal priest when he decided to join the Roman Catholic Church. The Pope allowed the married man to be ordained into the Catholic order. In May 2015, Lockwood published her memoir titled Priestdaddy. The title of the book comes from the fact that her father was a married Roman Catholic priest.
In her book, she recounts how the image of the church changed with the movie The Exorcist, instead of the sunnier days depicted in Going My Way and The Bells of St. Mary’s. In her book, she recounts the first time her father saw the movie The Exorcist. Chaplain Lockwood was on board a nuclear submarine, and there was not enough room for him to leap out of his chair with fear. Ms. Lockwood recounts his experience with these words:
Put yourself in his place. You’re a drop of blood at the center of the ocean…All of a sudden you look up at a screen and see a possessed 12-year-old with violent head vomiting green chunks and backwards Latin. She’s so full of demon that the only way to relieve her feelings is to have sex with a crucifix. You would convert too. I guarantee it.
* * * * * * * * *
From team member Chris Keating:
Matthew 2:1-12
Zoroastrian magi
Properly translated, Matthew’s star-crossed travelers were neither “wisemen” nor “kings,” but magi, or magoi in Greek. Magi were Zoroastrian priests, practitioners of one of the world’s oldest religions rooted in ancient Iran and modern-day Kurdistan. If the magi showed up in Washington, D.C. today, it’s possible they’d be seen as representatives of the Kurdish people.
The ongoing conflict in Syria and battles against ISIS have created deeper awareness of Kurdish culture and religion.
While Zoroastrianism has dwindled over the past centuries, the monotheistic religion has seen a trend of growing numbers of Kurdish converts in recent years. Kurdish Iraqis, weary of ISIS’ abuses and Islamic extremism, have returned to the religion that was often practiced by their ancestors. The Kurdish regional government became the first governmental entity to recognize Zoroastrianism since the Middle Ages. According to a report in the New Arab:
"Under the Baath regime, we could not even request to practice our religion since it was not recognised. We would have faced grave reprisals from the government," says Awat Tayib, the chief of the followers of the Zoroastrians in the Kurdistan region. "Our religion survived in hiding. Many worshippers secretly passed down the knowledge of their faith to their descendants throughout generations," she adds.
* * *
Matthew 2:1-12
Quaking kings
The magi’s quest for the new king of Israel incites fear in Herod. The contrast between the vulnerable infant and the anxious despot could not be more stunning. Herod’s deceit is barely concealed, and his actions form what would today be called the politics of fear. It is that sort of political climate which led Senator Jeff Flake, (R-Arizona) to step down from the Senate this year. In a farewell letter to Arizonans, Flake noted fear has resulted in steep political divisions which will have long-lasting impact. Flake wrote that “A political vision that is determined to turn American against American is beyond reckless and, is quite simply, a prescription for political extinction.”
Outgoing Speaker of the House Paul Ryan made similar comments in his farewell address. Last week Ryan said that it has become politically expedient to “prey on people’s fears,” by using “algorithms” which play on anger. “We spend far more time trying to convict one another than we do try to develop our own convictions,” Ryan said. “Being against someone has more currency than being for anything.”
* * *
Matthew 2:1-12
The monarchy of fear
Philosopher Martha Nussbaum has examined the impact fear plays in guiding current political discourse. Her works examine fear as a strategy as well its ability to let rage become a vehicle for transformation. Yet Nussbaum is also concerned about how to move beyond fear -- a move Herod and his kin never seem to consider. In a Newsweek interview, Nussbaum spoke of how she defines fear.
It is the most primitive emotion, and the first one felt by an infant arriving in this rather painful world, in desperate need of someone to protect them. When we feel helpless later in life, fear makes us scapegoat others. Instead of fixing the problems, we say, “Oh, it’s all their fault -- those women or immigrants are infesting our country.” Rather than useful protest or constructive solutions, we get angry at these handy targets.
Fear is also behind disgust, a visceral reaction to our own mortality and animality -- feces and bodily fluids and such. This is true across every single society; we project grossness onto a racial or gender subgroup or caste. A big part of social subordination and discrimination is to ascribe hyper-animality to other groups and use that as an excuse for subordinating them further. And then we feel better about ourselves; we can be the angels, and they can be the animals.
WORSHIP
by George Reed
Call to Worship:
Leader: Give our leaders your justice, O God.
People: May they judge your people with righteousness.
Leader: May they judge your poor with justice.
People: May the mountains yield prosperity for the people.
Leader: May they defend the cause of the poor of the people.
People: May they give deliverance to the needy.
OR
Leader: The light of the star and the Light of the World have come.
People: We rejoice in the light of God which shines on us.
Leader: Let the light shine in you so that you are filled with light.
People: We open ourselves to God’s light.
Leader: Share that light then with others.
People: With joy we will share the brightness of God’s love.
Hymns and Songs:
Go, Tell It on the Mountain
UMH: 251
H82: 99
PH: 29
AAHH: 202
NNBH: 92
NCH: 154
CH: 167
LBW: 70
ELA: 290
W&P: 218
AMEC: 122
STLT: 239
We Three Kings
UMH: 254
H82: 128
PH: 66
AAHH: 218
NNBH: 97
CH: 172
W&P: 233
STLT: 259
I Want to Walk as a Child of the Light
UMH: 206
H82: 490
ELA: 815
W&P: 248
Renew: 152
Let There Be Light
UMH: 440
NNBH: 450
NCH: 589
STLT: 142
Christ, Whose Glory Fills the Skies
UMH: 173
H82: 6/7
PH: 462/463
LBW: 265
ELA: 553
W&P: 91
This Little Light of Mine
UMH: 585
AAHH: 549
NNBH: 511
NCH: 524/525
ELA: 677
STLT: 118
Open My Eyes, That I May See
UMH: 454
PH: 324
NNBH: 218
CH: 586
W&P: 480
AMEC: 285
Rise, Shine, You People
UMH: 187
LBW: 393
ELA: 665
W&P: 89
Arise, Shine
CCB: 2
Renew: 123
Open Our Eyes, Lord
CCB: 77
Renew: 91
Music Resources Key:
UMH: United Methodist Hymnal
H82: The Hymnal 1982
PH: Presbyterian Hymnal
AAHH: African American Heritage Hymnal
NNBH: The New National Baptist Hymnal
NCH: The New Century Hymnal
CH: Chalice Hymnal
LBW: Lutheran Book of Worship
ELA: Evangelical Lutheran Worship
W&P: Worship & Praise
AMEC: African Methodist Episcopal Church Hymnal
STLT: Singing the Living Tradition
CCB: Cokesbury Chorus Book
Renew: Renew! Songs & Hymns for Blended Worship
Prayer for the Day/Collect
O God who dwells in awesome light:
Grant us the faith to open our eyes
and see your light all around us
that we may share your light and love with all;
through Jesus Christ our Savior. Amen.
OR
We praise you, O God, because you are the light eternal. You fill all creation with the light of your glory. Fill us with courage that we may look for your light in our midst. Help us to share your light and love with others. Amen.
Prayer of Confession
Leader: Let us confess to God and before one another our sins and especially our dwelling in darkness when there is light all around us.
People: We confess to you, O God, and before one another that we have sinned. You have given us the light that has the capacity to light all the world and yet we have not allowed it to shine within us. We have spurned your good gift and so we do not have it to offer to others. We open our hearts and minds to your light so that it may shine in and through us. Amen.
Leader: God’s light is always available to us. We just need to invite it in.
Prayers of the People
We praise you, O Light of the World, for illuminating our lives. In you we can see all truth.
(The following paragraph may be used if a separate prayer of confession has not been used.)
We confess to you, O God, and before one another that we have sinned. You have given us the light that has the capacity to light all the world and yet we have not allowed it to shine within us. We have spurned your good gift and so we do not have it to offer to others. We open our hearts and minds to your light so that it may shine in and through us.
We thank you for the blessings of this life and, especially, for your light that shines upon us. We thank you for those who have received your light and shared it with us so that we might find our way in life.
(Other thanksgivings may be offered.)
We pray for all your children in their need. We pray for those who have not yet opened their hearts and minds to your light. Help us to shine for them.
(Other intercessions may be offered.)
All these things we ask in the Name of our Savior Jesus Christ who taught us to pray together saying:
Our Father....Amen.
(Or if the Our Father is not used at this point in the service)
All this we ask in the Name of the Blessed and Holy Trinity. Amen.
Children’s Sermon Starter
Have a long tube, perhaps from wrapping paper, and paste a picture on the end so you have to look into the tube to see it. It should be a silhouette and can only be seen when someone shines a light on it from the outside of the tube. Arms being too short the children can only see it if someone else shines the light for them. God’s light is like that. It helps us see but we usually need someone else to shine for us.
CHILDREN'S SERMON
Light Shine Bright
by Bethany Peerbolte
Isaiah 60:1-6, Matthew 2:1-12
Need:
-- Light source (flashlight, candle, glow stick, etc)
-- Blanket (if your worship space does not get dark with the lights are off)
For this lesson you will use a physical light source to show that we can see light better in the dark. This will demonstrate how darkness is not bad because without it the light is not very bright. It is the contrast of darkness that allows us to fully appreciate the light. You can do this lesson with any light source (flashlight, lamp, candle, battery powered candle, etc). The fainter the better. Glow sticks work well because in a well-lit room they are not very bright. You can also get packs of glow sticks at a dollar store and allow every kid to have a light source. At a point in the lesson you will need to turn off the lights. If your worship area does not get very dark because of natural light, bring a blanket and ask a helper to take the light under the blanket to see how much brighter it looks in the darkness.
Say something like:
Happy New Year everyone! How many of you stayed up till midnight? Wow! When I was your age I didn’t like to be up that late because it gets really dark outside. The dark can be kind of scary. You can’t see very well. There is something you can see really well in the dark though. Can anyone guess what it is? What can you see in the dark? (stars, porch lights, candles, flashlights, etc). Yes! You can see light really well when it is dark.
I have a light here (take out your light/glow stick) It’s not glowing now but if I crack it/turn it on…Hmmmm it’s not very bright is it? I wonder why it isn’t very bright. (if you have enough for every kid pass out the light source and have them all crack/turn on their lights) When I tried this earlier it was really bright. You know what, when I tried it before I was in the dark, maybe that will make this light brighter. Let’s turn of the lights and see. (Turn of the lights.)
Wow! Look at that. Now that the other lights are off this light looks a lot brighter. The light works best when it is in the dark. We can see the light best in the dark! (Turn the lights on again.)
That is a really cool thing for us to learn, that light works best in the darkness. We may think the dark is scary but that is the best place to go if we want to see a light shine. In our scripture lessons today, we are talking about the magi, the wise travelers who followed a star to find the baby Jesus. If they were following a star when do you think they had to be awake to follow it? The night! When it was dark so they could see the star. I bet they were very thankful for dark nights so the star could shine bright and it would be easier to follow the star.
In Isaiah it says a light has come into the darkness. That light is Jesus, who we say is the light of the world. Where do you think that light shines the best? In the darkness. Yes, so it is okay to be in the dark because Jesus’ light shines bright there. Just like our light shines best in the dark too. We still might be afraid of the dark but when we feel afraid we can say a prayer and ask Jesus to shine brighter.
Should we say a prayer now? Let’s pray.
Dear God, Thank you for the light of Jesus. When we are in darkness, help us look for the light. In Jesus name, Amen.
* * * * * * * * * * * * *
The Immediate Word, January 6, 2019, issue.
Copyright 2019 by CSS Publishing Company, Inc., Lima, Ohio.
All rights reserved. Subscribers to The Immediate Word service may print and use this material as it was intended in sermons and in worship and classroom settings only. No additional permission is required from the publisher for such use by subscribers only. Inquiries should be addressed to or to Permissions, CSS Publishing Company, Inc., 5450 N. Dixie Highway, Lima, Ohio 45807.
- Keepers Of The Light by Dean Feldmeyer -- If, Professor Julian Birkinshaw of the London Business School is right, that “we are living in a post-truth world, where alternative facts and fake news compete on an equal footing with peer-reviewed research and formerly-authoritative sources,” then we have truly rejected the light and embraced the deepest gloom of the human condition.
- Second Thoughts: Both Sides by Mary Austin -- The way we talk about light and darkness may convey the opposite message from what Matthew’s gospel means, with the story of the magi.
- Sermon illustrations by Tom Willadsen, Ron Love, and Chris Keating.
- Worship resources by George Reed that focus on illumination; light and dark/good and evil thoughtfully addressed.
- Light Shine Bright Children’s sermon by Bethany Peerbolte -- The darkness has a bad reputation. Darkness is where scary things live and badness prevails. This lesson seeks to redeem the darkness a little. Darkness has a purpose and it does not have to scare us, because Jesus is the light that never leaves us.
Keepers Of The Light
by Dean Feldmeyer
Isaiah 60:1-6, Matthew 2:1-12
Epiphany is the season when we celebrate the phenomenon of illumination, especially spiritual illumination, the illumination that Jesus brings to our lives, making visible God’s presence, God’s forgiveness, and God’s acceptance. Scripture calls us to become keepers of that illumination, as we spread light through truth telling.
But, alas, the world does not love illumination. As the Gospel writer, John, makes so clear: This is the verdict: Illumination came into the world, but people embraced shadows and gloom because they had no interest in God’s values or priorities. (John 3: 19 -- my paraphrase).
Time Magazine underscored this profound truth in the final weeks of 2018, when they named “The Guardians,” journalists who have suffered imprisonment and even death for seeking and telling the truth, as 2018 persons of the year.
If, Professor Julian Birkinshaw of the London Business School, writing in Forbes magazine, is right, that “we are living in a post-truth world, where alternative facts and fake news compete on an equal footing with peer-reviewed research and formerly-authoritative sources,” then we have truly rejected the light and embraced the deepest gloom of the human condition.
What, then, are we Christians who are called to be keepers of light, to do?
In the Scripture
“In the time of King Herod…” (Matthew 2:1a)
Cue the organ music, minor keys. Dim the lights. Things just got real.
This is Herod the Great whose “greatness” was predicated upon his architectural achievements, not on his view of social justice. His was not a kinder, gentler Judea. Historians, Jewish, Christian, and secular tend to view his reign with equal horror, noting that it was permeated with extreme violence which he visited upon not just foreign threats but members of his own family as well, if he suspected they were even minutely disloyal.
And, of course, he would, shortly after today’s Gospel lesson, become the author of what scholars refer to as the “Massacre of the Innocents,” when he ordered every male child 2-years-old and younger in the vicinity of Bethlehem, murdered, an act that even the most skeptical of biographers accept as wholly in keeping with his personality.
After a 37-year reign, he would, eventually, (1-4 CE) die of an unknown but painful and, some say, morally appropriate, debilitating disease or combination of diseases that caused breathing problems, convulsions, rotting of his body, and worms.1
So the setting into which Jesus is born is already pretty much enveloped in shadows and gloom. Physically, mentally, morally, spiritually, if it wasn’t already so dismal, we would have to create gloom in which to enfold it. Kinda nasty, right?
But wait! There is a tiny, little spark of light. And if you are in the East, say Persia, or Iran, or even India, and you happen to be studying the astrological signs in the stars you just might notice it. It’s a star that’s just a little bit brighter than all the others and it is pulsing or vibrating or something, beckoning, calling you to come a little closer and behold that which is fueling the illumination which it is sending out.
Only “a little closer” turns out to be hundreds of hundreds of miles but what are a few hundred miles when you are trying to find a little illumination in a world that seems determined to entomb itself in shadow?
So, these “wise men” decide to follow that light. Wise, indeed.
Hold that thought. We’re going to revisit it in a few minutes.
But, first, Isaiah.
This morning’s passage is taken from the first six verses of the 60th chapter of the book, that portion of the book which scholars refer to as “Second Isaiah,” or “Isaiah of Babylon” or “Isaiah of the Fall.” These are the chapters in which the prophet speaks words of comfort and promise to the Children of Israel who are being held in exile “by the rivers of Babylon.”
It is a time of dismal gloom and dark shadow for the People of God and Isaiah’s dominant metaphor is that of light. He references it eight times in the passage: glory (2), shine, light (2), brightness, dawn, radiant. (NRSV)
Isaiah’s promise to the people of God is that illumination will, eventually, break into the spiritual gloom that is their life and, that precious light will illuminate the true relationship that exists between God and God’s people. And that relationship will be so moving, so beautiful, so powerful that all the nations will have no choice but to fall down before it in awe and wonder and sing praises to both God and Israel.
Illumination, true illumination, the kind that comes from God, reveals truth.
And that is good, because truth is a thing of God, a thing divine.
A world that rejects the light, rejects truth. And a world that rejects truth, rejects God.
In the News
October 5, 2018.
President Donald Trump is pictured, during a photo-op, with a group of generals, all of whom appear to be confidently calm and collected. Trump, while speaking to his press pool makes a cryptic remark that has never been fully explained by the White House.
“Maybe it's the calm before the storm,” he says to the gaggle of reporters. “Could be. The calm before the storm. We have the world's great military people in this room, I will tell you that. And we're going to have a great evening. Thank you all for coming.”
A reporter requests clarification about what Trump means: “What storm, Mr. President?”
“You'll find out. Thank you, everybody,” the president said.
Trump’s tone sounded confident: Perhaps he was secure in the knowledge of some future revelation he couldn’t quite name -- possibly something that could damage his political enemies. (The remark came shortly after a gunman, whose motives have never been uncovered, murdered 58 people in Las Vegas, and in the context of a heated back and forth with North Korea over that country's buildup of intercontinental ballistic missiles. Could it have referred to either of those?)
Or maybe the remark was just a troll carried out by a man with a documented history of playing games with the press. Still, some of his supporters took notice, and it began to cultivate a sense of expectation: When would “the storm” hit? What would it reveal?
About three weeks later they get their answer, or they get an answer, at least, and it comes from the strangest of sources. It comes from an anonymous source who calls him/herself “Q.” And the self- described, all-knowing, all seeing “Q” has managed to tie “the storm” to rumors of arrests, coups, plots, intrigues and, to quote Newsweek, “pretty much anything.”2
No conspiracy theory is so bizarre, no alleged plot so ridiculous, no old, debunked fear put far enough to rest, that it will not be credited to “the storm” that is to come.
And the whole thing might have died long ago, in its crib, so to speak, were it not for the help of Alex Jones’s highly trafficked, extreme right-wing website InfoWars, which has never seen a lie or a fairy tale it didn’t love. Mike Cernovich, a pro-Trump social media figure who helped spread the admittedly fake news story about a democrat-led human trafficking ring out of a Washington pizzeria has been noticeably absent from posts about “the storm” as has his friend, Jack Posobiec, who also promoted #Pizzagate. They also promoted several demonstrably false stories involving “antifa,” but that hasn’t kept it from becoming what Newsweek calls the “biggest fake news story of 2018.”3
No matter how demonstrably false a story is, if it hurts someone we don’t like, we will choose to believe it.
Could this be what it means to hate the light and embrace the shadows in 2019?
Our president has, according to the Washington Post Fact Checker, spoken 7,456 “false or misleading statements” in the first 700 days of his presidency.4 (That’s more than 10 a day for those keeping score at home.)
Not only are we no longer outraged or angered by such a disclosure, we aren’t even surprised. We have come to expect such duplicity from those who claim to lead us and we have willingly let them lead, dismissing their dishonesty with a wink and a nod.
How is this possible? How, in a nation that claims to hold and elevate such biblical values as honesty and forthrightness, can we simply not care? How is it that we have come to live in what William Davies, associate professor in political economy at Goldsmiths University of London, wrote of in the New York Times back in 2016 as “the age of post truth politics?”
Jason Stanley, professor of philosophy at Yale University, said, in December that it would be easy to blame it all on Donald Trump but the president would not be able to so grossly devalue truth without the support and complicity of his voters and other supporters who, themselves, value their opinions and feelings above such things as empirical evidence and verifiable truth.5
Besides, it isn’t just politicians.
The #Metoo movement has shown that lying, especially about the treatment of women, is ubiquitous in Hollywood. Recent actions by prosecuting attorneys and attorneys general have re-focused our attention upon pedophile priests and the bishops and cardinals who have lied and conspired to protect and hide them. And social media moguls seem to be changing their stories almost daily as congressional investigators seek to pin them down to one believable account about how the vast mountain of data they collect about us has managed to make it into the hands of others without our permission.
Abby Ohlheiser, who covers digital culture for The Washington Post, observes, “We’ve gotten an all-you-can-eat buffet of reporting on the platform: its data sharing with other tech companies; data sharing with political consulting firms; and hiring of a PR firm to go after its competitors and critics.”6
Russia, it seems, has created a cottage industry for people who are able to tell believable, or even unbelievable lies about Hillary Clinton on the internet.
Christopher Blair, of Waterboro, Maine, pulls down about $15,000 a month writing a blog called TheLastLineOfDefense.org. The blog, which started as a joke, contains hundreds of fake news articles, one more insanely unbelievable than the next. His headlines make your run-of-the-mill supermarket tabloids look like pillars of sanity. And there are more than fourteen disclaimers on the web site that remind readers that nothing they are seeing, here, is actually true.
Yet, he has, at last count, over 6-million readers who refuse to accept the disclaimers and choose, instead, to believe every ridiculous, crazy word they see in the blog posts.
It’s not that they are being innocently duped. They are choosing to participate in the devaluation of truth by choosing to believe what is obviously and verifiably false. It’s just that they prefer the obviously false to empirical truth.7
As with any other commodity, scarcity creates value.
And few are the things that are rarer these days than truth.
No wonder Time Magazine has named “The Guardians,” journalists who have risked and sacrificed their freedom and their lives in the pursuit of truth, as the persons of the year for 2018. These are rare and valuable people, people worthy of our respect and honor.
In the Pulpit
In his essay, “The Church as Social Pioneer,” Christian ethicist, H. Richard Niebuhr, offers what he considers to be the appropriate response of the church of Jesus Christ to the sin, separation, and estrangement that threaten to destroy our world:
“Church is that part of human society and that element in each particular society, which moves toward God, which as the priest acting for all men, worships Him, which believes and trusts in Him on behalf of all, which is the first to obey Him when it becomes aware of a new aspect of His will…
“In ethics it is the first to repent for the sins of a society, and it repents on behalf of all…It does this not as the holy community separate from the world but as the pioneer and representative. It repents for the sin of the whole society and leads in the social act of repentance” by holding accountable those who would devalue truth and shrug off the damage done when dishonesty becomes acceptable.
In other words, when we become aware of sin or a particular sin that is eating a the core of our culture, the first thing we do is repent of it, ourselves. That is, we turn our back upon it and abolish it within the church. And we do this not as a separate community acting on our own but as a social pioneer, acting on behalf of the whole culture.
So, when we discover that lying and deceit are being accepted as normative in the culture we repent for the sin of the whole society and lead in the social act of repentance by refusing to accept lies and by identifying those who do, by becoming truth tellers and rewarding those who join us as truth tellers. When the institutions of society are subject to question because innocent suffering illuminates their antagonism to the honesty and truth, then the church undertakes to change its own relationship to truth telling and to lead society in doing the same.
We, the church of Jesus Christ, honor truth and esteem those who join us in doing so.
We become the leaders and the models for the greater culture.
Like the magi of yore, we become the followers and the keepers of the light.
1 Zavada, Jack, " King Herod the Great: Ruthless Ruler of the Jews," ThoughtCo., Sept. 24, 2018.
2 Hayden, Michael Edison, How‚"The Storm‚" Became The Biggest Fake News Story Of 2018, Newsweek, Feb. 1, 2018.
3 Ibid.
4 In 710 days, President Trump has made 7,645 false or misleading claims, Washington Post, Dec. 30, 2018.
5 Devega, Chauncey, "Donald Trump is destroying truth": Scholar Jason Stanley on the rhetoric of American fascism, Slate, Dec. 11, 2018.
6 Ohlheiser, Abby, 3 ways to live with Facebook, Washington Post, Dec. 20, 2018
7 Saslow, Eli, ‘Nothing on this page is real’: How lies become truth in online America, Washington Post, Nov. 17, 2018.
SECOND THOUGHTS
Both Sides
by Mary Austin
Isaiah 60:1-6
The good guys wear white hats, and the villain always wears black. That’s how we can tell them apart. After centuries of training in these images, we connect moral rightness with white and evil with dark. These images have a long cultural history and our minds have been trained over the years to make these connections. “Day, Light, and Good are often linked together, in opposition to night, darkness, and evil. These contrasting metaphors may go back as far as human history, and appear in many cultures, including both the ancient Chinese and the ancient Persians.” And so, when Epiphany comes, we rejoice in the coming of God’s light, vanquishing the darkness.
These images, though, are deeply painful for people of color, when they hear that dark is something to be avoided. The idea that darkness is something less than the light carries a painful sting. As we preach about images of light and dark, we need spirit-filled illumination about how those words sound to all kinds of people. Our culture connects darkness with evil, sin, crime, backwardness and childishness. If we limit ourselves to saying that light is good and dark is bad, we fall short of the depth and mystery of God.
The message of Epiphany is that the message of Jesus comes to all people, including the Gentiles, who are embodied in these mysterious visitors from the east. God’s gifts, through Jesus, are available both to people on the inside, and to the people who wouldn’t usually be included. The light of God’s presence comes to all. Isaiah promises that, and Matthew shows its fulfillment in the journey of the magi to Jesus. When we preach about that, we have to be sure not to get in our own way by making our images only relevant to a few people.
One way for our preaching to reflect the breadth of God’s gift is to attend to how we use words about light and dark. Adele Halliday writes about being on the receiving end of these images, saying that “people who are dark-skinned (such as myself), people who hold internalized notions of darkness as always evil, and people who have grown up in a context where everything black is referred to as impure can find it difficult to enter into these biblical texts and rituals. People who are seen to personify evil can find it difficult to refer only to light as goodness.” She suggests that, just as we are always seeking to understand the depth and breadth of God in new ways, we can broaden our understanding of light and darkness. “Surely we can expand our vocabulary so that darkness does not always equate evil, and light does not always equate good. After all, in reality, such a simplistic dichotomy does not exist. In reality, darkness can be seen as comfort as a refugee is fleeing a time of war and unrest; light in this circumstance, could lead to death. Darkness could be seen as a wonder to explore, full of Holy Mystery; light, could be seen as a harsh reality, revealing a blinding light.”
Epiphany reminds us that maybe our understanding of darkness needs more depth. Barbara Brown Taylor, the author of Learning to Walk in the Dark, says that Christians have been misguided about darkness. We need to understand the gifts available in the darkness, she says, and to redeem our theology of the dark. Light is good, and so is the dark as a place of growth and presence. “Once you start listening to how people use the words dark or darkness, it doesn’t take long to realize that the references are 99% negative. I don’t know how that happened in every day speech. Maybe it’s a linguistic fossil leftover from our days in caves or maybe it is a predictable association for people who’ve become addicted to light. Where scripture is concerned, I don’t think Christians have misunderstood much of anything. From Genesis to Revelation, darkness is used a synonym for ignorance and sin and evil and death. But there are also narrative passages that form an easily missed minority report.” She notes that God is at work in many seasons of darkness. “In Genesis, darkness existed before God even got to work as a primal substance. Everything was made by God from dark. In Exodus, God promises to come to Moses on Mount Sinai in a dense or dark cloud. Here, darkness is divine and where God dwells. Abraham meets God in the darkness, Jacob wrestles an angel in the middle of the night, and angels announcing Christ’s birth to the shepherds at night. There’s so much that happens in the dark that is essential to the Christian story.”
Taylor suggests a wider definition of darkness. “Darkness is everything I do not know, cannot control, and am often afraid of. But that’s just the beginner’s definition. If I am a believer in God, then darkness is also where God dwells. God may also be frightening and uncontrollable and largely unknown to me, yet I decide to trust God anyway.” There is, she says, healing in the dark, along with liberation.
I feel indebted to the people who have educated me about how these words fall on their ears and hurt their hearts. In the season of winter, in my own life, I crave more and more and more light. I turn on all the lights when I’m in a room, and I move my light box around the house to get even more light. I long for as much physical light as I can get, and I love Epiphany for its promise of God’s light. But I have the privilege of not having my skin color connected to evil, crime and worthlessness because of its color. I see now that my view has been too narrow to do justice to the mystery of Epiphany.
We can talk about light not just as an end to darkness, but also as illumination for our spiritual blind spots. Light can reveal shadows, or banish gloom. Light can be warmth in a cold place. Light and dark exist together, each revealing the other. The magi come as travelers who add another perspective to the story of Jesus, and I am grateful to the people who have added another understanding to my views of light and dark. For all forms of illumination in our world, I am thankful. We can be most true to the story of the magi, and Epiphany’s light, when we consider this story from all sides.
ILLUSTRATIONS
From team member Tom Willadsen:
Epiphany or Twelfth Night or “Can we take the damn tree down now?”
My family were sticklers about observing the Christmas season. We put our tree up later than anyone else in the neighborhood because Mom insisted that it stay up and decorated until January 6, Epiphany or Twelfth Night, depending on who was naming the day. My brother and I even got presents on Epiphany, long past the time our friends got presents. (In later years, Mom confessed that Epiphany presents were those she hadn’t found in her closet on Christmas Eve.)
Observing Epiphany per my family’s tradition turned me into a criminal. The first year I was married, the community garbage collection engineers picked up Christmas trees on January 3. Having missed the deadline, our tree remained on our apartment’s balcony for months. Finally, in mid-May I stuffed the tree into the back seat of the Cavalier late at night and abandoned it in the nearest city park, where the woodland creatures would frolic in delight. That’s how I rationalized it. Mainly, the guilt I felt at dumping the tree illegally and the fear of getting caught showed me I was not cut out for a life of crime. Better I should stay in ministry, I reasoned.
Another family tradition was trying to get the tree to stand up straight in our decades old tree stand. My brother would lie on his side while Mom and I would steady the tree for him to screw into the stand. For some reason this task was never completed without screaming, swearing and my brother getting copious parallel scratches on his face. Putting the damn tree up was the only context in which one could safely drop the D bomb without fear of punishment in our family. It never occurred to us to buy a straight tree or a more stable tree stand. Tradition, you know.
* * *
The First Nowell
The church I served for 19 Christmases had a tradition. We always sang The First Noël the Sunday between Christmas and January 1. I was always on vacation that week, and I cannot stand that hymn. I have a well-rehearsed rant about it. There is no other hymn in the Presbyterian hymnal that is less true to scripture.
First, in our hymnal its title is “The First Nowell.” This alone is insulting. It’s as though Presbyterians do not know that the two little dots over the “e” in “Noël,” a tréma, indicate the absence of a diphthong. [Memo to self: “Absence of a Diphthong” great name for a rock band!] Someone familiar with this convention reads the title as it appears in our hymnal as though we are about to announce a severe water shortage, rather than the birth of baby Jesus.
I am not unfamiliar with the work of the brilliant late 20th century British philosopher, Robert Plant, who once opined, “You know, sometimes, words have two meanings.” In our hymnal it is certain that “Nowell” refers not to the holiday of Christmas, but to a song associated with that holiday. It is, however, curious to me that in the first Christmas song which gives this hymn its title the angels “did say,” rather than “did sing.” Perhaps the composer of this hymn means to suggest that the first Christmas carol or “noël” was rapped.
And suddenly there was with the angel a multitude of the heavenly host, praising God and saying,
Yo, bum rush da manger/
Da savior’s born!!
Second, the lyrics are not true to scripture. The shepherds did not look up and see a star; they looked up and saw an angel. [Luke 2:9] The magi saw a star. [Matthew 2:2] The star was not shining in the East; the magi were in the East when they saw the star. There is no mention in either Luke’s or Matthew’s accounts of Jesus’ birth that the light “continued both day and night,” though we will sing exactly that. The song says there were three wise men. Scripture only mentions that the wise men were plural. There could have been two or twenty. Scripture describes them only as “wise men from the East.” [Matthew 2:1] They brought three different gifts: gold, frankincense and myrrh.
Third, the lyrics are inscrutable. “On a cold winter’s night that was so deep.” How does one measure the depth of a night? There is nothing in Luke’s gospel to suggest what the temperature was when the angel appeared to the shepherds. (I know today’s Gospel reading is from Matthew, but this noël, the song, not the holiday, mixes images from Luke and Matthew.)
Fourth, the inscrutable, un-Biblical lyrics are mind-numbingly repetitive. When the Presbyterians have finished singing this tune, they will have sung “Noël,” excuse me, “Now-ell,” 25 times. This song alone will make us want to pack up the holly, douse the candles by the window, and shriek “humbug!”
Fifth, this is a Christmas carol about a Christmas carol; it’s a meta-carol. Songs in praise of songs irritate me. Whether it’s Bob Seger, now 73 years old, singing the praises of “old time rock & roll” or Billy Joel crowing “It’s Still Rock and Roll to Me” or country star Trace Adkins’s solipsistic “Songs About Me,” I hate the idea of music in praise of music. Admittedly, the text of “The First Nowell” is ambiguous, as the singer sings “nowell” 25 times it could be in praise of the holiday or the holiday song -- perhaps it is both, why split hairs when singing the same word over and over?
If you’re not a snob about French orthography, comme moi, or if your congregation has a high tolerance for repetition, go ahead and select this hymn as a fine closer for the Season of Christmas. I’m just gratified that I used “solipsistic,” “absence of a diphthong” and “inscrutable,” in an article citing Robert Plant, lead singer of Led Zeppelin. Maybe put these illustrations in storage and pull them out earlier in the season of Christmas next year. As of January 6, there are only 351 shopping days till next Christmas!
[Presbyterians who use the 1990 Presbyterian Hymnal will find that “The First Nowell” is the only hymn in the index of scriptural allusions that references the birth narratives of both Luke and Matthew.]
* * *
Isaiah 60:1-6
Covered in camels?
This passage is overflowing with the bright light of a new age dawning. The nations of the world are attracted to the light of Zion as moths to a flame. The heart of Zion throbs with joy. In verse six there’s even a reference to two of the three baby shower gifts the magi carried to Bethlehem.
“A multitude of camels shall cover you.” [60:6] Camels all the way from Midian, Ephah and Sheba. While it’s not certain what the borders of these regions were, the first two are likely in the west portion of the Arabian Peninsula and Sheba may be as far away as Yemen, at the southern end of the Arabian Peninsula.
The point is that great wealth is forecast to travel a great distance with Jerusalem/Zion as its destination. To be covered with camels is to receive great wealth. Imagine modern examples of great wealth. Perhaps winning the Publisher’s Clearinghouse Sweepstakes would be equivalent to being covered with camels.
* * *
Ephesians 3:1-12
Rich variety
Remember we’re still in the season of Christmas. Paul or whoever is talking about grace in a way that people often think of gifts at Christmas time, “according to the gift of God’s grace.” God’s wisdom is described as having “rich variety.” And grace is described as “the boundless riches of Christ.” There is abundance here, just as in the Christmases we just celebrated 12 days ago. The riches here are, however, of a different quality. These riches have been awaited for generations and at last, their treasure is revealed to all people in the person of Jesus Christ.
Last Easter I defined λογος as “intention.” Perhaps that’s appropriate as a way for us today to think of Christ on Epiphany. Our task is not only to recognize and accept this gift, but to embrace it. And let it embrace us.
* * * * * * * * *
From team member Ron Love:
Ephesians 3:9 “to make everyone see”
Psalm 72:4 “defend the cause of the poor”
The international recognized symbol for autism is a puzzle piece. The symbol was developed 55 years ago. Since then we have come to a better understanding of autism, so the symbol has now come to mean “Autism Awareness.” Those who wear or display the puzzle symbol are now saying autism is a real illness that affects real people.
The puzzle piece logo was first created in 1963 by the National Autistic Society. It was created by Gerald Gasson, a parent and board member for the National Autistic Society in London. The board believed autistic people suffered from a “puzzling” condition. They adopted the logo because it didn’t look like any other image used for charitable or commercial use.
The puzzle piece is so effective because it tells us something about autism: our children are handicapped by a puzzling condition; this isolates them from normal human contact and therefore they do not “fit in.”
Since then, the interlocking, mutli-colored puzzle piece has become the international symbol of autism. Its significance has become multi-faceted. For some it represents the mystery and complexity of the disorder, for others it represents the mechanical nature of an autistic’s persons thought process. The colors can represent the diversity of individuals who suffer from autism. For everyone, the bright colors represent hope.
* * *
Isaiah 60:5 ‘your heart will thrill and rejoice”
Matthew 2:11 “gifts”
In a dispute between the president and congress over funding for his wall, President Trump has temporarily shut down the government. Not all agencies have been closed, but some, like the national parks, have. Some of the parks are remaining open with state funding and charitable contributions. Bryce Canyon and Zion National Park are in Utah, and are remaining open to the public by way of state funding.
Utah governor Gary Herbert, a Republican, said, “Many travelers have planned their visit for months in advance and have travelled from all over the world to be here. We want them to return home with memories of magnificent vistas and welcoming people, not locked doors.”
* * *
Acts 8:15 “receive the Holy Spirit”
Half the users of smartphone spend between three and seven hours per day on their mobile devices. Adults, 69%, and teenagers, 78%, check their phones hourly. Lisa Checchio, the chief marketing officer for Wyndham Hotels, knew there was a serious problem when hotel managers had to request additional beach chairs to accommodate guests who would sit and stare at their phones all day. The average resort guest was bringing three devices and checking them once every 12 minutes, or roughly 80 times a day.
The hotel instituted a policy, now being followed by other resorts, to create incentive programs for guests to give up their phones for a few hours each day. These include special offers and discounts. A guest will put his phone in a sealed pouch so he will always have it with him, but only a hotel staff member can unlock the pouch.
These policies reflect the mission of the resorts to promote wellness and relaxation. Checchio said, “Everyone wants to be able to disconnect. They just need a little courage.”
* * *
Psalm 72:1 “justice”
The newspaper comic strip Close To Home is written by John McPherson. Though the many reoccurring characters have no names, if the comic is read daily and long enough the reader does become familiar with the unique personality of each individual.
In a recent publication two men are walking through the fires of hell. Looming over them is an oversized Satan, complete with horns and pitchfork. Walking in front of the two men is a snowman. As one companion says to the other, “You think WE’VE got it bad! How’d you like to be THAT guy?!
* * *
Acts 8:15 “Holy Spirit”
Ephesians 3:3 “mysteries”
Mary conceived Jesus as a virgin. Her conception is known as the Doctrine of the Incarnation, where Jesus was God’s word that became flesh and dwelt among us. But, as a virgin, absent of sexual intercourse, how could Mary ever become pregnant? This will remain an unanswered question. Though, the artists of the middle ages gave us their perspective on how Mary was impregnated. In their paintings you will often see a tiny glow touching Mary’s left ear. That brilliant glow is the Holy Spirit speaking to her. It is God’s word entering into her soul -- into her womb. When God speaks it is always a creative act.
* * *
Acts 8:15 “Holy Spirit”
Ephesians 3:3 “mysteries”
Matthew 2:1 “wise men”
In the newspaper comic Peanuts by Charles Schulz, Charlie Brown and Linus are leaning with their elbows on a brick wall. It is winter, as both are wearing stocking caps. Linus begins a discussion with a question and a thought, “I have a theological question…When you die and go to heaven, are you graded on a percentage or a curve?” Charlie takes no time in offering his answer to this deep and troubling question, when he tells Linus, “On a curve, naturally” Linus, seeking assurance, asks, “How can you be so sure?” Charlie again has no hesitation in responding to this question, telling his best friend, “I’m always sure about things that are a matter of opinion.”
* * *
Ephesians 3:3 “mystery”
Ephesians 3:9 “to make everyone see”
Matthew 2:9 “ahead of them, went the star”
The movie On the Basis of Sex is now playing in movie theaters. The movie is about United States Associate Supreme Justice Ruth Ginsburg, and how she overcame sexual serotypes and sexual discrimination to reach the position she presently holds. For a woman who was born in 1933 the obstacles she encountered in her career were formidable. The movie’s leading role is played by actress Felicity Jones, who portrays Ruth Bader Ginsburg. Ginsburg, who has seen Jones in other roles, approved of her selection. Ginsburg, realizing it is a movie, knew she had little control over the director’s adaptation of her biographical story. Though the director, Mimi Leder, was required by Ginsburg to be absolutely precise in her presentation of the law.
* * *
Matthew 2:11 “gold, frankincense, and myrrh”
There is an unofficial holiday each year known as “National Returns Day.” This is the day of the year for the most holiday returns. In 2018 for the first time the day has fallen before Christmas. This year there are more gift returns before Christmas than after Christmas. Because of increased sales on Black Friday and on Cyber Monday, more items have been purchased causing more early returns. In 2017 National Returns Day was on January 3, in 2018 it fell on December 19. Kathleen Marran, UPS vice president of U.S. marketing realized the day has been inching toward December for a number of years. But regarding 2018 she said, “It’s crossed over, finally.”
* * *
Isaiah 60:1 “your light has come”
Acts 8:15 “receive the Holy Spirit”
The word atheism means “without God.” The atheist is the person who says that there is no God.
Carl Sagan was one of the world’s most famous atheists. Sagan was an astronomer who narrated and co-wrote the award-winning 1980 television series Cosmos: A Personal Voyage. At the time, Cosmos was the most widely watched series in the history of American public television. The program has been seen by at least 500 million people across 60 different countries. Sagan summed up atheism when he declared on the program, “The Cosmos is all that is or ever was or ever will be.”
Isaac Asimov was another famous atheist. Asimov was a prolific writer. He wrote or edited more than 500 books and an estimated 90,000 letters and postcards. Asimov wrote science fiction and, along with Robert A. Heinlein and Arthur C. Clarke, he was considered one of the “Big Three” science fiction writers during the twentieth century. Asimov once said, “Emotionally, I am an atheist. I don’t have the evidence to prove that God doesn’t exist, but I so strongly suspect he doesn’t that I don’t want to waste my time.”
An atheist does not know that “the Lord is near.”
* * *
Acts 8:17 “laid their hands on them, and they received the Holy Spirit”
Patricia Lockwood is a poet and the daughter of a Catholic priest. Her father, Greg, was a married Episcopal priest when he decided to join the Roman Catholic Church. The Pope allowed the married man to be ordained into the Catholic order. In May 2015, Lockwood published her memoir titled Priestdaddy. The title of the book comes from the fact that her father was a married Roman Catholic priest.
In her book, she recounts how the image of the church changed with the movie The Exorcist, instead of the sunnier days depicted in Going My Way and The Bells of St. Mary’s. In her book, she recounts the first time her father saw the movie The Exorcist. Chaplain Lockwood was on board a nuclear submarine, and there was not enough room for him to leap out of his chair with fear. Ms. Lockwood recounts his experience with these words:
Put yourself in his place. You’re a drop of blood at the center of the ocean…All of a sudden you look up at a screen and see a possessed 12-year-old with violent head vomiting green chunks and backwards Latin. She’s so full of demon that the only way to relieve her feelings is to have sex with a crucifix. You would convert too. I guarantee it.
* * * * * * * * *
From team member Chris Keating:
Matthew 2:1-12
Zoroastrian magi
Properly translated, Matthew’s star-crossed travelers were neither “wisemen” nor “kings,” but magi, or magoi in Greek. Magi were Zoroastrian priests, practitioners of one of the world’s oldest religions rooted in ancient Iran and modern-day Kurdistan. If the magi showed up in Washington, D.C. today, it’s possible they’d be seen as representatives of the Kurdish people.
The ongoing conflict in Syria and battles against ISIS have created deeper awareness of Kurdish culture and religion.
While Zoroastrianism has dwindled over the past centuries, the monotheistic religion has seen a trend of growing numbers of Kurdish converts in recent years. Kurdish Iraqis, weary of ISIS’ abuses and Islamic extremism, have returned to the religion that was often practiced by their ancestors. The Kurdish regional government became the first governmental entity to recognize Zoroastrianism since the Middle Ages. According to a report in the New Arab:
"Under the Baath regime, we could not even request to practice our religion since it was not recognised. We would have faced grave reprisals from the government," says Awat Tayib, the chief of the followers of the Zoroastrians in the Kurdistan region. "Our religion survived in hiding. Many worshippers secretly passed down the knowledge of their faith to their descendants throughout generations," she adds.
* * *
Matthew 2:1-12
Quaking kings
The magi’s quest for the new king of Israel incites fear in Herod. The contrast between the vulnerable infant and the anxious despot could not be more stunning. Herod’s deceit is barely concealed, and his actions form what would today be called the politics of fear. It is that sort of political climate which led Senator Jeff Flake, (R-Arizona) to step down from the Senate this year. In a farewell letter to Arizonans, Flake noted fear has resulted in steep political divisions which will have long-lasting impact. Flake wrote that “A political vision that is determined to turn American against American is beyond reckless and, is quite simply, a prescription for political extinction.”
Outgoing Speaker of the House Paul Ryan made similar comments in his farewell address. Last week Ryan said that it has become politically expedient to “prey on people’s fears,” by using “algorithms” which play on anger. “We spend far more time trying to convict one another than we do try to develop our own convictions,” Ryan said. “Being against someone has more currency than being for anything.”
* * *
Matthew 2:1-12
The monarchy of fear
Philosopher Martha Nussbaum has examined the impact fear plays in guiding current political discourse. Her works examine fear as a strategy as well its ability to let rage become a vehicle for transformation. Yet Nussbaum is also concerned about how to move beyond fear -- a move Herod and his kin never seem to consider. In a Newsweek interview, Nussbaum spoke of how she defines fear.
It is the most primitive emotion, and the first one felt by an infant arriving in this rather painful world, in desperate need of someone to protect them. When we feel helpless later in life, fear makes us scapegoat others. Instead of fixing the problems, we say, “Oh, it’s all their fault -- those women or immigrants are infesting our country.” Rather than useful protest or constructive solutions, we get angry at these handy targets.
Fear is also behind disgust, a visceral reaction to our own mortality and animality -- feces and bodily fluids and such. This is true across every single society; we project grossness onto a racial or gender subgroup or caste. A big part of social subordination and discrimination is to ascribe hyper-animality to other groups and use that as an excuse for subordinating them further. And then we feel better about ourselves; we can be the angels, and they can be the animals.
WORSHIP
by George Reed
Call to Worship:
Leader: Give our leaders your justice, O God.
People: May they judge your people with righteousness.
Leader: May they judge your poor with justice.
People: May the mountains yield prosperity for the people.
Leader: May they defend the cause of the poor of the people.
People: May they give deliverance to the needy.
OR
Leader: The light of the star and the Light of the World have come.
People: We rejoice in the light of God which shines on us.
Leader: Let the light shine in you so that you are filled with light.
People: We open ourselves to God’s light.
Leader: Share that light then with others.
People: With joy we will share the brightness of God’s love.
Hymns and Songs:
Go, Tell It on the Mountain
UMH: 251
H82: 99
PH: 29
AAHH: 202
NNBH: 92
NCH: 154
CH: 167
LBW: 70
ELA: 290
W&P: 218
AMEC: 122
STLT: 239
We Three Kings
UMH: 254
H82: 128
PH: 66
AAHH: 218
NNBH: 97
CH: 172
W&P: 233
STLT: 259
I Want to Walk as a Child of the Light
UMH: 206
H82: 490
ELA: 815
W&P: 248
Renew: 152
Let There Be Light
UMH: 440
NNBH: 450
NCH: 589
STLT: 142
Christ, Whose Glory Fills the Skies
UMH: 173
H82: 6/7
PH: 462/463
LBW: 265
ELA: 553
W&P: 91
This Little Light of Mine
UMH: 585
AAHH: 549
NNBH: 511
NCH: 524/525
ELA: 677
STLT: 118
Open My Eyes, That I May See
UMH: 454
PH: 324
NNBH: 218
CH: 586
W&P: 480
AMEC: 285
Rise, Shine, You People
UMH: 187
LBW: 393
ELA: 665
W&P: 89
Arise, Shine
CCB: 2
Renew: 123
Open Our Eyes, Lord
CCB: 77
Renew: 91
Music Resources Key:
UMH: United Methodist Hymnal
H82: The Hymnal 1982
PH: Presbyterian Hymnal
AAHH: African American Heritage Hymnal
NNBH: The New National Baptist Hymnal
NCH: The New Century Hymnal
CH: Chalice Hymnal
LBW: Lutheran Book of Worship
ELA: Evangelical Lutheran Worship
W&P: Worship & Praise
AMEC: African Methodist Episcopal Church Hymnal
STLT: Singing the Living Tradition
CCB: Cokesbury Chorus Book
Renew: Renew! Songs & Hymns for Blended Worship
Prayer for the Day/Collect
O God who dwells in awesome light:
Grant us the faith to open our eyes
and see your light all around us
that we may share your light and love with all;
through Jesus Christ our Savior. Amen.
OR
We praise you, O God, because you are the light eternal. You fill all creation with the light of your glory. Fill us with courage that we may look for your light in our midst. Help us to share your light and love with others. Amen.
Prayer of Confession
Leader: Let us confess to God and before one another our sins and especially our dwelling in darkness when there is light all around us.
People: We confess to you, O God, and before one another that we have sinned. You have given us the light that has the capacity to light all the world and yet we have not allowed it to shine within us. We have spurned your good gift and so we do not have it to offer to others. We open our hearts and minds to your light so that it may shine in and through us. Amen.
Leader: God’s light is always available to us. We just need to invite it in.
Prayers of the People
We praise you, O Light of the World, for illuminating our lives. In you we can see all truth.
(The following paragraph may be used if a separate prayer of confession has not been used.)
We confess to you, O God, and before one another that we have sinned. You have given us the light that has the capacity to light all the world and yet we have not allowed it to shine within us. We have spurned your good gift and so we do not have it to offer to others. We open our hearts and minds to your light so that it may shine in and through us.
We thank you for the blessings of this life and, especially, for your light that shines upon us. We thank you for those who have received your light and shared it with us so that we might find our way in life.
(Other thanksgivings may be offered.)
We pray for all your children in their need. We pray for those who have not yet opened their hearts and minds to your light. Help us to shine for them.
(Other intercessions may be offered.)
All these things we ask in the Name of our Savior Jesus Christ who taught us to pray together saying:
Our Father....Amen.
(Or if the Our Father is not used at this point in the service)
All this we ask in the Name of the Blessed and Holy Trinity. Amen.
Children’s Sermon Starter
Have a long tube, perhaps from wrapping paper, and paste a picture on the end so you have to look into the tube to see it. It should be a silhouette and can only be seen when someone shines a light on it from the outside of the tube. Arms being too short the children can only see it if someone else shines the light for them. God’s light is like that. It helps us see but we usually need someone else to shine for us.
CHILDREN'S SERMON
Light Shine Bright
by Bethany Peerbolte
Isaiah 60:1-6, Matthew 2:1-12
Need:
-- Light source (flashlight, candle, glow stick, etc)
-- Blanket (if your worship space does not get dark with the lights are off)
For this lesson you will use a physical light source to show that we can see light better in the dark. This will demonstrate how darkness is not bad because without it the light is not very bright. It is the contrast of darkness that allows us to fully appreciate the light. You can do this lesson with any light source (flashlight, lamp, candle, battery powered candle, etc). The fainter the better. Glow sticks work well because in a well-lit room they are not very bright. You can also get packs of glow sticks at a dollar store and allow every kid to have a light source. At a point in the lesson you will need to turn off the lights. If your worship area does not get very dark because of natural light, bring a blanket and ask a helper to take the light under the blanket to see how much brighter it looks in the darkness.
Say something like:
Happy New Year everyone! How many of you stayed up till midnight? Wow! When I was your age I didn’t like to be up that late because it gets really dark outside. The dark can be kind of scary. You can’t see very well. There is something you can see really well in the dark though. Can anyone guess what it is? What can you see in the dark? (stars, porch lights, candles, flashlights, etc). Yes! You can see light really well when it is dark.
I have a light here (take out your light/glow stick) It’s not glowing now but if I crack it/turn it on…Hmmmm it’s not very bright is it? I wonder why it isn’t very bright. (if you have enough for every kid pass out the light source and have them all crack/turn on their lights) When I tried this earlier it was really bright. You know what, when I tried it before I was in the dark, maybe that will make this light brighter. Let’s turn of the lights and see. (Turn of the lights.)
Wow! Look at that. Now that the other lights are off this light looks a lot brighter. The light works best when it is in the dark. We can see the light best in the dark! (Turn the lights on again.)
That is a really cool thing for us to learn, that light works best in the darkness. We may think the dark is scary but that is the best place to go if we want to see a light shine. In our scripture lessons today, we are talking about the magi, the wise travelers who followed a star to find the baby Jesus. If they were following a star when do you think they had to be awake to follow it? The night! When it was dark so they could see the star. I bet they were very thankful for dark nights so the star could shine bright and it would be easier to follow the star.
In Isaiah it says a light has come into the darkness. That light is Jesus, who we say is the light of the world. Where do you think that light shines the best? In the darkness. Yes, so it is okay to be in the dark because Jesus’ light shines bright there. Just like our light shines best in the dark too. We still might be afraid of the dark but when we feel afraid we can say a prayer and ask Jesus to shine brighter.
Should we say a prayer now? Let’s pray.
Dear God, Thank you for the light of Jesus. When we are in darkness, help us look for the light. In Jesus name, Amen.
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The Immediate Word, January 6, 2019, issue.
Copyright 2019 by CSS Publishing Company, Inc., Lima, Ohio.
All rights reserved. Subscribers to The Immediate Word service may print and use this material as it was intended in sermons and in worship and classroom settings only. No additional permission is required from the publisher for such use by subscribers only. Inquiries should be addressed to or to Permissions, CSS Publishing Company, Inc., 5450 N. Dixie Highway, Lima, Ohio 45807.
