SERMON OF JANUARY 4, 2009
M. Bruce McKay
Pilgrim - St. Luke’s United Church of Christ
“ARISE! SHINE!”
Isaiah 60:1-6 and Matthew 2:1-12
I was talking with my mother on New Years Day about what she’d done the night before. She’d gotten together with some people for dinner and was home and in bed by 9:00 o’clock. “The dinner was fine,” she said, “but every year I can’t wait for News Years to be over.”
She went on to remind me how 52 years ago, on New Years Day, our Congregational church in northern Maine had burned to the ground. It was a clear, cold Sunday morning and my mother had taken my sister and me, along with 2 brothers from across town, to Sunday School.
Before the class was half over someone entered the room where my mother was teaching and said there was a fire in another part of the church. Everyone at church that day got out safely. My mother remembered piling us all into our car where she’d parked it in front of the Court House. Her heart was still pounding.
While we were safely home in a matter of minutes, a fireman was killed before the blaze was brought under control.
My mother went on to remind me that it was on New Years Eve that her father had died suddenly from a heart attack while working as a conductor for the Bangor and Aroostook Railroad.
On this Epiphany Sunday we listen to Bible passages with images of dawning light and shining stars in a season marked more by darkness than by light for many.
I overheard a conversation a while ago where someone was describing how difficult it is for him to leave for work when it’s still dark and then return home in the dark after work. “It’s like all I know is darkness,” he said.
All I know is darkness. He was talking about the darkness in the world around him.
These last two weeks are the darkest of the year, as if we needed reminding that darkness rather than light often seems to have the upper hand in the world around us. The wars in Iraq and Afghanistan continue dealing death and destruction as they have for more than five years. In recent weeks the eruption of violence in Israel and Gaza have terrorized civilians and led to a descending darkness in that war torn part of the world.
Closer to home more and more people are losing their jobs, more and more people are living without health insurance, more and more people are losing their homes to foreclosure, and more and more people are fling for bankruptcy. The economic storm devastating our nation shows no signs of letting up.
The descending darkness in the world around us reflects the struggle in the world within us with the forces at work in our own lives that would diminish hope, destroy confidence and quench the light of God’s love.
For many of us, like my mother, the New Year reopens old wounds and renews old losses - making it hard to believe that God’s light continues to shine, even in the darkness – making it hard to hope that a new day is about to dawn.
That’s why the Word of our Still Speaking God in the sixtieth chapter of Isaiah is so important.
In Jerusalem, more than 500 years before the birth of Jesus, the people of Israel were attempting to rebuild their city. They’d recently returned from exile in Babylon to a city where nearly everything was in ruins. The temple had been destroyed. Their economy made ours look good. Buried beneath a blanket of discouragement and despair, all they knew was darkness.
And a Word came from their Still Speaking God - through the prophet:
“Arise, shine; for your light has come and the glory of the Lord has risen upon you…” (Isaiah 60:1)
“Nations shall come to your light and kings to the brightness of your dawn.” (Isaiah 60:3)
“Lift up your eyes and look around, they all gather together, they come to you; your sons shall come from far away, and your daughters shall be carried on their nurses’ arms. You shall see and be radiant; your heart shall thrill and rejoice…” (Isaiah 60:4-5a)
Through the prophet God promised that a new day was dawning on God’s people.
How do you think the Jews living in Jerusalem 2500 years ago responded to this Word from the Lord?
Do you think that they all stood in unison radiant with the Lord’s light, their hearts singing and rejoicing together?
Or did they all continue going about business as usual cursing the darkness in their lives rather than seeing the dawning of the Lord’s light?
My hunch is that if the people in Jerusalem then were anything like the people in Buffalo now neither of those two things happened.
My hunch is that some responded in faithful, life-giving, light-producing ways while others continued to curse the darkness.
My hunch is that some rose to the occasion and let the Lord’s light shine through them, while others sat and sulked saying things like:
“Nothing will ever change?”
“This is how the world works.”
“What can you do?”
“What difference does it make any way?”
In the face of life’s most difficult challenges and darkest times when the death dealing forces at work in the world around us and the world within us seem to have the upper hand – we can either rise and shine or sit and sulk.
The grace and courage to rise and shine rather than curse the darkness comes not because we decide to light a candle but because we see that the candle we thought needed to be lit had never gone out.
We shall “see and be radiant and our hearts shall thrill and rejoice” when we see, with the eyes of faith, that God’s light continues to shine even in the deepest darkness and the darkness has not overcome it. (John 1:5)
It was this light that dawned in Jerusalem 2,500 years ago. It was this light that that led the magi to Jerusalem 2,000 years ago. And it is this light that is shining in the darkness of Jerusalem and Gaza even today. It is this light that is shining in the world around us and the world within us.
If we have eyes to see this light we too can be radiant even in the face of darkness.
This light is the light of God’s love come alive in a Bethlehem manger and in the lives of all those who see the world through the eyes of faith trusting that they are not only called to see the light but to be the light of the world.
Helen Suzman died on New Years Day at the age of 91. She was a member of Parliament in South Africa from 1953 to 1989. In the decades before the end of apartheid she was a lone voice against its evils. In the face of enormous opposition she never backed down, but continued to work tirelessly to end apartheid – something that virtually everyone else was convinced would never happen. She was the only woman to visit Nelson Mandela in prison and did so several times
Rather than being content with cursing the darkness of apartheid she saw the light of God’s love continuing to shine even in the darkness. And she became that light in her own life - trusting that a new day would one day dawn.
If we’re going to rise and shine rather than sit and sulk we need to know that a new day will one day dawn and we need to know how to tell when that happens.
There is an old Hasidic story that some of you may have heard about a rabbi and his students. As they were walking along, the rabbi asked, "How do you know the hour of dawn — the time when night ends and day begins?"
At first no one answered and the they continued walking.
Then one of the rabbi's disciples asked, "Is it when you can distinguish, from a certain distance, between a wolf and a sheep?" "No," said the rabbi. And they continued to walk.
"Is it when there is light enough to distinguish between a grapevine and a thorn bush?" another student asked. Again the rabbi said, "No."
There was a long silence before the rabbi finally said, “Dawn comes for each of us only when we can look into the face of other human beings and recognize our sister or brother – someone also created in the image of God. Until then, it’s always night."
Even though I was 6 at the time, I have no memory of that New Years Day when the church in which I was baptized burned to the ground. What I do remember is what happened after that. We moved in with the Unitarians up the street and worshipped as one congregation.
Now I don’t remember all the details about how this arrangement got worked out. I do remember understanding that somehow the Unitarians were different from us Congregationalists and that it took some significant effort on the part of everyone to make this marriage work.
In the years since we moved in with the Unitarians, some of the greatest blessings in my life have come when I’ve been able to see a sister or brother in another human being, despite our differences, for it’s been those moments that have revealed the glory of God.
A few years ago, during the week between Christmas and New Years, I went to get some exercise at the Jewish Center on Delaware Avenue. When I returned to my locker after the workout, there were three boys along the bench beside me.
They’d just gotten out of the pool and hadn’t managed to dry off. Large puddles lay at their feet. The boy sitting next to me was a Down ’s syndrome child. I’d often seen him with the other children playing in the gym. He always participated fully in what was going on. When I sat down he was struggling putting on his socks, as the other children talked a mile a minute.
When his eyes met mine I saw something in them and in him that I hadn’t seen before. I saw his preciousness as a beloved child of God in a way that I’d never seen it before – a preciousness that no power on earth could diminish or destroy.
In that moment, the Lord’s light dawned on me.
The light in which we are all one.
The light that enables us to rise and shine even when the darkness around us or
within us seems so deep that it will never let us go.
The light that puts on our knees and raises us to our feet knowing that a new day will one day dawn because the light of God’s love continues to shine even in the darkness and the darkness has not overcome it!
It’s this light that has made my heart thrill and rejoice seeing God’s power at work bringing both personal and social transformation!
It’s this light that has made my heart thrill and rejoice being part of a community of faith working here to build a spiritual home where no one is a stranger!
It’s this light that shines through Maya Angelou’s inaugural poem – “On the Pulse of Morning”
“Lift up your eyes,” she writes, “Lift up your eyes,
Upon this day breaking for you.
Give birth again
To the dream.
Women, children, men,
Take it into the palms of your hands,
Mold it into the shape of your most
Private need. Sculpt it into
The image of your most public self.
Lift up your hearts
Each new hour holds new chances
For a new beginning.
Do not be wedded forever
To fear, yoked eternally
To brutishness.
The horizon leans forward,
Offering you space
To place new steps of change
Here, on the pulse of this fine day…
You may have the grace to look up and out
And into your sister’s eyes,
And into your brother’s face,
Your country,
And say simply - Very simply - With hope – Good morning.”
Good morning! Can you say that and then repeat after me? Good Morning!
“Good Morning!”
Good morning, Buffalo!
“Good morning Buffalo!”
Good morning Pilgrim-St. Luke’s!
“Good morning Pilgrim-St. Luke’s!”
A new day is dawning!
“A new day is dawning!”
A day to Arise and Shine!
“A day to Arise and Shine!”
A day to give God the glory!
“A day to give God the glory!”
Arise and Shine!
Arise and Shine!
Amen!
Amen!
