“Lo, the hand of the LORD is not too short to save,
nor his ear too dull to hear.
Rather, it is your crimes that separate
you from your God.
It is your sins that make him
hide his face so that he will not hear you.” (Isaiah 59:1–2, NAB)
This is the sermon I preached at Holy Cross Lutheran Church, Beatrice, Neb., on Saturday and Sunday, March 6–7, 2010, for the Third Sunday in Lent.
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Isaiah 55:1–9
Psalm 63:1–8
1 Corinthians 10:1–13
Luke 13:1–9
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You call us to return to you, Lord God, and to leave behind all things that keep us from giving ourselves fully to serve you. Speak to us through your Word, so that we may turn to face you and to give you glory; through your Son, Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.
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Every now and then,
I’ll grab the remote and browse through the TV channels,
just looking for a show that catches my eye
and holds out the promise of being
at least a little more interesting than just watching the shows flash by.
Sometimes I’ll land on BBC America for a moment
and catch a few scenes of a comedy like Fawlty Towers.
British comedies, it seems, are something of an acquired taste.
The characters speak English, the situations appear funny,
but the best lines are lost on these American ears.
I’m just not familiar with the subtle cultural references
that make British humor,
especially from more than thirty years ago,
come fully to life.
When I was reading the texts for this Sunday,
I had the same kind of experience.
Not that I felt I was missing a joke,
but that I had a gap in my knowledge
of one of those subtle, oblique references
that help to make the text of Scripture come alive
and speak its Word of power
across the millennia into these modern ears.
In his letter to the Church at Corinth,
St. Paul reminds his readers
about the great events of Israel’s Exodus from Egypt:
“I do not want you to be unaware, brothers and sisters,
that our ancestors were all under the cloud,
and all passed through the sea,
and all were baptized into Moses in the cloud and in the sea,
and all ate the same spiritual food,
and all drank the same spiritual drink.” (1 Corinthians 10:1–4a, NRSV)
The Exodus, next to the death and the resurrection of Jesus Christ,
is the most familiar, powerful, and life-changing event
in the history of God’s people.
Even non-Christians know about Moses,
either from Disney’s The Prince of Egypt
or from Charlton Heston’s epic portrayal of Moses
in The Ten Commandments.
We all know about the plagues of locusts and frogs
and lesions and water turning blood.
We’ve heard about the angel passing over the homes of the Israelites
and the slaughter of the firstborn of Egypt.
We can picture Pharaoh finally giving in to Moses’ request
to let the people of Israel go into the wilderness to worship God.
We can envision the people’s escape
through the parted waters of the Red Sea
and God’s destruction of the Egyptian army.
We know about Yahweh, the God of Israel,
leading that nomadic multitude
by “a pillar of cloud by day and a pillar of fire by night.” (LBW, “Evening Prayer,” p. 144)
We’re familiar with the people’s grumbling and wanting food to eat,
and then receiving manna from heaven as God’s gift.
So much of the quick overview St. Paul provides in this passage
resonates with our memories.
But he doesn’t just give us the straight story.
He turns it a little bit, shapes it, molds it.
And so it’s a little surprising when he hear
that the ancestors were “baptized into Moses”
and that they ate “spiritual food”
and drank “spiritual drink.”
We can’t hear words like baptism and spiritual food and drink
without thinking of our lives together as Christians in worship.
Somehow, Paul is pulling together
the whole history of salvation
from Israel’s deliverance from bondage to slavery
under the leadership of Moses
to humanity’s deliverance from its bondage to sin
through the death and the resurrection of Jesus Christ
and finally to our celebration of that victory in worship
through Baptism and the Word and Communion.
There’s a technical term that helps us to understand
what Paul is doing with God’s history.
It’s called typology,
and it means that one connects two figures—people or items or events—
by saying that one is the type of the other,
that the earlier figure provides a glimpse or a preview of the latter figure.
The earlier figure finds its fulfillment in the latter figure,
while the latter finds its roots in the earlier figure.
In this passage, St. Paul pictures the Exodus
as the type of the Cross and Resurrection,
because the salvation of Israel pre-figures,
or hints at, the salvation of humanity.
Moses is the type of Jesus Christ,
because he leads the people to freedom from their bondage in slavery
just as Christ frees all people from their bondage to sin.
When Israel eats the manna
and drinks the water in the wilderness,
finding sustenance for the journey,
their eating and drinking
becomes the type of the Church’s Communion.
The manna from heaven is the type of the Eucharistic bread from heaven,
and the water flowing from the rock
is the type of the blessed wine poured from the cup of salvation.
But Paul invites us to enter even more deeply
into the ties that bind the Exodus and the Cross.
He writes in verse 4,
“…and all drank the same spiritual drink.
For they drank from the spiritual rock that followed them,
and the rock was Christ.” (1 Corinthians 10:4, NRSV)
God had told Moses to answer the people’s cry for water
by striking a rock with his staff,
the same one that had turned into a serpent before Pharaoh
and the one that Moses had used to part the waters of the Red Sea.
So with his staff Moses struck the rock.
Water came out of it,
and the people stopped their complaining and drank.
Long before St. Paul’s day,
a legend grew among the rabbis of Israel,
that this spring of water
traveled with Israel throughout the forty-year sojourn in the wilderness.
Paul builds upon his rabbinic knowledge of this legend—
he elaborates upon it—
and says that it wasn’t only the spring that followed Israel,
it was the rock itself from which the waters flowed
that followed Israel on its journey.
And then, Paul jumps again,
and makes the rock a type, but more than a type.
He says, “…and the rock was Christ.” (1 Corinthians 10:4b, NRSV)
He doesn’t say,
“This rock reminds us of Christ,”
or, “This rock reflects the qualities of Christ,”
or even “This rock pre-figures or previews or provides a glimpse of Christ.”
What he does say
is that the rock is Jesus Christ Himself.
This means that our Lord
lived among and offered His gracious gifts
to the people of Israel
even before He was born of Mary and the Spirit.
That’s a powerful insight
that helps us to appreciate the depth
of what we confess in the Creed when we say,
“We believe in one Lord, Jesus Christ…
eternally begotten of the Father.”
But then we realize we’re still so far removed
from the Corinth of Paul’s letter
and the Nicaea of the Creed,
separated by cultures and millennia.
And so we ask, “What does it mean for us,
that ‘…the rock was Christ’?”
Almost immediately, Paul tells us,
“Now these things occurred as examples for us,
so that we might not desire evil as they did.” (1 Corinthians 10:6, NRSV)
God worked His grace and law in the life of Israel,
not only to make them into His People,
but also to proclaim and prefigure His work among us.
Israel was baptized into Moses,
just as we are baptized into Christ.
Israel ate the spiritual food of manna,
while we eat the body of our Lord, the bread of heaven.
Israel drank the spiritual drink of the water,
even as we drink the blood of Jesus Christ from the cup of salvation.
This is the grace of God at work in the lives of all of His people,
both Israel and the Church.
And then Paul tells us how we ought to live:
This is more than guidance,
much more than simple tips for how to live.
These are the commands of God for us,
His will for how we ought to be His people.
Paul instructs us about how we ought to live,
since God has given us His grace.
These admonitions from St. Paul make that vital move from grace to action,
just the way the commandments themselves begin with grace—
“I am the LORD your God,
who brought you out of the land of Egypt,
out of the house of slavery….”—
and then move to action—
“…you shall have no other gods before me.” (Exodus 20:2–3, NRSV).
With this gift of grace, we have received all that we need to obey God.
And so, we can find comfort in Paul’s encouragement:
“No testing has overtaken you
that is not common to everyone.
God is faithful, and he will not let you be tested beyond your strength,
but with the testing he will also provide
the way out so that you may be able to endure it.” (1 Corinthians 10:13, NRSV)
Israel did not escape from the wilderness
until the forty years had passed.
Our Lord did not defeat death without dying Himself.
then he promised us release from our bondage.
And we have no escape from our wilderness,
no release from bondage that does not entail dying daily to sin.
But even so, God is faithful,
and through the rock, Jesus Christ,
He pours out His spiritual drink
and bids us to come and slake our thirst. Amen.
“…if you bestow your bread on the hungry and satisfy the afflicted,
then light shall rise for you in the darkness
and the gloom shall become for you like midday….” (Isaiah 58:10, NAB)
This is the sermon I preached at Holy Cross Lutheran Church, Beatrice, Neb., on Saturday and Sunday, Feb. 6–7, 2010, for the Fifth Sunday after the Epiphany.
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Isaiah 6:1–13
Psalm 138 (antiphon v. 2)
1 Corinthians 15:1–11
Luke 5:1–11
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Gracious God, open our eyes to the life-giving light that shines through your Son, Jesus Christ, so that your Holy Spirit may empower us to share your Good News with others. Amen.
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If you stop to think about it,
right now we are in the midst
of doing something really strange.
We have come together
and have just finished listening
to a reading from a text
that is almost two thousand years old.
And for most of us,
we’re here listening
not because we are history buffs who love a good account
from first-century Palestine.
We’re not ancient language scholars,
curious about the forms of Koine Greek
and the challenges of translating the gospels
into understandable modern English.
Instead, we have come together in faith.
We have heard a call from God our Father
to gather in this place to worship him.
We have committed ourselves
to following his Son, Jesus Christ, in obedience.
We trust their Holy Spirit to guide us in witness and service.
This is why we are here,
why we assemble to hear this reading,
why we believe that this gospel is more than a history lesson,
more than an ancient text to be dissected.
We believe it is—
somehow, in some way beyond our understanding,
in some fashion we cannot fully grasp—
God’s Word for us,
so that through its reading and hearing and interpreting
he comes into our midst.
We believe that he speaks to us through what the text tells us.
We trust that in some roundabout—but real—way
this reading is a word for us,
a word that comes through what we hear
that God has said to our ancestors in the faith.
And because this is true,
when we hear about one of those ancestors,
we will not go wrong when we envision ourselves
in his or her place in the text.
And of all the disciples—Jesus’ companions in his ministry—
Peter is the one in whose place
we can most easily see ourselves.
We know the most about him.
He was a fisherman, married,
brother to Andrew, a fellow disciple.
He was a close companion of Jesus,
but had something of a temper
and a way with a sword.
He confessed that Jesus was the Messiah.
He underwent a name change from Simon to Peter,
and became known as the Rock
upon which Christ would build his Church.
He denied his Lord three times.
But then he told the risen Christ three times that he loved him
and was made shepherd of the Lord’s sheep.
He emerged as the leader of the apostles
and spread the Gospel far beyond his Galilean homeland.
He conferred with Paul
on the question of evangelizing the Gentiles,
the children of God born outside of Judaism.
And finally, tradition has it that he died by Roman hands,
crucified upside down.
And in today’s Gospel,
we catch a glimpse of Simon—
as he is called here—
caught in a time of transition
between his life as a fisherman
and his calling as a disciple.
A little bit earlier in the story
Luke tells us that Jesus visited Simon
and healed his mother-in-law from a high fever.
So Simon, or Peter, knows a little about Jesus,
that he is a worker of miracles,
a healer of the sick.
And in the story we heard today,
Simon shares his boat with Jesus
and hears him teach the crowds
about the word from God.
And then, when Jesus finishes,
he offers Simon, the fisherman, a fishing tip.
And from Simon’s reaction,
we learn he is hardworking,
but also humble enough to take Jesus at his word.
And then the amazing catch nearly sinks the boats
as Simon calls over his fellow fishermen
to help land the haul that filled their nets.
We might think that Simon would be shouting for joy,
exchanging some first-century version
of the high-five with his companions.
But instead, he is moved to fall to his knees
and to confess to Jesus,
“Go away from me, Lord,
for I am a sinful man.” (Luke 5:8, NRSV)
In the light of seeing who Jesus is,
Simon recognizes his own sinfulness,
and confesses it to Jesus Christ, his Lord.
This is honesty and truth at work.
And when we hear this account
and slip on the mask of Simon,
we hear a clear message for us: Confess.
And then a surprising thing happens.
Jesus ignores Simon’s plea,
when he asks Jesus to leave.
Rather, Jesus says to Simon,
“Do not be afraid;
from now on you will be catching people.” (Luke 5:10b, NRSV)
Jesus speaks a word of power that grants what it says.
This means that when he says to Simon,
“Do not be afraid,”
he is not suggesting that Simon simply will himself to be free from fear.
Rather, Jesus speaks a word that grants freedom from fear,
just the way his healing word banished the fever from Simon’s mother-in-law.
This is the Good News at work.
And when we listen to this story and put ourselves in Simon’s place,
we hear Jesus speak clearly to us: Fear not.
And then an even more astounding thing happens.
Simon and Andrew, his brother,
along with their friends,
James and John, the sons of Zebedee,
bring their boats to the shore,
the boats laden with the catch of a lifetime.
And they just walk away,
leaving those fish flopping in the sun,
as Luke tells us:
“…they left everything and followed him.” (Luke 5:11, NRSV)
This is the proof that Jesus’ word has done its work.
They are not fearful, but believing,
and so they turn from casting nets for fish
to catching people with the Good News.
This is what the Spirit of God does in people’s lives.
And when we dwell in this Gospel
and know that we are one with Simon,
we feel the touch of the Spirit blowing upon us,
and our ears ring with Jesus’ clear word: Follow me.
The order of events makes all the difference.
Confess—Fear not—Follow me.
For Simon to become the disciple, the apostle, the Rock,
he had to begin with confession,
with seeing himself as really was,
revealed in the light of Jesus Christ and his truth.
And then, fresh from his confession of sin,
he was ready to receive the gift of faith,
to hear the word that banished fear
and filled him with trust in the Lord Jesus Christ.
Finally, liberated from sin and filled with faith,
he was ready, willing, and able
to follow Jesus Christ wherever that might lead.
It’s the same for us.
We might be tempted to throw up our hands
and say we can never become master anglers,
fishermen and fisherwomen who know instinctively how to catch people for Christ.
But if we back up,
if we remember Simon’s example,
and begin by confessing our sins,
by telling God we know we are broken,
then he will forgive us our sins and give us faith,
changing our ears, our hearts, our wills, and our minds
so that we can follow his Son, Jesus Christ.
Look what he did with some simple Palestinian fishermen.
What do we imagine he can do with us?
If you stop to think about it,
right now we are in the midst
of doing something really strange.
But stranger still, and even more amazing,
is what God is doing in our midst. Amen.
This is the sermon I preached at Holy Cross Lutheran Church, Beatrice, Neb., on Saturday and Sunday, Jan. 16–17, 2010, for the Second Sunday after the Epiphany.
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Isaiah 62:1–5
Psalm 36:5–10 (antiphon v. 8)
1 Corinthians 12:1–11
John 2:1–11
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Gracious God, open our eyes to the life-giving light that shines through your Son Jesus Christ, so that your Holy Spirit may empower us to share your Good News with others. Amen.
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When we read the list,
we can be tempted to despair.
We might come to believe
that Lutherans have missed out
on many of the gifts
the Holy Spirit pours down
upon the people of God.
It’s a sweeping and humbling litany of charismata,
or gifts of the Spirit:
When we read through this list,
it’s almost as if we are merely eavesdropping
on a conversation between Paul and the Church at Corinth.
And while we can hear the words
and understand what they mean,
they can seem somehow disconnected from our lives.
They seem as if they do not apply to us,
as if they don’t really describe our community of faith.
Is it because we are Lutheran?
Because we come traditionally
from some ethnicities
known for their emotional conservatism?
Maybe that’s why some of these gifts
seem to remind us of other, more expressive traditions.
It could be.
But it could also be
that Lutherans have not asked God
for some of the gifts on Paul’s list.
Maybe we haven’t prayed for God
to bless us with miracle-working
or prophesying or speaking in tongues.
It could be.
Or maybe we just want to be practical,
and so we don’t place much stock
in some of those gifts.
We just don’t see the value in the excitement
that flows from some of the more volatile gifts.
That could be the reason.
But even if none of these reasons explains
why we see some gifts—but not others—in our life together,
or why we wonder if we will ever manifest any gifts of the Spirit,
there’s another force at work
that prevents us, that’s blocks us
from experiencing the fullness of the gifts of the Spirit.
And this blockage is not something peculiar to Lutherans.
It isn’t something that Germans and Scandinavians
have gathered into their arms, keeping it from others.
Instead, it’s a part of our basic humanity.
Unfortunately, it’s just built in to who we are.
We can call it pride, or arrogance,
or willfulness, or stubbornness.
But whatever we call it,
there’s a streak in us
that knows that we know best,
that we are wise enough
to know what’s good for us,
what will work for our community,
where we should go in our journey together.
It’s not a Lutheran thing;
it’s a human thing.
And it goes back to our so-many-great grandparents
choosing to eat the fruit of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil,
trusting in the serpent’s lies rather than in God’s grace.
Why?
Because they knew they knew better than God
what was best for them.
They knew they knew what they needed.
And they were proud of it.
The opposite of this sin,
the sin of pride,
is the virtue of humility,
the practice of obedience.
And in a way,
humility itself is a gift of the Spirit.
It’s not that we can choose to be humble,
but that God blesses us with his Spirit
so that we become humble,
so that we live in obedience to his will.
And when we do,
then the Spirit takes an even deeper hold upon us.
Then we will find ourselves confessing—
with the Corinthians and the whole Church—
the oldest creed of all:
“Jesus is Lord!”
And as St. Paul reminds us,
…no one can say ‘Jesus is Lord’
except by the Holy Spirit. (1 Corinthians 12:3b, NRSV)
And when we live humbly, obediently,
seeking God’s will for our lives,
confessing that Jesus is our Lord,
then we will come to recognize
that he is blessing us each day
with the gifts of the Spirit.
Not that we choose to pick certain gifts,
like we are shopping at the grocery store
and selecting a flavor of juice or a type of cereal.
We don’t get to pick the gifts of the Spirit.
When we live humbly,
free from pride and self-importance,
then the Father pours out the Spirit upon us for Jesus’ sake,
as St. Paul writes,
All of these [gifts] are activated by one and the same Spirit,
who allots to each one individually just as the Spirit chooses. (1 Corinthians 12:11, NRSV)
The Spirit chooses which gifts to allot to each one of us.
The Spirit decides what gifts to activate in us.
The Spirit blows where it wills and accomplishes in us
whatever God, Father, Son, and Spirit, decide is best for us.
So what can we do?
We can wait patiently;
we can listen attentively;
we can pray diligently.
We can each ask ourselves,
“What is my allotment?
What gifts has God given me?
How is he calling me to use them?
What do I see as a need for each gift I have received?”
These are not questions we ask once,
then answer and set aside.
Instead, they become a part of our lives,
a topic in our daily conversation of prayer with God.
We can ask him for guidance in seeing what he calls us to do,
for discernment in recognizing the gifts of the Spirit we have been given,
for gratitude in thanking him for blessing us,
for wisdom in seeking how to use these gifts to his glory,
for cooperation in sharing our gifts with one another for the good of all.
And when we pray this way,
when we live by the virtue of humility,
when we follow God in obedience,
then we will surprise one another
with what he is doing in our midst.
And we’ll discover that what St. Paul wrote
about the Church in Corinth
is true of this congregation as well:
Now there are varieties of gifts,
but the same Spirit;
and there are varieties of services,
but the same Lord;
and there are varieties of activities,
but it is the same God
who activates all of them in everyone. Amen. (1 Corinthians 12:4–6, NRSV)
This is the sermon I preached at Holy Cross Lutheran Church, Beatrice, Neb., on Saturday and Sunday, Jan. 9–10, 2010, for the Feast of the Baptism of Our Lord.
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Isaiah 43:1–7
Psalm 29 (antiphon v. 3)
Acts 8:14–17
Luke 3:15–17, 21–22
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Gracious God, open our eyes to the life-giving light that shines through your Son Jesus Christ, so that your Holy Spirit may empower us to share the Good News with others. Amen.
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When I was getting ready to start high school,
I signed up to be a member of the marching band.
That meant going to band camp in August
for a week of drills and practices.
My instrument was the alto saxophone
and I was pretty confident
that I could play the music.
So my only real concern
was learning how to march.
What I wasn’t prepared for
were the unpublished rites of initiation
that older band members—all males—
foisted upon the freshmen—again, just the males.
I’ve probably blocked out the more unsavory bits,
but I do remember that the upperclassmen made each freshman
pick a grapefruit-sized piece of limestone—
common in that part of Pennsylvania—
and fashion a little rope harness for it
and wear it around his waist.
I had my rock for the week.
And that was a part of my initiation.
That and learning, without being instructed,
not to step on the falcon—the school mascot—
tiled into the floor outside the principal’s office.
But whether it involves carrying rocks
or learning secret handshakes
or snipe hunting
or other, more worthwhile activities,
many groups mark the rites of passage
that lead new members, neophytes, rookies
across the threshold into full membership.
In some ways, the Christian faith
as we live it together in a community
has its own rites and traditions
marking initiation into its membership.
That’s not to say that we haze anyone,
but that the Church,
because it is a human community,
has rites of initiation that mark one’s entry
into that community.
For us, this rite is Baptism.
It is the sacrament of washing and naming,
the ritual that divides a person’s life
into two parts, before and after.
In Luke’s Gospel for today,
the Feast of the Baptism of Our Lord,
we hear the account of Christ’s Baptism.
This marks a kind of before and after in his life.
Before his Baptism lies his birth
and the mostly silent decades
of his childhood, youth, and early manhood.
But then, when Jesus comes to the Jordan
and stands in the muddy water with John, his cousin,
he receives a ritual washing.
But uniquely in this case,
John points to Jesus and proclaims
that this one will baptize,
not just with water,
but with fire and Spirit.
Jesus will serve God his Father
and make a witness by their Spirit
that sweeps across humanity
as a thresher gathers grain,
bringing the harvest into the barn,
but burning the chaff with fire.
And so we may know that Jesus is that chosen one,
Luke invites us into the private conversation
that God the Father has with his Son
in the fellowship of their Spirit:
You are my Son, the Beloved;
with you I am well pleased. (Luke 3:22b, NRSV)
And that marks the line between
before and after in Jesus’ life.
In fact, the very next verse says,
Jesus was about thirty years old
when he began his work. (Luke 3:23a, NRSV)
Baptism marks the line running through our lives too,
the divider between the times before and after.
Before our Baptism we do have life,
but we are “in bondage to sin.”
But when God makes us his children in our Baptism,
we are reborn and initiated into his family.
That’s why our liturgy of Holy Baptism
tells us at its beginning:
We are born children of a fallen humanity;
in the waters of Baptism we are reborn
children of God and inheritors of eternal life. (Lutheran Book of Worship, p. 121)
Our Lord blesses us with this new life;
he gathers us together in the Church
to live as one with him and one another
in a divinely human community.
We can say the words about this gift,
but it’s hard to express
what has really happened to us
through our initiation into the Church,
the body of Christ here on earth.
This is not the marching band
or the scout troop
or the sports team
or the country club
or any other self-selected, self-defining group
that guards its gates,
defending them with secret knowledge
and unwritten rules
and even actions that hug the line
or cross over it into hazing.
God’s Church is not like any of that.
And we don’t have any special privilege or status
that comes from being ones
whose baptismal waters have long dried upon our heads.
Each of us still struggles daily
with our personal and private chains of bondage,
the sins we think and feel and act that shackle us,
the ties that bind us tightly,
but not like those blessed ones we honor in the hymn.
And so, this is why we are called to be different.
We do not seek to keep people out of the Church,
or to exclude them, or to welcome them on our own terms.
Instead, we invite all people
to come, to see, to hear about Jesus Christ,
the one who was washed like us,
the one who lived and died like you and me.
But most of all,
we want to share with all people
the great Good News
that Jesus, born of Mary,
raised by Joseph,
baptized by John,
condemned by Pontius Pilate,
flogged, spit upon, belittled,
abandoned by all but a handful,
left for dead upon hill,
buried in a tomb,
is now raised from death,
and lives no more to die.
And in his name,
we are washed with healing water,
we are blessed with the Holy Spirit,
and we are purified with the cleansing fire.
And in the end,
when we have died and been gathered
into the arms of the God who gave us life,
then he will look upon us our upturned and tear-stained faces
full of regret and remorse,
and see in us,
not our sin, our bondage, our broken lives,
but instead the face of his beloved Son
radiant with love and obedience..
Then our heavenly Father will smile
and say to each of us,
You are my child, beloved for my Son’s sake;
with you I am well pleased. Amen.
“As a mother comforts her son,
so will I comfort you;
In Jerusalem you shall find your comfort.” (Isaiah 66:13, NAB)
“Lo, I am about to create new heavens and a new earth;
The things of the past shall not be remembered or come to mind.” (Isaiah 65:17, NAB)
This is the sermon I had planned to preach at Holy Cross Lutheran Church, Beatrice, Neb., on Wednesday, Jan. 6, 2010, as part of Vespers on the Feast of the Epiphany of our Lord. The service was cancelled due to another snowstorm.
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Isaiah 60:1–6
Psalm 72 (antiphon v. 11)
Ephesians 3:1–12
Matthew 2:1–12
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Father in heaven, grant us times of quiet thoughtfulness, that we may rest in your Spirit, listen to your voice, and ponder in our hearts the good news of your Son’s birth. Amen.
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Across the centuries,
the voice of the prophet Isaiah
calls to us, saying:
Arise, shine; for your light has come,
and the glory of the LORD has risen upon you.
For darkness shall cover the earth,
and thick darkness the peoples,
but the LORD will arise upon you,
and his glory will appear over you. (Isaiah 60:1–6, NRSV)
When we hear this message of hope,
we cannot help but be reminded
that for us, the light of God shines upon us in Jesus Christ,
and his glory has been made known to us in his birth.
His is a light
that flickers in a straw-strewn stable,
that glistens upon the gifts brought by the Magi,
that bobs upon the back of a donkey
as his parents become political refugees escaping to Egypt,
that flashes upon the water running down his beard
when his cousin John baptizes him in the Jordan,
that shines upon the faces of his followers
as they witness his preaching and teaching and healing,
that dries the blood upon his brow
as he draws his dying breath upon the cross,
that radiates victorious from his loving heart
as his Father raises him from the dead,
that illumines his apostles as they witness his ascension.
And on and on and on,
until his light rests upon you and me,
having shone upon us in our Baptism,
having opened our eyes to his presence in his Holy Meal,
having enlightened us in his Word read and proclaimed.
There may be times when we think the light grows dim.
And to be honest, the darkness does sometimes seem to grow,
to surround us with fear and loneliness and loss and faithlessness.
Isaiah says, “For darkness shall cover the earth,
and thick darkness the peoples….” (Isaiah 60:2a, NRSV)
This is a promise from God,
but not one we like to be true or want to come to pass.
But there it is: darkness shall cover the earth
and wrap us in thick darkness,
like a fog impervious to the light,
like a blanket of blackness wrapped about our heads,
blinding us to the world around us.
God promises us this will happen.
But then, this is not his final promise,
not his assurance of his ultimate plan for us.
And so, as we gathered this evening,
we recalled together his promise of life and light
in his Son, Jesus Christ,
echoing the Prologue of John’s Gospel
that we have heard twice this Christmas season.
In it St. John writes,
What has come into being in him was life,
and the life was the light of all people.
The light shines in the darkness,
and the darkness did not overcome it. (John 1:3b–5, NRSV)
And so, in our gathering, we proclaimed:
Jesus Christ is the Light of the world,
the light no darkness can overcome.
Stay with us, Lord, for it is evening,
and the day is almost over.
Let your light scatter the darkness,
and illumine your Church. (Lutheran Book of Worship, p. 142)
Can we imagine a greater message of hope,
a more reassuring word of comfort
in the midst of these cold days,
these long dark nights,
these times when the world seems hell-bent on self-destruction,
when our common conversations grow coarse,
when our politics is interminably contentious,
when our Church wonders about its mission,
when our families wither and fracture,
when our work is imperiled and our play seems pointless?
It’s when this all settles on our shoulders
like that blanket of darkness,
and we are tempted to despair—to live as if we have no hope—
that we can find the greatest comfort
in hearing God’s word of encouragement
call to us across the centuries
in the voice of Isaiah, God’s prophet:
Arise, shine; for your light has come,
and the glory of the LORD has risen upon you. (Isaiah 60:1, NRSV) Amen.
“Yet, O LORD, you are our father;
we are the clay and you the potter:
we are all the work of your hands.” (Isaiah 64:7, NAB)