January 7, 2007 First Sunday after Epiphany
First Congregational Church in Thetford, Vermont, UCC
Psalm 72; Isaiah 60:1-6; Matthew 2:1-12, 6:22-23
Jesus was born into a society whose rulers were notoriously corrupt, where
the rich were bent on getting richer at the expense of the poor, and where the
Roman Empire was oppressively omnipresent. It was a society that could be
described as covered in thick darkness.
That is how Isaiah described his time several hundred years before Christ.
He lamented its violence and injustice, its oppression of the poor and the weak,
and its lack of the compassion and courage needed to throw off corruption and
captivity.
It sounds as if the writer of today’s Psalm was also living in such a time.
The Psalm yearns for a leader who will bring peace, save the children of the needy
and redeem the poor and the weak from violence and oppression. All this implies
that thick darkness covered the earth at that time, too.
And what of us today? Do we feel ourselves in such a society and world?
Do we feel overshadowed by violence and the plight of the poor, or oppressed by
corruption and injustice in high places? There have been warm El Nino winters
before, but this one feels more ominous as a foreshadowing of a global climate
catastrophe. We could use the kind of light that Isaiah and the Psalm and the Magi
saw as their hope.
If light and hope feel like what you need right now, then you may find
today’s scripture helpful, because they suggest a way out from under the shadow.
Surprisingly, the most important thing we need is not a way of being so much as a
way seeing—seeing the light that shines in the darkness.
Isaiah says, “Arise, shine: for your light has come, and the glory of the
Lord has risen upon you.” Later he says, “You shall see and be radiant.” We are
not the source of the light, we do not generate the light by our actions—the light
comes to us as a gift from God. Yet if we open our inner eyes to see the light, we
become bodies of light ourselves. Isaiah says, “Nations will come to your light
and kings to the brightness of your dawn.” If we see and take in the light of God,
we become a light to people who sit in great darkness and to an earth covered in
thick darkness.
This is exactly what happened to the Magi. They saw a star of hope, a sign
of God’s inbreaking presence, and they followed it to its source. The way was
long and dangerous, it required that they pass through great darkness where they
lost sight of the star, but in the end through their persistent looking, the light of
Christ filled their vision, and they adored and served Him with their gifts. As a
result, they have been signs of hope to Christians for two thousand years and will
be as long as there is still a church telling the Christmas story.
The question is, how can we in our time have this kind of vision that fills us
with God’s light? How can we be signs of hope to a world covered in thick
darkness?
Jesus said in the Sermon on the Mount, “If your eye is healthy, your whole
body will be full of light; but if your eye is unhealthy, your whole body will be full
of darkness. If then the light in you is darkness, how great is the darkness!”
This sounds helpful. All we have to do is have healthy eyes and we will be
bodies of light. But what does healthy mean? First of all, it does not mean free
from conjunctivitis or glaucoma. Jesus is not talking about our literal eyes, but
rather the focus of our lives and the way we understand and relate to the world—
the way we see things in our mind’s eye.
The Greek word translated “healthy” means literally “single” and is related
to the root of the word “simple.” The word translated as “unhealthy” means
something more like “sick and twisted,” or hurtful. It means the “evil eye,” a
mind filled with the malice of jealousy or envy, obsessed with its own material
well-being at the expense of others.
The intended meaning of these words comes clear when we look at the
context of this passage. Just before it Jesus said we should invest in spiritual
treasures and let go of material things. Just after it, he said that we cannot serve
two masters, we need to choose between God and mammon, or God and material
treasures.
To have a healthy eye means to have a single focus on God, to see all
things spiritually. It means to have a simple relationship with the things of this
world, seeing them as manifestations of God, and respecting them as such. It
means not seeing objects as existing to serve our selfish wants, but seeing them as
signs and epiphanies of God’s truth and God’s will, or as gifts meant to serve the
God of justice and mercy and peace. If we train ourselves to see God’s light
within all things, then we ourselves will fill up with that light, and our actions will
naturally reflect how we view the world.
If we go through life looking for God’s signs to lead us along the sacred
way, then we ourselves will become signs of the sacred way for others. From our
way of seeing the world will flow a way of treating the world, characterized by
compassion and non-violence, simplicity and sustainability.
Jesus knew that if our minds were full of God’s light then our lives would
be full God’s light, but he also knew that it is not easy to see the world this way.
He talked about the light that is darkness within us. This dark light fills us when
we see material things as objects of our greed or lust or pride, as most people do
most of the time. The dark light fills us when we are captive to our addictions and
obsessions and compulsions. The dark light blinds us to God’s light when we are
caught up in our over-busy daily preoccupations, and have no time for spiritual
considerations. These glaring, self-generated lights fill us with darkness, and the
darkness of the world becomes great around us.
As I was struggling earlier this week with the realization of my own share
of over-busy darkness, my own lack of single focus and material simplicity, I had
an epiphany—a gift of grace that opened my inner eyes to God’s manifest ways.
The storm came that coated everything with a quarter-inch of ice, and then the sky
cleared. I went for a walk through the fields and woods and was dazzled by the
sparkling prisms of a million twigs, the blue, green, red, gold and white beads of
light that filled my vision. But when I was half way through my walk and turned
for home I was shocked. Looking back across the valley that I had just walked
through, I saw no trace of ice, no sparkling light.
Later I took a moonlit walk and saw the same diamonds in the branches like
stars, and I saw a path of light across the glazed snow-fields that led me to the
moon from wherever I stood. When I looked down at myself I saw that I was
glowing with moonlight, too. But when I turned around, all I saw was my shadow
going off across the snow. No body of light, no sparkling diamonds, no path
shining toward the moon.
My epiphany was that God’s light works this way, too. The message is
simple and obvious, but we seem to need to be reminded of it over and over. To
see the light, we need to look toward it. To follow it, we need to turn and walk
toward it.
Our spiritual journeys do not always lead us into the light, as the Magi
discovered. Sometimes they lead into great darkness and danger. Sometimes we
cannot help but walk through the valley of the shadow of death. Sometimes the
shadow of our ego’s little daily forms of greed or lust or pride seduces us and fills
us with dark light.
But the lesson the scriptures want us to learn is to keep seeking the light
even then, to keep seeking signs and directions toward the source of the light even
when none can be found, to keep turning toward the light at the slightest hint of its
location, to keep seeking epiphanies. There is power in the persistent practice of
turning our inner eyes to God’s manifestations. There is power in making it a
practice to turn back to seeking God many times a day, day after busy day. There
is power in taking every opportunity to notice beauty and goodness, to notice light
when it comes, no matter how busy or distracted or lost we are. All these small
acts of turning to even the dream of God’s light add up to a tremendous power,
enough to transform us into bodies of light. But if we do not turn toward the light,
we will miss its sparkling and its path.
To paraphrase the Apostle Paul, if there is any justice, if there is any mercy,
if there is any instrument of peace, if there is any love, fill your eyes with these
things. Keep searching, keep traveling the dark desert of the world, keep watching
and waiting for signs and epiphanies, and the God of light will fill you until you
are a body of light and a sign of Christ’s sacred way.
Let us pray in silence seeking the presence of God here now…
Sermon 01/07/2007