New Year of Light

January 4^th, 2015        “New Year of Light”      Rev. Heather Jepsen

Isaiah 60:1-6 with Matthew 2:1-12

          We are entering what for many of us can be a season of darkness and despair.  The weather is cold, the skies are gray, the days are short, and the joy and warmth of Christmas has once again passed us by.  I always consider it a gift that in the church, this is the season of light.  It is as if the early church Fathers knew that we would be in need this time of year, in need of a reminder of the light and hope of our faith.

          Today we are celebrating Epiphany in the church, and as you may know, an epiphany is a sudden realization or dawning of awareness.  An epiphany is a moment when you suddenly understand something in a new, clearer way.  This is a moment of understanding in the life of the church, a moment when we experience a dawn of realization.

          The traditional text for this Sunday is of course the story of the Magi in Matthew’s gospel.  Travelers from the East have had a vision of a child, they have followed a star, and they have come to pay the child Jesus homage.  They bring their gifts and worship the newborn babe.  It is an Epiphany for Matthew as the savior he is so carefully crafting a story about is recognized by religious leaders from another far away culture.  For Matthew, the light of Christ is dawning on the world.

          I love that story, but this week I was more drawn to the text of Isaiah.  There was something there that spoke to me in a new and different way, something there that touched on my experience as an American beginning this New Year 2015.

          This passage comes from what scholars refer to as the writings of third Isaiah.  The last portion of the long prophetic work, this Isaiah is writing to the people after they have returned from exile in Babylon.  The people are now back home in the land of Judah, and they should be celebrating.  So why this need to offer yet again a word of hope?  Well, because the people had returned home to a mess.

          The strongest and best people were the ones the Babylonians had taken into captivity.  For years the best teachers, best artisans, best governors, best theologians, and best craftsman have all been gone.  In their absence the city of Judah has fallen into ruin.  As the captives return home, they find their homeland has been ravaged and destroyed.  Fields are full of weeds, buildings are crumbling, government is corrupt, and people have turned away from religion.  Sound familiar?  For the people of Israel, darkness has covered the earth.

          When I examine the world around us, I too often feel like darkness has covered the earth.  From a crumbling lack of faith to an increased distrust in authority, from corruption in every level of government to increased violence in the streets of the city, from the ever widening gap between rich and poor to the daily march of injustice across the land, many mornings I wake up to a vision where darkness covers the earth and thick darkness the peoples.  Like the exiles returning to Judah, I look around me and am often disappointed by my world.

          So too, like the people of Judah, I long to hear these words of hope from Isaiah.  “Arise, shine, for your light has come, and the glory of the Lord has risen upon you. . . You shall see and be radiant, and your heart shall thrill and rejoice.”  Even in the midst of despair, even when thick darkness covers the earth, the glory of the Lord has risen, the light of God is among us.

          Sometimes, it is when we are in our deepest darkness, that we begin to see the light around us.  I read a great quote this week from Jack Kornfield, who is a famous American Buddhist, and he says “It is the basic principle of spiritual life that we learn the deepest things in unknown territory.  Often it is when we feel most confused inwardly and are in the midst of our greatest difficulties that something new will open.  We awaken most easily to the mystery of life through our weakest side.  The areas of our greatest strength, where we are the most competent and clearest, tend to keep us away from the mystery.” 

          Personally, I know that I have often experienced my most profound spiritual growth in the midst of my most painful and confusing times of my life.  Perhaps the same has been true for you.  As we enter this New Year, many of us find ourselves in a reflective space.  We think about the joys and sorrows of the year past and we look forward to change and hope for the future.  Our scripture readings for this morning call us to follow the light of Christ and to look forward in hope.

          One of the wonderful things about the message from Isaiah is that the light of God, the hope we need, is already among us.  Isaiah writes “Lift up your eyes and look around”, calling the people of Judah to notice the power of God already in their midst.  God is already there, the light already shines, and yet the people are so downcast and distracted that they miss the hope they so dearly need.

          So too, we have a tendency to get distracted and to lose sight of the presence of God already among us.  We too, are called to lift up our eyes and look around.  Already the light and love of God, already the hope of grace and salvation, is present in our midst.  It is our job to open our eyes and see it.  It is our job to have that epiphany, that sudden realization of the presence and blessing of God in our midst.

          The work of faith is just that, work.  Often I think we expect things to be different right away, we expect big change.  Just like with our New Year’s resolutions, we expect to get healthy and get happy all within the next week or two.  We know it doesn’t work that way, and yet every year we do the same thing.  Every year we make big plans for change and then we lose our motivation early on.  Physical health is a process that takes time, so too is our journey to spiritual health and light.

          We often forget one of the most wonderful things about the story of the Magi in Matthew, and that is that it took those guys at least two years to get to Jesus.  They came when Jesus was in a home, settled down, probably close to two or even three years old.  We love to put them in our nativity sets, to imagine them bustling in on the very night the shepherds came, but even the text reminds us that it didn’t happen like that.  No, they journeyed for some time. 

          In fact, I like to imagine that they wandered a bit.  They followed the stars, a pin prick of light in the night sky, and they journeyed along not quite knowing what they were looking for, but knowing that they were called to seek it.  They were guided by dreams and spots of light, by visions and longings and hunches, and they didn’t even go back the way they had come.  They were nomads, they were wanderers, and they were people of faith.

          Our own faith lives are a reflection this journey.  Following something we can’t quite see; like a star that may be clear in the sky one night and then covered by clouds for weeks, or a hunch that nudges us in our gut but we aren’t quite sure why or what it means.  We travel and we follow, we think and we pray, we look up at the sky and we dream and eventually we find what we are looking for, the Christ child.  But even after that the road is convoluted, and we wander on a different way than we had planned or imagined.  The life and journey of faith is nebulous, but we are always guided by light and hope, even when thick darkness may cover the land.

          In this season of Epiphany, of ahas and awakening, of light and shadow, I hope that you too see a pin prick of starlight somewhere out there.  I hope that you too feel a little lift of hope in what can seem like endless days of darkness.  Perhaps a good New Year’s resolution for all of us is to listen to the words of Isaiah “Lift up your eyes and look around . . . arise, shine for your light has come.”  May this be a blessed New Year of light as we strive to look for hope and light in our world.  Amen.