Epiphany of our Lord
January 6th, 2002 Isaiah 60: 1-6
Heavenly Father, what makes us miserable is not so much the circumstances of our lives, but our expectations of what and how life should be. Empower us Lord to see your reality. Amen.
Title: “We need to remember that God is in control of our lives.”
This is from the third section of Isaiah, chapters 56-66, sometimes called “Trito-Isaiah.” Like all prophets, this one is convinced of but one truth: God is faithful. If God promised salvation and all that goes with it, then God will deliver. That’s hope. But there is false hope and real hope; there is manufactured, humanly devised hope and true hope. In this text the prophet is looking at the reality, but in two ways, on two levels. On the earthly plane, with his physical eye, historically, he sees that not much is good or hopeful and describes what he sees in terms of darkness, abandonment, poverty. With his other, faith. eye he sees a glorious city, a magnet for all peoples, a bustling, prosperous center of life, luxuries and love. Now which version is real? Of course, one feels more real than the other. But the prophet’s standard of truth and reality is not what “feels” real, that is, the “feely-real,” but what is real, the “really real,” God’s truth. He knows full well that God’s truth is not completely apparent to the one-eyed jacks and one-eyed kings of this world. And he knows that God’s people need encouragement to open their other eye and see the other side of reality. So, he writes as he does, using poetry, his imagination, wits, and God’s inspiration to describe in human, historical, physical language and terms what is more-than-history, what is mystery, the mystery of God’s plan for his people. The entire chapter is a gem, a poem of contrasts between now and then. And because God is faithful “then,” is more real than “now.”
Historically, the time is after the return from exile, maybe as long after as the reign of the Persian king Artaxerxes (464-423BC). The Persian kings- Cyrus, Darius and Artaxerxes- have been favorable to the Jews and especially respectful of their God, Yahweh. They supported the rebuilding of the city and Temple, the return of the Temple’s treasures and even, see Artaxerxes’ decree in Ezra 7, ordered other officials in the empire to financially and materially aid in the effort to rebuild. Historically, this poem paints a picture of treasures, gold, building materials, and artisans, along with Israel’s dispersed citizens streaming into Jerusalem, transforming it from a desolate place to a bustling metropolis. Of course, historically speaking, none of that ever happened. Jerusalem never returned to her former “heights,” which were not that high in the first place. The prophet was actually referring to the “real,” Jerusalem, the one in God’s eyes and mind. That Jerusalem would not begin to happen until her king, the Messiah, was born. He would be the light that attracts all the nations to see and come to. Nonetheless this poem, this picture of the ideal situation, provided hope to a sagging and disheartened people whose hopes in the past have been raised so high and so often and just as often dashed, that the prophet’s task was harder than ever. Without denying the truth of what they can see out of one eye to be the case, he tells them what he sees out of his other eye and invites them to start behaving in a way to make that vision as real on earth as it is real in heaven.
In verse one, Arise, shine; for your light has come,
and the glory of the LORD has risen upon you.
The people came back to Jerusalem from exile, some from Babylon, others from other places where they had fled to, places like Egypt. If they expected to see the city as it once was they were sadly mistaken and sorely disappointed. Even a century after the return things were not much better. They still had not learned the difference between their expectations and God’s promises. The prophet-poet turns to a theme, a thread woven into the entire book, that of light, to capture what he sees with his “other” eye, his “faith,” eye. In chapter nine, verse two, First Isaiah said, “The people who walked in darkness have seen a great light.” And in 42:16 Second Isaiah said, “I, God, will turn the darkness before them into light.” This is a call for the people to “heighten consciousness,” to look above and beyond the surface and see what is really there.
The glory of the Lord shines on you: The people are called to see, with their faith eye, the presence of Yahweh in their midst, expressed as light. This whole text is captured in what Jesus says in Matthew 5: 14-16: “You are the light of the world. A city set on a mountain cannot be hidden…your light must shine before others, that they may see your good deeds and glorify your heavenly Father.” The prophet is so sure of God’s delivery of his promise, of his fidelity, that he speaks of the divine reality that apprehended by one’s “faith” eye, as though it has already occurred within the physical world of physical sight and touch. His verbs are in the “prophetic” perfect tense, that is, future events spoken of as already having happened.
In verse three, “Nations shall come to your light, and kings to the brightness of your dawn.” All the peoples of the world, represented by their leaders, will be attracted to this light, like a city on a hill, with its lights, that cannot be hidden. Because of the presence of God the light or glory he gives off will capture the attention, at first, their physical eye; then, their spiritual one, of all peoples, not just of Jews dispersed throughout the world or discouraged by living in a ruined and desolate Jerusalem. First Isaiah according to chapter two verse two, put it this way: “All nations shall stream toward it.” Second Isaiah, 40:5, said, “All flesh shall see Yahweh’s glory.” In the New Testament John 1:14 says, “We saw his glory.”
In verse four, 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. The Isaian outlook was that secular powers, like Persia, actually helped God accomplish his plan. In this vision of caravans of trade and tribute coming to Jerusalem, Israel’s own children will find the means of transportation to get there themselves. They will attach themselves to these cargo ships or the camel caravans, camels, the “ships” of the sandy desert, and return to Jerusalem, home, the Lord.
In verse five, Then you shall see and be radiant; your heart shall thrill and rejoice, because the abundance of the sea shall be brought to you, the wealth of the nations shall come to you. The imagery of Jerusalem as a woman is twofold. On the one hand, she is like a mother, receiving her returning children with open arms. On the other hand, she is like a bride, Yahweh’s, receiving wedding gifts from the whole world, a tribute to and recognition of her exalted status.
In verses five to seven, The gifts are further described. Jerusalem’s former poverty will be turned into wealth. Historically, the prophet may be speaking of the effect of the edict of Artaxerxes recorded in Ezra 7 around 458BC. All the nations under imperial rule were to help, financially and materially, in the restoration of Jerusalem. The prophet is saying that this part of God’s promise has happened or shortly will happen. But there is more to the promise than that. The “riches of the sea,” would have physical reference to the maritime traffic of coastal cities like Tyre in the north. Midian and Ephah refer to the region in NW Arabia, east of the Gulf of Aqaba, which for centuries controlled the trade routes to S. Arabia, E. Africa and the East in general. Sheba would refer to SW Arabia and Somalia in E. Africa, both famous for the production and export of incense. Ophir was also in E. Africa and famous for its gold. Midian, Ephah and Sheba were all sons of Abraham by Keturah, whose name, incidentally, means “incense,” The Sabaeans of Sheba, whose queen visited Solomon, were known as suppliers of gold, frankincense and spices. And Kedar and Nabaioth are nomadic peoples descended from Ishmael, son of Abraham and Hagar. But all these “gifts,” tributes, foreign aid, if you will, were to be put to the service of God, sacrifice and worship in his Temple, its beautification, that is, for religious purposes rather than political or social. Clearly, this text was in Matthew’s mind when he tells the story of the Magi in today’s gospel reading chapter two verses one to twelve. The prophet’s vision, however, goes beyond the physical realities. They are only prompts, props, clues, to meta-physical realities, realities that can only be perceived with “faith eyes.”
Sermon
Jesus himself in Matthew 5:14-16 teaches us how we are to interpret and apply this text to our lives. He knew, as did the prophet, that the truth being revealed in this text was not about an historic city, geographically located in present-day Israel. That Jerusalem, and her condition then, was only the raw material the prophet-poet used to make a larger point, a longer lasting one, an eternal one. In Isaiah Jerusalem is addressed as though it were a woman- both a bride and a mother. That should give us a clue that poetry, not history, is primarily involved. Jerusalem was a metaphor, even in the poem, for people. Jesus took it and made it, along with light, a metaphor for the individual Christian as well as Christians as a group, as a Church. While this has the effect of making “Jerusalem,” smaller, at least physically, it really makes “Jerusalem,” broader, a free floating image for anyone or anything which “houses,” God. Then what is said in the poem can be applied to one’s individual experiences and not merely to the people-as-a-group of the New Jerusalem, represented by the Christian Church.
So, who does not get despondent, experience darkness, abandonment, desolation? With or without faith these feelings are ingredients in every life. They may vary from time to time in amount, but they are there. Even when they are not there, the fear that they will return haunts us even on “bright, sunny,” days. What to do about them? The prophet says, “Open your other eye and see the whole picture.” You might think that peace, joy, salvation, abundance, grace, companionship, etc. are not “there,” but they are. They are there for the seeing, not just the wishing, or imagining or the making up of them. God is always there. When we realize that, see that, it is like a light going on. It shines through the darkness, a light the darkness cannot overcome according to John 1:5. Let psychologists, “priests” of the secular perspective, recommend to their clients to “do something you enjoy,” to join a club, treat yourself, etc. in order to get out of depression. And let psychiatrists the “high priests” of secularism, prescribe drugs to get their clients “high.” The prophets and Jesus say, “Open your other eye and see.” When we see reality as God sees it, with him in it, we can stop being afraid, admit our own powerlessness and depend on him. The world cannot be scary if God is in it. Only when we foolishly think he is absent do we fear. The first thing God says when he “appears,” when his ordinarily hidden presence becomes obvious, when we “see his glory” is “Do not be afraid.” The next thing he says is” “I am with you.” When we are depressed we need to remember that God is in control of our lives and make that our reality.
The Jewish people, after the return from exile, had the same problem, fell into the same trap, as those before the exile. Remember, for the most part, these would be different people returning than those who left. It was fifty years later or more. They expected so much. Their imaginations went wild. So what they imagined- an instant utopia, that God would make everything as they imagined it-what they imagined they also believed God had actually promised. True, God promises what God “imagines,” or “dreams,” for us, but we must be careful not to mistake our own imagining and dreams for his. If so, we, like the people of Jerusalem, are in for a disappointment. God will not change his plans to make us feel better. His dreams are far greater than ours. His dreams of a New Jerusalem will far surpass the “renewed,” Jerusalem the people of old dreamt of. What makes us miserable is not so much the circumstances of our lives, but our expectations of what and how life should be. It is the disappointments. And most, if not all of these, are within our power to change. We can change, lower, adjust, our expectations of people, places and things to fit this world and its reality. At the same time, we can accept God’s promises on his terms and we can expect deliverance. It is that reality, that world and our vision of it, which keeps hope alive, primarily because that reality can be experienced in some measure even while we wait for its fullness.
The message is “Open your other eye,” and you will not only see the light, but also be the light for others according to Matthew 5: 14-16.
No matter how harsh the facts-on-the-ground might be God’s promises will still come true on earth, if they pertain to earth.
What seems like a promise on earth and in terms of time is already a fact in heaven and in terms of eternity.
Seeing by the light of eternity gives one insight into time-bound realities.
The light of eternity bestows hope upon any earthbound situation, whereas the light of time merely bestows wishful thinking.
Wishing: Our imagination gives us the power to envision life situations radically different from the ones that actually exist at the time. One does not need faith, the eternal vision, to imagine the world and one’s place in it in ways diametrically different from what actually is the case. We can even go so far as to imagine ourselves living on another planet or being made of say wood with say green covering. We can imagine talking trees and we can certainly imagine ourselves living lavish life styles, being filthy rich, and incomparably powerful. Such imaginings are kind of fun. They are also a temporary escape from reality and give us momentary relief from the present imposed circumstances of our lives. However, such imaginings can become tyrants if we become addicted to them. They can begin to rule our lives and then ruin our lives. First, they can start to take over our mind. We can spend an inordinate amount of time daydreaming and getting little work done. That is bad enough. However, the contrast between what we dream and what we are actually living can become so pronounced that we begin to hate our circumstances with a passion and then hate ourselves for not being this imaginary ideal we have cooked up in our mind. We begin to “wish,” more than we actually live. We “wish,” today were Tuesday instead of Monday. We “wish,” it were evening rather than afternoon. “We “wish,” we had married that person rather than the one we did, had those children rather than the ones we have, worked “there,” rather than “here,” etc. Too much wishing disconnects us from earthly reality to the point where we become miserable just because we are where we are, who we are, what we are. Wishing is a distortion of hope, an addiction really arising out of false hopes.
Hoping: Hope, on the other hand, is rooted in reality, but not earth’s reality, God’s. As we intuit the presence of God in all reality we realize there is more to any reality than what meets the eye. We realize that we might experience the earth as solid and standing still, but in reality, it is in constant flux and moving in an orbit. We realize that all our experiences have more than one dimension to them and more than one interpretation of them.
Remember to realize means to make real in our own minds at least.
Hope is not really a light, but we use the term “light,” to describe it because it is the most apt earthbound term for it. Hope functions much like light functions and so we call it light. As such it is inseparable from faith and also from love. We do separate these terms in order to talk about them and to distinguish aspects of an experience, but, in the final analysis, they are one and the same reality. That is why St. Paul can say in 1Cor13: 13 that “Faith, hope and love remain…” despite the fact that we will not need faith or hope in eternity, since we will have arrived at the destination towards which they point and lead. All three- faith, hope and love- are the media by, through and in which we apprehend God or, more correctly, God apprehends us. So, hope is that light we use to interpret all reality, especially reality’s dark side. When we shine it on earthbound situations we are able to either see through them, get at their guts, so to speak, or we see them in a broader context whereby they are not as big or important as they seemed before we shined the light. Hoping differs from wishing, wishful thinking and daydreaming, in that we do not make up the scenario and it does not exist merely in our mind. We make contact with the reality and the version of reality that exists in God’s mind and we let it be ours. On the surface and at the time a hoping person and a merely wishing person may seem indistinguishable, but over time the difference emerges as God’s reality lasts and our imagined reality vanishes. Amen.
