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Holy Trinity Anglican Orthodox Church
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First Sunday after Epiphany |
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Isaiah 60:1-10 Thy Light Is Come Light
is good. Whether it is the
lights of home after a day at the office, the candles on the mantle during
a power outage, or the lights on the tree at Christmas, lights have the
ability to soothe and give pleasure.
That’s one of the reasons I endure the fuss of the annual
Christmas tree. I like to
light the fire, turn on the tree lights, listen to my favorite Christmas
music, and enjoy the warm golden glow.
With associations like this, it is no wonder light is such a common
symbol for knowledge and good and God.
It has been used this way for about as long as there have been
people on this earth, and it is used this way in our text for this
morning. It
is not just a warm fuzzy feeling that God is bringing to mind in this
passage, however. The Jews
were in a terrible state of apostasy when God had Isaiah write it. The prophet gives a sad picture of their distance from God in
chapter 59. This should bring
tears to your eyes as you listen. Your iniquities have separated between
you and your God, and your sins have hid his face from you, that he will
not hear. For
your hands are defiled with blood, and your fingers with iniquity; your
lips have spoken lies, your tongue hath muttered perverseness. None
calleth for justice, nor any pleadeth for truth: they trust in vanity, and
speak lies; they conceive mischief and bring forth iniquity (Is
59:3-5). But
God has no intention of leaving them in this state. From cover to cover, the Bible makes abundantly clear that
God is a God of love and grace. He
is patient with our sin, and His
mercy endureth forever (Ps.
118:1). It is His purpose to
bring the Jews back to Jerusalem. There
they will rebuild the city and the Temple, and there God will rebuild
their faith. All of this is
described by Isaiah as the coming of light in the darkness.
It is the dawn of a new day in Israel. Yet
it is not simply a return to business as usual. It is not just rebuilding the city and the Temple, or
reinstituting the sacrifices and rituals of the Old Testament.
It is not even just becoming “good people” by keeping the Law
and going to “church.” It
is coming home to God that Isaiah writes about in this passage.
And it is the return of God’s favor to Israel.
Darkness, in this passage is the wrath of God.
It represents being separated from God, as Isaiah said in chapter
59, read a few moment ago. Our sins have “hid” His face, and we are in
darkness. Light is the return of His favor and grace.
It is in fact the return of God.
Not that God has ever gone away.
It is always we who leave him.
It is we who love ourselves and our sins more than we love God, and
so we run away from Him as though He were someone to be hated and avoided.
But God is still there. In
this passage He breaks through the sins and apathy that separate His
people from Him. Note that it
is not they who return to Him. It
is not their repentance that rises upon them and brings them back to God.
It is God who comes to them. It
is His glory that rises upon them. As
I was preparing this sermon I thought of three words that relate to the
rising of the glory of God. The
first is presence. God in His
mercy is coming to be with His people.
He is forgiving their sins. He
does not keep His wrath forever. He
bears in Himself the cost of renewing the relationship with fallen people,
and He comes to those who are running away from Him.
One of the great meanings of Isaiah 60:1 is that God is present
with His people again. These
days we make a great deal of defining and understanding the Kingdom of
God. We look at the Kingdom
in the preaching of Christ and the apostles, as well as in the early
Church. We look for it in the
prophets and other books of the Old Testament.
We even look at the writings of Jewish splinter groups to help us
understand the Kingdom of God. Yet
we cannot seem to completely explain it rationally.
We are left with symbols and images to give us ideas about it.
The phrase, “Kingdom of God,” is also an image, a word picture
to help us understand God and His relationship to His people. Here is another image. In
a sense the whole concept of the Kingdom of God is summarized in the
single word, “presence.” The
Kingdom of God is God with us, forgiving us, yes, but also transforming us
and our future into something wonderful and new and good.
In the Kingdom of God, we are with Him.
We come to know Him as our Lord and King, and we begin to act like
His loyal subjects, and as citizens of His Kingdom, with the rights and
freedoms He secures to us. We
come to know him as our Father, and we begin to act like His loving and
obedient children, out of gratitude and love.
This presence of God is what He is promising to His people in
Isaiah chapter 60. The
second word is community. In
the light of God we are not alone any more.
We have become a part of a fellowship or community. All the things that once separated us from each other are
gone. “There
is neither Jew nor Greek, there is neither bond nor free, there is neither
male nor female: for ye are
all one in Christ Jesus” (Gal. 3:28).
Things that separated us are part of the old things that are
“passed away” as Paul wrote in 2 Cor. 5:17.
The new things are things of unity, love, and belonging.
They are Christ. God
was telling the Jews they were going to become the community of God’s
presence. This means God is
present in this community in a way that is not true of the world or even
individual believers. “For
behold, the darkness shall cover the earth, and gross darkness the
people.” That is how
Isaiah describes people outside this community.
Just as light describes the presence of God or the presence of His
Kingdom, darkness describes the absence of it.
It is to dwell apart from God.
Of course God is in the world, and there is no place in this
entire, vast universe where we could ever be away from Him.
The universe exists in Him. He
is more than the universe and He is separate from it, but the universe
exists in Him. He fills it,
but it does not fill Him. But
His presence within the community of His presence is different, and more
apparent than it is anywhere else. After
all, “presence” is a symbolic word too, when we use it of God, and we
use symbols to communicate things that are too great to convey by logic.
I guess we could say that the difference is that God’s presence
is revealed more fully in the community, and is realized more fully in that community than it is outside of it. The
third word has already been alluded to.
That word is Jesus. In
Him the meaning and promise of this passage is fulfilled. Jesus is our Immanuel. He
is the presence of God with us. It
is He that invades our darkness and brings us into the light of God’s
presence. He is that light. The
community has its being in Him, which is another way of saying the Kingdom
is in Him, and everything I’ve been talking about and Isaiah has been
writing about is brought into fullest being for us in Christ. All the blessings and joys Israel enjoyed in the Old
Testament were but the foretaste of their fulfillment in Christ which we
enjoy in the Church. Even the
Church is only the foretaste of what we’ll enjoy in Heaven, for there
the presence of God will be unmediated by time and space.
We will walk by sight instead of by faith as we walk here below. There
is something else in this passage that we need to see.
I will call it inclusiveness.
The light of God is inclusive.
“And the Gentiles shall
come to thy light and kings to the brightness of thy rising.”
(Is. 60:3). We
have to be careful when we say “inclusive” these days, because of the
relativistic, “anything goes” way people think and act, which they
justify by saying they are inclusive.
Of course their inclusiveness extends only to those who are willing
to submit to their values and ideas.
They tolerate no deviation, and they do not include biblical values
and ideas. That means you
cannot be included in their inclusive culture.
Instead the inclusive culture will exclude you and your values. Yes, I am making fun of them a little, but I am also exposing
the fallacy of their thinking. They
are inclusive only of those who accept their ideas and values.
Everyone else is excluded. When
I say the Light is inclusive I mean it is for everyone who desires to be a
part of it. This was a
revolutionary idea in the Old Testament era.
The Jews believed they were the exclusive people of God, and that
His Kingdom existed for them alone. Most
ancient peoples felt that way. It
seems that from the beginning each little tribe thought of itself as the
chosen people and that to glorify their gods they should annihilate the
“infidels” around them. This
was the foundational idea behind many of the empire builders in the
ancient world. The conquest
of another people was almost always viewed as their gods defeating the
infidels’ gods. People who
worshipped different gods, spoke different languages, or held a different
culture were not seen as potential allies but as infidels worthy only of
enslavement or extermination. But
according to Jesus the Kingdom of God is not limited to one geographical
area, one race, one group, one nation, or even one time. It is for everyone who wants it.
All you need to do is walk in by faith in Jesus. Let
me close with a little story, which I have borrowed from Robert Webber’s
Ancient Future Faith.
A young man entered a store and found himself talking to an
employee who was a Christian. The conversation lasted until the employee was off work and
eventually got around to Christianity.
The young man was in darkness.
He came from a family with addiction problems, received no
religious training, no direction in life, no love, no real standards.
Emptiness was in his heart, the future was bleak, and he felt stuck
in a world without hope, fulfillment, or purpose.
In this aspect he was like many of his generation.
His life was a futile round of drugs and sex.
He did not apply himself in school and had no plans for the future. He was just plain empty. The
employee told him about hope and meaning he enjoyed in Christ.
He told him life can be lived in joy and fullness.
And he told him about the Church, a people who support one another,
and experience community, genuine love, the fullness of hope, and
fulfillment in life. Do
you know what the customer said? He
said that kind of people does not exist.
So I want to ask you a question.
Does that kind of people exist?
Are we that kind of people? It
is my hope and prayer that the church we are beginning here is, and always
will be, that kind of people. O
God who sent forth Thy Son to be Light and to bring Gentiles to the
brightness of thy rising, grant that your Church may be that community of
Christ. In the name of the
Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost.
Amen.
The Rev. Dr. R. Dennis Campbell, Vicar, Holy Trinity Anglican Church,
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