God’s people have often lived in deep darkness, in the time of Herod, so our hope is their promise: God’s light still shines, and now in and through us.
Pr. Joseph G. Crippen
The Epiphany of Our Lord
Texts: Matthew 2:1-12; Isaiah 60:1-6
Beloved in Christ, grace to you, and peace in the name of the Father, and of the + Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen
“In the time of King Herod.” That’s all Matthew needs to say.
And now all Matthew’s readers know this story of the visit of eastern strangers to the Christ child won’t end well. It happened in the time of a tyrannical, paranoid despot who saw threats everywhere, and ruled by violence and fear.
There is a little hope in the story. The magi are warned to take another road home. Joseph is warned to flee to Egypt with his family. The Magi are safe. The Child is safe.
But. This is the time of King Herod. Vulnerable, weak, powerless people are never safe. And the town of Bethlehem weeps at the death of their children, mothers and fathers inconsolable.
Darkness shall cover the earth, in our lives, Isaiah says, and thick darkness the peoples. It’s reality.
Nothing Isaiah says is news to us.
Our ancestors in faith, from the Hebrew people to the early Church lived under various Herods, under unjust governments, threatened by people who abused power and worshipped violence.
Our nation is defined by this. Today’s threats to immigrants and people of other faiths, disdain for those who speak truth about what is happening, organized attempts to disenfranchise, outright and open attacks of hate on people who are different, are deeply embedded in our history. Ask the Cherokee and Choctaw nations whether King Herod can be trusted. The president on our twenty dollar bill forcibly removed nearly 60,000 Native Americans from their homes, forcing 13,000 Cherokee and 17,000 Choctaw to march from the east coast to west of the Mississippi, and thousands died on those Trails of Tears.
Or ask our Black siblings in our country who in our history always have had to keep an eye on King Herod, from slavery to lynching to Jim Crow to redlining to today’s disenfranchisement.
Darkness will cover the earth, Isaiah warns, and thick darkness the peoples. Expect this, Scriptures say.
And yet Isaiah also declares a wonder: Arise, shine, for your light has come!
God enters this thick darkness and brings light through this Christ to enlighten all peoples. This is our hope tonight. But this is critical: remember how God’s light shines. It shines in darkness, and the darkness cannot overcome it, John says. But it’s still darkness where the Light shines.
Jesus escaped Herod, but the children of his village did not. King Herod lived at least a few more years after these events. Christ’s coming didn’t stop him.
But Isaiah says: lift up your eyes and look around. God’s light shines, even in the darkness, even if it looks weak. Even if this child escaped King Herod only to run into the power of Rome and a Roman cross. Even if this child fled Israel for Egypt only to be turned over by his own people for death. Even so, we declare that this Christ, this light, still shines. Even in persistent darkness.
That paradox is our hope.
God chooses the way of the weak to come to us, Paul has said, and shames the way of power. God’s true power is revealed in that cross, in that vulnerable refugee family fleeing Herod. God’s light is seen not as a day of sunshine but as a lone candle shining in a vast place of darkness.
But that one light is enough to see by. When you’re walking on a path in the dark with a candle, there’s a lot you can’t see. But you can see the two steps in front of you, and you can take those steps. And if someone joins you with their candle, there’s a little more light, and more wisdom about which steps to take. And if you are joined by more and more and more, the darkness has no chance of stopping you.
This is the way God is bringing light to overcome the darkness of this world. And from the beginning of his life, this is the only way Jesus operates, under constant threat of the Herods, by being light. And when Jesus is finally killed, God stuns death by breaking free of its hold. God’s light cannot be extinguished by darkness, not even by death.
And so Isaiah says, “See and be radiant.”
See God’s light in the darkness. And be radiant. Shine yourself.
You are the light of the world, Jesus said. It is who you are. So you leave here and when you see the darkness, you don’t pretend it isn’t real, or despair that there’s no light from God. You don’t have to fear the time of King Herod.
You leave here as light. Maybe tiny, weak, trembling, but that’s the way God’s light works. Even a tiny candle can be seen from a long distance in the dark. You are a light someone else might see, and be drawn to. Like those strangers from the east, someone might come to you and say, “We have seen this light from a distance, and have come.” To find God. To find hope.
And imagine what others could see when you and I join our lights, when we all join all our little lights together. We may not see the end of darkness in our days. But we witness by our light that it cannot overcome God’s light, its days are numbered.
Lift up your eyes and look around: it’s already happening.
In the name of the Father, and of the + Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen
