You are salt. You are light. The world is diminished, tasteless, dark, if you do not live as you are, and when we all are salt and light together, astonishing grace from God shines and seasons the creation.

Pr. Joseph G. Crippen
The Fifth Sunday after Epiphany, year A
Text: Matthew 5:(1-12) 13-20

(Note: Because of the feast of the Presentation last Sunday, we missed hearing Matthew 5:1-12, the appointed Gospel for 4 Epiphany. We read those verses today, because they provide clarifying context for Jesus’ words on salt and light today. Additionally, vv. 17-20 are appointed for today, but provide a much more helpful context for next Sunday’s appointed Gospel reading which begins at verse 21, and will be read next week.)

Beloved in Christ, grace to you, and peace in the name of the Father, and of the + Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen

Here’s an important truth about salt and light.

You notice when they’re not present. The world is diminished, tasteless, dark, if salt and light are removed.

Ponder, then, why Christ wants you to imagine yourself as salt and light. Can you conceive that Jesus claims if you don’t live as who you are in the world, the world is less beautiful, is bland, stumbling in darkness?

Do you know how important you are to the quality of this world? Have you understood how central this is to what it is to be a Christian, a follower of Jesus?

I doubt “salt and light” would be the way most Christians, if asked, would summarize what it is to be Christian.

Many would speak of faith in Christ Jesus as the core of being Christian. They might say trusting Jesus as your Savior. They might speak of Baptism. They might speak of assurance that they will live in heaven after they die. They might even recite one of the great ecumenical creeds, the Apostles’, the Nicene, or even the Athanasian.

You know what isn’t in the Creeds? Salt and light. The list of the blessed ones Jesus enumerates at the start of Matthew 5. All of Jesus’ teaching, for that matter. You know what trusting in Jesus for life after death doesn’t say anything about? The life before death Jesus spent a great deal of time teaching about and inviting into.

We’re walking with Matthew’s community in worship this year, hearing from that Gospel for most of our Sundays, except in Lent and Easter. Do you know how much of Matthew’s Gospel is devoted to telling you of Christ’s death and resurrection? 15%. That’s a large number. But do you know how much of Matthew is devoted to telling you about Jesus’ teaching, his call to be salt and light, his declaration of blessed ones, his parables? 49.7%. Nearly 50%! Half the Gospel.

Matthew’s community is deeply invested in learning about life here in God’s reign.

They trusted in Jesus’ death and resurrection, in the hope of life with God after death. That’s clear. But it’s also clear this community heard again and again how interested Jesus was in the life they were living right now.

How he invited them to repent – to change their minds, change their direction – and turn into God’s way. How he challenged them to re-envision even the Ten Commandments to be a deep shaper of a new life. How he taught them the ways of the reign of heaven that, as he taught them to pray, were lived on earth as well as in heaven.

Jesus taught them a life of love of enemies, of unlimited forgiveness in the community. A life of abiding trust in God’s providing for them, where they learned to release their anxiety about the world.

It was a visible, one others could see and notice. A life where they were salt. A life where they were light. Where they, by their simple existence as disciples of Christ, made a difference to the world.

So Matthew begins Jesus’ teachings in his Gospel with Jesus’ declaration of God’s radically different values for this life here.

The values of God are so different from the world’s values, their effect on the world is like salt on bland food, light in utter darkness. They completely transform what they touch.

The world says the blessed ones are the proud, confident ones. But Jesus says, actually in God’s reign the poor in spirit are the blessed ones. They know their weakness and fears, and learn to rely on God’s guidance and life: they’re the ones living in the reign of heaven.

The world says the blessed ones are the successful ones, the ones who know no failure. Weakness and struggle are signs that you’re a loser to the world. But Jesus says, actually in God’s reign those who mourn and grieve their loss and failure are the blessed ones. In their pain, God comes with comfort.

The world says the blessed ones are the ones who live in the “real world,” not in unrealistic hope. The world values cynicism and trusting only yourself to get ahead. But Jesus says, actually in God’s reign only those who are pure in heart – those who have simple love, simple hope, simple compassion – can see God. Their heart mirrors God’s, and they are the blessed ones.

The world says the blessed ones are the strong ones, who impose their will on their lives, and others. Who do what needs to be done, even if it requires violence, deceit. We’re living in that horrible reality right now. But Jesus says, actually in God’s reign the peacemakers are the blessed ones, they are God’s children. They embody God’s non-violent, peaceable, non-dominating way of love in their hearts and lives.

The values of God’s reign, so utterly at odds with the world’s, are salt and light, Jesus says.

When you understand Christian faith is living the Christ-life, Matthew’s community believes, you bring the seasoning of God’s radical value system to a world mired in its own self-adoration and love of power. And as salt transforms any dish it’s put into, so will your life transform the world you encounter. Bring delight and joy to what was jaded and tiresome, life to what was death.

When you live your faith, live as Christ, Matthew says, you are the light of God’s radical value system in a world lost in the dark. And just as a single candle can break through the darkness of the greatest dungeon, so will your life transform and enlighten the world you encounter. You will help people see, open new visions for those blinded by the world’s values.

That is, Jesus says, if you live as salt. If you live as light. But if you’re not salty – if you refuse to let your life be applied as seasoning in the world – nothing in the world changes. And if you’re not going to use salt, Jesus says, throw it out and trample it. And if you’re not light – if you hide yourself away inside your own house or life – nothing in the world changes. And if you’re going to cover up light, Jesus says, there’s no point in having it.

But did you hear exactly what Jesus said today? It’s really good news.

“You are the salt of the earth.” “You are the light of the world.”

You are. Already. It’s what you were made in baptism. Even if you forgot that Christian faith only makes sense if it’s lived, you are already what God needs to transform the world. Be salty as you are, and bring the seasoning of God’s unconditional love and grace to a world of hate and fear. Be light as you are, and shine the light of God’s desire for all God’s children to be blessed, comforted, filled, and to see God, shine that in a world that can see nothing right now.

And imagine this: what if every child of God in Christ, baptized as salt and light, began to live that, together? If millions and millions were God’s seasoning of love, millions and millions God’s light of grace? What would happen to this world?

That’s Christ’s plan. There’s absolutely no reason for it not to happen. Because you already are what you are. Jesus said so.

Amen

God’s people are now God’s Temple: we, like Jesus, bear God’s light and love into the world.

Pr. Joseph G. Crippen
The feast of the Presentation of Our Lord
Text: Luke 2:22-40

Beloved in Christ, grace to you, and peace in the name of the Father, and of the + Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen

It was so vast, Isaiah could barely see anything else except some angels.

In Solomon’s Temple in Jerusalem, Isaiah had a staggering vision of God. The huge space was filled with just the hem of God’s robe. Isaiah fell down in terror, knowing he was unworthy.

Today we come again to the Temple of the God of Israel, but the second one, built after the return from exile. Once more a prophet sees God. Simeon replaces Isaiah. It’s nothing like before.

The Creator of all has again come to the Temple. But not in immensity, only a fraction filling the great worship space. Now the vision is a tiny little baby. Now the Triune God, first revealed to Israel, has come to God’s Temple as a child, God in human flesh.

And know this: because of this child, the dwelling-place of the one true God can no longer be adequately housed in a building. This baby reveals God is permanently changing residence.

Try to grasp the significance of this.

Temples in ancient times were the only sure sign a god was real. They were a place to worship that god, to control that god, a place where the religious elite were in charge, and they were the home of that god.

Ancient peoples believed that what happened to the temple happened to the temple’s god. If you desecrate your enemy’s temple, you humiliate your enemy’s god. If you destroy your enemy’s temple, you defeat your enemy’s god. In short, not much different from our view of church buildings and teachings and traditions today.

This second Temple in Jerusalem was destroyed within decades of Jesus’ resurrection. Judaism was scattered throughout the world, and changed irrevocably. They had to change their ritual and refocus their faith practice with no Temple, no sacrifice, no religious elite, no God-home, at its center.

But years earlier this baby had already pointed to a world where all temples were left behind.

This is the beginning of the end of God belonging only to one people and one place.

This child has come, Simeon says, to be a light of revelation to the Gentiles, “to the nations,” that is, to non-Jews. And yet this child is also the glory of his own people, Israel. All God’s children are included in God’s light and glory, through this child.

This child comes into the Temple of one people and signals the end of all parochial gods who can be possessed and controlled, the end of religion which excludes others. Instead of every people having their own gods and their own temples, and hating and destroying each other, God comes in Christ for all. To cross all borders and walls. To embrace all of God’s beloved children.

Every time we see Jesus come to the Jewish Temple he shows this new reality, confronts the status quo.

Today in God’s Temple Jesus is recognized by Simeon as God’s Son, an astonishing realization. When we begin to recognize that God is in this small baby, we begin seeing that Jesus completely changes how we know and meet God.

The next time we see Jesus in the Temple, he’s 12 and arguing with the teachers there, asserting his authority over elders and scribes many times his age. As an adult he charges into the Temple and drives out the moneychangers, directly challenging the authority of the religious leaders. He refers to his own body as the Temple that will be destroyed, and that he will rebuild after three days, foreshadowing his death and resurrection. And stating directly that God’s home has permanently changed.

At Jesus’ death, the curtain to the Holy of Holies is torn in two. There is no more hidden divine place where only privileged people can go. The glory of God is no longer shut away from God’s people. God’s glory is out and about in the world. And in the resurrection, Christ is proclaimed God of all, the Light of all nations Simeon foretold that shines in all, for all.

And in the world today, everything changes with this.

If God’s House is no longer one particular place belonging to one particular people, where only those who worship or believe the same things are blessed and worthy of life, while all others are condemned, if that’s no longer true, then Simeon’s right: everything changed with this child. In a world where fear and hatred of those who are different is promoted and proclaimed, even by Christians, all of that now ends in this child.

In this baby the astonishing truth of God’s coming to us in the flesh begins to dawn in our hearts and minds: that is, God’s love surely includes all peoples. God is no longer owned by those who build the most impressive temples, the biggest walls, or the greatest armies.

God’s out in the world, in you, in me, in all God’s children, shining light and love on the whole creation.

Because each of you also are filled with the Spirit of God, and each of you are members of the Body of Christ, you are literally God’s temples. “Do you not know,” Paul said to the Corinthians, “that your bodies are a temple of the Holy Spirit within you?” (1 Corinthians 6:19)

You are now God’s dwelling places. In you God lives and moves and has being. In you, God’s radical plan to bring all people together in Christ finds life.

When we wash John Larry with water today and pray God’s Spirit on him, we do what Simeon did. We say, “Now, in this child, we see God’s anointed one, God’s Christ sent into the world.” John joins all of you, all of us, in the mission we share to bear God’s light and love to all people.

And God lives in him. John becomes a temple of God, like you.

As God’s temples, moving in the world, you shine God’s light into the dark places.

You bear the grace and forgiveness you’ve received wherever you’ve been planted. Spirit-filled, you live as God’s presence in the world, bearing God into the darkness. And the light shines for all to see.

In the name of Jesus.  Amen

 

Jesus calls you to fish for people, to be God’s love in the world, and gives you all you need – not for results, but because it’s what being faithful is.

Pr. Joseph G. Crippen
The Third Sunday after Epiphany, year A
Texts: Matthew 4:12-23, with reference to John 21; Isaiah 9:1-4

Beloved in Christ, grace to you, and peace in the name of the Father, and of the + Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen

“Follow me, and I will make you fish for people.”

That’s today’s sequel. Last week Jesus said, “Come and see.” You were invited, with Andrew and the other disciple and Simon, to come and see what God is doing in Jesus. To see God’s Word in your midst.

But now that Word has come back with the next invitation: Follow me. Follow me and I will make you fish for people.

And that’s where we get stuck. Do you believe that following Jesus means that you, of all people, will fish for others? What does that even mean? Get new members for a congregation? Knock on doors asking if folks know Jesus? Lead an evangelism crusade? Does fishing for people mean doing all or some of that and counting up the numbers of people you’ve saved, like fish in a net?

If it does, we have a problem. Lutherans from the northern hemisphere tend to grow the church through birth rates, passing on the faith to the next generation, not through evangelism. But if following Jesus means fishing for people, and we just don’t do that, are we being faithful?

Actually, two ways of faithful “good-news telling,” evangelism, are in the Gospels.

In Matthew, Jesus starts his ministry calling Peter and the others to learn to fish for people, and he ends it at the Ascension by giving them a commission: Go and make disciples of all nations, baptizing, teaching them to obey me. For many Christian traditions, this is evangelism: find as many people as you can who don’t know Jesus and draw them in. Get more and more Christians in the world, spreading over the planet.

In John’s Gospel, Jesus doesn’t ask this. There Jesus speaks of loving as God loves. That’s the commandment, the commission. In John, after Easter, when Peter is challenged about his love of Christ, he has one job given him, three times: feed my lambs, tend my sheep, feed my sheep.

So Matthew’s community remembered Jesus insisting on going out and getting people in. And John’s community remembered Jesus insisting on loving others with God’s sacrificial love, feeding God’s sheep, caring for God’s people. Both have rich history in Christian life. Both are so early in the tradition we have to assume Jesus taught both emphases. Perhaps Jesus thinks there’s more than one way to follow faithfully.

But do we believe fishing for people is doable in our multi-faith world?

A hundred years ago, we wouldn’t ask that. Most Christians assumed all people needed to be Christian, and were lost in darkness and risking eternal damnation if they weren’t.

But today we know God’s children express their faith in God in very different ways, but in ways that often have much in common. Christian and Buddhist and Jewish and Muslim mystics all understand each other’s way of sensing God’s divine presence in their lives. The major religious traditions of the world share a deeply similar ethic of love of neighbor. The three religions who trace back to Abraham even claim the same God.

We proclaim that this shared God is Triune, has come to us in Christ Jesus in the flesh, and intends to love the whole creation back into the life and love of God. But we’ve learned that because we believe all that to be true about God, we don’t need to condemn others who believe differently, and certainly don’t need to hate them. If God is who we Christians claim, God’s love for all overrides any judgment we’d make about what they believe.

And, we have Jewish and Muslim and Hindu neighbors. We live in a global community. We’ve learned the value of respecting others’ beliefs. The common tradition shared by all religions that speaks of universal human rights, of care of the creation, of food and shelter and education for all, is something we can build on together with people of other faiths, even if we disagree in our beliefs.

So, does Jesus’ call in John make more sense to us today? Love others. Feed God’s lambs. Care for God’s beloved ones, no matter who. It seems so. But maybe we don’t have to walk away from Jesus’ call in Matthew either.

Following isn’t an either/or proposition. And we’re already both fishing and loving.

Think of all that we do together as Lutherans in the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America. We’re definitely loving, feeding God’s sheep. We give millions of dollars yearly, starting with your stewardship of money in this place, to end world hunger, to alleviate suffering in places struck by disaster. And we’re casting nets, too. Your stewardship supports mission start up congregations all over the Twin Cities, and the U.S. People who don’t know Jesus are being reached and drawn into life in Christ.

And we’re doing both together here at Mount Olive. From our Longer Table Loan program to Community Meals and daily ministry with our neighbors in need, we take “feed my sheep” very seriously. We’ve a task force working on how we might make a difference in the housing crisis amongst our neighbors. But the hospitality in this place also takes the Matthew path. People are invited to come and see here, to worship alongside this community, to meet Jesus in the flesh in us.

And individually, I see this all the time. You people witness to God’s reign coming near, Jesus’ message today, and to the light in the darkness, our word from Isaiah, with your lives, your love. Your grace in caring for others and inviting them here to find God’s grace.

Both of Jesus’ calls to follow are ones you know and do. Not always perfectly, and sometimes we hesitate in our following. But if you look, there’s evidence of such faithful following in a lot of places.

And good news: the message isn’t yours, it’s God’s. God’s doing it already.

God’s reign has come near, Jesus said. God’s reign. That’s the message you’re proclaiming with your life and your love – together as the ELCA, as Mount Olive, and individually. When you live that, you’re just living what God’s already doing, revealing God’s astonishing, transforming love. Is it increasing numbers of members here or elsewhere? Doesn’t matter. Jesus didn’t count, and many didn’t follow him. But God’s reign of love has come near, regardless.

And, light from God is shining in the darkness of this world. God’s light. That’s the message you’re proclaiming with your life and your love, together and individually. You’re just living what God is already doing. Shining God’s light of love for others to see hope, that’s all. Are you always effective? Who knows? But God’s light is shining in the world, regardless.

Fishing or loving, both are promises from God to you and the world.

I will make you fish for people, Jesus says. I’ll make it happen. You are God’s love for the world, Jesus says. You already are. So – feed God’s lambs. Cast the nets. Work with others, and do your thing, too. Be the Christ you are. God will handle the rest.

In the name of Jesus.  Amen

Listen to God’s voice: you are God’s beloved, the pleasure of God, and the Spirit is on you to be God’s promise to the world.

Pr. Joseph G. Crippen
The Baptism of Our Lord, year A (First Sunday after Epiphany)
Texts: Isaiah 42:1-9; Matthew 3:13-17; Acts 10:34-43

Beloved in Christ, grace to you, and peace in the name of the Father, and of the + Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen

It’s not clear if anyone nearby saw or heard what happened to Jesus in the Jordan.

In John’s Gospel John the Baptist says he saw the Spirit descend on Jesus. But the other Gospels, including Matthew today, if they say anything, say the heavens were opened “to Jesus” and “he saw the Spirit of God descending like a dove.” Then the voice speaks: “This is my Son, the Beloved, with whom I am well pleased.”

So did anyone else see the heavens opened? See the Spirit like a dove? And if they didn’t, did anyone hear the voice of God, either? It may be that only Jesus was privy to this whole event.

Regardless, Jesus did experience this, and two things changed him utterly.

He saw the Spirit of God come to him. Now he knew he was connected into the life of the Trinity from which he came, and God’s Spirit, part of the divine dance he knew before creation, now filled him.

And he heard the voice of the Father, calling him a beloved Son, well-pleasing. What that meant to Jesus as the eternal Word, we can’t know. But as a human being like us, this must have been a powerful gift, to be affirmed as beloved and a pleasure.

These two things were meant for what was now coming. From the river, Jesus went into his ministry, the job he came to do as God’s Word from before creation. He headed into the wilderness for forty days of temptation, which we’ll hear about in over a month as Lent begins. After that, he was preaching and teaching and healing and calling people into God’s love. Fulfilling Isaiah’s prophetic word today, being the God’s covenant for all the people, God’s fulfilled promise. A light to the nations, opening eyes, bringing those imprisoned out into the light. Proclaiming justice and, Peter reminds Cornelius in Acts today, proclaiming peace.

Jesus did all of this with this new confidence from his baptism: He was joined into God’s life through the Spirit. And he was God’s Beloved Son, well-pleasing to God. That’s what carried him through all the coming challenges and trials.

But are you content today to simply come to the Jordan River again, as we do every year, and just watch?

The early Church boldly looked at words like Isaiah’s today, and Isaiah’s words for next week, and the ones we heard in Advent, and said, “These are about Jesus, the Christ. He’s God’s servant Isaiah promises.” We look at the same verses from Isaiah and agree: clearly we’re talking about Jesus.

But sometimes we in the Church just stop there. We celebrate this moment where Jesus is baptized and named God’s beloved, well-pleasing Son, and look forward to all the saving work he will do, culminating in his revealing of the height of God’s love for the world in dying on the cross and rising from the dead. We claim him as the Christ, God’s Son, our Savior. And happily move on with our lives.

You could do that today. But first, listen more carefully to the Church’s witness.

The Church took their understanding of Isaiah a lot further.

The experience of Pentecost – another coming down of the Spirit of God, this time on the people of God – led those first believers to understand that Isaiah’s promises applied to them, too. That they were part of God’s covenant to the people, God’s light. God’s servants.

They claimed this on themselves in baptism. So even though we don’t know who besides Jesus saw or heard anything at the river Jordan that day, after Pentecost the Church said, “We were there, too. We, too, are washed in God’s water, have the Spirit within us. We, too, heard God’s voice say we are God’s beloved children, well-pleasing to God.”

Though the Church at times forgets this, there have always been voices calling us to the riverside ourselves, delighting not just in Jesus as the baptized beloved Son of God, but delighting that you, and I, and all God’s people, are God’s beloved, well-pleasing to God.

And therefore, also called to all these servant missions that Isaiah declares, that Jesus fulfills, and now are yours to do, and mine.

This is the joy of your baptism, if you can hear God’s voice and trust God’s Spirit.

In the waters of baptism – even if you were too small to remember it – God’s voice said, “This one, this is my beloved child. I am well pleased with you.” God’s Spirit filled you, and still does. God’s Spirit, as Isaiah proclaimed to us in Advent, the Spirit of wisdom and understanding, the Spirit of counsel and might, the Spirit of knowledge and the fear of God, the Spirit of joy in God’s presence.

God’s Spirit, Isaiah proclaims today, gives you breath and strength, holds you by the hand and keeps you, and then gives you as God’s covenant to the people, God’s promise to the world. Gives you the power to open eyes, and free those imprisoned and in the dark.

Remember, though: before Jesus began his calling, he faced that wilderness testing.

That story is coming in Lent, but remember it now, too. Jesus needed to hold tightly to “You are my beloved” and to the Spirit within him, to deal with the testing in the wilderness, and the testing of his ministry. He needed to keep learning who he was, what God needed him to do, and that learning often happened in the middle of suffering and challenge.

It will for you, too. This world is eager to crush your hope of being God’s beloved, to shut your light down, to tell you you are not important to them, much less to God. You yourself might be one of the voices saying to yourself, “I can’t be God’s beloved child, God’s covenant with the world.”

Suffering and difficulty also test your sense of this truth and its calling. When things are hard, it’s equally hard to keep in mind who and whose you are and what your path is. Being light in this world today, a peacemaker in a world lusting for war, a voice of freedom in a country of walls, will be very hard.

And even though Jesus did his forty days in the wilderness and then his ministry, there wasn’t a clear line between testing and ministry for him. People always questioned him, doubted him. He had setbacks, failures. He even had moments wondering if God the Father was with him, and he was the Son of God, one within the Trinity! This continued through and including the cross. It will for you, too.

But: can you hear God’s voice? Listen carefully.

The Scriptures proclaim it, and it’s about you: you are God’s beloved child, and well-pleasing to God. You are. God’s Spirit is in you.

And now God needs you to fulfill God’s covenant promise to the world. To walk away from your baptismal water wet with that promise and keep that wetness as a reminder of God’s blessing and call. So, like so many of God’s beloved before you, you can proclaim the good news of God in Christ through your words and deeds, serve all people, following Jesus’ example, and strive for justice and peace in all the earth.

You are beloved of God, God’s Spirit is in you, stirring in your heart even now. You are not alone, even in the wilderness of this world. Go as God’s beloved and love and serve as Christ.

In the name of Jesus.  Amen

Enlightenment is seeing God’s light of hope in the baby, at the cross, not in spite of them, and then radiating that light into the world yourself.

Pr. Joseph G. Crippen
The Epiphany of Our Lord
Texts: Matthew 2:1-12; Isaiah 60:1-6 (with reference to John 1)

Beloved in Christ, grace to you, and peace in the name of the Father, and of the + Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen

Are you here seeking enlightenment tonight?

Light is a powerful image for humanity. Every part of this globe every day is partially covered in darkness. Even those on the equator have half their days in darkness, and even though those near the poles have times when the sun barely sets, they still have moments where there isn’t enough light to see by.

So we have learned to use light to help us see. To overcome our fear of the darkness, where things invisibly threaten us. We learned to burn wood, we learned to put a piece of string in the wax bees make and light it, we eventually harnessed God’s electricity for light whenever and wherever we needed it. So we don’t stumble in the dark, bruise our shins, break our legs. So we aren’t afraid.

But we also learned this about light: it’s a helpful way to describe understanding. When we are confused, lost, afraid, and come to understand hope, or direction, or clarity, we say we are enlightened. Our minds now have light in them, we say, shining so we can see – not with our eyes but with our hearts and our minds and our spirits.

So I ask you again, are you hoping for enlightenment tonight? Is that why you came?

Maybe the Magi were seeking enlightenment, too.

They famously read the skies and interpreted the movement of planets and suns millions of miles away as indicating truth of something on earth. We’ve long since abandoned that idea. How can the rotation of our solar system, let alone distant galaxies, say anything about who we are, what God is doing?

But even in the Magi’s day, astrology was pretty subjective. Different cultures believed different things about what they saw in the skies, and it wasn’t like the star they followed came with an instruction guide. Somehow, they came to believe it was important that they go in a certain direction and see what they believed this heavenly body was indicating. But even as they arrived in Jerusalem, they didn’t know where to go.

Maybe they were looking to be enlightened as much as we are. So, they showed up at a house and saw a baby in the night, just as we’ve showed up in this house and heard about a baby in the night.

And Matthew says they were enlightened. They were overwhelmed with joy. What they saw opened their eyes, their hearts, their minds, to God’s grace coming into a dark and frightening world.

That’s an enlightenment we’d love to have.

Where is God in a world where children are killed by wicked rulers who feel their power threatened, 2,000 years ago and today? Where people are permitted to destroy the climate and wreak havoc on innocent humans, animals, landscapes? Where so many of God’s children are homeless and starving? Where powers that work evil and suffering seem nearly invincible?

We truly are here once again, as we always are, to ask of God: where is the beauty of your light in the darkness of the world? Where is the One whom we seek to be found, we ask like the Magi, and how will that One bring light?

And here is the light that John tells us shines in the darkness and cannot be overcome: God comes in a human child.

But anyone who saw the baby Jesus might not find it obvious that God was in this child for the healing of the world. Our Christmas movies always have a glowing light surrounding the Holy Family, presumably so the shepherds knew where to look, and the Magi knew where to kneel and set their presents.

But God’s truth is hard to grasp in this baby. If Matthew said a great warrior hero was God-with-us, maybe that’d be easier. Where is John’s promised light in this poor little family, this poor little baby?

But Matthew and John know the truth. The light of God, the heart of God the Son came to reveal, God-with-us, is only seen in this humility, this vulnerability.

That’s the enlightenment you need: not believing God is with us in spite of looking like a baby, but believing God-with-us can only be known in this little baby. You can’t understand God-with-us if you don’t understand this baby.

You see, God’s light is the humility, the vulnerability. God’s light is the suffering and death on the cross. Whatever the Magi saw, whatever the centurion on Golgotha saw, look for that: God isn’t known in spite of vulnerability and humility, but because of it.

See this and be radiant, Isaiah says, and then your heart shall thrill and rejoice.

You can be overwhelmed with joy at God’s coming this way, like the Magi, when you see this is the only light that makes sense in the world’s darkness. That this vulnerable baby and this dying Jesus on a cross is  the true light that actually can conquer evil. God’s plan of healing starts with vulnerability and always remains vulnerable, to reveal how evil can be dismantled forever. Not with power and might, our human approach. But with radical, self-giving love, modeled by the Creator of the universe.

You see that when you see this vulnerable child. When you look at the cross, and then at the empty tomb. That’s where you find enlightenment, when you finally understand the power of power-releasing love, the light of self-giving that cannot be extinguished by the worst evil.

And then, Isaiah says, you will also become light for the world.

See and be radiant, Isaiah says. Go be light.

You might not get the attention of whole nations and kings, as Isaiah promises, but what if you imagined that God meant that promise for you? What if you trusted that the light of Christ shining in you, the enlightenment you have received in God’s epiphany that this path of vulnerable love is the only light that can pierce all darkness and end it, what if you trusted that God would make that light shine from you? From your eyes, your face, your words, your actions?

This is the enlightenment to pray for: that God helps you see not only God’s light in this baby, in all that Jesus is and does, but also God’s light in you until you, too, are burning brightly as a candle in the night. Showing God’s hope, God’s love. And lighting others. Until eventually the promised dawn of God’s healing and life brightens for all the creation.

In the name of Jesus.  Amen