Epiphany
Isa
60:1-6
1/6/18
In dramatic ways, the book of Isaiah contrasts Yahweh, the
Creator of all things, with the false gods of the pagan nations. For example in chapter forty the prophet
writes, “To whom then will you
liken God, or what likeness compare with him? An idol! A craftsman casts it,
and a goldsmith overlays it with gold and casts for it silver chains. He who is
too impoverished for an offering chooses wood that will not rot; he seeks out a
skillful craftsman to set up an idol that will not move.”
Instead of idols that are merely the work
of human hands, Isaiah goes on to point to Yahweh: “Do you not know? Do you not
hear? Has it not been told you from the beginning? Have you not understood from
the foundations of the earth? It is he who sits above the circle of the earth,
and its inhabitants are like grasshoppers; who stretches out the heavens like a
curtain, and spreads them like a tent to dwell in; who brings princes to
nothing, and makes the rulers of the earth as emptiness.”
Like the rest of the Old Testament, Isaiah
declares that Yahweh, Israel’s God, is the only true God. He is the Creator of
the heavens and the earth. In his call,
the prophet hears the seraphim calling back and forth to one another, “Holy,
holy, holy is the Yahweh of hosts; the whole earth is full of his glory!”
Yahweh was the God of Israel. He had called them to be his people and taken
them to be his own. Yet Israel was just a small sliver of this world that
Yahweh had created. God had created it all. As the seraphim had
declared, Yahweh’s glory fills the whole
earth. It made it hard to avoid the
question about whether Yahweh meant something for the people who lived in the
rest of the world.
Isaiah addresses this directly in ways that
go beyond anything else we find in the Old Testament. It is a theme that is announced in the second
chapter of the book as he looks to the future and declares, “It shall come to
pass in the latter days that the mountain of the house of the LORD shall be
established as the highest of the mountains, and shall be lifted up above the
hills; and all the nations shall flow to
it,
and many peoples shall come, and say: ‘Come,
let us go up to the mountain of the LORD, to the house of the God of Jacob,
that he may teach us his ways and that we may walk in his paths.’”
Isaiah describes a time when the nations
will come to Zion and learn from God. He
goes on to add, “For out of Zion shall go the law, and the word of the LORD
from Jerusalem. He shall judge between the nations, and shall decide disputes
for many peoples; and they shall beat their swords into plowshares, and their
spears into pruning hooks; nation shall not lift up sword against nation,
neither shall they learn war anymore.” The future is a time when Yahweh will
rule over all nations and peoples in perfect peace.
If we ask how this is going to happen, the
answer is Yahweh’s Servant. In chapter
forty two Yahweh says, “Behold my servant, whom I uphold,
my chosen, in whom my soul delights; I have put my Spirit upon him; he will
bring forth justice to the nations.” And then a little later he adds, “I am the LORD; I have called you in righteousness; I will
take you by the hand and keep you; I will give you as a covenant for the
people, a light for the nations, to
open the eyes that are blind, to bring out the prisoners from the dungeon, from
the prison those who sit in darkness.”
The Servant of the Lord in Isaiah is
puzzling. Quite often he is identified
as Israel such as in chapter forty nine where the prophet writes, “You are my
servant, Israel, in whom I will be glorified.” But other times he seems to be
an individual such as a little later in the same chapter when Isaiah adds, “…he
says: ‘It is too light a thing that you should be my servant to raise up the
tribes of Jacob and to bring back the preserved of Israel; I will make you as a light for the nations, that my salvation may reach to the end of the earth.’”
This is the sort of thing that prepares us
in the book of Isaiah for our text. The
prophet says, “Arise, shine, for your light has come, and the glory of the LORD
rises upon you.
See,
darkness covers the earth and thick darkness is over the peoples, but the LORD
rises upon you and his glory appears over you. Nations will come to your light,
and kings to the brightness of your dawn.”
The prophet describes our world as one of
darkness. Do we really believe that?
After all, our world is filled with so many flashy gadgets and wonderful
technologies. We have so much to make
our life easy – so much with which to entertain ourselves. Yet all of these things easily become
distractions that draw our attention from what real life is. Created in the image of God, we are meant for
life with God. Yet instead our focus
becomes the creation itself – everything else except God. And in that
there is darkness, the darkness of sin.
Isaiah diagnoses the true situation of
life. It is one of darkness as we turn
to gods of our own creation. What we
need is light. What we need is freedom
from this slavery. In the next chapter
we learn again who is going to do it. We
hear, “The Spirit of the Lord GOD is upon me, because the LORD has anointed me
to bring good news to the poor; he has sent me to bind up the brokenhearted, to
proclaim liberty to the captives, and the opening of the prison to those who
are bound; to proclaim the year of the LORD's favor, and the day of vengeance
of our God.” This One is not given a
name, but after all that has been said, how can we not identify him as the
Servant?
In the Gospel lesson for the Feast of the
Epiphany of Our Lord we see this Servant revealed. He is revealed to magi by the light of a star
at its rising. They go to Jerusalem looking
for “he who has been born king of the Jews.” But there they find only Herod
whom the world calls “Great.” Instead
they are sent by Scripture to Bethlehem, the city of David. They are sent to look for a descendant of David.
And in this the question of the Servant’s identity begins to be answered, because
the Davidic king is God’s son, just as the nation is God’s son. He is Israel reduced to One.
These Gentile magi then follow the light of
a star that leads them to the true light – the light for all nations; the light
for the Gentiles; the light for you. They follow the star that leads them to
Jesus Christ and they begin to fulfill Isaiah’s words in our text: “A multitude
of camels shall cover you, the young camels of Midian and Ephah; all those from
Sheba shall come. They shall bring gold and frankincense, and shall bring good
news, the praises of the LORD.”
Isaiah words make lofty claims and are
filled with soaring rhetoric. And it is
therefore easy for us to overlook how much they contradicted the reality of the
world. Yahweh was the true God and Creator of all, yet it was the nations of the false gods, like Assyria and
Babylonia who had the power. Our text
speaks of kings and nations coming to the light, but in fact it is only a few
magi who show up and sneak home by different way.
Indeed, the Servant is described as the One
upon him the Spirit rests – the One who is the light to the nations. Yet Isaiah also says about the Servant: “Surely
he has borne our griefs and carried our sorrows; yet we esteemed him stricken,
smitten by God, and afflicted. But he was wounded for our transgressions; he
was crushed for our iniquities; upon him was the chastisement that brought us
peace, and with his stripes we are healed. All we like sheep have gone astray;
we have turned--every one--to his own way; and the LORD has laid on him the
iniquity of us all.”
Jesus Christ is the light because he
received the darkness that we deserved.
He died in the darkness of Good Friday forsaken by God. But then when
the light first dawned on Easter Sunday it was revealed that he had emerged
from the tomb as the victor over sin and death.
In him, the light of the immortal life that will be ours now shines.
Epiphany shows us that Jesus the light has
dispelled the darkness. He has given us
forgiveness, life and salvation. He has
done it … even for us, Gentiles who were not God’s people. Because this is so, we join the magi in
rejoicing exceedingly with great joy. We
join them in worshipping Jesus and offering gifts – the gifts of our time, our
talents, our treasure.
This light continues to shine in our
midst. Yet like Isaiah’s words; like the
few magi showing up in Bethlehem; like Jesus Christ hanging on a cross the current appearance of this light contradicts what it really
is. The light appears as a Gospel that
people can dismiss because “they don’t need religion.” It appears as the water and the word of Holy
Baptism, and the bread and wine of the Sacrament of the Altar. These are things
that appear to be weak. They don’t seem
to match the grand claims made about them. But because they are the gifts of
the risen Lord they give the benefits he has won. They give forgiveness and life – eternal
life. They are Jesus’ light that drives away the darkness and makes us the people
God.
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