Lectionary blog for Jan. 17, 2016
The second Sunday after the Epiphany
Text: Isaiah 62; Psalm 36:5-10;
I Corinthians 12:1-11; John 2:1-11
People where I come from, the foothills of the Appalachian Mountains, like to tell stories about “folks back up in the hills,” the way Midwestern Lutherans like to tell stories about “Norwegian bachelor farmers” – it’s an affectionate look back at our ancestors and their adjustment to the modern world (and not meant to be taken literally).
My Grandpa Chilton, a Baptist deacon, loved to tell the story about the “little mountain church” having a church meeting to decide whether to buy a chandelier. After much discussion, the church patriarch, Brother Absalom – age 97, rose to speak his mind.
“I am against this here proposal on three accounts: One – don’t nobody in this church got enough education to spell chandelier. Two – ain’t nobody here what knows how to play one. And three – what we really need around here is some more light.”
(I told that story in an Epiphany sermon in a church in a large Southern city once. The next day a transplanted member from the Midwest came by the office and said, “I’m been thinking about what the pastor said yesterday. It is dark in the nave. We do need some more light in there.” He then handed over a sizable check marked “for chandeliers.”)
The theme of the season of Epiphany is light – the fact that “what we need in here is some more light” and the reality that God has sent us that light in the life and ministry of Jesus the Christ.
Isaiah writes at a time when the people of Israel are trying to figure out what it meant, and may still mean, for them to be God’s “chosen people.” They are at an extreme low point in their life as a nation – defeated, in exile, in ruin. Besides their political, secular troubles, they also have the added problem of thinking they are special and are, therefore, somehow protected from this sort of thing. Now that they have been defeated, they are asking, “What? Were we wrong about being God’s chosen people? Or did God decide we’re not chosen anymore? And if being protected from death and defeat isn’t what it means to be God’s child – then what on earth does it mean?”
It is to these questions that Isaiah is responding when he says, “The nations shall see your vindication, and all the kings your glory; and you shall be called by a new name that the mouth of the Lord will give” (Isaiah 62:2). Isaiah raises the bar, invites the children of Israel to lift their eyes from their current troubles and to believe the promise that their “vindication will shine out like the dawn, and (their) salvation like a burning torch.” They will become a light to the world.
This is a word to the church today. Sometimes we become much too focused on ourselves and fixing ourselves and meeting our own needs. We argue about such things as worship styles and programs in the context of what we like or what other people might like and would attract them to our congregation. But either way it’s about us – about our likes and dislikes or about our need to grow.
Sisters and brothers in Christ – this is not good. For too long we have considered ourselves forsaken and desolate. We are called to do more, much more, than scramble for mere institutional survival – be it the survival of our congregation, our synod or our beloved ELCA. Christianity was here before our institutions; it will be here long after we and they are gone.
To be “light,” to show forth like the dawn or a burning torch in the night is our true calling. We are called to repent, to turn from going one direction and to start going in another. Just as the nation of Israel was called upon to realize that being God’s chosen people was about being chosen to show God’s love to the world, we in the church are called to lift our eyes from the little, light, wispy issues we have a tendency to obsess about and to follow Christ into the world, carrying the bright light of God’s love high above our heads to illumine the way.
This post started with one silly story. It ends with another. Everybody remembers John Belushi and Dan Aykroyd in “The Blues Brothers.” Near the end, when they are being chased by everybody from the police to the KKK, they get in their car sitting in a tunnel and Aykroyd says, “It’s 106 miles to Chicago; we have a tank full of gas and half a pack of cigarettes; it’s dark and we’re wearing sunglasses. But we’re gonna make it, ’cause we’re on a mission from God!”
Brothers and sisters, our current troubles are next to nothing when we remember the light of Christ that we are called to shine into the world. Like the children of Israel, like Paul and the church at Corinth, like Jesus turning water into wine at a wedding, like Brother Absalom up in the hills, and like Jake and Elwood Blues on the mean streets of Chicago – we are on a mission from God and that mission is to show God’s love at all times and in all places.
Amen and amen.
