Second Sunday of Christmastide
The Epiphany
Rev. Brent Gundlah
First Reading (Isaiah 60:1-6, NRSVUE)
Gospel Reading (Matthew 2:1-12, NRSVUE)
The Chiesa del Gesù, the Church of Jesus, is located in the center of Rome. Founded in the mid-16th century, it is the home of the Catholic order known as the Jesuits and a must-see site for tourists. For me, it is also the place where I had an epiphany of sorts.
My family and I arrived at the front door of the church at the beginning of our last evening in Rome and stood there for a while before finally deciding to go inside. We’d been in the city for almost a week, and the combination of jet-lag and relentless sightseeing had left us all physically, mentally and emotionally exhausted (and my feet really hurt too).
After bickering our way through the final day of our march through Rome, the last thing any of us wanted to do was tour yet another church, but this one was on our checklist of important places to see so we felt like we should go. Besides, the daily five-thirty service was going to begin in a little while and, at the very least, this would give us the chance to sit down and take a break.
We were, if I’m being totally honest with you, a bit sick of each other’s company at that point, so the four of us meandered around the church separately for a bit, perusing this incredible building and its contents. By the time five-thirty rolled around, a small crowd of worshippers and tourists had gathered; the recorded voice and music began and my family found our seats together — well, at least geographically speaking anyway; I say this because we were each off in our own little world.
The spoken parts of the service were in rapid-fire Italian, so we weren’t able to follow very much of it. The music was nice but the sound system was also turned up way too high, which made it mildly unpleasant to listen to.
After about twenty minutes, the large painting above the tomb of Saint Ignatius Loyola was suddenly lowered (accompanied by great musical fanfare), revealing a giant golden statue of the Saint himself. I have to tell you, I kinda jumped when that happened: I didn’t see that one coming at all. And just like that, this service, intended to inspire awe and reverence was over.
As our fellow celebrants made for the exits, our family, for some reason, decided to stay put in our rickety wooden chairs for a while. The sun had finally made its end-of-day turn around the back of the church, and its intense late-winter rays began to stream through the large oval window, bathing the frescoed ceiling, the giant gilded sunburst above the altar, the aforementioned golden saintly statue and the faces of every person present in this incredible, almost otherworldly light.
The four of us just sat there and smiled at each other, saying absolutely nothing. After a few minutes we slowly rose from our seats and walked out together basking in the warm sun. It’s kind of difficult to describe, let alone explain, but an overwhelming feeling of peace and joy suddenly washed over that place and the people in my family when the light began to shine (which was great, because I think we really needed it).
At the time, it seemed kind of like a minor miracle. We had walked into that church exhausted, dejected and divided, and we walked out energized, inspired and together. And, to this day, the only explanation I can find for this sudden change in our hearts and minds was God’s mysterious and transcendent grace, as manifested in that light.
For all the high drama of that church and that service, for all of these things that we humans had created in order to inspire faith in God amongst ourselves (music and paintings and statues and such), it was in the simplicity of light beaming through a window that we managed to sense God’s presence there among us that day. This shouldn’t be all that surprising, though, because God’s been doing this sort of thing for a long, long time.
“Arise, shine; for your light has come, and the glory of the Lord has risen upon you. For darkness shall cover the earth, and thick darkness all the peoples; but the Lord will arise upon you, and his glory will appear over you,” is the message that God delivers to the Israelites through the prophet Isaiah in our first reading for today. And, make no mistake about it, they really needed to hear this. Then again, maybe we need to hear it right now too.
As Isaiah speaks to the people, they have just returned to the Promised Land after many years of exile in Babylon. They’d heard about this incredible place from their ancestors, and so they were understandably anxious to get back to it. But, when they finally arrive back home, they are sorely disappointed by what they find there.
You see, the Babylonian conquerers had sent Israel’s best and brightest packing, leaving things to a group of caretakers who proved themselves to be less than capable of tending to all that they’d been entrusted with. And so when the exiles return, they find Israel in ruins, it’s society filled with a toxic mixture of incompetence, corruption and faithlessness.
This must have been absolutely devastating for these newly-returned exiles. They’d looked forward to this for so long, only to have their hopes completely dashed;
they’d suffered so much, only to have the foundation upon which they’d built their dreams knocked out from under them;
they’ve endured all sorts of terrible things, only to discover that they’ll now have to endure some more;
they discovered that this place they called “home” wasn’t quite what they’d thought it was.
Given the situation in which we currently find ourselves, it’s not too tough to understand how these Israelites might have felt. And it is into all of this pain, fear and sadness that Isaiah steps forward to deliver God’s message of hope — a hope both arrived and deferred.
“Arise, shine; for your light has come, and the glory of the Lord has risen upon you,” is what the prophet tells the people, even though it probably didn’t feel like it at the time. What he’s saying is that God is already there with them.
“The Lord will arise upon you, and his glory will appear over you,” he continues, seeking to give the despondent Israelites something to look forward to and something to work for, even though the restoration of which Isaiah speaks likely seemed like the remotest of possibilities to his audience. What he’s saying is that God is also on the way.
You can’t really blame people for not understanding this, because the darkness of human experience can be pretty powerful sometimes, preventing us from seeing joy or possibility in anything. Isaiah, it’s worth noting, doesn’t pretend for a moment that this darkness isn’t real; indeed, he acknowledges that it shall cover the earth and the peoples, which we all know that it does from time to time.
But even on the most dismal gray days, the sun is still there, even though it’s difficult for us to see. The whole point here is that God’s light persists, it continues to shine, it continues to call out to us through — and in spite of — the darkness, because God’s light has always been and will always be there.
On these short, gray days during yet another winter of our discontent, when the world seems cold (in so many ways) and the sun rarely shines (at least it’s seemed like that for the past couple of weeks here in Utah, anyway), it can be challenging for us to sense the presence light that lies just beyond the clouds — a light that we know, in our heart of hearts, is always there even when it’s difficult for us to see.
But every once in a while, that light manages to break through all of the impediments of this world and remind us of its presence, in ways both small and large:
In the words of the prophet Isaiah bearing the light of hope and the promise of restoration to the forlorn Israelites;
in Jesus, who was the life that was the light of all people;
in light of the star that guided the Magi to pay homage to this unlikeliest of kings;
in the light of the afternoon sun shining through the window of a church in Rome;
in the light of God that continues to call us towards better versions of our world and ourselves.
The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness did not overcome it;
the darkness never has and never will overcome the light.
May we have eyes to see it, and the will to never stop looking for it.
Thanks be to God.