There is a thread through most of our lessons. Not in the Epistle, where there is a little insider stuff. The Epistle is rarely selected to match the other lessons, except on special days. Generally, we read through one of Paul’s Epistles, as we are working our way through 1st Corinthians now. The Epistle does not match the other lessons today, but the first reading, the Psalm, and the Gospel are selected to have at least one thread that connects them. There is a thread that is pretty clear in these readings today, and it is light.
As we heard in Isaiah, “the people who walked in deep darkness have seen a great light. Those who lived in a land of deep darkness, on them light has shined.” And in the Psalm we hear “The Lord is my light and my salvation. Whom then shall I fear?” And in the Gospel we heard Matthew quote Isaiah in a slightly different translation, “the people who sat in darkness have seen a great light. And for those who sat in the region and shadow of death, light has dawned.” We see this thread of light.
This is the same thread of light that we have been seeing for the last couple of months. During Advent and Christmas and Epiphany, this thread of light is there through these seasons. I like to call these three seasons “The Trinity of seasons of light” because there is this thread through all of them. In Advent we heard about the coming of the light, and we lit another candle on our Advent wreaths each week as we anticipated the coming of the Light. Then at Christmas we have the birth of the Light into this world. As we heard in the Christmas season from the prologue to John’s Gospel, “The beginning was the Word and the Word was with God and the Word was God. And all things came into being through Him. What came into being through Him was life, and the life was the Light of the world.” Jesus is the Incarnation of God’s light into this world.
And now in Epiphany, the light is going out into the world as various people in their epiphanies have the experience of seeing the Light. The Magi, people at Jesus’s baptism, the people at the wedding in Cana of Galilee, the Disciples and their calls, the healings and teachings of Jesus, are all moments in which people see this Light in their midst.
This thread of light isn’t just through these readings or just through these seasons. We see this thread of light through all of Scripture, from the beginning to the end. It is there in the very first chapter in the very first book in Genesis in the creation story. In the beginning when God created the heavens and the earth, the first thing that God said is, “Let there be light, and there was light, and it was good.”
That light continues on until the end of Scripture, the very last book. In the Book of Revelation we see the light again when God creates the New Heaven and the New Earth. There is no longer the greater and lesser lights, the sun and the moon. It is now the Lamb of God as the Light in the midst of the New Creation.
This thread of light keeps showing up all through Scripture. It is in the story of Moses’s call: he gets called from the light of a burning bush. As Moses is freeing the people from their enslavement in Egypt, they are led at night by a light, a pillar of fire. We this light in many of the Prophets, and we see it in Jesus: the prologue of John, and in today’s Gospel when Matthew frames Jesus’s ministry by saying he is the coming of the Light. And, of course, Jesus himself taking it to the next step: I have light, but you also have light, and let your light shine. This thread of light that we see through Scripture is from the beginning to the end, and all in between.
Why? Why is there this strong thread of light through all of Scripture? It is because the darkness has always been here. There has always been darkness in this world. Jesus himself was born into darkness, the darkness of empire that uprooted his family and made them, when Mary was nine months pregnant, go to another city. The darkness of them having to flee to Egypt as refugees because the thin-skinned King Herod tried to kill Jesus, and killed every little Hebrew boy in the effort to get Jesus.
We see the darkness in Jesus’s ministry. As Matthew said, he is coming into this darkness. What is that darkness? The darkness of people in Galilee being crushed under the oppression of an empire that is trying to extract all the wealth. Galilee is the breadbasket of the region. A lot of us have the image of the Holy Land as all desert, but that is not at all how it is. It is a varied geography, and Galilee is a gorgeous place with grass and plant and animal life. Orange trees are everywhere. It is an amazing region, and the empire was trying to extract all of the resources, and it was crushing the people. There is a great darkness that Jesus had come into.
The darkness is sill here today. It has been here through all of history. The darkness of grief at the death of a loved one, the death of a relationship, the death of a dream. All of us know the darkness of grief. The few people who don’t know about the darkness of grief have another darkness, which is a life tragically cut short. If you live you love, if you love you lose, if you lose you grieve, if you grieve you know about the shadow of death. There is a darkness always around us.
There is the darkness of injustice in the world, like the state execution of an innocent man. That was the story yesterday, and that was the story two thousand years ago when Jesus went to the cross. But what does the cross show us? The cross shows us that the darkness does not get the final word. The prologue to John that I quoted earlier, “The beginning was the Word and the Word was with God and the Word was God. And all things came into being through Him. What came into being through Him was life, and the life was the Light of the world.” The next sentence is, “And the darkness did not overcome it.” Because the light of Christ, the light that God is shining in this world is more powerful than the darkness of death and despair. The darkness of grief and injustice do not have any thing on this light. It cannot put it out. The cross and the crucifixion are not the end of the story. The Resurrection is, and the light of Resurrection always gets the final word. In the midst of the darkness that we find in this life, God is trying to show us that there is a light, light to give us hope, light to shine a path on the way forward, a light so that we do not trip, a light so that we do not despair. Do not despair, my friends, of the darkness you see in this world. It has happened before, it will happen again, and in the midst of it is the Light.
Keep focused on the Light. Grieve, of course, we have to grieve. But do not let that grief overcome you. Do not fall into despair, but keep an eye on the Light and it will shine on the path out of it.
Look for that Light, and don’t forget the words of Jesus to shine the light yourself. You who have been baptized into the death and resurrection of the Incarnation of Light are meant to shine that light out into the world. As Dr. King said, “Darkness dues not drive out darkness, only light can do that.” In another point in that sermon when he talks about responding to hate with hate, he says that doing that is like adding deeper darkness to a night already devoid of stars.
In the darkness, my friends, be the star. Be the light for somebody. Shine out the Light of Christ that is within you. Shine out the Light into this world so that people have hope, so people can see a path forward, and people can know that Light. Shine the Light, for the darkness does not get the final word. Only the Light of Resurrection does.
AMEN.
