Sermon 1/2/05
The Year in Review - Isaiah 60:1-6, Matthew 2:1-12
(view lectionary notes for this text)
Two-thousand five. It’s hard to believe, isn’t it? I’m sure we say every year how fast things have gone by – but I must say it – I can’t believe another year has gone by already. Two-thousand four was a hard year. We’ve been through a lot – a tough year with elections and the political climate that has polarized the country. A war that has resulted in more loss of life than anyone could have hoped. Recently, the earth was hit by one of the largest natural disasters we’ve every seen. And already, people are questioning, wondering, why did this happen? Did God cause this? Was this a sign for us? In our community, we’ve struggled as we’ve watched Oneida Limited suffer greater losses that affect the whole region. And in our own congregation, we’ve had a lot to deal with too. We’ve had too many of our loved ones batting diseases like cancer, too many who have been hospitalized with unexpected illnesses. And we’ve had too many of our friends and family members die this year. Who can take one more funeral? Enough is enough – two-thousand four was a hard year, and perhaps we’ve come into this new year hoping for a fresh start, for ourselves, for our community, for our world.
Our church calendar, though, doesn’t exactly correspond with our secular calendar. We already celebrated our new church year when we began the season of Advent. Now we find ourselves well into the church year already, in the midst of the Christmas Celebration, Epiphany Sunday. The day of Epiphany, the twelfth day of Christmas, is celebrated on January 6th, and we celebrate a bit early today in our worship. On Epiphany we read the story of the Magi. Today we back track in our text – last week we read about what happened to the holy family after the Magi left from their visit to the Christ Child. Today we read about how they got there – why they were coming to see the Christ Child. We celebrate Epiphany – the realization of who the baby Jesus was by the Magi was their Epiphany. And we try to celebrate our own Epiphanies – the moment or moments in our lives when we finally realize who Jesus is to us, what he means to our lives.
Perhaps Epiphany is not such a bad way to start our new year after all. Epiphany is from a Greek word, epiphano^s, which means “coming to light” or “in full view.” Epiphany is a celebration of light. For Christians, we understand the light of our lives to be Jesus Christ. Today we read of the Magi seeing the light of the star of Bethlehem and using that to discover the baby Jesus. We read on Christmas Eve in the gospel of John, “what has come into being through him was life, and the life was the light of all people. The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness did not overcome it.” But even as we understand that Jesus is the light we also hear in scriptures that we are the light. In Matthew, in his account of Jesus preaching the Sermon on the Mount, we read of Jesus saying, “You are the light of the world . . . Let your light shine before others.” Epiphany is about light – the light of Christ that has come to the world to dwell with us, and the light of Christ that dwells within us for which we are responsible.
Epiphany – coming to light. Our scripture lesson from Isaiah gives us even more insight into this Epiphany celebration. It is an inspirational passage – Isaiah is writing in a state of joy because the King has finally allowed the people to return to Israel after their years in Babylonian exile. They are going home, at last. “Arise, shine,” writes Isaiah, “for your light has come. For darkness shall cover the earth, and thick darkness the peoples, but the Lord will arise upon you – God’s glory will appear over you . . . Lift up your eyes and look around . . . you shall see and be radiant, your heart shall thrill and rejoice.” Isaiah speaks of the whole people here, of the city Jerusalem itself. But I think the verses still speak to us, too. “Arise, shine, for your light has come. Lift up your eyes and look around.”
We make an awful lot of resolutions every year, don’t we? And if we don’t, it’s probably only because we’ve become so skeptical at our past record of keeping those resolutions that we don’t even think it is worth the bother. But if I look over the list of things I usually resolve to do, very few have been kept, and very few do more than skim the surface of who I am. You know what I mean – we resolve to lose weight, to quit some bad habit like smoking that endangers our health. Or we resolve to finally take that time off that we’ve been neglecting. These things might be important to us, but they’re not resolutions that are really about who we are. But Epiphany – it means “coming to light” or “in full view.” If we take those meanings and apply them to our own lives, perhaps we’d get a different sense of who we are and what we need to resolve to do this year, differently than we’ve done before. Put yourself under this light of Epiphany. Examine who you are and who you want to be. Make yourself visible in full view. Imagine, if you resolved this year, not simply to read your Bible more often, but to live more fully according to God’s word. Imagine if you resolved not to pray each day, but to have a conversation with God, to build a real relationship with God. Imagine if we resolved not to do some good deeds, perhaps give more money to a certain charity or volunteer for an extra hour at the Karing Kitchen, but if we went a step further, deeper, and said, “I resolve this year to LOVE MY NEIGHBOR. Really. Love. My. Neighbor.” Those aren’t the kind of resolutions that can simply be broken – first, because they require of us a greater commitment than just a pledge to “try hard” and second, because they aren’t as easy to measure and track as the scale registering 5 lbs. lower. These kind of resolutions are processes, and it is the process that is as important as the product. Yourself, in full view, coming to light. An epiphany. “Arise, shine,” says Isaiah. The time is now – don’t think of more reasons to delay and put off living the life you know you’re supposed to be living. There is no better time than now. After all, the Christ has already come – the light is already here. We no longer must live in darkness. And we are commanded to be the light of the world to others.
Today, immediately following the worship service, you will have a chance to take part in another way to recognize the New Year that has arrived. It is called the Wesleyan Covenant Renewal Service. The service is one that John Wesley, the founder of Methodism, celebrated with his followers regularly, and particularly made part of the Watch Night Service, a three hour service held on New Year’s Eve. The Covenant service is an opportunity to renew your commitment to God, to begin again with a renewed sense of purpose and dedication to living your life according to God’s will. It is not a commitment that I ask you to consider, as it were, lightly. We are all at different points in our spiritual journeys. But I do ask you to consider it seriously. Could this be the time for you to renew your faith? To really start living as the light of the world Jesus told us we were? If so, I invite you to stay and celebrate this short service of renewal. If you’re not ready to make this commitment now, or you want to make a commitment in a different way to renew your relationship with God, I urge you to do so, and would be glad to help you in your own journey. But don’t fail to act, in some way. This New Year is upon us. Our light has come. Seize the opportunity that God has laid before you. Two-thousand five. Happy New Year! Amen.