This Little Light
Isaiah 60:1-6
Epiphany Day
January 6, 2011
There are many little songs I can remember from VBS and Sunday School, but none was more fun than ‘This Little Light of Mine.’ We all loved to shout “NO!” when the song asked, “Hide it under a bushel?”
It’s a fine little song, but it is theologically a little on the weak side. After all, children don’t have a ‘little light’, just because they are ‘little’ themselves; children are not filled with Holy Spirit Jr.
More significantly, whether the child in question is 3, 30, or 60, a ‘little’ light is not our inheritance. A Great Light has brought us to Christ whose face shines more powerfully than the sun, Not only this, he has poured out on us the Holy Spirit, and the presence of the third person of the Trinity was manifested by flames of fire resting over the heads of 120 people gathered on the day of Pentecost. That’s enough to set off the smoke alarms!
We are people of the Day, sons of the Light, those who once sat in darkness, but who have now seen a great light.
That’s why Isaiah’s exhortation is so important for us tonight:
Arise, shine…
A Great Event has Occurred – Your Light has Come
Two Great Outcomes can be Anticipated -
1. The Conversion of the Gentile World: the Magi are the forerunners, drawn inexplicably by supernatural light.
• Missions is not an optional extra for the church but a mandate which must be embraced with joy and faith.
2. The Renewal of our Families: the Holy Family of Jesus, Mary, and Joseph reminds us of the calling each of our families have received to be households of faith and shine as lights in the world.
• Children being discarded as inconvenient, or neglected in the name of ambition; marriage being held in contempt not only by those who would seek to redefine it, but by those who already have done so, destroying the covenant foundation of marriage through so-called ‘no-fault divorce’, or pursing infidelity and all manner of license while masking that behavior with formal religion – all of this and more is the gross darkness of our own day.
• “But the glory…”
How can we be Epiphany People, People who Live the Light in the Darkness?
1. Love the King and His Kingdom Supremely: The ancient kings come to worship the One born King.
• Do not confuse nation and kingdom!
2. Go Public with Your Witness: Don’t curse the darkness, but rather patiently and quietly love and testify with your words and examples to the Light of Christ.
3. Engage with Missions and Missionaries. Pray for them , support them financially, write them. Go on a short-term mission trip.
• Offer your Treasures
• Travel the world on your knees
Has the light shone upon you and in your heart? Christ the Light of the world has broken into our darkness and brought his new day! Sins forgiven, we are a new creation, united to the One who is the Light and thus to Light we belong and so with Light we go to the world, and to Light we shall go in the end.
1 comment:
This poem brought to mind our Epiphany passage
(From Helen Waddell's study of late Latin poetry - 'The Wandering Scholars')
Not that they beggared be in mind, or brutes,
That they have chosen their dwelling place afar
In lonely places: but their eyes are turned
To the high stars, the very deep of truth.
Freedom they seek, an emptiness apart
From worthless things: din of the market-place,
And all the noisy crowding up of things,
And whatsoever wars on the divine,
At Christ's command, and for His love, they hate;
By faith and hope they follow after God,
And know their quest shall not be desperate,
If but the Present conquer not their souls
With hollow things: that which they see they spurn
That they may come at that they do not see,
Their senses kindled like a torch, that may
Blaze through the secrets of eternity.
The transient's open, everlastingness
Denied our sight; yet still by hope we follow
The vision that our minds have seen, despising
The shows and forms of things, the loveliness
Soliciting for ill our mortal eyes.
The present's nothing: but eternity
Abides for those on whom all truth, all good,
Hath shone, in one entire and perfect light.
Best, Brian
Post a Comment