Year C, Christmas Isaiah 9:2-7
“The people who have walked in darkness have seen a great
light; those who lived in a land of deep darkness—on them light has shined.” We hear a lot of Isaiah during Advent and
Christmas. We hear it in the music,
especially in Handel’s Messiah. If that
is your only exposure to Isaiah, it would be natural to assume it’s meant to be
a bit of a preview for the dramatic unveiling of the Christ Child. But that
would be a disservice to the Book of Isaiah, and the Jewish faith. The Book of Isaiah is one of the longest and
most significant books in the Hebrew scriptures.
Because it’s so long and covers such a long time frame, it
is usually divided into three parts. The
first part was the prophet trying to convince people to change their ways, or
they would be conquered by a foreign power. In the second third, the
Babylonians invaded and the people were driven from their land. Their city, the city of God was in
ruins. Some were left homeless and
friendless, but most were taken away to Babylon to live as slaves. In that section of the book, Isaiah provided
a message of consolation. He assured
them that God would save them. The final
third of Isaiah describes life after the Hebrew people have returned to their
home. But it didn’t look like the way
they remembered it. They had to rebuild
and start over. There were no easy
beginnings or endings in Isaiah.
Our reading for today comes in the first section of
Isaiah. There is a warning, but there is
also hope. One of the challenges of the people of Israel was their tendency to
put their hope in human kings. They
believed that their kings were divinely ordained and if only they could find
the right king, then they would be safe and secure. In many ways the US was started with a rejection
of this concept, the idea that one person or a line of people could be our
salvation. Yet we still fall into that
trap, don’t we----thinking that one person can save us or worse yet, one person
can destroy us.
Biblical scholars and historians believe this text from
Isaiah wasn’t necessarily talking about a messiah who would be born hundreds of
years later, but the reign of King Hezekiah.
King Hezekiah was a good and righteous king. Despite that, during his reign, the Assyrians
invaded and Israel was conquered. This
was not what Isaiah predicted in our reading for today. Our reading for today
predicted a great light and the end to war.
It says, “For all the boots of the tramping warriors and all the
garments rolled in blood shall be burned as fuel for the fire.” That was an
allusion not just to the end of war, but the end of being the conquered. That is not what happened. Not only were they
conquered, King Hezekiah was followed by a corrupt king.
One might wonder how prophetic Isaiah really was. He promised a period of endless peace. When we look at the Middle East, one would
hardly describe it as endless peace.
Does that mean that Isaiah was wrong…or was he just wrong about that
king---perhaps they just had to wait 500-700 years for the birth of Jesus. Even the most passionate believers of Jesus
Christ and his role as a savior and messiah would never try to argue that he
brought a period of peace. Look at any
news outlet at any period in the history of our world---war has been a
constant. It is as reliable as death and
taxes.
And yet…I think Isaiah was on to something. “The people who walked in darkness have seen
a great light; those lived in a land of deep darkness---on them light has
shined.” We can never know the beauty of
light until we have stood in darkness.
We can never know what it is to yearn for light until we have survived
the night that seems interminable. We
can never truly fathom joy until we have experienced grief.
Jesus, the person who we celebrate tonight and every night,
was not born in a palace—in a place of light and glory. He was born in a barn, more likely a cave as
that is where people kept their animals at the time. You know what caves
are—they are dark. He was born in a war torn country to people who have been
conquered over and over again. He was
born as an infant, as we all are, the most vulnerable of all creatures. The
movies always show this big light shining down on this scene, but in the Gospel
of Luke, there is no star, there is only darkness and a few people who found
their way through the darkness.
I think sometimes we come to Christmas service to hear this
heartwarming story that kind of ties our faith up in a neat and clean bow. But the beauty of this story is that it’s not
clean and it’s not neat. It’s not even magical. It’s real and it’s only the beginning. It is meant to show us that even in the deep
darkness of our lives, a light shines—not in spite of the darkness but because
of the darkness.
It’s not just a
light---it’s a fire, a fire that fought hard to exist—a fire that refuses to be
covered. But like all fires, it needs
oxygen to keep going. It requires that
all of us fight to protect it and refuse to ignore it. In a few minutes, we will walk out of this
(slightly) warm church---leaving the soft glow of candles. We will all have to
go back into the dark. I want you to
hold on to that fire, stoke that fire so that it burns bright enough, not to defeat
the darkness, but to bring more life into places where most only see death. That’s our calling as Christians, to be bearers
of light and fire, because we worship a God who has not defeated darkness, but
who enters the darkness with us and then lights it on fire.
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