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Sunday December 20, 2009 "Daylight Again" Isaiah 9:2-7 |
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Location: Blogs Brad's BlogBrad's Sermons |
 | | Posted by: Brad Miller | 12/23/2009 12:11 PM | The prophet Isaiah had seen darkness.
Isaiah, son of Amoz, prophesied in the latter half of the eighth century BC and witnessed the rise of the second Assyrian empire. Under the aggressive policies of it’s king Tiglath-pileser III, Assyria eventually conquered or annexed much of Syria and its neighbors, including the kingdom of Israel and it’s capital. In opposition to the growing Assyrian presence, Kings of the region formed a coalition to resist the encroaching empire and to fight together. King Ahaz of Jerusalem refused to join in the fight and was immediately overrun by this new coalition.
Rather than wait for God’s promised deliverance, Ahaz sided with the Assyrians and became a protectorate of Assyria. But this meant bowing to the dictates of Tilgath-pileser and led to the wholesale deportation of Israelites into forced exile.
This is what darkness meant to the people of Isaiah’s time: total domination by the Assyrians and strained relations with everyone else in the region. What hope could there be for the utterly alone, utterly friendless people of Israel?
Darkness makes every road harder to traverse, and Israel found itself in the darkest place imaginable.
Into this world of darkness, Isaiah inserted a measure of hope. Speaking to the future, he informed his fellow Israelites that those who walked in darkness, would indeed see a great light. This light would be cause for joy and it would restore freedom and automony and peace. The oppression of the people of Judea and Israel would be overcome; the harvest would be plentiful; the boots of the warriors and all their war-scarred garments would have no other use except as for fuel for the fires that would warm Isaiah’s people.
And what exactly was it that was going to happen to cause this reversal of fortune? What was it that would will lead to daylight again? What could possibly end the dark days in which they were mired?
Isaiah says it simply and candidly: a child will be born for us. To Isaiah and his compatriots, the message of hope is clear: the house of David would one day be restored; a Davidic king would rise up and end the darkness for his people. He will be the king of kings, wonderful counselor, mighty god, everlasting father, prince of peace. Justice and righteousness will be his calling card and the peace he brings will be without end.
That is what it’s going to take, isn’t it? If your problems are political, then a political leader is your hope. If your problems are rooted in military aggression, then a military leader is your hope. If your problem is spiritual, then a spiritual leader is your hope.
To live without hope is to live in darkness.
The prophet Isaiah knew darkness.
So do we.
While our darkness is not the same as the people in Isaiah’s time, it is nonetheless very real.
The darkness today is not based on military might. It is not based on angry armies against whom we cannot muster a defense. It is not being forced into physical exile. It is not about having to choose between a tyrant king or a coalition out for revenge. No, our darkness is much more basic than that. Yet, our darkness can impact us the same way that the Israelites darkness impacted them. It can leave us feeling utterly alone, utterly helpless and utterly without hope.
I think today’s darkness is rooted in something much more insidious and much more subtle than the brutal domination that the Israelites experienced. I believe that today’s darkness is rooted in our lack of control over things that at one time seemed so totally in our control. I believe today’s darkness is rooted in our feelings of powerlessness where we once felt powerful. I believe that we have come to rely on ourselves and our own abilities for so long, both as a society and as individuals, that we have lost some of our ability to rely on something bigger than ourselves. We have felt like we were in control, and now we are not. This is not a criticism or indictment, it’s just an observation.
The economy has affected us all. Jobs have been lost or scaled back. All of us know someone who is struggling with making ends meet, or the mortgage payment. All of us have made decisions to spend our money differently. All of us have had at least the passing thought that we have no power over our situation and so we feel hopeless.
But it is more than a terrible economy. Increasingly, I see a world where we have less and less connection to those around us. For whatever reason, neighborhoods don’t seem as cohesive and communal as they once were. For whatever reason, we seem to have taken on more activities, yet we seem to be less connected. For whatever reason, the depth of our relationships seem to have decreased, even as we interact with more and more people.
The result is that we feel more alone, more isolated than ever before. And that isolation can severely affect us when we find ourselves in a position where we feel our profound lack of control over our own destiny.
It always comes back to our ability to control our lives. Well, here’s the bad news, the news that Israelites confronted just like we must confront: we are not in control. But this is news that we must accept before we can move: we are not in control. We cannot do it all on our own, as much as would like to or we believe we can.
But here’s the good news: we are not alone. God is with us. And God gave us each other to help along this journey.
We know about darkness.
But we also know about the light that overcomes the darkness, the light of hope, the light that restores us, comforts us and emboldens us.
Because we know about the light that shone above a stable some 2000 years ago. We know about the light that surrounded the angels as they heralded the birth of the Christ child. We know about the light that comes from knowing that Emmanuel, God with us, is a very real and very present reality.
The people of Isaiah’s time heard the words of the prophet and willed themselves to stay strong in anticipation of the coming of the messiah. We know that the prophecy has been realized and that in the coming of the Christ, we know beyond a shadow of a doubt that we are loved. We know that when the darkness is at it’s zenith, that the dawn will come, and it will once again be daylight again.
Last week during the elders meeting, one of elders said, and I paraphrase only slightly: “We spend so much time with the business of the church, with the worries of finances and the future. We need to pay attention to all those things, but right now, it’s Christmas. We need to celebrate! We need to remember stories of Christmases past and play with the children and sing carols and tell the story of Jesus and just let the other things go. It’s Christmas!”
And he is absolutely right.
We know the story. We are not waiting to find out if we will be saved. We are waiting to celebrate the fact that we are already saved. It is time to put down the notion that we can do it all and realize that God came to earth in the form of a baby born in Bethlehem so that we would always know that we do not have to do it alone, that grace and love abound and we are the stronger for it. It is time celebrate that we have someone to lean on. It is time to celebrate Christmas.
For me, the celebration of Christmas revolves around the stories I heard growing up, and the Christmases I have experienced in my life. Stories that show me that through the darkest times, the promise of Christmas is that soon it will be daylight again.
A story my father once told me illuminates this very well. My father grew up on a farm in Sandusky, Michigan. For a kid like me that grew up in the city, Sandusky was not the end of the earth, but I’m pretty sure you could see it from there. He was the oldest son in a family of 8 children. During the depression, his father was fortunate enough to get work at the Chevrolet assembly plant in Detroit, so Monday through Friday, my granddad lived with his brother and worked on the assembly line, leaving my father to take charge of a large part of running the farm in his absence.
One Christmas, when my father was a teenager, his father pulled him aside and told him that Christmas was going to be especially lean that year, and to make it even harder, the small presents that they had ordered through the Sears and Roebuck catalog had not arrived, and there was nothing much to give the little kids. My father told me that this distressed my granddad greatly, but he enlisted my father’s help to try and do something. Together they checked around and found some small tokens that they could put in a stocking, and then they found out that the local grocer had oranges in stock! And come Christmas morning, the young kids eagerly opened up their stockings to find a few pencils, some jacks and each of them had a fresh juicy orange – which some of the younger ones had probably never seen before. My father told me years later that he felt so bad for his parents and he knew that they felt like they had let the family down, but he remembers the joy on his little brothers and sisters faces and the wonderful meal they had that day and his grandparents coming over and his cousins stopping by and realizing that the presents were the least of Christmas. Being together, relying on each other, was the best of Christmas.
I asked him if the presents ever came. He said, “I don’t remember when they came, but I do remember my parents giving me mine a few days later. It was a really nice pen and pencil set. But it didn’t really matter at that point. Christmas would have been just as good without it."
I remember Christmases in the past, probably much like you, that came in the midst of hard times. Maybe you are experiencing that type of Christmas now. Christmases that seemed threatened by the recent loss of a loved one, or by the serious illness of someone close, or by economic hard times. I have had Christmases where all things fell heavy on my heart. But in every case, when Christmas came, when I let myself truly celebrate the miracle and wonder that is Christmas, the darkness began to lift. In each instance, it became clear that in the midst of the darkness, in the midst of the time that I felt so alone, the light broke through to reveal that I was in fact, not alone.
The lesson I take from those Christmases is that the light is always there, if only we will pick our gaze up off the ground and see it. The light will not solve our immediate problems: it will not put money in our bank account or make all our maladies go away. But when the light shines, we can see clearly that we have companions on the journey. When the light shines we can see that God has come to be our comforter and guide. When we can see the light, we can see more clearly where the proper path is. When we can see the light, we are reminded that a child has been born for us, a son given to us. We are reminded that we do not have to shoulder our burdens alone, for authority rests on his shoulder, and he is named Wonderful counselor, might God, everlasting father, Prince of Peace.
We have seen the darkness. But as we prepare to celebrate the birth of the messiah, we see clearly that once again, it will soon be daylight again.
Merry Christmas. May the light of this season shine brightly for me and for you, today, tomorrow and all our days.
Let us pray: Lord, help us to open our eyes, and our hearts, so that we might see in every important way that you are with us, and that your light is a reminder that you are our God and we are your children, now and always. Amen. | | | Permalink | Trackback |
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