Room at the Inn

A Reflection for Christmas Day 2022

Bloomsbury Central Baptist Church

 

The Birthplace of Jesus, Church of the Nativity, Bethlehem

Luke 2.1-20
 
Have you seen the wonderful musical Come from Away,
            which has been playing at the Phoenix Theatre near Bloomsbury
            for the last few years?
 
If not, then it’s about to close on 7^th January,
            so you don’t have long left to catch it!
 
It’s a Canadian musical, and is based on the events
            in the small Newfoundland town of Gander
            during the week following the September 11 2001 terror attacks.
 
In the aftermath of the aeroplanes hitting the Twin Towers in New York,
            all airspace over the United States was immediately closed,
but the problem as there were already planes mid-flight across the Atlantic,
            without enough fuel to return.
 
So these planes, 38 of them, carrying approximately 7,000 passengers,
            were ordered to land unexpectedly
            at Gander International Airport.
 
There is a large runway used for refuelling stops,
            but in absolutely no way at all was the town geared up
            for all those who suddenly needed housing and help.
 
The characters in the musical are based on
            actual Gander residents
            and the stranded travellers they hosted and fed.
 
The show has been described as
            ‘the most heart-warming musical ever written about logistics’,
and it’s genuinely a show that makes you laugh and cry at the same time
            as it depicts the astonishing welcome given by the small local community
                        to people stranded far from home,
            set against the backdrop of an international terrorist incident.
 
In a moment I’m going to play us one of the songs from the show,
            but first I probably ought to explain
            why I’m showing this on Christmas day.
 
The thing is, I think something similar to this,
            albeit on a slightly less international scale,
was what was happening in Bethlehem,
            at the time of the birth of Jesus.
 
Let me explain…
 
We sometimes get the idea that the ‘inn’ in Bethlehem,
            at which there was famously ‘no room’ (2.7)
was a sort of ancient equivalent to a modern hotel:
            the kind of place where, once all the rooms are taken,
            a ‘no vacancies’ sign gets put in the front window.
 
But actually, the Greek word here means ‘guest-chamber’,
            and what we’re actually talking about is a place in the house,
                        maybe a bedroom,
                        or possibly just a corner of a communal sleeping room,
            where visitors from the extended family could stay when in town.
 
You see, the ancient world was a place which ran on hospitality,
            it was culturally essential for people to offer hospitality,
            particularly to those from their wider family networks.
 
And Joseph’s family were from Bethlehem,
            so under normal circumstances it would have been simple
            for him and Mary to find a place to sleep there;
and the idea of refusing a room to a pregnant woman
            would have been an unthinkable breach of hospitality.
 
But these were not normal circumstances,
            they were anything but normal,
because the Roman Empire had altered the circumstances entirely.
 
We know that this story is set against the backdrop of the Empire,
            because Luke makes it clear for us.
 
He does so in 2.1 by telling us that these events happened at the time
            when the Emperor Augustus issued a decree
            that all the world should be registered.
 
This is the Roman Empire at its most intrusive:
            I mean, we worry today about data-gathering,
but Caesar Augustus knew a thing or two about this mechanism of control:
            and he wanted every person to be registered,
            primarily so that every person could be taxed.
 
And for this to achieved,
            all people were required to register in their ancestral town,
            regardless of where they actually lived.
 
This outlandish demand of the Empire
            placed an unreasonable burden on every person in the land:
people had to travel who should have remained at home,
            and some towns suddenly had such an influx of visitors
            that the normal rules and expectations of hospitality
                        were stretched beyond breaking point.
 
So let’s now hear the song ‘Blankets and Bedding’ from Come From Away,
            as the locals of Gander frantically scramble to offer hospitality.
 
https://youtu.be/IWpqrhh-rKg
 
If a stranger ends up sent by fate…
Are we gonna be ready?
Well, we have to be, don’t we!
 
Sometimes the world makes impossible demands of us:
 
Maybe 38 aeroplanes land in a small town in Canada.
 
            Maybe the Empire orders everyone to their home town for a census.
 
Maybe there’s a war in Ukraine and people need urgent hospitality.
 
            Maybe there’s an evacuation from Afghanistan and people need rehousing.
 
I think that the story of Mary and Joseph in Bethlehem,
            being given somewhere to sleep with the animals
            because there was literally no room in house,
is the story of a community making do in extremis,
            of people refusing to turn away the pregnant young woman,
            refusing to give up on their values of hospitality
                        despite all the pressure to do so.
 
Like Gander in Newfoundland in 2001,
            the people of Bethlehem 2,000 years earlier
            found somewhere for Jesus to be born.
 
It wasn’t ideal, but it was enough.
 
And I wonder what this ancient story says to us,
            as we contemplate our place
in a world where people continue to find themselves in extreme situations?
 
Will we capitulate with the cultural pressure to  ‘batten down the hatches’,
            looking after our own, and leaving others to do the same?
 
Or will be rediscover the values of hospitality, in our own lives,
            but also in our communal life together as a church community,
                        and as a nation more widely?
 
I think the way people rallied round to care for the poor and vulnerable
            during the years of the pandemic,
tells me that these values of hospitality,
            of making things work in a time of need and crisis,
are still very much part of who we have the capacity to be,
            because they are, fundamentally, part of what it means to be human.
 
Jesus was born into a town in crisis,
            and yet the angels sang of his coming
            as news of great joy for all people.
 
Sometimes, out of crisis comes the blessing of God.
 
So this Christmas, as we contemplate the Christ-child in the manger,
            I wonder if we can hear a challenge to us:
asking us how we will welcome the Holy Family into our lives?

Joseph’s Dream

A sermon for Bloomsbury Central Baptist Church

18 December 2022

 

Dream of St Joseph, c. 1625–1630, by Gerard Seghers

Matthew 1.18-25; 2.13-23

I’ve heard it said
            that you should never trust what you remember from a dream,
because the boundary between reality and fantasy
            stretches thin in the hours of darkness.
 
But for me, dreams have always seemed somehow more real
            than the events of the daytime.
 
Maybe it’s because my name is Joseph?
            My parents called me after the great dreamer of old,
                        whose teenage dreams of sheaves in a field,
                        and of the sun, moon, and stars bowing down before him,
            created in him some capacity to see beyond the now,
                        to futures yet to be,
            and which led to him interpreting the dreamings
                        of none other than the Pharaoh of Egypt himself.
 
So yes, if you want to call me ‘Joseph the dreamer’,
            that’s fine by me, they’ve called me that all my life.
 
I have had many dreams,
            but chief among them was my dream for a family;
            of a wife, children, a home of happiness and contentment.
 
And it seemed as if that dream was coming true
            when I became engaged to Mary:
            a young woman from a respectable family.
 
I paid her father the required betrothal payment,
            and then began the period of waiting
            for the appointed time of the marriage to arrive.
 
Poor Jacob had to wait fourteen years before he could marry his Rachel,
            but unlike Laban of old (Gen. 29),
                        Mary’s father was an honourable man:
            so there were to be no surprise substitutions or unexpected delays
                        - we agreed the standard one year betrothal.
 
But the dream didn’t last long:
            my Mary was found to be with child,
            and thing is, I’m pretty sure it wasn’t mine.
 
And then, to make it worse,
            the law is very clear on what should happen next.
I even went to the synagogue
            and asked the Rabbi to check the scroll of the law for me:
He read to me:
            ‘If evidence of a young woman’s virginity is not found,
            then they shall bring her to the entrance of her father’s house
            and the men of the town shall stone her to death.’ (Deut. 22.20-21).
 
Whoever heard of such a thing?
            Surely no-one would do this these days!
I mean, the Romans would never allow it, would they?
 
But I could still imagine the scandal
            that would engulf Mary and her family if news of this got out,
            and none of that was part of my dream.
 
So I found another way:
            I would relinquish my claim on Mary,
                        leave her father with the betrothal payment,
            and have a private bill of divorce drawn up and signed by two witnesses,
                        leaving Mary free to marry another,
                        maybe even the father of her child?
 
Such things matter to people,
            and they mattered to me.
 
Children should surely be with their parents, everyone knows this;
            society relies on fathers taking responsibility for their own children,
            it’s always been this way.
 
And then I had one of my dreams,
            and this one was more real, more vivid, than any I’d had before;
and it seems I’m to be a father after all,
            and with Mary too.
 
This child of hers would become mine,
            and through me he too would become a son of David and an heir of Abraham.
 
Well, I’ve had worse dreams.
 
Despite it all, I still wanted Mary,
            and an early child in a marriage is no bad sign of blessings to come.
 
Not all families have straightforward stories,
            and many great men have had complicated origins.
 
After all, Plato, Alexander the Great,
            Romulus, and even Caesar Augustus
            were all said to have been conceived from the gods;
and within our own Hebrew Bible
            we have the stories of Sarah, Leah, Rebecca and Zipporah
each being visited by the Lord
            before conceiving their sons
            Isaac, Reuben, Jacob, Esau and Gershon.
 
Did I really believe the angel’s claim
            that Mary’s child was conceived of God?
 
Does it matter?
 
I just know that I heard the call of God
            to be a husband and a father,
            and my dream began to merge once again with my life.
 
A family, it occurred to me as I lay in my bed that night,
            is something called into existence by God,
            not willed into being by a man.
 
And I resolved that this son of mine,
            for such the angel had said he would be,
would be mine more truly
            than if I had made him myself.
 
I’m told that parents who adopt a child often feel this way,
            as if the act of choosing somehow matches
            or even exceeds the act of creating.
 
After all, are we not all God’s children,
            chosen in grace and adopted into love?
 
Is this not what it means to be part of God’s family,
            God’s chosen people?
 
One of the privileges of fatherhood is that of naming the child,
            and my angel helped me here too,
            echoing to me words spoken in dreams to others.
 
You understand, I have made something of a study of these things,
            and according to our traditions,
            the Lord came to Moses’ father in a dream, telling him that
                        ‘this child… shall deliver the Hebrew race
                        from their bondage in Egypt’ (Josephus, Ant, 2.215-16);
and similarly the great hero Samson’s birth
            was revealed by an angel in a dream,
            telling his mother that she would ‘conceive and bear a son…
                        [and that] it is he who shall deliver Israel
                        from the hand of the Philistines’ (Judges 13.5).
 
So the angel in my dream told me
            that my betrothed would bear a son
            who will save his people from their sins (1.21),
and that I should call him Jesus,
            after Joshua of old who led the people of God after Moses,
            into the safety of the promised land.
 
I have to admit, at this point in the dream
            I nearly woke myself up.
 
I mean, taking on a child and a woman I love is one thing,
            but comparisons with Moses, Samson, and Joshua
            are something else altogether.
 
But the angel hadn’t finished with me yet.
 
This talk of salvation needed some explaining,
            because the Romans and the Greeks
                        had already declared their gods of Asclepius and Zeus
                        to be the saviours of the people,
            and the emperors of Rome
                        exercised this salvation on their behalf.
 
Any suggestion of an alternative saviour
            born from among the Hebrew people
            could quickly become treasonous,
and no son of mine was going to face that fate
            if I could help it.
 
Enough with this angel and this dream,
            it’s time for some sober reality now in Joseph’s family.
 
Except the angel wouldn’t let me go,
            and for a time our spirits wrestled
as the angel sought to keep my dream alive
            and I tried to break free.
 
But then the angel spoke again,
            this time quoting from the book of the prophet Isaiah,
speaking words originally shaped for the evil King Ahaz of Judah,
            way back before the Babylonians
            laid waste to Solomon’s temple (2 Kings 16.1-20),
at the time when the Assyrians
            were besieging the northern kingdoms of Israel.
 
Isaiah prophesied to Ahaz
            that a young woman was with child and would bear a son,
            whose name would be Immanuel,
and that this child would be a sign of either deliverance or destruction,
            before the child reached maturity (Isa. 7.14-16).
 
God had offered Ahaz a possibility of deliverance,
            and whilst the child of promise had indeed been born to his wife,
            his faith had faltered and Judah and Jerusalem too had fallen.
 
The message to me was clear:
            my child of promise would succeed where Ahaz’s had failed,
and my task was to keep the faith,
            to hold onto the dream of a better future for God’s people.
 
What such a future might look like
            not even I can begin to imagine,
            but I have some convictions about what it won’t be.
 
It seems to me that for too long
            those called and chosen by God to be part of God’s family
            have lived under a system of domination.
 
From Egypt to Assyria,
            from Babylon to Greece to Rome,
the world’s kingdoms have existed in opposition
            to God’s dream of people living in peace
                        and justice and righteousness.
 
And for too long,
            God’s people have resisted God’s dream of a better future,
being led astray by the competing dreams of power and privilege,
            that have their origins in the nightmares of imperial aspiration.
 
So what did the angel mean
            when they said that my child would save God’s people from their sins?
 
This may be one of those things that, as Mary sometimes puts it,
            we just need to treasure in our hearts.
 
But it seems to me that God’s salvation
            must surely look like an alternative empire,
a way of existing in the world
            where the dominating powers of Rome, Babylon, and Egypt
                        give up their claims on human lives,
            and people are freed to experience life in all its fullness.
 
But here, I’m dreaming again,
            and how this is related to my child, only time will tell.
 
But I can tell you, however,
            that the angel hadn’t finished with me yet.
 
I did as I had been asked,
            and took Mary as my wife, and Jesus as my child,
and we stayed in Bethlehem,
            intending to return to Nazareth in due course.
 
But then the system of domination flexed its muscles against us,
            as our own king, the great Herod,
                        heard from travellers form the East
            that a child had been born
                        who embodied a new vision for what God’s people could be,
                        a vision that threatened his carefully negotiated power
                                    as a puppet king of Rome.
 
And so at the angel’s command,
            and like my namesake Joseph of old,
we set off for Egypt - of all places -
            to escape Herod’s murderous intent (2.13).
 
I heard later what Herod did to the babies of Bethlehem,
            as he channelled Pharaoh in destroying the children of the Israelites,
            and my heart breaks for those children and their parents (2.16).
 
Why did my angel not warn them too?
 
I have no answer,
            just a hope that in the salvation of our child
                        will come, as with Moses of old,
            some consolation for all those who mourn in Israel,
                        for Rachel who weeps for her children (2.18).
 
Moses led the people out of slavery in Egypt,
            can our son in some way also lead people
            out from their own imprisonment to forces of evil?
 
Is this what the angel meant
            by saying our child would save God’s people from their sins (1.21)?
 
I thought then that I had heard the last of my angel,
            but to my surprise one night I he came back to me in another dream,
            telling me that it was time to return to our homeland (2.19-20).
 
We set off, and trust me, it’s a long journey.
            It didn’t take us forty years like it did Moses
                        and the people of Israel after the Exodus,
            but it was no easy thing to do.
 
As we neared Judah,
            we heard that Herod’s cruel son Archelaus had replaced his father,
            having gone to Rome to be confirmed as king in his place.
 
Did you know that a delegation of Jews went after Archelaus
            to appeal to the Emperor,
            saying that they did not want him as their ruler?
 
The angel came to me one final time, in another dream,
            as we journeyed up from Egypt.
 
The angel told me that we should avoid Judea and Jerusalem,
            and so we made our way north, to Nazareth in Galilee (2.22),
where we now live in peace with our wonderful child of promise,
            and our other children too.
 
I haven’t had any more dreams with angels since those days:
            maybe four angelic visitations is enough for anyone,
            even a dreamer like me.
 
But I do still dream,
            and I try to encourage my child to dream too ,
to dream of a world where men like Pharaoh and Herod
            no longer control the lives of people,
where God’s family is a people where all are welcomed
            and even those born in disgrace are adopted in.
 
Together we dream of a future
            where the power of evil over people’s lives is broken,
            and where God’s purposes of liberation are accomplished.
 
This is my dream, of God with us,
            and I invite you to join us in dreaming it into existence.

The light of the world

 A sermon for Bloomsbury Central Baptist Church

11 December 2022

Isaiah 42.1-9

 
Our reading this morning is one of the four so-called “Servant Songs”
            that we find in the book of Isaiah. [1]
 
The Christian church has traditionally seen these texts as pointers to Jesus,
            which is not a bad move in itself,
            unless it becomes a way of distancing ourselves from this scripture.
 
What I mean by this, is that just because Christians
            have read these passages as pointing to Jesus,
this doesn’t mean that they were originally intended to be read in that way.
 
The book of Isaiah has had a long life outside of its Christian usage,
            and we must do justice to that context
            if we are to truly get to grips with its message.
 
And we need to remember that Jesus took part of today’s reading
            as his text in the Luke 4 sermon
and even angered some of his congregation
            by telling them they were witnessing its coming to pass.
 
I don’t know if you’ve ever read it through,
            but he book of Isaiah is quite a long book, and it contains a series of prophecies.
It has some predictions about the future in it,
            some which were fulfilled long before Jesus was born
            and some which have been taken to refer to Jesus himself
 
But prophecy in the Bible is a whole load more than just making predictions,
            it is more often the speaking of The Lord’s words into a particular situation.
 
And this is what most of Isaiah is about:
            It gives The Lord’s perspective on what is happening
            to the nation of Israel – to the people of God.
 
What we tend to think of as one book – the ‘Book of Isaiah’
            is in actual fact three books,
            between them covering a period of about 200 years.
 
The first book is what we call chapters 1-39
            and it was probably written by the real man called Isaiah,
he was a prophet who lived in Jerusalem,
            about 750 years before Jesus.
 
By his time, the nation of Israel had split in two
            having previously been united under the reigns of David and his son Solomon
                        about 200 years before Isaiah
            but things had gone downhill badly from then on.
 
Solomon’s two sons Jeroboam & Rehoboam had divided the kingdom
            into north and South
 
And any similarity between this and a devolved Scottish parliament
            is purely accidental!
 
So Israel was now two countries:
            there was the northern kingdom – still called Israel,
            and the southern Kingdom  - called Judah,
– with its capital in Jerusalem.
 
During the time of Isaiah
The Northern kingdom fell to the Assyrians.
 
So Isaiah, who lived in Jerusalem in the south
            spent much of his time saying
                        “aha – see what’s happened in the North
                                    That’s The Lord’s judgment on them
                        If we don’t clean up our act here in the south
                                    and get back to worshipping The Lord properly
                        The same thing will happen to us!”
 
So we can locate first the first 39 chapters of Isaiah
            to this period of political instability
around the fall of the northern kingdom to the Assyrians
            and the rising threat to the kingdom of Judah.
 
Then we come to the second part of what we call the book of Isaiah – chs. 40-55
            which was written well over a hundred years
after Isaiah the prophet had died
 
By this time, the Babylonians had stormed into Judah
            destroyed Jerusalem
            and taken most of the Jews off to Exile in Babylon
 
The prophet who wrote the second book of Isaiah
            was one of these Jews taken into exile
                        he is writing in Babylon
                        and he is writing for his fellow exiles.
 
So in second Isaiah, from which our reading this morning comes,
            we find the words of a prophet
                        written to a group of Jews who were far from home,
                         exiles in a strange land,
            trying hard to keep faithful to The Lord
                        in a context of religious, political, and economic pressures
                        to start worship the Babylonian gods
 
And so our passage and the other chapters around it
            reflects this prophet of the exile addressing issues
which were relevant for the Jewish exiles to Babylon.
 
The third book of Isaiah – chapters 56-66
            was written later still
sometime after the Jews had returned to the land of Israel
            and it reflects their context of rebuilding Jerusalem and the Temple.
 
But for today we’re firmly in the time of exile,
            a time when all hope was lost,
            and the prospects of a better future seemed very bleak.
 
[the following section is drawn from Juliana Claasens]
 
Louis Stulman and Hyun Chul Paul Kim
            describe prophetic literature as
            “meaning-making literature for communities under siege.”
 
And a prophet like Second-Isaiah
            who speaks to exiles still recovering
            from the trauma of the Babylonian invasion
can be characterized as
            “a map of hope for disoriented and dislocated people
            at risk of losing their bearings.” [2]
 
So how does a prophet go about talking to people
            who have been completely traumatized
by seeing their city destroyed,
            their family and friends killed or taken away in shackles to a foreign land
and who even feel that God has deserted them?
 
The prophet in Second-Isaiah definitely did not have an easy task.
 
But throughout the chapters of this central part of the book of Isaiah,
            the prophet uses some creative imagery
            to help people think anew
as to how to live in the midst of the terrible chaos
            that unexpectedly broke into their lives.
 
For instance, in Isaiah 40.10-11,
            God is depicted in one breath
                        as a mighty warrior who will come deliver his people
                        and then as a shepherd who presses the little lamb tightly to his bosom.
 
And further on in Isaiah 42.13-14,
            the prophet is using yet another unexpected combination of images
when the divine warrior image
            is juxtaposed with the image of God as a woman in labour.
 
In our lectionary text for today, Isaiah 42.1-9,
            we encounter for the first time the image of the (suffering) servant of God
that serves as a wonderful example
            of the meaning-making nature of the prophetic task
            (see also Isaiah 49:1-13; 50:4-11; 52:13-53:12).
 
In Isaiah 42:3, the servant is described
            as “a bruised reed” and “a dimly burning wick.”
However, because of God’s spirit that works through him,
            the servant will not be broken or quenched,
rather he will faithfully continue his mission
            of establishing justice on the earth.
 
The servant, as Isaiah portrays him, offers a profound example
            of power in the midst of vulnerability.
 
The power that is held up in the servant
            is a different kind of power to what you might expect.
It is a power that does not scream or shout (verse 2),
            which offers a sharp contrast with the brutal force
            executed by the empires of the day.
 
However, the servant image introduced here in Isaiah 42,
            continued in Isaiah 49 and 50,
            and culminating in the famous sections of Isaiah 52-53,
encapsulates a life-giving power
            that will have an impact far beyond
            the narrow confines of Israel.
 
The book of second Isaiah is characterised
            by a number of surprising and radical reversals
such as the appearance of a highway through the desert in Isaiah 40:3-4;
            water suddenly found in the wilderness in Isaiah 44:3-4;
the wilderness unexpectedly bursting into flower and becoming like Eden in Isaiah 51:3,
            and fertility happening where there was barrenness in Isaiah 54:1-3.
 
And in perhaps the greatest reversal of them all
            the suffering servant is said to give sight to the blind,
bringing light and life to those
            who find themselves trapped in dark dungeons (verses 6-7).
 
The remarkable thing we see in this text
            is how the people who have been traumatized
are called to not do that typically human thing
            of uniting defensively against a perceived common enemy.
 
Edward Said, the Palestinian-American academic and literary theorist,
            warned that nationalism quite often tends to arise
            as a natural consequence of collective trauma.
 
It would be so easy to find in these texts from Isaiah
            what Said calls “an exaggerated sense of group solidarity,
                        [and a] passionate hostility to outsiders,
                        even those who may in fact be in the same predicament as you”. [3]
 
However in Isaiah 42,
            the prophet offers a vision of the world
in which an individual or a group of people
            in the midst of brokenness, in spite of brokenness,
                        and maybe even because of the brokenness,
            will be a light to the nations.
 
For people today who all too often find themselves
            in a state of chaos and despair,
this powerful depiction of the (suffering) servant in Isaiah 42
            may speak in a number of ways:
 
First, in the midst of those times when chaos is rampant,
            when we are weighed down
            by the forces that seek to destroy life as we know it,
we need to accept the fact
            that we often are no more than “bruised reeds”
            and “dimly burning wicks.”
 
As the Jewish-Canadian songwriter and theologian Leonard Cohen
            says so beautifully in his song, “Anthem”:
“Forget your perfect offering, there is a crack in everything,
            but that is where the light gets in.”
 
That is where the light comes in.
 
God’s grace and power works exactly there where we are broken,
            where we are most fragile.
 
As Paul puts it his second letter to the Corinthian church:
 
But we have this treasure in clay jars,
            so that it may be made clear that this extraordinary power
            belongs to God and does not come from us.
 ⁸ We are afflicted in every way, but not crushed;
            perplexed, but not driven to despair;
 ⁹ persecuted, but not forsaken;
            struck down, but not destroyed;
 ¹⁰ always carrying in the body the death of Jesus,
            so that the life of Jesus may also be made visible in our bodies.
             (2 Cor. 4:7-10)
 
Second, in the midst of these most difficult times,
            when we feel helpless and out of control,
we learn from the example of the suffering servant
            that we should seek to cultivate the power that we do have
            in the midst of our current state of vulnerability.
 
Even in the midst of the most dire of circumstances,
            we still have the power to make a difference
            in the lives of the people around us.
 
As we have seen in the case of the suffering servant,
            this power is a remarkable power
— not like the power of the worldly institutions
            but a power that grows out of compassion,
            out of being concerned with the needs and concerns of the other.
 
Even if we find ourselves in a completely hopeless situation,
            we can nurture compassion’s power
that means that even in the most disturbing of days,
            we have the ability to do good things,
                        to look beyond our own problems,
                        and to direct our focus to the other.
 
And it is this capacity to hope against hopelessness,
            that shapes the people of God to be the light to the nations
            that Isaiah speaks of in his prophecy.
 
[Rebecca Wright:]
 
From a biblical perspective, light is a fascinating subject.
            It is used metaphorically in both the Old and New Testaments [4]
and in many cases the metaphor is used
            with the sense of the insiders being light for others.
 
Although a metaphor, it has a basic, easily-grasped meaning.
            And yet there is a deeper meaning too,
because light is in at least one dimension different from other quantities.
 
If we are in a small heated room in a large cold building
            we will want to take care that the door remains closed,
            lest the heat leak out into the hallway and dissipate
            to the point of no longer being useful to those of us in the room.
 
Imagine that someone in the cold hallway knocks on the door
            and asks that we keep it open so that they can share the heat.
That would be a foolish thing to agree to.
 
We would do better to invite the person into the room to share its warmth.
 
Now change the story slightly.
 
Imagine that temperature is no longer the issue.
            Imagine that our room is the only one in the building with working lights.
Now if someone asks us to open the door
            to share the light out into the hallway,
            we would have no need to hesitate.
 
Whatever light is in the room will not diminish perceptibly
            by throwing the door open.
 
(There may be instruments sensitive enough
            to measure a difference in the room’s remaining light.
But I do not think that anyone in the room
            could tell the difference with the naked eye.)
 
Unlike heat or air-conditioned air
            or food or money or nearly anything else,
light can be shared with no diminution to those doing the sharing.
 
Another property of light is important
            to the Bible’s use of it as metaphor:
light does not exist for its own sake alone.
 
That is, the point of turning on a light in a dark room
            is not so that everyone may stare at the light fixture.
Rather, the light makes it possible for people to see other things
            that would be invisible to them otherwise.
 
So how do these two properties affect our reading of Isaiah?
 
It is not clear whether the “you” in verses 5-9
            is the same as “my servant” in the preceding section,
although clearly Jesus reads them that way
            in his inaugural sermon in Luke 4.
 
In addition to its other layers of meaning,
            God is calling the people of God to be a light to the nations.
 
And no matter how enthusiastically we live that calling,
            it will not cause us to end up in darkness.
 
Whatever light we have
            will not be dangerously diminished by our sharing of it.
And the results of that sharing
            will be allowing the possibilities of other things
            than people staring at us.
 
Light-bringers and light-givers are often noticed individually,
            but the larger point is the light itself and what it makes possible.
 
The work of building justice
            can be compared to shining a light on a situation.
It begins with our willingness to look, to see, and to understand
            where injustice lies
            and what the causes of injustice are.
 
The prophecy of Isaiah tells us that the servant of God
            ‘will not grow faint or be crushed
            until he has established justice in the earth’,
and this same prophecy says that the people of God
            are called to be, ‘a light to the nations’.
 
The light we are called to bear in the world
            is the light that gives rise to justice,
by shining on oppression
            and highlighting God’s intolerance
            of those who harm both nature and other humans.
 
And so we speak out:
            we speak out about the injustices we see in our city,
and we speak out about the injustices we see internationally,
            from the streets of Palestine to the streets of the West End,
our calling is to bear the light of the world
            who comes into the world in Bethlehem,
            and who continues to come into the world through us.
 
And as we approach Christmas,
            let us hear the again the words of Jesus,
            the suffering servant of God,
who said:
            "I am the light of the world.
            Whoever follows me will never walk in darkness
                        but will have the light of life." (Jn. 8:12)
 
 

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[1] This sermon draws extensively from the commentaries on Isaiah 42.1-9 by Rebecca Abts Wright https://www.workingpreacher.org/commentaries/narrative-lectionary/light-to-the-nations-2/commentary-on-isaiah-421-9-8 and Juliana Claasens https://www.workingpreacher.org/commentaries/narrative-lectionary/light-to-the-nations/commentary-on-isaiah-421-9
[2] Louis Stulman and Hyun Chul Paul Kim, You Are My People (Nashville: Abingdon, 2010), 22.
[3] “Reflections of Exile,” 178
[4] Jesus to followers about them: Matthew 5:14. Jesus about himself: John 8:12 and 9:5, Luke 2:32.