‘Mixed messages”
By Rev. Michael Stonhouse
Meditation – Thursday, January 6, 2022
Isaiah 60:1-6 (Forward, p. 69) CEV p. 754
Sadly, unfortunately, the way that people have used—or misused—the Holy Scriptures over the ways has served both for their doing and their undoing.
On the ‘undoing’ end of things, its negative aspect, today’s passage has fed into the traditional Christmas story ideas or details that are not based on the actual nativity narratives at all. For instance, its mention of “kings coming to the dawning of your new day” (verse 3), or its mention of gifts of caravans of camels and gifts of gold and incense (verse 6). Even the mention in a later verse (verse 7) of sheep being brought as sacrifices feeds into the narrative of shepherds bringing sheep to offer the Christ Child.
These details about sheep and kings might simply come off as being interesting but unessential elaborations if it were not that liberal scholars use them as a justification for writing off the entire story of Jesus birth. They claim that the two gospel writers, Matthew and Luke, merely borrowed elements from the Hebrew Scriptures and wove them into a ‘story’ about a miraculous birth that never really happened.
And, somehow, in all this it is forgotten or merely glossed over that none of this in its original context in Isaiah had anything to do with the Messiah. Rather, it is addressed to Jerusalem, announcing its future glory and its future restoration. It is suggesting that a city that has been pillaged and destroyed and forsaken will once again be restored to its former glory.
And so, transported to our present lives, it is meant as a poem of hope, as poem of the restoration that only God can pull off. We can all too easily look around ourselves and our world today and see nothing but dis-ease, political unrest and turmoil and threats on every hand. We can easily forget that God is not through with us yet, nor with our world. He is still working out His purposes, some of which are in us and through us. And so He calls us to be people of hope and purpose, people who haven’t given up on Him, or on our world. So, let us continue on with Him, into this unknown yet glorious future. Amen.
Forward notes: “Arise, shine; for your light has come, and the glory of the LORD has risen upon you” (verse 1).
“This week is the start to a new year. It brings promise and newness. Yet we still are witness to or are living through vast divides and heaps of injustice. As I write this, some children at our borders are still separated from their parents, and some may never be reunited with them.
“While God never orphans us, parents and even grandparents are essential to a life of security and intergenerational wisdom. The fight to right this wrong and repair a broken system seems never-ending, yet we are reminded on this day of the Epiphany that God became us for us through Jesus Christ. There is newness in us and for us. When our days are rife with conflict and turmoil, let us remember that God’s light shines on each of us equally. God became incarnate for all of us as we continue to fight for mercy, justice, and peace.”
Moving Forward: “How do you hold the tension between the light of Epiphany and the ongoing struggles for justice?”
