Jesus-the-Light.

Isaiah 9:2-7.

I.

            These words from the prophet Isaiah celebrate the birth of a new king, a new heir to the throne, indicating a new future for the people.  We who follow the Way of Jesus Christ understand the prophet to be looking forward to the coming of the promised Messiah.  That Messiah is Jesus Christ.  He is our King and our God.  He is our light.

            The prophet begins by saying that the people had been walking in darkness.  I take this to mean that they were living according to lies, falsehoods, and untruths, probably fed to them by a conquering power.  They were not living in the real world, but a fake and artificial world generated and projected by the sinful human ego.  Hence, the people were subject to violence and motivated by fear.

            I find much darkness in our world in our days as well.  I am conscious of much denial and delusion.  There are so many ways that we are not following Jesus the light, and choosing instead to live by our own feeble and limited, little, artificial lights: our own reason, our own feelings, our own hungers and desires, our own memories and habits.   

            Jesus the light feeds hungry people.  But we choose to leave hungry people, even children, unfed.  Jesus the light heals everyone who comes to him sick or disabled.  But we deny healthcare to people, or charge such high prices that it is the major cause of personal bankruptcy.  Jesus the light welcomes everyone and makes a point of associating with outcasts, exemplified by tax collectors and prostitutes.  But we find ways of judging, condemning, excluding, or placing arbitrary conditions on including people we either don’t like or don’t understand. 

            Jesus the light celebrates and appreciates the natural world, lifting up lilies, foxes, birds, wheat, and weather as signs and examples of God’s loving care and providence.  But we, of course, have built a civilization upon the rape and pillage of creation, even causing a wave of extinctions, for the profit of a very few.  Jesus the light preaches forgiveness and freedom.  But we have the highest rate of incarceration in the world.  

            Jesus the light establishes new communities of equality and sharing, as acts of resistance to the tyranny that throttled his own society.  But we have this idea that only individuals exist, and communities don’t matter.  Jesus the light warns us of the certain consequences of continuing on the path of inequality, violence, injustice, fear, and anger; he sadly cautions us against trusting in ourselves and our leaders and our ideologies.  And we choose to follow self-serving, self-righteous, self-justifying, self-important, self-centered ways of thinking and acting, trusting in violence, greed, feeding our manifold addictions, and piling up material goods.

            Surely “walking in darkness” describes us pretty well. 

II.

            But the prophet doesn’t emphasize this here.  There are lots of other places in his book where he talks at some length about the character of the darkness that grips the people.  But here that darkness is placed in the past.  He says that light has finally shined on the people and he foresees several clear indicators that this is the case.

            First, the nation is growing in joy and prosperity for all.  The creation is made by God as the perfect space for life to grow and thrive.  The earth is more than able to provide for everyone’s needs, if resources are distributed and shared equitably.

            Jesus the light tells us that we do not need to be anxious or worry about what we will eat or what we will wear.  The notion of scarcity and limitation of resources is something we invent and create.  The situation where some have too much and many have too little, and where too many people fight over scraps, is something generated in the darkness of the fearful human heart.  It is not true.  It is not the way God created the place.  It doesn’t have to be this way; and God will fix it.

            Living in the light means living in this abundance.  Jesus the light shows that abundance happens in obedience to him when we give thanks for what we receive, and when we share with each other.  Living in sharing and gratitude creates abundance and joy; but living by hoarding creates scarcity, pain, and anger.

            This is the economics of the light.  It has to do with rejoicing in what you have, rather than in being resentful about what you don’t have.  And the prophet mentions the dividing of plunder as a reference to the redistribution of wealth that the victors do after a war.  In this case it is the spreading around of the wealth of their oppressor who had gobbled the lions’ share of goods for themselves.     

            Indeed, the joy of the people is based on this defeat of their oppressor by God.  Their conquerors’ weapons have been miraculously broken, which is to say that their powerful enemy has been defeated.  The example used is that of Gideon, from the book of Judges.  In that story God deliberately reduces the number of Israelite fighters so that it will be absolutely clear that the victory as not won by the people, but by God.  In that battle, the Midianites defeated themselves in the disarray and confusion brought about by fear. 

            In Scripture it is God alone who takes vengeance, not the people.  The people are to maintain their attitude of faithful non-violence, even to the point of ministering to those who are hurt in the divine retribution.

            What Isaiah and so many other biblical writers say is that violence begets violence, those who live by the sword will die by the sword, if you participate in a system based on murder then don’t be surprised if that is what your actions bring down on you.  Not one of the many acts of destruction in the Book of Revelation are committed by the followers of Jesus.  It is all God acting in defense of the creation.

 

III.

            Finally, there is the birth of this child, the new king.  There is a reason why we are reading this passage tonight.  In the Lord’s Nativity we celebrate that the new king prophesied by Isaiah has come!  He comes as an infant, but the fact that he is here means that we know the light has arrived and is now available to us. 

            Knowing this, we are forced to choose now which king we will follow.  On the one hand, we may continued to give our allegiance to the defeated oppressors who still manage to rage.  We may follow those who kept us in the darkness of selfishness, greed, wanton consumption, and division; who enforce inequalities between us and whose agenda has always been the abuse of the poor and workers, and the depletion, degradation, and destruction of the earth. 

            Or on the other hand we may walk in the way of the new king who brings light and endless peace with justice and righteousness; the One born with the animals and first worshiped by shepherds.

            It is a choice that every generation has to make.  Caesar or Jesus Christ?  The Empire or Jesus Christ?  The reigning system propped up and enforced by the terror of advanced weaponry, or Jesus Christ?  The ones born with privilege in palaces, announced by well-paid propagandists, or the One born in a livestock feed-trough in a barn, and announced to poor workers by angels?

            Jesus is real.  He does not pretend to be more than human… even though he is God!  Too often humans pretend to be God, imagining God to be no more than an extrapolation of what we think is really powerful – just whatever we admire written in capital letters and yelled really loud.  But we thereby ignore this fact that where we find God most truly is in the circumstances of abject humility we see in Jesus’ birth.  God is not like us at our greatest; God is more like us at our lowest, most common, ordinary, and shared life.  It is through that place God infuses everything with divinity and being, from the bottom up. 

            To walk in the Way of Jesus Christ is to walk in the Way of God.  It is to resonate with and share in the energy of the Creator, reflecting and expressing the Creator’s Light in us and through us.

            So all those things and qualities that Isaiah says this child is about – Wonderful Counselor, Mighty God, Everlasting Father, Prince of Peace, establishing the throne of David with justice and righteousness forever – that all happens in Jesus Christ, not from above, but from below.  It is not imposed on us by force, but we live into it with gentleness when we find that Presence within ourselves.

   

IV.

            We cannot make a new world without him; we have no light unto ourselves.  He is the only light.  And it is his light, the light of Jesus Christ, the light of God-with-us/Emmanuel, the light of the Kingdom of God within and among us, that brings light to all the world. 

            Isaiah makes the point that all this is God’s doing.  It is done by God’s “zeal,” God’s fervent energy, God’s unstoppable will.  Like a rising tide, or gravity.  You can work against it if you want and be temporarily successful.  But God always wins in the end.

            And here, in a barn in Bethlehem, the victory is sealed and guaranteed.  Because here is where we who walk in darkness, deep darkness, do see a great light.  It is the light that shines in the darkness, our darkness, that the darkness cannot overcome or comprehend. 

            Here God shows us that the light that shines on the people comes into the world by emergence from within.  From within first a woman named Mary, then from within a manger, then from within Bethlehem, then Galilee and Judea.  That light shines from the cross as an outpouring in love of the very life-blood of God, and through his blood and the Spirit that life and light finally radiate inexorably within the earth and the whole creation itself.

            Now we walk in the Way of Jesus in the power of that light, following his commandments, living his life of love revealed in generosity, healing, forgiveness, blessing, and peace, gathering his people….  That is what the Nativity is: walking even now in the gentle and open and joyful Way of our Wonderful Counselor, Mighty God, Everlasting Father, and Prince of Peace, Jesus Christ.