Epiphany Sunday

I have had the privilege to preach on Epiphany for multiple years.  It is my favorite celebration.  The day that we celebrate the Magi’s arriving to Jesus’ crib side. The day that the world discovers that God is most truly present in the small, the vulnerable, the insignificant. This is a day of hope and rejoicing, this is a day that we hear the hopeful words of the prophet Isaiah:

Arise and shine, for your light has come!
Lift up your eyes and look around!

As I read through the readings this past Sunday, it was the first time that I was not filled with excitement and anticipation for this beautiful day.

I have always loved the words of Isaiah because he was a prophet to broken, exiled people.  He, himself, lived in exile and yet he spoke words of hope, he gathered the people together and urged them to move forward despite being bound and far away from their God-given Promised Land.

Every year, I find his words uplifting, calling us to do the same.  To stay to together, to forge on, to believe that God’s Promised Land is in our midst.  That God is breaking into our world today just as God did when the infant Jesus laid in his mother’s arms all those millennials ago.

But this year and this week in particular I found myself tired of Isaiah’s words, I didn’t want to arise and shine or lift my eyes. 

Hope has felt hard to hold on too.  This year feels like it has been full of false hope - occasional weeks or even a day when things feel “normal” and “safe” are quickly dashed as masks are put back on and we return home to the safety and confinement of our homes and our bubbles.

This Sunday, my morning began as the chaplain for the adult ICU - all Covid patients and we’ve all seen enough images of what those units are like right now..  Later that morning, we learned my husband had an exposure to Covid.  And so we began Christmas week with masks on and trying to keep our distance from one another because our daughter is too young to be vaccinated.

On the 2nd or 3rd day of quarantine my husband and I remarked how my daughter did not blink an eye at the fact that her parents were wearing masks at home, not kissing her, not sharing food. She has never known a world without masks so I guess it wasn’t too big of leap for her to have masks on at home too. 

The distance between my reality and the prophet Isaiah’s words only grew greater as the week went on.  I found myself talking with parents of other small children as it seemed that everyone we know had a Covid exposure over the last week and the hospitalization of young children is increasing.  Fear gripped all of us once again, we shared our extreme fatigue of navigating who we should and should not visit this holiday season, and our deep sadness and anger of what our children have missed so far in their short lives - no crowded playgrounds, no swimming lessons, no silly winter crafts at the community center, no hugs or visits from family for nearly the entirety of 2020 and minimally in 2021.

Exactly, what, Isaiah, should we wake up for?  Where is this light you proclaim?

On Wednesday night, we received our negative Covid results.  And Thursday morning, I hugged my daughter up with no masks.  She proceeded to kiss every inch of my cheeks, my nose and my mouth.

Her kisses were proof that she had been impacted by us wearing masks the past four days and by our distance from one another. This realization maybe, should have made me feel even sadder, even angrier - another piece of “normal” stolen from her.  But it didn’t.  It filled me with gratitude with light and maybe even some hope. 

Small children are perhaps the most powerful prophets around us but so frequently overlooked since they lack the use of language we value so much.  Small, vulnerable, wild little tornadoes - so easy to overlook or to simply be exhausted by, and yet they exude the deepest love and joy - they are prophets, they are our daily epiphanies.

When my mask was finally removed, my daughter did not dwell on its presence for the last four days, instead she was moved with gratitude and joy to celebrate the presence of my unencumbered face with sloppy, wet toddler kisses. My daughter doesn’t understand the pandemic and so on the one hand it is of course easier for her to celebrate with ease and freedom.  But at the same time, after three years of life I know that my daughter has experienced sadness, pain, disappointment and anger.  She has felt the emotions we have all felt and yet every single day she gets excited that Mr. Sun rises and Mr. Moon wakes up at night and she is quick to kiss this broken, terrible world and dance in it.

As this week has gone by, there’s something shifting for me as I read these readings.  Prior to this week, I have viewed Isaiah as someone who was offering us words of hope, calling us to be people of hope in challenging times.  But I think the words “offering'' or “calling” are too gentle.  Prophets aren’t really known to be gentle - they are forceful, they speak messages that people need to hear but generally don’t want to hear. 

So maybe the prophet Isaiah is not recommending that we consider being hopeful people.  Maybe he is commanding it.  He isn’t gently waking us from our slumber, he is shaking our shoulders and shouting, “Arise and shine, for your light has come! Lift up your eyes and look around!”

What if we are commanded to be hopeful people just as we are commanded to not lie, steal, or take God’s name in vain.  What would that mean?  What if hope wasn’t so much a choice or a feeling but a way that we must live our lives if we desire to live as God has asked us to?

If I didn’t have my little three-year-old prophetess smothering me with kisses, I would have stayed asleep this week.  I would have closed my eyes because when I tried to open them I only saw the darkness - my fear, my pain, my anger. But she pried them open and demanded I see something more than that. 

After this year, we now know probably better than we ever have before that there are no guarantees for next year.  Will 2023 be better?  Maybe, maybe not.  And better by whose standards? Because while these last two years have been hard on a global level, for many people in this world imprisonment, restriction, injustice has always been “normal.”

And that I think is perhaps one of the main reasons we must be hopeful people because hopeful people wake up, hopeful people aren’t naive, optimistic people - they are people in love with this world, with God and with their neighbor.  Hopeful people are just people and that’s truly what God is commanding us to each and every day: “To act justly and to love mercy and to walk humbly with our God.”

God has broken into this world, not to promise us something in some far off future but to declare to us that beauty, life, goodness is here right now.  Our job is to wake up to it and work alongside God and our neighbor to ensure that each and every person can similarly follow the prophet’s command.  To be a hopeful people is to become epiphanies ourselves. We too become God breaking into this world. Like an infant in a lowly manager, like a wild toddler and her sloppy kisses, we are simple, we are small, we are vulnerable and that is exactly where God dwells and where God’s light shines from.

So my friends, let us head the prophet’s challenge as we step into the New Year:
Arise and shine, for your light has come!
Lift up your eyes and look around!