Nations Shall Walk By Your Light

Epiphany of the Lord - Isaiah 60:1-6

Rise up in splendor, Jerusalem!  Your light has come,

the glory of the Lord shines upon you.

See, darkness covers the earth,

and thick clouds cover the peoples;

but upon you the LORD shines,

and over you appears his glory.

Nations shall walk by your light,

and kings by your shining radiance.

Raise your eyes and look about;

they all gather and come to you:

your sons come from afar,

and your daughters in the arms of their nurses.

Then you shall be radiant at what you see,

your heart shall throb and overflow,

for the riches of the sea shall be emptied out before you,

the wealth of nations shall be brought to you.

Caravans of camels shall fill you,

dromedaries from Midian and Ephah;

all from Sheba shall come

bearing gold and frankincense,

and proclaiming the praises of the LORD.

We have been reading from the Prophet Isaiah for weeks now, but we have not yet considered the full scope of the book, which provides important context for our first reading. Isaiah was a prophet in the southern kingdom of Judah in the 700s B.C. when the northern kingdom of Israel was being wiped out and the southern kingdom of Judah was being reduced, both at the hands of the Assyrian Empire. Much of his message consists of warnings to several nations in the Middle East, the most important of which were the kingdoms of Israel and Judah, God’s Chosen People. Isaiah offers stark warnings to the people of the covenant about the consequences for continuing to break the covenant with the Lord: exile from the Promised Land. But Isaiah is no mere prophet of doom. He intersperses revelations about the coming Messianic King, and he concludes with twenty-six chapters about the eventual return from exile and the future glory of God’s human family on earth. 

It is in this final section on the future glory of Jerusalem that Isaiah writes our first reading. He foresees a time when the glory of the Lord will shine over all God’s people, one might even say like a bright star in the night sky, and will attract the nations who will come to Jerusalem with gifts that sound very familiar to Christian ears: gold and frankincense. When this prophecy eventually is fulfilled, when magi representing the nations file into Jerusalem with their caravans and dromedaries proclaiming the praises of the Lord, they bright with them gifts of gold and frankincense along with myrrh. In addition to their symbolic import, these gifts represented the tools of the magi’s trade, their very source of sustenance. These pagans symbolically offered their lives to walk by the light of the Lord. What about you? What about me?

This week, the Spirit invites us, through the voice of Isaiah, to let the glory of the Lord shine upon us and shine through us. You do not have to leave this nation to be a light to the nations. “Those people,” the outsiders and the not-good-enoughs, are all around us, and the Lord wants us to bring the light of his coming, of his presence, of his salvation to your fallen away neighbor, your cousin with same sex attraction, your coworker who drives you crazy. The nations will walk by the light of the Lord, and that light is supposed to shine through us. 

Perhaps part of why the nations flocked to the Christchild was because they did not have to deal with the cranky church people that you and I can be at times. The magi did not exactly hurry back to spend more time with Herod and his priests who knew the correct religion answer but did not do anything about it. Rather than deal with the “insiders” who were obscuring the light, they went straight to the source of the light itself. Jesus is attractive. Faith is attractive. A life lived in relationship with Jesus is attractive. May we be less like Herod and his priests and more like Mary and Joseph who opened their cave and their home to whomever was drawn by the light of the world to their doorstep.