Isaiah 60:1-6 "Arise! Shine"

         Last weekend, Joe and I took down our Christmas tree and packed away most of our holiday decorations. We swept up the needles off the floor, and now the odor of balsam has vanished for another year.  I left the candles in the windows through January 6^th, the Day of Epiphany, to commemorate the coming of the Magi, but those lights too have been placed in a box in one of the upstairs closets.  

Though it is certainly nice to reclaim the space in our living room where the tree once stood, alit with those tiny white lights, I am always a bit sad to close the Christmas closet door, knowing it will not be opened again until next December. For me, the end of Christmas means that it is time to hunker down for winter – bracing myself for a cold house when I get up in the morning, aware of how tired I will be of my winter sweaters before long, envying Patrick who I know is going to Florida during February school vacation.  Though logic and rationality tell me that the days are getting longer – and have been since the winter solstice on December 21^st – it does not really seem like they are.

It is all enough to make you feel like you have caught the winter blues along with your inevitable January cold that seems to hang on and on – or in more extreme cases, that you have contracted seasonal affective disorder with its symptoms of sluggishness, low energy, and loss of interest in everyday activities.  

A diminished amount of sunlight is said to cause seasonal affective disorder.  It affects 1-2% of the population while the milder form of simply winter blues targets 10-20%.  One article I read this week said that “since the amount of winter daylight you receive changes the farther you are from the equator, SAD is most common in people who live at least 30 degrees latitude north or south (north of places such as Jacksonville, Florida, Austin, Texas, Cairo, Egypt, and Hangzhou, China, or south of Perth, Australia, Durban, South Africa, and Cordoba, Argentina). Ah – to live in Maine in the winter! 

However, I find it interesting that here in the church, when half the world is coping with winter darkness, we find ourselves in the season of Epiphany, the season of light.  Bookended between the Light of the Star that brought the Magi to the Christ Child and the Transfiguration when Jesus himself was lit up like Christmas Tree before his disciples Peter, James, and John, we celebrate this man as the Light of the World and his ministry as the force that has the potential to awaken the Light of God in each one of us.

And yet, each January, as we launch ourselves into this season of light, we cannot help wonder…Did someone forget to turn on the lights in my life? 

 With that question looming over us, during this Epiphany season which will last until the beginning of the season of Lent in early March, we are going to reflect – not on Seasonal Affective Disorder – but rather on Spiritual Affective Disorder.   We will explore spiritual practices that may help us get out of the metaphorical darkness of winter and into the light of our lives. We will see how experiencing some of the everyday activities of our lives as blessings – filled with God’s radiance – can offer us a chance to be filled with God’s Light as well. 

We will reflect on how Spiritual Affective Disorder can become more pronounced as we lead lives that are too crowded, busy, overcommitted, and sometimes disturbing and uncertain. At the turn of this new year, we will highlight everyday life activities that can become spiritual practices – and in doing so can deepen our experience of a meaningful life and make us more “light-hearted”.

Sometimes we can feel as if we are the only ones who have ever lived in a darkened world.  No one has it quite as bad as we do – with vitriolic tweets spewing darkness as they flood cyberspace, the threat of war one minute and the voice of conciliation the next. 

However, come back with me for a moment to a time hundreds of years before the birth of Jesus – in the 6^th century BCE, when the prophet Isaiah and his school of disciples were speaking out to the Israelites, God/Yahweh’s chosen people, who sought to cope with their dark and changing world.  Nazarene pastor Chris Naftis wrote that Isaiah was “addressing those who have returned to the land of Israel after seventy years in exile (in the backwaters of the Babylonian Empire). 

The return has not been quite as glorious as the people likely envisioned. A generation removed, few of those returning to the land of Israel would have direct memory of it. Memories would have been passed down from parents and grandparents, and it seems safe to assume that they would have remembered the good old days with a little extra romance”.

The reality in Jerusalem was that living conditions were lousy, and the temple had not been rebuilt.  In fact, much of the city was still a pile of rubble.  No wonder the Israelites themselves were divided and in conflict. 

Presbyterian pastor Christine Roy Yoder remarks in her blog that “those days are cast easily in hues of grey -- the city of Jerusalem and its temple yet in ruins, the community rag-tag and divided, the once proud monarchy now a small colony on the fringe of the Persian Empire…..One imagines worry, like a wet chill, settling deep in the bones, and hope struggling in darkness.”

It is enough to bring on, at best, the winter blues – or, more likely, Seasonal (and Spiritual) Affective Disorder!  However, into that darkness – when the sunlight of redemption seemed so far away and out-of-reach –Isaiah made his proclamation in which the hope of the ancient Israelites – and perhaps our hope as well – rested – and might rest:

Arise, shine; for your light has come,
and the glory of the Lord has risen upon you.
For behold, even though darkness covers the earth,
and deep darkness the people;
the Lord will arise upon you,
and his glory will be seen upon you.

Lift up your eyes and look around;
Then you shall see and shine like the sun.

What a glorious announcement to anyone who has ever experienced darkness!  Not just the darkness of a winter’s night, but the darkness of being without hope.  Isaiah is spreading the world that the Israelites (and us) do not have to live a life of doom and gloom.  We need not experience  the dark night of the soul.

You see, that is what Epiphany is all about – reminding us of, as Christine Yoder comments, “in-breaking, world-inverting power of God's glory, the radiant light, that by no effort of human will or ingenuity, has come for the sake of everyone. That light enables the forgotten and hopeless to rise to their feet. That light prompts nations and kings to pay homage. It is to that light we make our way in midwinter, bringing all that we have to kneel before God.”

A blogger minister I read this week wrote about an experience he had outside of a restaurant while waiting for a friend.  A man came up to him, and he heard him say, "Do you have the light?"

Hmmm, our blogger thought, do I have the light? Clearly he was thinking about his Epiphany sermon and those verses from Isaiah we just read.  

He thought to himself, “I’m not sure.  Is that a philosophical – or theological - question?”  Or was it simpler?  Was there something on the menu there called ‘the light?’  Was this some new slang phrase he did not know?  

He was about to ask the man what he meant, when he saw him pull out a cigarette and realized he had not asked if I had the light; he was just asking for a light.” 

However, still, it is a terrific question, especially for this morning:  Do you have the light? 

That answer, of course, is yes.  The light – God’s light – is an ember within each one of us - and is there, ready to ignite and burn brightly.  Isaiah says it all in his hope-filled proclamation, right?

…your light has come,

and the glory of the Lord has risen upon you.
For behold, even though darkness covers the earth,
and deep darkness the people;
the Lord will arise upon you,
and his glory will be seen upon you….

you shall see and shine like the sun.

A customer called the customer service line  - maybe at Central Maine Power - to complain about a power outage after a big storm.  He stopped raging long enough to ask, “How will I know when my lights are back on?”

The customer service agent remained silent for a second, debating about the best way to answer such an obvious, even ridiculous, question. How will you know when your lights are back on? Finally, she just said, “Um, it’ll be brighter than it is now.” The customer hung up on her.

“Your light has come,” proclaims the old wizened prophet who had been broadcasting the truth for a long time now.  However, there is a caveat to what he declares – and he puts it out there right at the beginning of his hope-filled announcement.  

“Arise!  Shine!” he says.  Sounds simple, but too often we focus on the second part of the prophet’s directive – Shine!  However, before you can shine, you have to “Arise!”.  

And that, I think is a most important message for you in this congregation as we begin a time of transition together.  To receive the gift of God’s Light, you first must arise –lift yourselves physically, emotionally, and spiritually – to begin the work that God has set before you and before this church.  

Only after arising can you shine – can you reflect the light of God both inside and outside of this faith community.  Only when you bear witness to the Light – only when you first arise can you shine out of the darkness that everyone – everyone – finds him or herself in the midst of in this crazy, jaded, cynical world we live in, only when you arise long enough to shine out of the darkness so that others are drawn to your light will your lives be enriched in the way you hope they will be enriched in a church community.  Shining does not just happen  It is not like the lights coming on after a power outage.  Shining only happens when first you arise.

In order to shine in the darkened world that many of you feel has become this church, it is not enough to simply come to worship on Sunday.  You need to be active.  You need to be involved.  You need to stand up and be counted.  You need to live all that Jesus stood for – particularly the giving part.

 There is an Arabic story I read this week about a Muslim who died and left his seventeen camels to be divided among his three sons.  One was to receive one-ninth of the camels; one was to get half; and the third son was to inherit one-third. 

If you do the math, however, you will find that seventeen camels are not evenly divisible by three.  Consequently, the three sons argued long and loud about what to do. Finally, in desperation they agreed to let a certain wise man decide the matter for them. The old man was seated in front of his tent with his own camel staked out back.  

After hearing the case, the wise man took his own camel and added it to the other seventeen camels.  He then took one-ninth of the eighteen, or two camels, and gave them to the first brother.  To the next brother he gave half, or nine camels. To the third brother he gave one-third, or six camels, distributing seventeen camels to the brothers which left one camel, which was his own.

This story powerfully illustrates the truth that, as Presbyterian pastor Michelle Fincher wrote, “while we’re trying to find God and solve the problems of life by logical, calculating schemes that insure that we ‘get our fair share,’ we’re missing God.  

Because God is to be found not in claiming our rights but in giving; not in grasping but in (first arising, first) opening our hearts and hands to receive from God’s storehouse of grace and mercy” – to receive God’s light in our darkness.

So – in this coming week, I challenge each of you to arise, so that you can shine.  You need to care about what happens in the Middle East.  You need to care about refugees and asylum seekers.  You need to care about the upcoming Presidential primaries – no matter who you hope will win the election come November.  

You need to care about what happens to this church in the weeks and months to come.  You need to care enough to come to the Annual Meeting next week.  You need to do all you can – with God’s help - to arise – so that your light – and the light of God within this church – can shine.  

And to remind you of that challenge, as we sing the next song, I am going to give you a small candle – perhaps to light at home this week – or simply to look at - to remind you that even a single small candle can make a difference in the dark.  “Shine!  For your light has come”, the prophet Isaiah says.  But first, you have to arise.