Shine Your Light
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One of the most important things to understand as we dig into Isaiah today, is that at this point the Israelites, are and have been, in exile after the Babylonians conquered Jerusalem and destroyed the Temple. The entire Babylonian exile last for about 70 years, and while we don’t know exactly at what point this specific text was written we can assume that it had been a while because of the way that God perceives God’s people. What we can infer from the text is that the people are having a difficult time in exile. They aren’t experiencing justice, they are feeling weak and broken, they seem to be lost and and in darkness.
Think about it from their perspective. The land that they had been promised was no longer theirs and they were not living in it. The temple that God had directed Solomon to build was now destroyed. They have been in exile for decades. A new generation was now growing up and possibly having families of their own who had never seen those things. They had never seen their homeland and had never seen the central place of worship. I can’t even imagine what it must have been like to live in that way or in those conditions. Foreigners all around them worshipping countless other gods, and as we learned from Esther last week, there may have been persecution for them as a people of faith and as a race. Do we really need to list anything else that reinforce the idea that the Israelites were at the very least a bruised reed and a faint wick as Isaiah says in verse 3?
Honestly at this point in time my mind wanders back a few weeks to the prophet Habakkuk when he shouted, “How long O Lord?” How long must we endure exile? How long must we wait to go back home? How long until we can worship again on the holy mountain? There is a lot of waiting that is happening and while we as Christians are in a season of waiting as well I don’t know how much more I could endure if I were cast out in a foreign land unable to go home.
What are the kinds of things we are tired of waiting for? Are we tired of waiting for peace in the world? Are we tired of waiting for the hungry to be fed? Are we tired of turmoil between people in our nation and the nations of the world? Are we tired of violence happening to our youth in their schools? I just saw on the news this week that Peru’s president Pedro Castillo attempted to dissolve his congress and redo the constitution. I also saw in Germany that there were raids across the country to stop the extremist group Reichsburger from trying to install a new government. How much more do we have to endure before these kinds of things are topics we no longer have to read about or worry about in our lives? Why do we have to keep waiting for an end to all of these terrible things?
God’s response to the weariness and the waiting, the sorrow and the brokenness, is presenting a servant that he is lifting up on behalf of the people. The things this servant will do are absolutely incredible. While not intentionally drawing attention to himself, the servant, will care for those who are bruised and whose light is dimly lit. And what is fascinating is that in the opening description of the servant, God says in verses 1, 3, and 4 that this servant will bring and establish justice in the land. As we study the Bible we know that the kind of justice declares to God’s people and this world is not the same justice that this world offers. We saw a glimpse of that justice also in Habakkuk when all nations would go to Zion to seek the teaching of God.
The end to the waiting and the brokenness is the promise of this coming servant. In that promise God declares all the things that God has done in order for us all to know that what God has promised before has come true, which means that if what came before is true then God’s promise of what is coming next is also true. The servant who will bring a light to the nations and hold us by the hand to protect us. The servant who will open the eyes of the blind, lead the prisoners from prison and bring people from darkness to light is the promise of something new. That promise then will come true.
We, as Christians, see that promised servant as Jesus who is the light of the world, who is the one that we wait and watch for this Advent season. Jesus, himself, in Luke 4:14-21, when he returns to his hometown of Nazareth even picks up the scroll of Isaiah and reads a passage from Isaiah 61 which is almost identical to this one, and declares that this scripture has been fulfilled. Much of the rest of the gospel of Luke is Jesus living into and fulfilling that promise to preach good news to the poor, proclaim release to the captive, and bring sight to the blind. To care for those who are in that time of waiting for something more than what they are experiencing now.
While I don’t know what you are waiting for specifically, or what you are tired of that you see happening in our world, I do know that Christ came as the light to the nations so that you could find your way to him. I also know that light brings attention to those things that were hidden. So my prayer this Advent season is that you would both strengthen your relationship to the light so that you are not dimly light or about to extinguish but that you burn brightly. I also pray that you live into that light that God has given you. With that light you may live into what Christ said in Matthew 5:16 “16 In the same way, let your light shine before people, so they can see the good things you do and praise your Father who is in heaven.” Because just as I said last week, we may be in a season of waiting but we are also the ones who have been called to be the light in this world. I believe that while the servant song that we heard today may be about the promised messiah, I also know that promised messiah called 12 disciples and all the crowds to follow him and let our light shine into this world.
So shine your light. Let it burn brightly and know that with this entire room, our collective light can be a beacon to this community and beyond. This is what it means to be a follower of the servant. Letting our light shine for this world is living out our baptismal calling. So while we wait patiently or impatiently for things in this world to change we have been changed in the waters of our baptism and have been given the light of Christ to shine in us, especially in the places where it is dim so that all may see and know the love and light of Christ, not just in this season but every single day of their lives. Amen.