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Isaiah 60:1-22 · The Glory of Zion
The Flight From Light
Isaiah 60:1-22, Matthew 2:1-12
Sermon
by Erskine White
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"And being warned in a dream not to return to Herod, they departed to their own country by another way." (Matthew 2:12)

The other day I called someone to compliment her on a job she had done exceedingly well. We had worked on a project together which became a great success, in no small part because of the leadership she provided. As I spoke with her, I went on and on about how much her work had been appreciated. "Everyone who was there really loved you," I told her; "in fact, they’re raving about you!" Then I added, "Of course, I don’t know what they see in you myself, but they all seemed to be impressed anyway."

It was a joke, and she took it as a joke. "That’s right," she laughed, "don’t let me get a swelled head about this!" A few minutes later, the conversation was over.

After I hung up the phone, I started thinking: when we experience a high moment like this, a moment of real success and appreciation, why do we feel we have to poke fun at it or cut it off? When we feel like bursting with happiness and enthsuiasm about something that has gone well, when we find ourselves on one of life’s rare mountaintops of joy and grace, why do we feel a need to puncture the mood and rush back down into the valley again, as if we are afraid the good feeling might last too long?

Our texts show something like this happening after the birth of Jesus. "Arise, shine; for your light has come," cries Isaiah. After suffering for all of human history in a thick, oppressive darkness which has covered the earth and all its people, God’s light has finally come! More than that, it has come for everyone and not just a chosen few. With Epiphany, the light which came to a little town called Bethlehem is now being given to all the world.

You would think the world would rejoice. But in Matthew, we see that rather than welcoming this light and flocking to it, the world is fleeing from it. In fact, Herod is trying to destroy it.

It is the light of justice and compassion, a light which dispels the darkness of indifferent greed and responds with love to human need, a light which "judges the poor with righteousness and decides with equity for the meek of the earth" (Isaiah 11:4).

It is also the light of peace. It is a light which disperses the dense darkness of violence and aggression which have bedeviled us for so long and empties out once and for all the boiling caldrons of war. Since the dawn of time, what has humanity yearned for more feverently than peace? What has humanity been more tragically confused about than the methods and means of achieving peace? Now, at long last, a light has come into the world to end our confusion, to be our peace (Ephesians 2:14) and to show us in the flesh "the things that make for peace" (Luke 19:42).

Here is a light which can answer the deepest longings of the human heart, and Herod is alarmed. Here is a light of new hope in a world whose long, dark history has been written in blood, and Herod is terrified. In fact, he is so unnerved at the prospect of a different kind of ruler and a new kingdom of justice and peace that he orders a terrible massacre in Bethlehem. The violence always falls indiscriminately on the innocent as the thick darkness descends, and a perennial "voice is heard in Ramah," the sound of Rachel weeping for her children "because they are no more" (Matthew 2:18).

Of course, we aren’t talking about just one brutal, first-century dictator here; there are Herods in every era and nation who fear and despise the light. In every age, we think we want a world of justice and peace, but when we are confronted with the possibility of actually approaching it, and when we are shown how to create the conditions which nurture it, we turn away from that light and settle back into the familiar darkness. Believe in this new king, O Herods of the earth! Live in His way, love with His love, rule in His light and you will see peace in your time! The prospect frightens Herods everywhere. Why do you think that is?

Actually, a closer reading of our text tells all of us to answer that question, because it isn’t just the Herods in positions of power who fear that this light might end the darkness - our text says that "all of Jerusalem" was frightened as well. Every citizen, great and small! Each one of us today! In one way or another, we all turn and flee from the light of the very things we think we want the most.

What do we want the most, you and I? What do we most desire, not in the sense of a thing to be bought but a quality which would make us whole? Think about what you really want, and then think about what you do when faced with the prospect of actually getting it.

One thing we want is companionship, an end to our loneliness. In some ways, we have it with friends and loved ones, but in other ways we are all too aware of our solitude. We come into this world alone and leave it alone, and in between those two events we are searching for connection.

To whom can we really talk, and who is there to really listen? Who can hear our deepest secrets and not think badly of us for telling them? Who is there to know us through and through - all that is good, bad and ugly about us - and love us just the same?

We want to be cared for, listened to, understood and appreciated. We are searching for the intimacy of understanding, body to body and soul to soul, but when we come to the brink of real sharing and genuine communion, we back away. When we come to the brink of one searching person deeply touching another searching person with honest love and fearless truth, we retreat and raise our guard. We practice the art of remaining strangers. In ways we may or may not recognize, we are continually fleeing from the light of caring and sharing into the lonely darkness again, desperately wanting communion with others but afraid to open our hearts and be vulnerable, afraid to expose ourselves or admit our need.

We also want our wounds to be healed, an end to our pain. Sometimes our pain is physical, ranging in severity from the distracting to the debilitating, and we wish we were free of it. More often, our pain is emotional, psychological and spiritual. Each of us is wounded in more ways than we can count or understand.

We are wounded by dramatic, specific events in our lives which leave lasting scars: a shattering loss here, a twist of fate there. We are also wounded in more elusive ways by the ebb and flow of life itself. As children, we are wounded by the families which raised us; no matter how much our parents may have loved or cared for us, they were coping with wounds they had received as children, so the pain is handed down, often unintentionally, like unwanted inheritances from generation to generation.

As adults, we are wounded by the families we ourselves raise, wounded by spouses and children even in the most loving of homes. We are wounded at work and in the world by faceless alienation, wounded almost daily by betrayals large and small. We are wounded as dreams die and cherished life goals are adjusted to fit reality.

We want our wounds healed, but when we come face to face with the cause of our pain, we avert our eyes and deny what we see. When the prescription for ending our soul’s distress is placed in our hands, we dare not take it to our lips. To be sure, we do not like the darkness which holds our hurts and pains, but we are afraid to let it go, so we go on living with our brokenness, yearning to be whole.

Finally, we want communion with God. The answer to our loneliness and pain is communion with God, and we yearn for it with all our might. But when the moment comes and God is ready to fill us, we shut Him out. When God confronts us with the possibility of giving up whatever it is that is keeping us in darkness, we cling all the more fiercely to it and run fearfully from the light.

When I send my young children to the basement to get something for me, they say they cannot go because they are afraid of the dark. They beg me to leave a light on when they go to sleep. In our corporal lives, we fear darkness and crave light. But in our spiritual lives - in those intensely personal dramas which are played out in the privacy of our hearts and the sanctuary of our souls - our attitudes toward darkness and light are frequently reversed. Our spiritual lives often amount to a reluctant embrace of darkness and a headlong flight from light.

The ancient Greek writer, Euripides, understood this human tragedy when he wrote, "People somehow fend off righteousness" (Hippolytus 93). What a phrase that is! Righteousness seeks us out and we actually fend it off! The Apostle Paul knew this well: "I do not understand my own actions. For I do not do what I want, but I do the very thing I hate" (Romans 7:15). Who among us would deny that Paul is speaking for all of us and not just for himself?

Besides telling us that people flee the light which Christ brings into the world, our text also gives a hint as to why this is so. Notice that after they came and saw the infant Jesus, the wise men returned home to their own country "by another way." They had to make a change and take a route which was less familiar.

Is it really the darkness we love, or is it that we love what is familiar? When the Israelites were in the wilderness after escaping from Egypt, they rebelled against Moses and wanted to return to slavery (Exodus 16). It wasn’t that they loved slavery, for well they remembered how harsh their lives had been in Egypt. But slavery was familiar to them; at least they knew what their life would be like and what would happen day to day. Now that they were out in the wilderness, they had to trust in God for their sustenance, and their future was completely unknown. They wanted to escape from their freedom.

So it is with every torment, every addiction and dependency, every hurt and fear which enslaves our spirits today. How often do we cling to the things which keep us in darkness, thinking we are better off staying on the dead-end path we are accustomed to as opposed to trying a new and unfamiliar road? It takes courage to come home by a different route, and sometimes we prefer to stay with the sadness and darkness we know rather than leap sight unseen into the light of unfamiliar joy.

There once was an impoverished widow who had fallen badly behind on her bills. Her utilities had been cut off and the eviction notice had been received. She waited in fear for the inevitable.

One day, there was a knock on the door and the widow cowered in silence, keeping her doors locked and her curtains drawn. She trembled in terror as she heard the knock again, and then a third time. Finally, she allowed herself a silent sigh of relief as the knocking stopped and the sound of retreating footsteps grew dim.

She had assumed that the person knocking was the sheriff, coming to repossess her belongings and put her on the street. Had she found the courage to answer the door, she would have seen that her pastor was there, not the sheriff. Her pastor had come to tell her that he had raised enough money from her friends to catch up on her rent and pay off all her bills.

In some way, we are all like that frightened widow, cowering inside the dark houses of our private loneliness and pain, unaware that what we fear has actually come near to save us. King Herod’s fierce political resistance to the light is merely a more graphic side of our own personal and spiritual resistance. The great irony of our religious life (if we are honest enough to admit it) is that even as we fear the darkness and praise the coming of God’s light to the world, we spend much of our lives fleeing from the very light we think we are so feverently seeking.

At this very moment even as I speak, winds of pain are blowing through the world, and through our hearts as well. The pain within and the pain without are connected, as wind itself is indivisible. But listen! The One who is our light has come, and now He is knocking at our door. We think about fleeing deeper into the unrewarding comfort of familiar darkness, but He is knocking again. The time has come to arise and open the door, and let His light shine in. Amen.

Pastoral Prayer

Most Holy and Loving God, who saw the thick darkness under which Your children were languishing and did not abandon us there, we thank You for sending Your light in the form of this infant child named Jesus. We thank You that now we may live with supreme confidence and hope, certain beyond a doubt that a light will shine in our lives and in this troubled world which no amount of darkness can overcome. Teach us to seek Your light and not to flee it. Help us overcome our fear that Your light will change us and make us eager for that transformation. Loosen the grip which darkness has upon us, that our deepest yearnings may yet be realized as we walk in communion with our Lord in the light of His love. In Jesus’ name, we pray. Amen.

CSS Publishing Co., Inc., More Urgent Season, A, by Erskine White