Isaiah 60;1-6--Then Shines Forth The Darkness

"Arise, shine; for your light has come, and the glory of the Lord has risen upon you. 2 For darkness shall cover the earth, and thick darkness the peoples; but the Lord will arise upon you, and his glory will appear over you. 3 Nations shall come to your light, and kings to the brightness of your dawn. 4 Lift up your eyes and look around; they all gather together, they come to you; your sons shall come from far away, and your daughters shall be carried on their nurses’ arms. 5 Then you shall see and be radiant; your heart shall thrill and rejoice, because the abundance of the sea shall be brought to you, the wealth of the nations shall come to you. 6 A multitude of camels shall cover you, the young camels of Midian and Ephah; all those from Sheba shall come. They shall bring gold and frankincense, and shall proclaim the praise of the Lord."

Introduction

Last night, before I opened the Scripture for my study and writing, I was drifting away in a sort of ethereal realm of thought, listening to old tunes from Gilbert & Sullivan's HMS Pinafore, singing along to "I am the Very Model of a Modern Major General," delighting in the unreality of it all. I was, in short, trying to remove myself from the "realities" of day-to-day life. It wasn't that I wanted to "escape" life completely; I simply wanted a moment's reverie where I could go into the silly, and sometimes juvenile, worlds to which we all repair at various times.

I knew, however, that I would be coming to "light" in the morning, because I knew this passage, I knew Epiphany was on the way and, most of all, I had already exposited Matt. 2:1-12, the great passage of the magi's visit to the Christ child. I was "psyched" for light, and I was going to hit, if not a home run, then at least a double or triple by speaking about light. I already had my three points tentatively roughed out: (1) God's light comes; (2) Others are attracted to the light, even our children; (3) All rejoice. It is one of Isaiah's familiar passages of brimming hope, and I was going to speak on the lights in our life that bring hope in the world's darkness.

But then, I arose this morning with the light, and I felt only darkness. Why? Benazir Bhutto had been assassinated in Pakistan [The Dec. 28 news story out of Pakistan, however, is that she wasn't shot, but that she fractured her skull when she hit it against a lever inside of the SUV sunroof as she hastily tried to lower herself in the car. Who really knows?] In a crazy sort of way, I felt connected to her, since it was her talk at Willamette University (Salem, OR) in Feb. 2004 that launched my web site. Or, to put it differently, it was her talk that got me to thinking that I had a lot to say in describing, probing, criticizing, improving upon and initiating thought in a "mini-essay" form. At that time, I predicted that even though she was in exile in London and that conservative forces had taken over her country, the world had not heard the last of her. Indeed, sensing the vulnerability of the General who had a hand in her exile, Pervez Musharraf, she returned to Pakistan in October 2007, ready to forge a coalition with him to stamp out the "terrorists" who were also the enemies of the Bush Administration. It seemed a bit too good to be true, that old enemies could bury their hatchet, that they could galvanize sections of the people which had long distrusted each other, that they could identify the nameless and faceless "terrorists," that they could control the countryside where the "terrorists" resided and, finally, that they could deliver a blow to them that would restore some democracy to Pakistan. And, indeed, I guess it was too good to be true. She, like her father, was killed in trying to serve the people she loved.

One could make the point that she was a polarizing figure, and indeed she was. She was a confident, western-educated woman in a Muslim country, one whose main appeal was in vast urban areas of the country where her youthful vigor, beauty and ability to trigger people's memories of her father generated a groundswell of support. Yet, as is often the case in life, the source of her strength was also the source of vulnerability. She lived for the adulation of the people, and it was the urgent cries of her supporters yesterday that urged her to stick her head out of the vehicle in which she was traveling so that she could bask in the praise of "her people." But, there was also a suicide bomber in the crowd, who killed her while she was thus exposed. And so she, a person that many in the west revered, and who was considered one of the best hopes for bringing democracy, and a strong opposition to the Muslim fundamentalists, to that country is now dead.

Thinking Further on Light and Darkness

So, what do you do if you are a preacher, the topic of the day is "light," and the Scriptures point you to the great drawing power of the child in Bethlehem, yet your world and what you feel is the world around you has been plunged into darkness by the news? Well, I suppose you can do several things. One option would be to "ignore" the news, and just continue. After all, the Word of the Lord stands forever, the light of Christ beckons to the world even in its darkest days. Thus, redouble our preaching about light. Unfailing optimism may be the means for events actually getting better. Optimism can be contagious. If that is the way you want to go, my three points breifly mentioned above would be a good way to go. Light dawns in darkness. God is light.

Or, you could use the events of the day to reflect on geo-political realities. Using Reinhold Niebuhr as your guide, you could speak of the vanity of human pretensions, the sin which clings to us all, but the need to have a sort of "Christian realism" in formulating foreign policy goals. If this was your interest, and I would lean this way, I would contrast two models of looking at our foreign policy future with respect to the "War on Terrorism." Thus, I would use Bhutto's death as an occasion to help us think about foreign policy options. One option is to cling to a binary view of the world, which seemed to work for us in the Cold War, by replacing the Communist Soviet Union in our minds with the faceless "Terrorists," whom we think are mostly from the Arab world. If this is the way we conceptualize the world, we need to gear up our military and ideological forces/resources for a bruising and long-lasting battle with these forces. An alterative way of looking at the is new post-9/11 reality is to reinforce multi-laterialism, to encourage voices of Arab moderation, to teach and try to appreciate the culture of the Arab world and to understand Islam, and to reach out in ways that try not to describe the world in polar opposite terms.

Because America has burnished its self-image on what might be called the "hero" myth, the story of America as savior, as heroic intervenor to save peoples all over the world, the first of the two will be much more "natural" to preach and affirm. We rarely excoriate people in our day for being too conservative. But I am of the tempermant in these days that flees and fears ideological explanations of things. Why? Because ideology leads to actions that tend to defined whole swaths of people into categories we have neatly constructed for them, generally to their detriment. It is an easy way to "categorize" the world, but it lacks the nuance, the patience and insight that is the fruit of wisdom.

Isaiah in All This

And so we return to the text for the morning. Those who are preachers/teachers of the Scripture should begin and end with the text. That, to me, is the best doctrine of Scripture that I can muster. The author is so confident of light's dawn, but there is one word that helps me out in the middle of my darkness. It is in v. 2. Literally, the verse runs:

"For, behold, the darkness shall cover the earth and the deep darkness the people..."

We always look at this passage as a promise of light and the glory of the things coming from light, but the only verb used in a future tense in the first 1 1/2 verses relates to darkness. The light has already come. Thus arise. But, darkness will come. Isn't that strange? Why do we see this passage always as a passage of hope when the darkness is something that "shall" cover the earth? Maybe the tenses of the verbs give us an insight into how to read the text in the light of today's bad news. Light has dawned for us; people rush to the light, but darkness will come. And so it has. The light has dawned, but darkness is there in its midst. Both are irreversibly true. I know it, because I feel so deeply both light and darkness in my soul today.

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