Sermon: Arise and Shine

 

Text: Arise, shine; for your light has come, and the glory of the LORD has risen upon you.

Isaiah 60.1

Was it Billy Cotton's Band Show, back in the 1950s, that started with the said bandleader appearing on the screen and shouting, Wakey! Wakey! I know I came across the same expression later on, on a school Christian Union House Party: there was a member of staff who took it upon himself to wander around the dormitories first thing in the morning chanting, Wakey, wakey! Rise and shine! You've 'ad your sleep; I've 'ad mine! You can go off people, even Christians.

The word epiphany has to do with light being shed upon a surface or a point in such a way as to make it visible. The one who is 'lit up' is to 'arise and shine'. First of all that is Christ himself, who in his incarnation is alight with the glory of his Godhead.

But the God who is Father of Jesus Christ does not hog the lime-light. Indeed, his light is shared with all who will share it. The light of Christ is catching. And we recall in this evening's Gospel those wise men who shine in their coming to see the infant Christ, who shine in their presence with the infant Christ, and who shine in their departure from the infant Christ.

They shine in their coming because, wise as they are, having studied their books and made their calculations, they take it upon themselves to scan the skies, and so embrace the empirical, and to look for a one born to be king, and so embrace the personal.

They shine in their being with him because, once there, they kneel down and pay him homage and offer him gifts, valuable gifts, commodities which retain value in troublesome times: gold and perfumes. Theirs was no stinting nor useless offering.

And they shine in their departure from him, because, once having seen this King of kings, they do not waste their time on any other little king, but ignore Herod's command and go home a different way.

Arise, shine; for your light has come, and the glory of the LORD has risen upon you. Those wise men arose from their books and shone in their coming, in their presence and in their departure.

Isaiah 60 sits more or less in the middle of the third section of Isaiah's prophecies, and the chapter sums up the message of that section: Look up! Be cheerful! Get up! Shine! Great things are happening! Be ready for them! Celebrate them! Share in them! The prophecy dates from soon after the return of Israel from Exile in Babylon, when there still exists the hope that 'things can only get better'.

These few chapters, unlike other passages concerning God's showing himself in prophetic literature, have no reference to warfare, and no great demonstrations of natural phenomena. All that is to happen is that God is to reveal himself miraculously in light, and he will share that light with his people. This represents some heightening, some spiritualizing, of other such traditions and texts; there is a shift here from the events of history to the supernatural, for even animals - camels, flocks and rams - will come to Jerusalem of their own accord.

You might detect here a note, if not of desperation, then at least of suspicion. You see, things actually had not quite turned out as planned; there was still more to be hoped for. The people had returned, but their God had not returned with them. The prophecy was uncertain, and there is present here an element of whistling in the dark.

Arise, shine; for your light has come, and the glory of the LORD has risen upon you.

What is it from which the people must arise? What is to be the nature of their shining? Must they get up off their backs or their backsides and arise from their beds? Wakey, wakey! Rise and shine! You've 'ad your sleep; I've 'ad mine! Or is their malaise something deeper? Are there echoes here of that call in Ephesians 5,

Sleeper, awake! Rise from the dead,
and Christ will shine on you?

T.S. Eliot raises the question of death in his poem, Journey of the Magi, with his three trees on a low sky
And he goes on:

... but set down This set down
This: were we led that way for Birth or Death? There was a Birth, certainly,
We had evidence and no doubt. I had seen birth and death, But had thought they were different; this Birth was
Hard and bitter agony for us, like Death, our death.

This Christmas we have seen death on a massive scale. How shall we arise from that? What will it mean to shine? Where is the glory of the Lord? And how is it risen upon us? We too live in troublesome times. Eliot's Magus may confess, I should be glad of another death? But we have seen enough.

Unless. Unless that other death could be a death to self-serving, a death to injustice, a death to death itself. And that is the possibility which the light of Christ holds out to the world.

Three hundred and eighty two years ago, on Christmas Day 1622, Lancelot Andrewes preached at Whitehall Palace the sermon that inspired Eliot's poem. He even admits that his text - Matthew 2.1,2 - is a little early for Christmas Day, because it would better suit the Epiphany. Andrewes suggests that we can worship God in three ways. First, with the soul he has inspired; second, with the body he has ordained for us; and third with the worldly goods he has vouchsafed to bless us with. And we to worship him with all, seeing there is but one reason for all.

If he breathed into us our souls but framed not our body, but some other did that, neither bow your knee nor uncover your head, but keep on your hats, and sit even as you do hardly. But if He hath framed that body of yours and every member of it, let Him have the honour both of head and knee, and every member else. Again, if it be not He That gave us our worldly goods but somebody else: what He gave not, that withhold from Him and spare not. But if all come from Him, all to return to Him. If He send all, to be worshipped with all. And this in good sooth is but rationabile obsequium [reasonable service], as the Apostle calleth it. No more than reason would, we should worship Him with all.

Wakey! Wakey! Arise, shine; for your light has come, and the glory of the LORD has risen upon you.