O God, manifest in us the strength, the wisdom and the courage to seek always and everywhere after truth, come when it may, and cost what it will.

Today is the day in the church liturgical calendar called “The Baptism of our Lord.” In the early church, the Feast of the Baptism of Our Lord was far more important a celebration than the Feast of the Birth of Our Lord (which we call Christmas). Traditionally, Christians celebrated three feasts of light: Epiphany, which was the story of people wise enough to seek after and find Jesus and then go home by another way; The Baptism of Our Lord by the incredulous John at the River Jordan; and the Wedding Feast at Cana where the story goes that Jesus brightened up a very gloomy situation by changing water into some really good wine. These feasts of light were understood to illuminate the nature of God. They were manifestations or revelations initiated by God and noticed by people. These three feasts demonstrated to Christians who observed them, not only what God is like, but also Who (God) wishes us to be in community – in relationship to one another.

Once every three years, the Gospel of Matthew account of Jesus’ baptism gets paired with Isaiah 42:1-9, which has the unfortunate effect of reinforcing the idea that Jesus was the servant Isaiah was writing about. I read a Christian interpretation just the other day that regrettably suggested that Isaiah is commentary on Jesus’ baptism, when it is just the opposite. Matthew is commentary on Isaiah. Five to six hundred years before Jesus, was Isaiah predicting Jesus’ life and ministry? Did Isaiah have Jesus in mind? Of course not! Did Jesus’ followers in Matthew’s community have Isaiah in mind when they witnessed Jesus’ life and ministry? Absolutely. Isaiah scholar Walter Brueggemann writes: “It is legitimate to see how the book of Isaiah fed, nurtured, and evoked Christian imagination with reference to Jesus. But that is very different from any claim that the book of Isaiah predicts or specifically anticipates Jesus…[That] is a distortion of the book [of Isaiah].”[1]

Isaiah was calling the people of God – the people of the Covenant, the people of Love – to serve as an example of truth, gentleness, compassion, right-relationship, fidelity, honor, sound judgment with regard to economic and social justice, to a world that desperately needed them. Jesus was calling for the same. That’s not a coincidence – that is the arc of the whole scriptural narrative for peoples of the Book: Jews, Christians, and Muslims. I love that Craig Smith and John Harbison’s notes for today’s cantata liken the opening chorus, Liebster Immanuel, to the designs on the walls of Alhambra in Grenada, Spain, where “the name of God [is] woven into a constant, all-over design, so omni-present that it forms, along with the constantly circling melodic line, a tapestry without foreground and background.”[2]

Since next week, we will hear the Gospel of John’s account of the baptism of Jesus and we will celebrate an actual baptism, this week, I want to spend my sermon time addressing our scripture lesson from Isaiah. This passage from Isaiah is thought to be from around 540 BCE when the Persian Empire under the leadership of King Cyrus, was growing and displacing the oppressive and despised Babylonian domination of the Hebrew people that had lasted more than 150 years. The Babylonian Empire had been exploitative of labor and the environment. Corruption and greed, and utter disregard for human dignity defined Babylon, according to our scriptures. Babylon became a code word for a government completely alienated from the compassion and mercy of the Holy One.

King Cyrus of Persia famously freed slaves, emptied prisons, and championed human rights. King Cyrus protected freedom of expression, religious diversity, and safeguarded the rights of people in the Persian Empire to speak their own languages and practice their own cultural traditions. I read a report yesterday that at an “Evangelicals for Trump” rally in Florida, a pastor laid hands on the president and prayed that the president would fulfill his role as a “new King Cyrus of Persia.”[3] I don’t know if the pastor was intentionally being subversive and ironic. I kind of doubt it, but the Lord works in mysterious ways. So I share that prayer and I hope you will join me. (On the other hand, I’m not naïve, and I do understand the dangerous agenda of the evangelists in the extreme white calling for “rebuilding Jerusalem,” which is be code for provoking the final destruction of the world. I’m not on board with that at all, and I can’t call it Christian.)

This portion of Isaiah is about the restoration of what had been lost during the 150+ years of Babylonian Exile, namely social, economic and religious well-being. Just prior to chapter 42, the voice of the Holy One says, “when the poor and needy seek water, and there is none, and their tongue is parched with thirst, I the LORD will answer them, I the God of Israel will not forsake them. I will open rivers…and fountains…I will make the wilderness a pool of water and the dry land springs of water, I will put in the wilderness the cedar, the acacia, the myrtle, and the olive…so that all may see and know, all may consider and understand that the hand of the Lord has done this.” This is new growth being promised, not a propping up of the dead wood of chopped trees! As Bishop Gates said last week in his sermon, restoration in the Bible is never about going back to some good old days – it’s about going home by another way. The writer of Second Isaiah reveals the voice of God calling the people to remember just who and Whose they are: people given breath by God; people worthy of respect; people taken by the hand by God; and people appointed by God to be a light for others – to shine and to show the goodness of living in Love.

That all sounds good until you think about what kind of shape these people were in – they had been exiled into slavery. They had been stripped of their dignity. They are people who had not been treated as if they were worthy of respect and acceptance. They had not been treated as if their true nature was fundamentally good and beautiful and dignified. They were exhausted and they were despairing and demoralized. The amazing thing is that God was telling them that God needed them to heal the world! God needed them to open eyes, to rescue prisoners from confinement, and deliver those who sit in dungeons of debt and despair, bereft of resources, and to stand with those who are accused. The servant being described here in this first of four servant songs is not a person, but a people, being called to practice vulnerability and be attentive [and useful] to those who are weak[4], not stirring fear, but sharing well-being, shalom, peace, asalaam.

It strikes me that as a people, a community, this parish is being called to shine a light and show the loving kindness of the Holy One working in and among people who are most vulnerable, to inspire others to do the same. What happens here at Emmanuel Church in the midst of suffering and healing, of birth and death, at its core we know, cannot be defined in words or captured in a report (or a sermon) no matter how precise our language. What happens here is Love, the great I AM, who will not yield glory to another – not to science or technology or money or education or military might or even religious practice when we make them into idols. And life lived in Love, according to Isaiah, is “dynamic, surprising, and costly”[5] and I’d add messy.

 I don’t often give homework in my sermons, but I have two homework assignments for you this week. Learn about the life and loves of Dr. Margaret Morgan Lawrence, in whose blessed memory our cantata is dedicated. Her entire life was dedicated to living and loving, healing and advocating for those who were the most vulnerable (including her own self), blessing those with whom she came into contact, not by pronouncing, but by enacting kindness, respect, compassion and mercy. Even if you already knew her well, find out what more you can learn from her this week about ferocious persistence and loving-kindness. 

Second, go see Just Mercy, a recently released movie that is the true story of a part of the life and work of Bryan Stevenson, co-founder of the Equal Justice Initiative in Montgomery, Alabama.[6] It’s a non-profit that confronts and dismantles racial and economic inequalities in the criminal justice system in the United States. Archbishop Desmond Tutu has named Stevenson, “America’s Nelson Mandela.” Find out what you can learn from him this week about liberating people from the lie that their lives don’t matter.[7]

Learn from both Dr. Margaret Lawrence and Bryan Stevenson, about the power of insisting on the dignity of the most vulnerable, and about finding allies one or two at a time to build a beloved community. Stevenson famously asserts that “the opposite of poverty is not wealth. The opposite of poverty is justice.” I know that Dr. Lawrence would agree whole-heartedly. Epiphany is a season to celebrate manifestations, realizations, indications and expressions of the Compassionate and Merciful One in our midst. Let’s shine in a way that our lives may be for others a manifestation, a realization, an indication, and an expression of the Compassionate and Merciful One in our midst: a light to the world, in the name of Jesus the baptized, the anointed, the beloved child of God.