Phosphorescence; a Sermon For Dark Times

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Why Bullies Fear the Dark

Isaiah 60:1-6

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

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.

(So much of the meaning in this sermon comes in the way it is preached. If you are able, I’d suggest clicking the above link and taking 10 minutes to listen - the sermon starts at 31:00)

Dark Times

I’m having a hard time making sense of where we are right now as a people.

And I do not know what the future holds.

Or what can possibly illuminate our path forward because it seems pretty dark right now.

So, that’s about all I could think of this week as I studied our reading from Isaiah – “Arise, shine; for your light has come, and the glory of the LORD has risen upon you.”

Isaiah 60 is spoken to a people who have recently returned from Babylonian captivity. People who have been carried off. Flattened. People whose city was reduced to rubble. People whose prayers probably sounded more like exhausted sighs than exultant praise.

And maybe they are having a hard time making sense of where they are as a people.

Perhaps it seems dark and

They do not know what the future holds.

Or what can possibly illuminate the path forward.

Which makes Isaiah’s command feel almost tone deaf doesn’t it?

He says to these people, Arise. Shine.

As if grief responds to commands.

As if it were easy.

As if they themselves had much light left.

So I doubt that Isaiah was telling them to create shininess within themselves as a people. I hope he was just reminding them of their own story. Reminding them that God’s first utterance in scripture is “Let there be light” and that the sun moon and stars of God’s good creation remain even now undimmed.

Maybe Isaiah was also helping them recall the pillar of fire God sent to light the path their ancestors trod out of slavery and away from the clutches of Pharaoh, that insecure tyrant who felt threatened not by an army, but by a baby.

Maybe Isaiah’s audience needed reminding as we do, that those who walk in darkness can still see great light.

Which brings us to 5 days ago. Because this text from Isaiah is the one assigned for January 6th the feast day of Epiphany.

Just as an aside, the church I grew up in did not celebrate religious holidays. Families were free to observe Christmas or Easter at home if they wanted, but only as secular events, since these celebrations were not mentioned in the New testament and therefore were not to be indulged in by the church.

In other words, we were a people who worked very hard to keep Christ out of Christmas.

Which is why I grew up thinking The Twelve Days of Christmas song was maybe about like, the extravagance of an aristocratic family who spoiled their children and were strangely obsessed with birds. I had no idea that Christmas was a season that lasted the 12 days until Epiphany.

As you heard in the Gospel reading last Sunday, the story of Epiphany mirrors that of Exodus – as it also involved a fragile strongman who felt threatened -again - not by an army but this time by like, a toddler and a horoscope.

Herod feared this child for all the wrong reasons. Jesus did not knock Herod off his little throne. History took care of that.

Jesus of Nazareth did not overthrow Rome. He laughed at it. He saw it for what it was: temporary. Fleeting. Harsh and demanding and tyrannical, yes—but temporary.

That is what every Petulant bully cannot abide, by the way. The idea of their own insignificance.

Which means the gospel might not promise us control—it does promise us clarity. Illumination, even.

As you already know, the path the Magi trod toward the Christ child was illuminated by a star. Because, it ends up, that God’s light is always a counter-narrative to Pharaoh’s armies, to Herod’s insecurities, even to our own obsession with winning, and to the countless ways we harm one another while being utterly convinced we are right.

This week I was reminded of how often, when I am up in the mountains, that I reliably have the same thought when looking up at the night sky. Mesmerized by the vast number stars all burning their small announcements into the dark, I always say the same irretrievably stupid thing:

“Wow. There’s so many more stars up here.”

Of course, there are exactly the same number of stars in the sky above Denver as there are in the sky above Mount Evans. But what they call light pollution keeps us enclosed inside our own manufactured brightness.

It robs us of the ability to see in the dark, to look up into the cosmos and feel undone. And like a toddler without object permanence—I assume that if I can’t see it, it must not be there.

But sometimes we need a dark sky to remind us that we are small. That time is deep. That wonder does not need us to manufacture it.

Which is another reason the Epiphany story is one we should not move on from too quickly.

If you remember, the Magi were warned in a dream not to return to Herod. So, Matthew’s Gospel tells us… they left by another road. Which means the Epiphany story does not end with kneeling in worship. It ends, as Clover mentioned last week, with resistance.

I kept thinking this week about that road the Magi took. A road taken in defiance of a paranoid ruler…and how it must have been lit by something, but this time it wasn’t the star. And I couldn’t get this out of my head which is why rather than reading Bible commentaries, I read as much as I could this week about phosphorescence.

Phosphorescence in case like me, you forgot, works like this: the energy goes in quietly. The transformation happens unseen. And only later—often much later—does the light begin to show, but it’s only visible in the dark. Which is frustrating, frankly, for those of us who prefer immediate results or visible proof.

I think maybe The Magi carried the light of Christ within them because they had been close enough for it to soak in. And that is what lit their path.

Phosphorescence.

Maybe this is how a life of faith actually works.

We tend to think of faith as something we work for. A virtue we strive to inhabit. A spiritual New Year’s resolution we keep.

We in the West are very determined people. We set a goal, determine the steps, take action, work hard, and achieve the thing. And look—that works great if you’re training for a 10K or trying to get your real estate license.

But the life of faith operates within a different order of reality. You do not, in fact have to create, muster, manufacture, or maintain your own light. I promise you have been absorbing enough of it for long enough to shine with it.

You have been absorbing God’s light all along—even when you don’t believe it, even when you aren’t paying attention, even when you are phoning it in, even when you are pious as all get out.

Because that is just what gently happens when we get to do things like baptize babies while renouncing evil in the process. This is what quietly happens when we light candles and say prayers, and read Scripture aloud and sing hymns... even when we don’t really “feel it”.

So if you too don’t feel particularly radient right now—if it feels like Isaiah describes, that darkness covers the earth and thick darkness the peoples—and you are convinced you cannot possibly rub two sticks together to somehow create a spark, just know this:

Maybe you don’t have to. In fact, I wonder if manufacturing our own brightness can obscure a gentler light that God has provided for the path ahead.

And so when things get dark—and they will—the light of God’s word, shines enough to be a lamp unto our feet. Stumbling, maybe. Dancing, sometimes.
But always the next step is lit. Not because you have made yourself dazzling.

But because the Light has already found you.

And no. I still do not know what the future holds.

All I know is that in Christ, in prayer, in word, in sacrament, we have quietly, unsuspectingly been absorbing everything we need to phosphorescently light the path before us wherever that leads.

Because the light of Christ does not vanish when the world goes dark.

It lingers.

It lingers in those of us who have sat in the presence of forgiveness—and thought nothing was happening.

It lingers in the children in these pews who seem distracted by coloring, but who are absorbing Scripture without realizing it.

It lingers in all who have heard that a light shines in the darkness and the darkness has not overcome it.

And then one day—
when the power fails,
when the star disappears,
when certainty collapses—

there you are.

Glowing just a bit.

Not because you are shining with your own goodness or faith. But because you were once close enough to the Light of the world that it soaked into you. And that kind of light has a way of leading people by another road.