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Morning Devotion for the Season of Epiphany
January 10, 2024
Invitatory
Because in the mystery of the Word made flesh, thou hast caused a new light to shine in our hearts, to give the knowledge of thy glory in the face of thy Son Jesus Christ our Lord.
Glory to the Father, and to the Son: and to the Holy Spirit: as it was in the beginning, is now, and will be for ever. Amen.
Reading from the Book of Isaiah 9:2-7
The people who walked in darkness have seen a great light; those who lived in a land of deep darkness—on them light has shined. You have multiplied the nation, you have increased its joy; they rejoice before you as with joy at the harvest, as people exult when dividing plunder. For the yoke of their burden, and the bar across their shoulders, the rod of their oppressor, you have broken as on the day of Midian. For all the boots of the tramping warriors and all the garments rolled in blood shall be burned as fuel for the fire. For a child has been born for us, a son given to us; authority rests upon his shoulders; and he is named Wonderful Counsellor, Mighty God, Everlasting Father, Prince of Peace. His authority shall grow continually, and there shall be endless peace for the throne of David and his kingdom. He will establish and uphold it with justice and with righteousness from this time onwards and for evermore. The zeal of the Lord of hosts will do this.
Meditation-Rebecca Northington
For the first three decades or so of my life these words were very familiar, but I couldn’t really tell you why this Old Testament passage was valuable paired with the birth of Jesus. Prophets and prophecy probably rang a bell, and I understood that the first century jews were waiting for a savior to spring them from brutal occupation and restore the chosen people to Israel completely. I didn’t appreciate that Isaiah was speaking to exiled Jews in the 5th and 6th centuries BCE, marking the beginning of a diaspora people, persecuted and seeking religious freedom, rooted out from their own land. Isaiah spoke to them of hope, promise and a new world where peace would overwhelm violence. Warriors replaced by a gentle loving baby.
We read these same words every year as we remember Luke’s account of the virgin birth, “Be not afraid; for behold, I bring you good news of a great joy which will come to all the people; for to you is born this day in the city of David a Savior, who is Christ the Lord.”
I often say to the youth group kids that the Bible is God revealing Godself to us, yes, but also humans revealing their humanity to us, century after century, millenia after millenia. We read about violence, jealousy, love, and compassion; stories that are timeless in their revelation of our human nature. Isaiah wrote several hundred years before Christ. We read these passages two thousand years and more after Christ. Yet, beyond the changes in technology, geography and human census, we as humans are very much the same. Our primal human characteristics go unchanged. We love, we hate, we covet, we struggle with anger, fear, insecurity, doubt, hope and faith, just as the exiled jews in 600 BCE, and those in occupation in the 1st century. What I have come to understand is that scripture is always relevant, and revelatory, if we are paying attention, year after year, century after century, millenia after millenia.
It is not just charming tradition that impels us to read these passages every Christmas. We revisit these stories to remember, because we humans have collective amnesia and forget. We forget who Jesus is, and what riddles he came to answer. We forget that his birth, life, and death represent more than a story. They demand a change in us. As the Bishop said at confirmation this past Sunday, the story of Jesus is disruptive, and asks us to be disruptors. We forget that we are all diaspora people, especially here in America(if we are not native to this land), and that we all participate in the primal human failings that result in tribal ‘us against them’, good versus evil, right versus wrong thinking. Jesus was a king, the Messiah, who was born in poverty. He was a jew, a people of the law, who did not always follow the law. He was unorthodox, counter cultural: disruptive. His story speaks today, as it did in Isaiah’s time, to a people living in darkness, hourly distracted by false idols and susceptible to corruptible emotions and sensations. A people who need to be reminded of Christ’s great light, and the unity that we are called to pursue as a result of his coming to us, the Word made flesh.
Epiphany Collect
O God, by the leading of a star you manifested your only Son to the Peoples of the earth: Lead us, who know you now by faith, to your presence, where we may see your glory face to face; through Jesus Christ our Lord, who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, now and for ever. Amen.
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