Preached on the Third Sunday After Epiphany, January 25, 2026, to First Presbyterian Church of Rolla. We worshipped on Zoom due to inclement weather. Based on Isaiah 9:1-7.
It has been a little while, so let me remind you that I’m planning to march through the Old Testament lessons this year. I was talking to a friend recently, and she was of the opinion that we should just set the Hebrew Bible aside. I believe that there is good news throughout the scriptures if they are read through the right lenses. In Better Ways to Read the Bible, Zach Lambert describes four helpful lenses: the Jesus lens (that the whole Bible points to Jesus), the flourishing lens (that the whole Bible is about fostering universal human flourishing), the fruitfulness lens (that the right interpretation will yield fruits of the Spirit), and the context lens (that we need to consider the whole story arc, not just a verse).
So let’s think about the context of today’s passage. Isaiah was a prophet who was active during the 8th century BCE, a time when Assyria was on the warpath. Assyria conquered the Northern Kingdom, Israel, as well as parts of the Southern Kingdom, Judah. They laid siege to Jerusalem but fell short of conquest. Still, they exiled the ten northern tribes.
The darkness to which Isaiah refers is two-fold: the violent threat of the invading Assyrians, and the internal rot of Judah and Israel. That rot included oppressing the poor, failing to support the widows and orphans, and failing to welcome the stranger and immigrant. Truthfully, that rot is pervasive in every generation of every human society. Over time, the rich and powerful consolidate their positions by oppressing the poor and weak. Eventually, the society collapses, only to be replaced by a new regime with different rich and powerful rulers. That happened to Israel, to Judah, to Assyria, to Babylon, to the Seleucid Empire, to Rome, and on down the ages to the Germans and the Soviet Union. It is the story of the human condition.
It is important to remember that at the time of the Bible’s composition, its authors were generally writing from the margins of society. For the last 1500 years, the Church in its many forms has ruled over Christendom. That has skewed our ability to interpret the Bible’s message as it was originally intended. If you are in power, the logical aim of spreading God’s love is reconciliation between adversaries or with those you are oppressing.
But to the original recipients of Isaiah’s prophecies, reconciliation was the furthest thing from their minds. They wanted revolution. They were people with no power, no freedom, no agency. Their only hope was for God to rescue them. They needed a mighty warrior to free them, to break the yoke of their oppression.
And so, Isaiah promises that the people will be freed from tyranny by a Wonderful Counselor, the Prince of Peace. This prophecy was fulfilled in Jesus Christ, our Lord and Savior. Yet it was not fulfilled in the way we would expect. Isaiah implied that the Messiah would be a mighty warrior, but he also says that war will be no more. One possibility is that ALL enemies will be vanquished. I suppose all things are possible to God, but 100% victory over our enemies seems like too much to ask.
No, I think that Jesus Christ delivers victory not by vanquishing our enemies, but by destroying the very category of “enemy.” That is, through Christ, all people, all things, all Creation will be reconciled to God. In that reconciliation, enmity will cease, not because our opponents have been defeated but because they will be turned into our friends, our fellow members of Christ’s family.
For what does war really accomplish? The victory achieved by the Allies in World War I sowed the seeds of the conflict that led to World War II. And the victory achieved in World War II set up the conditions of the Cold War. Now we can see that the victory over the Soviet Union set up the conditions that led to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. Human attempts at forging a lasting peace through military might always result in another violent conflict.
But peace forged by the love of God poured out upon us all has the potential to truly last. That is the victory promised through Christ. Too many Christians think their job is to vanquish God’s enemies, as if God were too weak to do it. No, our job is to allow God’s love to overcome conflict and strife, and therefore turn enemies into friends.
“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.”
That’s how our NRSV Bible translates Isaiah’s words. But a better rendering is:
The people walking in darkness
see a bright light;[g]
light shines
on those who live in a land of deep darkness.
Hear the difference? Verb tenses. The NRSV translation makes sense: people walked in darkness in the past, and then a light came and shined upon them, so they were no longer in darkness. But the Hebrew verb tenses say something else altogether. They say that people are still walking in darkness even though light is shining on them. The light is there, always and forever. Yet we do not have eyes to see it. We prefer the darkness to hide our evil deeds, or we mourn in the darkness of the world’s brokenness and refuse to see God’s goodness shine upon us.
Yet God’s light has been shining upon us all since the beginning.
In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. 2 He was in the beginning with God. 3 All things came into being through him, and without him not one thing came into being. What has come into being 4 in him was life,[a] and the life was the light of all people. 5 The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness did not overtake it.
From the very beginning, Christ has been the light shining in the darkness. Christ has always been the way, the life, and the truth. All things have their being in Christ, the Word, the divine ordering principle of all Creation. We just fail to see it. We fail to see the light.
More than that, we fail to be the light. We are Christ’s body. We are all one in Christ, united through baptism and nourished through communion. We are all one in the Spirit, our Advocate who strengthens and unites us. Christ is the light of the world, and we are in Christ, and so we too are light to the world.
That is our fundamental calling: to build God’s kingdom by being light to the world. But how? What does it mean to “be light”?
Well, some people say it’s by following all the rules. Rules, rules, rules. Do this, don’t do that. But N.T. Wright wrote, “The New Testament’s vision of Christian behavior has to do, not with struggling to keep a bunch of ancient and apparently arbitrary rules, nor with ‘going with the flow’ or ‘doing what comes naturally’, but with the learning of the language, in the present, which will equip us to speak it fluently in God’s new world.”
We are called to learn the language of God’s love, of God’s reconciliation, of all that fosters human flourishing. We are called to speak the truth in love. We are called to lift up the lowly, to flip tables, to proclaim release to the captives and recovery of sight to the blind, to set free those who are oppressed, to feed the hungry, to welcome the stranger, to clothe the naked, and to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor. We are called to transform the world so that it progressively approaches God’s kingdom.
But you know that already. This is not the first time I’ve spoken about universal human flourishing, nor will it be the last, not until we reach that glorious state. And I’m not the only preacher proclaiming the year of the Lord’s favor and imploring their congregation to be light to the world. So why do we see so much darkness?
I subscribe to a newsletter called “Stoic Wisdoms” with an anonymous author. In a recent article, they wrote,
There’s a particular kind of suffering that comes from knowing exactly what needs to be done and not doing it.
Not the suffering of ignorance, where the path forward is unclear. Not the suffering of impossibility, where circumstances prevent action. But the suffering of standing at the threshold of change, seeing clearly what lies on the other side, understanding precisely what’s required to cross over, and choosing to remain where you are.
… The knowledge is available, but the cost of acting on it feels too high.
This is the real barrier.
Not lack of knowledge, but unwillingness to pay the price that acting on knowledge demands.
… [T]he immediate cost of [changing] … outweighs the projected benefit of having [changed] ….
This calculation might be wrong. Often is wrong. But it’s not irrational. It’s the product of human minds that weight immediate costs more heavily than delayed benefits, that fear loss more than they value gain, that prefer certainty even when certainty means staying in bad situations.
… But timing is never right. Circumstances rarely change on their own. The gap between knowing and acting doesn’t close through waiting. It closes through the decision to act despite the prohibitive feeling of the immediate cost.
… What changes the calculation is changing the framework within which costs and benefits are evaluated. Instead of comparing immediate cost to delayed benefit, comparing immediate cost to continued cost of inaction. Instead of weighing the discomfort of change against the comfort of stability, weighing the discomfort of change against the growing discomfort of maintaining the status quo.
When the weight of unlived knowledge becomes heavier than the cost of acting on it, action becomes not just possible but necessary. Not because willpower increased, but because the calculation shifted. The question changes from “Can I tolerate the cost of acting?” to “Can I continue tolerating the cost of not acting?”
So that’s the question I put to you today. You know what you should do, as an individual, as a part of this church, or as a part of an organization. You know how to be light to the world, yet you don’t. Can you continue tolerating the cost of not acting?
This isn’t about setting goals. I know that this is the time of year when people have mostly abandoned their New Year’s resolutions. Those almost always fail. James Clear wrote, “You don’t rise to the level of your goals. You fall to the level of your systems.” Resolutions fail because they propose a goal or a solution without providing a system that would get you from here to there. But Scott D. Clary wrote, “You don’t rise to the level of your goals. You fall to the level of your identity.” A good system imbues you with an identity that aligns with your goal.
I set a goal of running a half-marathon on February 21. The system that I set up to get there is a training plan with my Fitbit that will build the stamina and speed I need to complete it. But more importantly, the identity I have is that I’m a distance runner. That identity gets me out on the road to train when the temperature is in the teens or even single digits.
We each have a collection of identities. I’m a runner, a teacher, a mentor, an engineer, and more. You could probably make a list that would be mostly different from mine. But we all share one identity: WE ARE THE LIGHT OF THE WORLD. We are Christ’s body. We are united by the power of the Holy Spirit so that we can be light to the world.
I implore you to embrace that identity and what it means to you. Then once you know what to do, think about the cost of the status quo, how much it is costing you to avoid the claim God has on your life. Ask yourself, What can I do to fulfill my calling, and how much is my inaction weighing on my soul? Then take a step into the unknown, confident that Christ will be walking with you and showing you the way. May God bless your journey. Amen.
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