Friends
Peace be with you.
When I was a kid, my family would often go camping at Twin Acres Campground close to Colo, Iowa. I only bring up the name of it on the off chance that some of you also camped there and had a similar experience. The owner at the time, a man named Earl, would hook up his tractor to a hay rack and, twice on both Friday and Saturday nights, take people around the the campground and the adjoining farm that he owned. The whole thing took about an hour and was very slow and, undoubtedly, too dangerous for today’s insurance folks. But, one of our favorite things to do was to ride the hay rack out to the field Earl owned, which always seemed be planted with corn, and jump off the back when we were in the deepest part of the field. It’d be around dusk and we’d start playing hide and seek for as long as we could. It got more and more exciting and challenging because there were no lights in the field aside from an occasional full moon. At some point, we’d realize it was getting too dark and we’d have to walk back but, in the darkness, we didn’t always know how to get back to where we came from. I remember a few times of having to look intently for the lights of the campers and being relieved when we reached our parents campers and the light and warmth of their campfire.
Today is Epiphany and our readings are focusing us on light. In the first reading, Isaiah is speaking to a people who have recently returned from exile in Babylon to a completely destroyed city of Jerusalem and its center of worship, the Temple. There is little to celebrate, other than their freedom. Yet, God says to them that their light has come. That the light of their decimated city will shine bright and that the other powerful cities will be thrown into darkness, the darkness of cities that have been plundered and destroyed. It will be a brightness that attracts the sons who have been leery about returning home and lead to a kind of hopefulness that will encourage people to start having children again. And, it will be a type of light that encourages the people from Sheba and Seba, the chief competitors to Jerusalem, to give them money and animals.
From a Christian perspective, we see in this a kind of foreshadowing of the events that happened at Epiphany when these visitors from the East, look into the sky, see a star there, and interpret from it the appearance of the King of the Jews. What’s amazing, however, is that, when the Magi follow the star to Jerusalem to meet the King, King Herod tells them that he is actually in a backwater little town called Bethlehem. When I studied in Jerusalem, I walked a couple of times from Jerusalem to Bethlehem and back. It’s relatively short but, even today, the difference is striking. Aside from the Basilica of the Nativity, there is nothing in Bethlehem of historical significance. Yet, the star shines on O Little Town of Bethlehem and illuminates it for the Magi. Please notice, by the way, that the star didn’t lead them to Jerusalem. It just rose and the Magi noticed it so they went where they figured the king of the Jews would be, in the capital city of Jerusalem. Yet, it did guide them from Jerusalem to Bethlehem. It’s like the star knew these seers from the East would get the directions wrong if it didn’t walk them directly to Bethlehem. In so doing, however, it’s fulfilling the promise God made through Isaiah to his people so many years before.
We are, therefore, called to be people who follow the light in search of the King of the Jews. Yet, how often do we, instead, find ourselves more fascinated with darkness? How often do we wish something bad “karma” would happen to someone who is behaving badly instead of praying for or encouraging them to do what is right? How often do we justify our own bad actions by saying they aren’t as bad as other people’s or that we deserve to do them because we have had a hard day or because we work so hard? How often do we look at someone who is poor or hungry or stranded by the side of the road and assume that they don’t want our help? Now is the time to stop being in the darkness of our cornfields and, instead, look up to see where the light is so we can search it out.
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