Isaiah 60:1-1

The sunrise that sticks with me was a trip across the Grand Canyon that started at 3:30 in the morning. We were at the bottom of the world’s biggest hole when the sun started to touch the red rock of the north side. There was a very long day ahead of us, but I will never forget what it was to be in that literal, physical and mental darkness and to see the light of the sun just touch that rock as we crossed the Colorado River. It gave me what I needed to press on knowing that there was life and light beyond this huge (and glorious) pit.

The call of Isaiah at this moment is to a specific person or personified “you.” It turns out to be Jerusalem. The “you” of Isaiah is 60 is feminine and both v. 14 and the habit of all of Isaiah point to identifying this as Jerusalem. More important is the interplay here between God’s action and Jerusalem/Zion’s.[1]

Jerusalem is to arise, for the Lord will arise upon her (v. 2). She is to shine (אוֹרִי) because “your light” (אוֹרֵךְ) has come. There is this movement between God’s originating action and Jerusalem’s responsive action. But rather than their lack of originality being some kind of problem, we see it begin the process that God has desired all along. Jerusalem is centered as the source of God’s light into the broader darkness. God’s glory will become Jerusalem’s glory: the glory of a bride adorned, drawing the attention of every king and nation on earth.

Much of the scholarship would place chapters 60-66 of Isaiah at the time of the return from exile, sometime in the late 6th c. BC. It is hard to imagine a bigger pit than a chastened and newly un-exiled people looking around their ruined land. Who is going to rebuild this place? Why even rebuild? It would be so much easier to just cut our losses and start over somewhere else. You’ve got tensions with the community who stuck around the land and those who are just coming back. You have outside pressures and competing visions of the good within the community. What are you even supposed to do? How is a weak and attenuated community supposed to even go about this project?

Isaiah calls them to arise! Shine! It’s not your glory that you are shining forth (v. 2). And it’s not even for your sake. The mission of Israel has never really been about Israel. It is coming from God through Israel for the sake of the kings and nations (the world) so that God might be glorified. What higher purpose could their be? What deeper beauty could we hope to participate in?

The fact that the church reads this on Epiphany is, of course, not accidental. The Magi are not some weird addition to an otherwise totally normal story. They are critical to the vision of God’s glory taking up residence in the person of Jesus Christ, built within the womb of Mary and now being worshiped in a suburban house outside Jerusalem. They are the foretaste of the nations streaming into Zion from Micah 4 and Isaiah 2. They are the foretaste, even, of the second Pentecost of Acts 10 when Peter discovers that this Way of Jesus is not simply a tweak on the Messianic hope of Israel, but a promise which is for all people in all times. The wide salvific vision of Isaiah has finally come to fruition in Jesus who is worshiped by Gentiles and baptized by John on this newly dawned morning.

But wait! There’s more! Isaiah finishes this portion with a reference to the “wealth of nations” (חֵיל גּוֹיִם). Astute readers might sense some connection to Adam Smith and the origins of modern capitalism, although this is a disputed claim and the suggestion is made that it is probably Smith who influenced our contemporary translations, rather than the other way around.[2] You will note that the KJV and other earlier English translations read this phrase as forces or strength of the Gentiles. And so what is being pointed to here is not about something so uninteresting as the collected international GDP. Far from it.

Just as John in Revelation 21:24 envisions a world that is full of the light of God, where the New Jerusalem is the recipient of the glory of all peoples, we ought to be thinking about the ways that every good thing pursued and humbly offered to the Lord, whether by an Israelite or not, will be a part of the coming glory of God’s Jerusalem. It is God’s glory, residing in Zion/Jerusalem so that all might know and take part in it. And whether they know it or not, all the good things of the world will ultimately flow uphill to the glory of God in Jerusalem and the Church. The wealth of the nations is not merely military or economic. It is gold, frankincense, and myrrh–better for the adorning of temples, burning of incense, and the anointing of bodies than for war or the endless pursuit of Economic Growth. And it is also well made tables and lovingly crafted gardens. The glory of the nations are the unlocking of the human genome, good books, and masterfully run marathons. They are beautifully cut hair and the work of compassion that goes unseen. The glory of the nations might even be a sermon preached by a Gentile on a continent unknown to the Biblical writers in some unseen church to a people who may not remember it. May we be attentive to all our work, knowing that in some way, the Father will pull it all up into the glorious kingdom of his Son and our Savior. May we bend the knee regardless of how deep our pit is today, knowing that the light is touching the tops of the rock and we are being called to press forward into the boundless riches Christ (Eph 3:8).

And like a preacher who can’t quite wrap things up, I have one more “last” word. If you are one who struggles with how good gifts and good work–including worship–that is not intended for the Lord can find its way into God’s kingdom, I would suggest you read a children’s book. In The Last Battle, C.S. Lewis writes of a man named Emeth who has been a faithful servant of Tash, the diabolical, demonic divinity of the wicked kingdom Calormen. Emeth is worried for his future when he finally meets Aslan, as we all should be. Emeth tells the story like this:

The Glorious One bent down his golden head and touched my forehead with his tongue and said, Son, thou art welcome. But I said, Alas, Lord, I am no son of Thine, but the servant of Tash. He answered, Child, all the service thou hast done to Tash, I account as service done to me. Then . . . I overcame my fear and questioned the Glorious One and said, Lord is it then true, as the Ape said, that thou and Tash are one? The Lion growed [sic] so that the earth shook (but his wrath was not against me) and said, It is false. Not because he and I are one, but because we are opposites, I take to me the services which thou hast done to him, for I and he are of such different kinds that no service which is vile can be done to me, and none which is not vile can be done to him. Therefore, if any man swear by Tash and keep his oath for the oath’s sake, it is by me that he has truly sworn, though he know it not, and it is I who reward him . . . . But I also said (for the truth constrained me), Yes I have been seeking Tash all my days. Beloved, said the Glorious One, unless thy desire had been for me, thou wouldst not have sought so long and so truly. For all find what they truly seek.[3]

May we all find what we truly seek: the Lord shining on and in us this Epiphany.

[1] Ackerman, Susan. “Isaiah.” In The New Interpreter’s Study Bible, gen. ed. Walter J. Harrelson (Nashville, TN: Abingdon Press, 2003), 1040.

[2] Jordan J. Ballor, “A Biblical Myth at the Origins of Adam Smith’s The Wealth of Nations.” Journal of the History of Economic Thought 38, (2017): 2. https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/journal-of-the-history-of-economic-thought/article/biblical-myth-at-the-origins-of-smiths-the-wealth-of-nations/502898FA3134D3F2C34AB571BA1C70AE.

[3] Christina Hitchcock, “What Has Aslan to do with Tash? C.S. Lewis and Natural Theology.” Inklings Forever 5 (2006). https://pillars.taylor.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1117&context=inklings_forever.