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Epiphany

Isaiah 60
Arise, shine; for your light has come,
and the glory of the Lord has risen upon you.
2For darkness shall cover the earth,
and thick darkness the peoples;
but the Lord will arise upon you,
and his glory will appear over you.
3Nations shall come to your light,
and kings to the brightness of your dawn.
4Lift up your eyes and look around;
they all gather together, they come to you;
your sons shall come from far away,
and your daughters shall be carried on their nurses’ arms.
5Then you shall see and be radiant;
your heart shall thrill and rejoice,*
because the abundance of the sea shall be brought to you,
the wealth of the nations shall come to you.
6A multitude of camels shall cover you,
the young camels of Midian and Ephah;
all those from Sheba shall come.
They shall bring gold and frankincense,
and shall proclaim the praise of the Lord.


We appear to have survived the holidays. Presents unwrapped, wrapping discarded, cookies eaten, leftovers finally thrown-out, potential regifting analyzed (come on, we all do it), toys played with that initial time and set aside until “oh yeah” moment later on, empties returned, resolutions made and that new calendar hung on the wall.

That makes it time to confess: I gave at least one self-serving gift this Christmas, and I don’t regret it. In moral terms, that makes me ‘finally impenitent’ and that’s never good. The gift in question, the one that puts my soul in potential danger, is Season One of Mad Men, the award-winning television series. I say ‘self-serving’ because I gave it to my brother for Christmas, knowing full well that we would find time over the holidays to watch it together.

And we did: we watched 13 episodes of the ‘golden age’ American advertising, as recreated by director Matthew Weiner. The story begins in 1960, and explores the ‘hinge’ between the Eisenhower 1950’s and the new decade yet to be defined. It shows all the vices of the day, and how the “Mad Men” of Madison Avenue managed the tension between the office and the world at home.

And, of course, the series looks at the nature of advertising itself, with many of the mainstays of the ad world having been developed in the era portrayed. These men (and an emerging group of women) used an expanding sense of the world, the popularity of what we now call ‘pop psychology’ and the so-called American Dream to sell cigarettes, lipstick and a host of other products.

Through it all, they are busy creating and exploiting myth. They are using cultural touchstones and the things people hold dear to market products, things they don’t really need, until an ad tells them they do. They create need, and a strong desire to meet that need, and try to do it without it being too obvious. In the era before the ‘marketing department,’ these men and women would take a product and turn it into something else, something more desirable than a toaster or a bar of soap.

This morning’s reading may well have been written, or at least repackaged, on the Madison Avenue of Babylon. Israelites were experiencing their own hinge moment, when the Babylonian Captivity was ending and many in the community were transitioning back to the ruined city of Jerusalem. They were pioneers, returning from the land of exile and struggling to make their way in amid the fallen Temple and the city destroyed.

At least, that’s one telling. There were others, history tells us, that didn’t make the journey back from exile, that decided to remain in the capital city of the leading empire and make a life. It’s impossible to know how many, but we do know how long, because as recently as the first Gulf War, there was a sizable Jewish community in Iraq, the successor state to Babylon.

We also know from an ample supply of biblical literature, particularly the Book of Daniel and the Book of Esther and other works from this period, that remaining Jewish while serving in the court of a foreign king was a well-explored theme. Jews were literate and had skills that made them excellent administrators, and therefore employed wherever the wealthy and powerful needed to manage their wealth or power.

This also led to some irony. The religious Jews who remained in Babylon were also wealthy, and because of this wealth they were able to support a community of scholars. The community of scholars were supported in what became voluntary exile to create a message that encouraged their patrons in that place. At the same moment they were promoting return, and hope for those on their way back to Jerusalem.

The question for the scholars was how to encourage return without offending those who were unwilling or not ready to return: how to create a message that didn’t offend they people who were ultimately footing the bill for all their writing and interpreting. The answer is in Isaiah 60:

Arise, shine; for your light has come,
and the glory of the Lord has risen upon you.
2For darkness shall cover the earth,
and thick darkness the peoples;
but the Lord will arise upon you,
and his glory will appear over you.
3Nations shall come to your light,
and kings to the brightness of your dawn.

The strategy is to repackage Jerusalem, not as a spiritual home or a place to be rebuilt, but as a rival to the greatest cities of the earth, the place where nations and kings will gather to see the light of the Most High. It took the impulse to return to the holy places, twinned it with the taste for wealth and power that so many experienced in Babylon, and created a new destination: the centre of the world:

5Then you shall see and be radiant;
your heart shall thrill and rejoice,*
because the abundance of the sea shall be brought to you,
the wealth of the nations shall come to you.
6A multitude of camels shall cover you,
the young camels of Midian and Ephah;
all those from Sheba shall come.
They shall bring gold and frankincense,
and shall proclaim the praise of the Lord.

In some sense, they were not describing a New Jerusalem so much as a new Babylon. The life that the exiles came to enjoy would be recreated in the ruined places, and the exile could truly end. No more would the lure of capital and international trade exist in a far away place, but in the hole city herself, among God’s people, with God at the centre.

One of the primary impulses in the Christian Church is to be a ‘light to the nations.’ I met an architect who made a convincing argument that the theme ‘light to the nations’ or ‘light to all people’ can be seem in church design. One of my Scarborough congregations, Cliffcrest, was designed on this principle, without stained glass, so that the light of the Gospel could shine on the streets that surrounded the church. Or another Scarborough example, Wexford Presbyterian, built in the 1950’s to resemble a giant lantern to shine in all directions.

The theory here was that the church was a light shining in the darkness, and people would see the light and enter. The church was regarded as the centre of community life and also the place where you could find ‘enlightenment,’ or illumination. We functioned this way for much of the last 50 years, with the corresponding sense of privilege that comes when you imagine yourself the source of light to a community.

Then, sadly, people turned away. Like the wealthy exiles in Babylon, who heard the message of return, and may even have paid for the message to be produced, they weren’t buying it. The generation that followed the church builders of the 1950’s were unimpressed by the mortgage burning and the scout troops and the fowl suppers and looked away, some never to return.

The problem, to my mind, was light confusion. We were promoting the ‘light of all people,’ a message consistent with our best tradition, but we were busy imagining that the church was the light and not the Gospel of Jesus Christ. We gave into the idea that friendly, busy, well-meaning communities of faith were the light, and not the true ‘light of the world.’ We thought that all we needed to do was shine our light through large windows and into the neighbouring streets, rather that the light of the glory of the Lord.

The exile continues in our time, an exile that many think is ultimately healthy for the church of today. The end of privilege, the end of the “if you build it they will come” assumption, the end of the blurring between the church and the dominant culture: all these endings are positives for the Christian Church.

As exiles, seeking the true light, we are free to meet our neighbours as equals, as fellow travelers, and not as a privileged group with something to share. We have a common message to hear, and a common mission to make, that God has entered our world to make us brothers and sisters, to find our humanity and our equality, and live in God’s light once more. Amen.

posted by michael jacob kooiman @ 3:05 PM