“Arise, Shine”
by Bruce J. Johnson
January 6, 2002
The NCAA football national champion has been crowned and it is the University of Miami. They did a number on Nebraska on Thursday evening. Much the same as the UConn women did to Tennessee yesterday. Last year, at the close of the season, there was a story told in the Wall Street Journal about a young man name Eli Herring, a 6 foot 7 inch offensive tackle from Brigham Young University. He was everybody’s All-American and was expected to go high in the draft, possibly the first round--- after all the pretty boy quarterbacks and running backs. The Oakland Raiders had already announced that he would be their first pick. He was smart, hard working and very religious. Quite incredibly, he announced early on that if drafted he would not play--- this because to choose professional football meant that he would have to work on Sunday and he simply would not do that. He intended rather to teach math and coach football at the high school level.
Ted Roberts, a Wall Street Journal columnist, got wind of the story and the multi-million dollar contract the young man was turning down. He conducted an interview and the following represents part of it:
“But Eli,” I asked him… “what about your family and 18 month old daughter who someday will cry for designer jeans and later, maybe a
$40,000 dollar wedding?”
“Well,” Eli says, “his family will be just fine and maybe a blessing from above is better than a bank account. Eternity is so long and life is so short, you know. Hey, you can’t be a beacon if your life don’t shine.”
“Hey, you can’t be a beacon if your life don’t shine!”
We come together on this Epiphany Sunday around this theme. The voice of the prophet Isaiah rings out with just this message:
Arise; Shine for your light has come!
And certainly the Christmas message is that God’s light has come into the world in Jesus Christ and although it may shine and celebrate that it shines in our darkness, the equally important theme is that it is meant to shine in us. “Because He has come, we are meant to shine.”
Last February Kim gave me a neat little book of faith and art of living titled: A Touch of Wonder by Arthur Gordon. He introduces the fifth chapter by remembering one night:
“walking alone through the blackout in London during World War II. There had been an air-raid warning, with a searchlights crisscrossing the sky, but now the sirens were sounding the all clear. Suddenly all the searchlights were extinguished except for four, one on each side of the city. These great shafts of light ceased moving and grew still, focussed on a single point exactly overhead. I stopped walking. They remained there like silver sword blades quartering the tremendous blue-black vault of midnight. The sirens died away and there was no other sound. Nothing. Just a deep ringing silence. It was like being at the heart of a gigantic star! I have never forgotten that moment.
I have always called it: “the gift of a bright encounter.” (p. 141)
I wonder if that was what it was like for the wise men when they finally arrived at the place just below those brilliant and streaming bands of light. The experience might well have been a gift of a bright encounter and of course, epiphany’s power is in the message. God guides and leads even people of other faiths and cultures, life experiences and hopes and dreams to that point where we can do nothing other than offer our precious gifts!
“ARISE AND SHINE”—THE PROPHET ISAIAH SAYS-- FOR YOUR LIGHT HAS COME!
AND OL’ Eli says: “You can’t be a beacon if your life don’t shine!”
I’ve been over to St Joseph’s Living Center a number of times this week to see Jan McCauley. She died yesterday afternoon. When you leave her room, turn left and walk strait toward the nurses’ desk you can’t miss the poster on the wall. I’m not sure whether it is meant for the staff or visitors. Maybe it doesn’t matter. In bold colorful print, it reads:
“BE A BEACON OF LIGHT”
Christmas and Epiphany are supposed to be gifts of bright encounters that are meant to awaken us to the wondrous happening of God showing us such incredible love. The experience is meant to fill us with that love and enable us to shine and challenge us to share it with others… And there’s nothing mysterious about how that is done.
We are simply called and challenged:
To live with greater love and kindness,
To be more patient and tolerant and forgiving,
To show more compassion in situations when we might prefer to judge.
To bless others as generously as we have been blessed.
Of course, it is not uncommon to feel somewhat of a letdown after the holidays. (Where would we be without UCONN basketball and now, what do we do with the Tennessee game in the ‘Win” column?) The same can happen spiritually.
Tony Campolo, one of my favorite preachers, tells the story of old guy in the backwoods of Kentucky who could be counted on to show up at revival meetings whenever the evangelist came to town. At the end of each service when the invitation was given, he would come down the isle, get down on his hands and knees, raise his arms to heaven and cry out: “Fill me, Jesus! Fill me! Fill me, Jesus!”
Then, within a matter of week or two, he would slip back into his old ways of living. But when the next round of revival meetings was held, he would once again go to the meeting, walk down the isle, pray that same prayer over and over again.
One time, he was down on his knees yelling to the ceiling, “Fill me, Jesus! Fill me. Fill me, Jesus!” when suddenly from the back of the church some lady yelled:
“Don’t do it, Lord! He leaks!”
(Tony Campolo, Let Me Tell You a Story, p. 96).
We all leak from time to time and the light dissipates, the love diminishesbut we are forever given yet another opportunity to be filled up and turned on. That’s what worship and prayer, song, sacrament and service are all about--- to gather together where the star rests over the place where the Savior lay--- offering the gift of a bright encounter that changes your life.
SO, ARISE, SHINE, FOR OUR LIGHT HAS COME AND WE CAN’T BE BEACONS IF OUR LIVES DON’T SHINE!
Amen