First Sunday of Epiphany
January 7, 2024

Sermon

John W. W. Sherer
Organist and Director of Worship

Isaiah 60:1–6
Matthew 2:1–12

I am honored to preach this morning, and I am so thankful to Lucy Forster-Smith for the invitation. I would be glad to return the honor and have Lucy play the organ any Sunday, but alas, she is retiring next week.

“Arise, shine!” shouts the prophet Isaiah in our first reading this morning. “Arise, shine, for your light has come.” For a lucky few, they can arise and shine in an instant, like the blink of an eye. Maestro, the movie about Leonard Bernstein, portrays the day his career was launched like a rocket. It was Sunday, November 14, 1943, and Bernstein got a call in the morning telling him that the famous conductor Bruno Walter had the flu and was unable to conduct the New York Philharmonic that afternoon at Carnegie Hall. Bernstein had only a few hours to prepare for the concert. But arise and shine he did, and his career was launched that day!

In a speech at my graduation from Juilliard, the actor Patrick Stewart, better known to many as Captain Jean-Luc Picard, shared a story about a friend of his who was in a Shakespearian play. His friend knew that a critic would be in the audience on a certain night and that with one positive review his career could take off. So the actor practiced his best line over and over to make the most impact possible: “God’s will, my liege, would you and I alone without more help could fight this royal battle.” In the play he was supposed to run on stage and deliver this line, but when the big moment arrived, the actor ran on stage and his mind went totally blank. After a painfully long pause all he could say was “They’re coming.” The critic loved the spontaneity and modern interpretation and gave the actor a great review that launched his career. Arise and shine he did!

In about 580 BCE, when the prophet Isaiah wrote the words “Arise, shine, for your light has come” it was to the Jewish people that had been in exile for a couple generations and had just returned to a ransacked and demolished Jerusalem. For them the words “Arise, shine, for your light has come” must have seemed like the height of sarcasm. Their beloved city was gone, and they were experiencing utter despair and loss. For them the idea of arising and shining would have been a very distant goal, not one lucky moment. For some people, arise and shine can mean the work of a lifetime.

When I was invited to preach on this day, I was thrilled knowing that it would be Epiphany Sunday, a day that has always had deep meaning for me. I have served you for twenty-eight years as Organist and Director of Music but rarely had a chance to say much about my own epiphany.

I was almost twelve years old, growing up in my hometown of Xenia, Ohio, a town of about 15,000 with a quaint nineteenth-century downtown. The day was April 3, 1974, and I was watching television in our living room after school. The phone rang at about 4:40, and it was my dad, calling from work to say he could see a huge tornado on the ground approaching our house. My mother, sister, and I ran into the basement and said the Lord’s Prayer. “Our Father, who art in heaven …” But all we could hear was the sound of the tornado passing over our house like a freight train in a tunnel. “For thine is the kingdom and the power and the glory forever. Amen.” Just as we finished the prayer, the tornado was gone.

We came upstairs into a world transformed, a world that looked much like what those Jewish exiles would have seen. Xenia was demolished. The tornado ripped a path five miles long and one mile wide through the heart of town. Nothing was left in the path of this massive tornado. Our house was still standing, but houses just a short block away were gone. We came up from the basement and realized that we had no windows left in our house. The walls were imbedded with nails and boards. Debris was thrown around our home by the 300-mile-an-hour winds of the tornado. The shingles on our roof were gone, and one side of the house was badly damaged. Huge century-old trees were pulled out of the ground, revealing their twisted roots and leaving deep pits in their place. And most frightening of all were the live electric wires yanked down from their poles and now dancing in the streets like giant snakes. It was a scene of indescribable destruction; the world I knew was wiped away in an instant.

The piano I had been playing since I was seven was still sitting in the corner of our living room, and I sat down and played the “Minuet in G Minor” by Bach. I was not fully aware at the time of what I was doing, but looking back on it, I will always remember that as the moment I was called to be a musician. Arise, shine! In that moment I was using music to bring beauty into a world transformed by despair and destruction, music to bring healing and comfort into a world so desperately in need. I could make music to bring unity and order into a world longing for both.

My epiphany, my “arise and shine” moment has lasted ever since that day in April 1974, and I feel so blessed to be part of this church and to fully live out that calling to be a musician. Being at this church also allows me to see how so many others rise and shine every day, making this a better world. We say in our mission statement that we are a light in the city, and so we are! Day in and day out I see the impact that the people of this church make in the world and in the lives of individual people.

Edmund Kimbell joined the Morning Choir in 1996, and he was an extraordinary person. Absolutely brilliant and a gifted musician, he was also the second person in history to receive a successful kidney transplant. But soon after starting to sing with our choir his one kidney began failing. Even though he was a new member of the choir almost everyone in the choir joined together to form care teams that would go to his apartment in Lincoln Park to provide help and comfort. We made meals, did laundry, changed dialysis bags, whatever it took to keep Edmund going. And many times, when he was no longer able to walk into the choir loft, some members carried him up the stairs so he could sing with us right up to the very end of his life. Edmund brought the choir together into a caring community that has never wavered. The people in this choir care deeply about each other, about the music they create and about each of you receiving the music. They arise and shine every week, just as they did for dear Edmund.

The Chicago Lights Social Service Center at Fourth Church strives to be an open door where anyone who needs support can come, feel free of judgment, and have the support they need. The Center provides practical resources such as food, clothing, support groups, and case management for hundreds each week.

Every week I see volunteers and Deacons at Fourth Church making a difference and helping others arise and shine. Sometimes guests are shining quite literally because they were able to take a shower for the first time in a week. Volunteers at Fourth Church make sandwiches seemingly every day of the week. They sort clothes, help immigrants arriving unannounced at our door. Volunteers tutor hundreds of school children and provide countless blessings that go unnoticed by most of us here on a Sunday morning. In doing this they not only help others arise and shine, but they are also the ones arising and shining! Arise, shine, for your light has come.

Just before Christmas the Social Service Center offered a short event called “Miracle on Chestnut Street” in which Michelle shared her story. Michelle had been knocked down by life but shared with us that the people at Chicago Lights and Fourth Church gave her life back to her. She didn’t think she would be able to turn her life around and had to set her “ego” aside to receive the help she needed. She had to admit she had a problem and needed help. Thanks be to God that Michelle got that help to arise and shine here at Fourth Church.

We all rise and shine every time we stand to sing. I thank God that this is a congregation that loves to sing together every week. When we stand to sing, we are united in one message sung out with our whole being. But it’s even more than that, because as we sing, we are breathing in together at the end of each phrase, and before long our united breathing even becomes united heart beats. Our hearts begin beating together as we sing our hymns each week. So sing those hymns loudly and boldly. It doesn’t matter if your singing is pretty or even in tune. All that matters is that we are singing together, united in thought, breath, and pulse. Each of us rising and shining!

What do all these examples of rising and shining have in common? They can happen anywhere, anytime, to anyone, but it takes action to rise and shine! Isaiah did not write “arise and reflect” or even “arise and form a committee.” He wrote “Arise, shine, for your light has come.” Whether you are Leonard Bernstein; a Shakespearean actor; a boy in Xenia, Ohio; a choir member; a visitor to our Social Service Center; or a church volunteer, every ordinary person has one thing in common: determination and action to arise and shine.

Poet and pastor Laura Martin so beautifully brings this message together in her poem about Isaiah’s reading:

Notice that the prophet does not say
arise, shine, for their light has come,
but arise, shine, for your light has come.
…
Arise, shine, for your light has come.
It has come right now,
…
It has come to tell you that your light
finds you right here,
and does not compare you to anyone else.
It has come to tell you to notice the particular shape
your life makes with people you love,
with the way only you can live it. 
Do you hear the music playing? 
Your light tells you to stop telling someone else’s story,
to simply get up where you are, in the midst of all this,
and shine like you already are.
(Laura Martin, poem on Isaiah 60)

In Matthew’s Gospel we hear that the three wise men entered the house and saw the child with Mary his mother. But for them to enter the house Mary had to get up from where she was and act in that moment to open the door for them. Arise and shine! Joann Post writes in the Christian Century that “Mary greets her guests as though she has been expecting them, flinging the door open to them, and ultimately to the whole world, because they will carry the news of the newborn child to their own people, in their own language, in their own way, expanding the love of God to places of which Mary could not even dream of” (Joann Post, “January 6, Epiphany,” Christian Century, January 2024).

We are all invited to arise and shine this moment and every moment. Open your heart’s door and expand the love of God by welcoming the stranger, feeding the poor, clothing the naked, helping all in need.

Arise, shine for the person in need of beauty.

Arise, shine for the person who is anxious and afraid.

Aise, shine for the person that feels oppressed every day.

Arise, shine for the homeless person in our midst.

Arise, shine for the immigrant at our door.

Arise, shine to bring peace to all the nations.

Arise, shine to bring the kingdom of God on earth as it is in heaven.

Arise, your light is come! The mountains burst in song! Rise up like eagles on the wing: God’s power will make us strong. Amen!

Sermon © Fourth Presbyterian Church