First Sunday after Epiphany Year C

First Sunday after the Epiphany-Year C January 13, 2019 Thus says the Lord, he who created you, O Jacob, he who formed you, O Israel: Do not fear, for I have redeemed you; I have called you by name, you are mine. These words from the portion of Isaiah that is known as 2nd Isaiah are being spoken by God to the children of Israel after they have been taken into captivity in Babylon. We don’t know the state of the people, but we can imagine it. They have been forcibly removed from their homeland. They have been told repeatedly by the prophets that they have forsaken their covenant with Yahweh and because of their sinfulness, Yahweh has allowed for them to be vanquished and exiled. They don’t know what the future holds; they are overwhelmed and unprepared for where they find themselves; and they are very, very afraid. Twice in these seven verses, God reassures God’s people that God is still with them, urging them twice in this passage alone: “Do not fear.” But these words of God—“do not fear”—are not empty words in this passage. They are backed by the promise of God for redemption: “I have redeemed you.” Now, this means something totally different for us hearing these words today than what they would have meant to the original hearers. One scholar puts it this way: “To be redeemed according to Israel’s law means to be bought out of human bondage by one’s kin…[so] when God redeems Israel, God asserts close kinship, family relationship with them.”i So in this passage from Isaiah, God is telling the people in exile, “do not be afraid. I have claimed you as my family and bought you out of slavery; I am with you, and everything is going to be all right.” This past week, I watched the Netflix movie that lots of folks have been talking about: Bird Box. It’s an interesting exploration about fear and relationships. In the movie, Sandra Bullock plays a woman named Mallory, who is trying to raise two young children under some very unusual circumstances. A global situation has occurred in which normal people who are going about their lives suddenly and inexplicably commit suicide. The survivors identify the fact that there are some sort of mysterious force, creatures, (we aren’t really sure what) at work, and when most people see them, their eyes change and they are provoked to madness/suicide. The survivors cope by covering their windows and staying inside, and they discover that when they do have to go outside, if they blindfold themselves, then they stay safe. (In this instance, what they can’t see, can’t hurt them.) It’s an interesting take on fear, specifically fear of the unknown, and how self-enforced blindness can occasionally help but mostly hinder us in trying to deal with frightening situations in our lives. The other interesting aspect of the movie is that it points to how fear affects our relationships. Mallory and her boyfriend Tom have very different philosophies about how to raise the two young children. Tom wants them to help the children cultivate hope. But Mallory’s philosophy is to make sure that they survive, and it is her philosophy that wins out because the children do not even have names. She calls them “boy” and “girl” and they call her Mallory (even though one of them is her biological child). She is so focused on their survival that she doesn’t name or claim either of them. For me this week, this movie was in sharp contrast to what God is doing for God’s people in Isaiah, and it was a helpful reminder for me of how fear can distort our relationships, but how in God, we find our true belonging. And if the Isaiah reading isn’t enough to remind us of this, this week, we have Jesus’s baptism by John in the Jordan in Luke’s gospel, where God affirms that Jesus is God’s beloved. And we hear echoes of our own baptism in that--when we were “sealed by the Holy Spirit in baptism, and marked as Christ’s own forever.” It’s easy to remember all this, sitting here in our lovely, safe church, when all is well in our lives. It is a whole different matter to remember all this, to trust in God’s promise that we do not need to be afraid because we are already a part of God’s family, during the hard places in our lives: the death of a loved one, the news of the diagnosis or even the potential for a diagnosis, the child who has gotten into trouble and seems beyond the realm of your help or even your knowledge of how to help. In those times and in those seasons, perhaps it is more helpful for us to remember past times of fear and God’s faithfulness in our own lives. Back when I was a brand new priest and a relatively new mother, I became convinced that I was going to die soon. There was no rhyme or reason to it, no rationality. I just had this feeling that I was going to die. I spent a lot of time thinking about all that I was going to miss in my child’s life. (Jack hadn’t even been born yet.) And I was so sad and so scared. One day, I was driving on the highway in a torrential rainstorm, and I thought, “Well, this has got to be it. This is how I’m going to die.” And I was so afraid. But then I had an epiphany. I had been dealing with an elderly parishioner who was clearly dying but who refused to go on hospice. I had been trying to convince her that hospice would help her, and I was frustrated because she was spending so much energy fighting and denying that she was dying. And I realized that this woman, whose life to me had seemed to be almost over, had just as much passion to keep living as I did. And I was able to feel compassion for her then in a way that I hadn’t before. (You’ll be happy to know that I did not die. After that epiphany, I made it safely to my destination, and I no longer had the feeling that I was going to die.) This week, I invite you to remember a time in your life when you have been afraid and to think about how your fear affected your relationships with God and with others. How was your fear resolved? What did you learn about yourself, about God, about others? At the end of the movie Bird Box (spoiler alert), when Mallory and the children reach a place that seems safe, she gives them each a name, and then she tells them that she is their mother. May you remember this week and always that God has claimed you as God’s beloved, a member of God’s family; and that you have absolutely nothing to fear. No matter what happens. i. Exegetical Perspective for First Sunday after the Epiphany by Kathleen M. O’Connor. Feasting on the Word Year C Volume 1 ed. Bartlett and Taylor. Westminster John Knox: 2009, p 221.