Sermon preached at the Sung Eucharist on the Second Sunday of Epiphany 2025

Today is the Second Sunday of Epiphany. What does that tell us? Well, Epiphany means manifestation, or revelation. It is the moment the penny drops, or the light goes on. When something is made manifest, or is manifestly so it is clear, it is obvious. So, two Sundays into Epiphany, we should feel like people who have it sorted, for whom it is all blindingly obvious. Manifestly so.

And because it does not feel like that to me, I am going to say something about what it is we know in Epiphany. What is it that we have understood? And I will start with that first reading from Isaiah, the one that said,

You shall no more be termed Forsaken. (Isaiah 62: 4)

We need some history, some solid ground to stand on. One of the world’s great empires had just collapsed. Two and a half thousand years ago Babylon’s power stretched from the Gulf to the Mediterranean, it covered Iran parts of Iraq, and Saudi Arabia, all of Jordan, Syria, and Lebanon, and Israel. An empire of brutal armies, of slavery, and captive Israelites in exile. And. two and a half thousand years ago, Jerusalem was a ruin after Babylon captured it:

What can I say for you, to what compare you, O daughter Jerusalem? To what can I liken you, that I may comfort you, O virgin daughter Zion? For vast as the sea is your ruin; who can heal you? (Lamentations 2: 13)

A desperate time to be Jewish. Remember, the Land is God’s promise and they are in exile, the Temple is God’s very presence and it is a ruin. The promises of God are shattered, hope runs dry.

And then, Cyrus the Persian defeated the Babylonians. He entered their proud city in 538 BCE marching through their blue tiled gates. The change was shattering. Cyrus did not rule by fear, he believed in tolerance looked for unity. he set the exiled Jews free. Sent them back to Jerusalem to rebuild. and, 

I have heard stories about the end of World War Two, people talking about the ’50s when the sepia and grey tones of post-war Britain unexpectedly blazed with colour for the Festival of Britain and the Coronation. That is as nothing to what the Bible struggles to describe when it speaks of those exiles coming home:

…we were like those who dream. Then our mouth was filled with laughter, and our tongue with shouts of joy. (Psalm 126: 1–2) 

That was what our reading this morning was struggling to describe. Change, difference, the push and pull of it, the dislocation, the wonder and the worry of it. We need to notice the this then that of the story, the before and after of it. They are polar opposites. But they belong to the same story. To have one you must have the other. So,

You shall no more be termed Forsaken, and your land shall no more be termed Desolate; but you shall be called My Delight Is in Her. (Isaiah 62: 4)

Not Forsaken, but My Delight is in Her. The one and the other. And when Isaiah says these words, this is still a work in progress. The effort that the exiles have to put in is far from over. Actually, the great project hangs in the balance. Working in the ruins of Jerusalem the first, famous burst of energy and enthusiasm is failing; running into the ground. The exiles are tired. Their hope leaches away. So, here is Isaiah telling them that this is precisely what it is like, this is exactly where we live our lives, in the push and pull of what was and what will be. Remember how the reading began:

For Zion's sake I will not keep silent, and for Jerusalem's sake I will not rest, until her vindication shines out like the dawn, and her salvation like a burning torch. (Isaiah 62: 1)

Isaiah never suggests that this is easy or a done deal; the language is all about what might perhaps and possibly follow.

The nations shall see your vindication…
You shall be called by a new name…
You shall be a crown of beauty in the hand of the Lord…
You shall no more be termed Forsaken…

This is the hope and faith of Israel: a hope and faith worked out in the midst of things, in the this and that, the before and after, in the history of what was and the mystery of God’s providence. It is hard and believing is hard. But it is possible.

Years ago, I was appointed Chaplain in a College. Arriving there, in a community that was confident and purposeful and thought it was fine, thank you for asking, I wondered in the first few weeks what on earth I was supposed to do. How was I to join in, what on earth was I supposed to do or say? Within two weeks, however, it became clear that one of the Freshers was ill, really ill. His name was Duncan, and he was the best of us—bright, eager, warm, interested, and interesting. I visited him in hospital. He became a friend. He didn’t have a faith; we could not talk about that. We talked about poetry. He introduced me to a poem called Snow by Louis MacNeice. Interestingly, Louis MacNeice did not have a faith, but his father did. His Father, indeed, was a minister in Northern Ireland. In this poem MacNeice is in the manse, that ordered, disliked house and it starts snowing. He stares out of the window, past a vase of roses on the sill, and he stares at the storm outside:

The room was suddenly rich and the great bay-window was
Spawning snow and pink roses against it

Inside and outside are very different worlds and they collide:

World is crazier and more of it than we think,
Incorrigibly plural. I peel and portion
A tangerine and spit the pips and feel
The drunkenness of things being various.

Things are various, this and that, world is crazier and more of it than we think. MacNeice knows that and so does Isaiah. It is a fundamental lesson in scripture that we live in a world of difference—a world MacNeice calls ‘incorrigibly plural’. Right from the start, in the story of creation, we are forced to consider both this and that. God separated the light from the darkness, separated sky from earth, separated land and water. (Genesis 1: 4–10) Then God gives us the wonderful, mad abundance of creation the cantering, charging, creeping, swimming, slithering, scuttling, growing, flowering fulness of it all. 

This is our world and it is plural, a world of this and that. Gloriously, generously plural and also baffling and barbed in its variety. The world is the place that Isaiah knew, where armies march and where hope fails, it is the place that Duncan knew, a world of genius and glory, but a world where bright, brave souls die far too young and leave us grieving. It is absolutely in this world that we have to work out our faith, live it, name it. That is what Isiah is writing about; writing about naming a hope that will not be defeated when times are bad.

For Zion's sake I will not keep silent, and for Jerusalem's sake I will not rest, until her vindication shines out like the dawn, and her salvation like a burning torch. (Isaiah 62: 1)

It seems to me sometimes, that faith gets described as though it is the answer to any question, the ticket home, the safe place where you can stay. It seems we might want a faith where it is all manifestly so. Believers think they are supposed to have it sorted. Then Christianity is turned into an agenda and a strategy and we are all supposed to get better and nicer. But that is not the world we live in, not the world God gave us. So, three cheers for Isaiah and that longing for the vindication that is still to come. Three cheers for MacNeice and the World that is crazier and more of it than we think. And three cheers for Duncan who taught me something about courage, and grace, and dignity when you live and die in this world at its hardest.

This, for me, is the real language of Epiphany. This is where Revelation gets us, this is where the Christ who comes to us in history takes us. This is his life and it is ours. World that is crazier and more of it than we think. And God is here, here now, here on Golgotha and the agony of the cross, here in the trials to come and vindication will shine out like the dawn. That is what we should hope to understand.