"Isaiah's Prophecy and Epiphany's Posture" - Sermon for Epiphany Day, 1-6-26

What do you hope for, wish for, deeply desire from this new year? The turn of the calendar page and the annual plus-one of that descriptive digit brings with it the notion of a fresh start, a beginning-again.

For Isaiah’s people – Third Isaiah as Old Testament scholars call him – the desired fresh start and hoped-for new beginning was pinned on the return home of the exiled Hebrew people from captivity in far-off Babylon. Arise, shine; for your light has come, and the glory of the Lord has risen upon you.  Though it may be thick darkness all around you, the Lord’s glory will appear over you. This people, once destined for doom, will become a destination. Nations shall come to your light, and kings to the brightness of your dawn.

But it did not turn out to be all that. The fortunes of the people would again fall. Failure was an option that became reality. Empires subsequent to Babylon would arise and conquer. It was Rome’s turn in the time of Mary’s star-child; the Judean region administered by Herod, a paranoid puppet-king. Nations, represented by the gift-bearing eastern sages, came to the light, paid homage, and went home by another road. King Herod would try to eclipse and extinguish that light, and nearly succeeded.

The light of Mary’s star-child would live and burn in maturing intensity, bringing words and works of peace and justice, healing and hope, signs and parables – all indicators of God’s Kingdom, inaugurated. But where Herod the father had failed, Herod the son succeeded, abetted by Rome’s governor, and others fearful of the light. The midday sky drew dark one Friday when the crucified star-child’s life was finished.

It turns out that we had misinterpreted the prophecies. It was not over a geo-political people and through an earthly king that greatness would be restored; rather light and brightness would shine upon all people when the star-child rose from the tomb on the third day, negating crucifixion’s presumed triumph.

Empires rise and fall. The Hebrew people are returned for now, tenuously and violently, to what they believe is promised them. Nominally-Christian nation-states have come and gone. Third Isaiah’s prophecy and Epiphany’s posture is not about political power; it never was. It is about God’s dream, God’s desired-destiny for all God’s people – Jew and Gentile, in Paul’s schematic – for us to live not as the world entices, but as God envisions.

The star-child would say to the Roman governor that his kingdom is not of this world. Neither is our citizenship, yours and mine. The memory of the insurrection in this nation’s capital, five-years distant today, should prompt us to give thanks for that. We, too, shall go to our own heavenly country by another road, not succumbing to Herod’s wiles. Perhaps some of us even this year.

Until then, our hopes, our wishes, our deepest desires this new year ought only to be aligned with God’s hopes, God’s wishes, and God’s deepest desires for us. Pray for this wisdom, this clarity, this gift, as you begin again. Ask God to shine in your darkness, and, yes, to intensify your light. And always, always, to bring you safely home.

Father Daniel S.J. Scheid, SCP

Epiphany Day – January 6, 2026

All Saints’ Episcopal Church, San Francisco

“Isaiah’s Prophecy and Epiphany’s Posture”