We come to a place in scripture where God’s Word demands action—kind of like John the Baptist’s “Repent!” But today we get a bit of a different message. Today we hear: Arise! Shine! For your light has come, and the glory of God has risen upon you. Arise and shine! Does that phrase ring a bell with anyone? I kept hearing my mother when she woke me up on the morning to go to school: Rise and Shine! Rise and Shine! And I usually did rise and shine because I was and still am a morning person. I would pop out of bed and I’d be off. That doesn’t happen to me in the evening by the way. But there are lots of people who aren’t morning people and I can imagine when they hear somebody coming at them in the morning singing Rise and shine I see them pull the covers closer to their ears and mutter something like, “I might rise but I sure ain’t gonna shine!”

That’s the feeling I get from reading today’s scripture in Isaiah. Israel is in its darkest hour. The storms of life are raging all around them. They’ve lived a lifetime in exile away from home and there’s been way too much change happening around them. They look back on the good old days when the whole town and surrounding area used to flock to the Temple to worship. A time when there were no such thing as people stealing cars in their communities, a time when they kept their doors to their houses unlocked. A time when all people everywhere honoured and worshipped God and lived out their faith daily.  They look back to a Golden Age when their community was going full force. Businesses were opening up in town and the population was going up. And they look to where they are now. Now there are not as many of them and the ones that have stayed are feeling the weight of being stretched beyond their limits. Someone is always asking them for their time and money, taxes, Temple nominating committees looking to fill up their Boards. The people realize now that the good old days are long gone. It is in the middle of this depression that Isaiah comes skipping and singing at the top of his lungs, “Arise! and Shine!” For your light has come. And the glory of God has risen upon you. I can see some of them pulling the covers closer to their ears and mutter, “Yeah right@! Go away Isaiah!”

In the gospel of Matthew we hear about another type of rising and shining. The Wisemen have noticed something odd and peculiar about a particular star rising. And it was because of that star rising and shining that they set out on a journey. Kind of like that song that was poplular when I was a teenager, "When the moon is in its 7th hour, and Jupiter aligns with Mars. Then peace will rule the planets. And love will steer the stars." Some sign of something big is in the sky. And we find out that the goal of the people who are interested in this sky phenomenon is just as strange. Their only goal is to worship. They want to worship the child who is born king of the Jews towards whom this rising and shining star points to. Imagine going out on some wild journey on an unknown road that began with a rising and shining star, and the only thing you want to do it to worship. We might call this star rising and shining their Call to Worship. There must have been something of great worth and importance in that child who is born king of the Jews.  They must have heard or seen something in that star that spoke the words, "Arise! and Shine! For your light has come. And the glory of God has risen upon you." And they responded by not pulling the sheets closer to their ears but arising and shining towards the light of the child born king of the Jews. They were off!

The church has a word for all this that is happening. And the word is salvation. Salvation is one of those church words that needs to go to rehab for awhile to get rid of its heavy baggage that it has picked up over the years. Salvation in Greek is soter and it means to save, to make safe, to salve, to heal. Salvation can mean many things. But the most helpful definition I have found is to consider salvation as a salve or an ointment that heals and restores that which has been wounded or broken. Just like the Wisemen who knew something about this child born king of the Jews healing the world, we too in the church know something about Jesus Christ healing the world. Jesus Christ is our Saviour, saving us from living a meaningless life, saving us from addictions (alcohol, drugs, work, material things, sensationalism, security, beauty), saving us from thinking we’re just nobodies from nowhere, and saving us from thinking we are alone, that nobody cares, and we have to do everything ourselves. The wisemen knew something of salvation as they answered their own Call to Worship. And we in the church also know something of salvation and many have answered the Call to Worship. This is a Call that begins not when we enter the church on a Sunday morning but it begins when we see something astir, like a star rising and shining. I am thinking of something that Ian Milne's family said at his funeral in December. I did not know him but something that his daughters said about him was such a testimony to how he responded to the call to worship, to Arise and Shine. Ian's daughter spoke of how her father worshipped every moment of his life, taking each moment in as it comes to him. Ian took time for everyone. If he was working on something and was interrupted, he would accept the interruption, and give 100% of his attention to whomever had entered the space he was in.  And I think when we do things like that we are participating in our salvation and salvation for the world because to love the people God loves is to be saved. It is a call to worship that says, “Arise and Shine”.

Herod does not hear a Call to Worship. There is no rising and shining with Herod. Herod hears a threat. Herod would be one of those who pulls the covers up closer to his ears and says, “I might agree that the Messiah has been born, but I’m certainly not going to rise and shine about it.” Matter of fact Herod is shaking in his boots. The text tells us that Herod is frightened and all of Jerusalem with him. Herod’s goal is salvation for Herod. To control his own security, to control the ordering of his day so he can do what he darn well wishes at the expense of others.  Jesus brings salvation for all, not salvation for one or even two—but ALL!  That is a threat to established power.

Before we pull the courtroom out and pul Herod in the witness box, let us all accept the fact that each and every one of us has something of Herod inside us. Sometimes we behave like Herod the king and Jesus Christ becomes a threat to our own security. Jesus calls all those in our communities and all those in the area around our communities to Arise and Shine! Are we always happy about that? Does that frighten us sometime? Jesus preaches forgiveness to everyone, even when they’re still sinning. How do we feel about that? Jesus preaches grace to all, even those who don’t deserve it. Jesus Christ our Savior, to all. Jesus Christ, salvation for all, is both threat and promise. Arise and Shine is sung out to ALL people.

Salvation for the world lay as a helpless infant in a feeding trough on Christmas morning. This same salvation for the world hung motionless on a cross on a Friday at noon. Wild journeys on unknown roads following strange stars. That is our Call to Worship. Threat or promise? We can pull the covers up closer to our ears and say muttery things to ourselves or we can Arise! and Shine! and move through our Call to Worship, towards salvation through Jesus Christ--our Savior.