Anyone else already putting up Christmas lights? I’ve seen several houses with full displays already. It’s not even Thanksgiving yet! We may shake our heads at neighbors who string lights in November, but honestly, I get it. I’m actually thinking about doing the same while the weather’s still decent – better now than wrestling with frozen ladder rungs in December. As daylight savings ended two weeks ago, we’re all feeling that 5 PM darkness. Many of us experience a primal need for light when nights grow longer. We flip switches, light candles, string LED strands – anything to push back the darkness that arrives too early and stays too long.
That instinct runs deeper than seasonal preference. When life gets dark – a troubling diagnosis that changes everything, job loss that threatens security, relationship strain that isolates us – we desperately search for any glimmer of hope. Some of you walked into church today carrying darkness nobody else can see. You’re wondering if morning will ever come, if this weight will ever lift.
Today’s scripture speaks directly to that darkness. Isaiah promises something that sounds impossible: light has already broken through, even when we can’t see it yet. The prophet shows us how hope works when everything seems hopeless.
Throughout our “Called to More” worship series, we’ve discovered how God calls people in unexpected ways. David was called from shepherd fields to become Israel’s greatest king. Solomon transformed his father’s temple vision into magnificent reality. Elijah discovered God not in dramatic wind and fire but in whispered silence after his greatest triumph turned to deepest despair. Last week, Amos the farmer-prophet showed us that speaking truth sometimes means delivering messages nobody wants to hear.
Today, Isaiah reveals perhaps the hardest calling of all: maintaining hope when everyone else sees only darkness. While previous weeks showed God calling individuals to specific action, Isaiah calls an entire people to see what isn’t visible yet – light that’s already shining in pitch-black circumstances, promise breaking through impossibility.
Isaiah understood something we day-shift people often miss. I’ve made my share of early morning hospital visits to pray with members before surgery. Arriving at in pre-dawn darkness, I expected a sleeping building. Instead, the place hummed with purposeful activity. Nurses prepped operating rooms with meticulous precision, technicians calibrated life-saving equipment, cafeteria workers brewed coffee strong enough to fuel another twelve-hour shift.
Those pre-dawn visits revealed profound truth: darkness isn’t when work stops but when different work begins. While we sleep, the night shift transforms tomorrow. Bakers knead dough for morning bread. Truckers deliver goods to empty stores. Power plant workers keep electricity flowing. Security guards patrol quiet streets. The world doesn’t pause in darkness; it prepares.
Isaiah spoke to people convinced God had clocked out when Assyria invaded. Everything looked dead, finished, hopeless. But Isaiah saw heaven’s night shift working overtime. While Israel slept in despair, God was kneading hope, delivering promises, guarding futures they couldn’t imagine. The prophet understood: divine restoration happens in darkness, preparing light we’ll wake up to find already shining.
God’s night shift imagery leads us directly into Isaiah’s extraordinary proclamation. The prophet wrote during Israel’s darkest hour, around 730 BCE, when the Assyrian Empire systematically destroyed everything the people cherished. The northern territories of Zebulun and Naphtali – tribal lands stretching from the Mediterranean to the Jordan River – suffered first and worst. These weren’t just geographical regions but ancestral homelands, places where families had lived for generations. Now they became bywords for devastation, places where hope seemed not just unlikely but foolish.
Yet Isaiah declares something stunning: “The people walking in darkness have seen a great light.” That past-tense verb is astounding. Isaiah speaks of future redemption as already accomplished, demonstrating prophetic certainty that transcends present circumstances. The darkness isn’t metaphorical – families literally stumbled through exile, oppression, and terror. Children went hungry. Parents couldn’t protect them. Communities scattered like dust. But Isaiah sees beyond visible reality to God’s hidden work.
The prophet’s imagery intensifies with each verse: joy exploding like harvest celebration when barns overflow, liberation as complete as Midian’s defeat when Gideon’s mere three hundred warriors toppled an empire. Every military boot that trampled their fields, every blood-soaked uniform worn by their oppressors becomes fuel for fire. War’s instruments don’t just disappear; they transform into ashes. This isn’t gradual improvement but complete reversal.
Then comes the passage’s shocking heart: “A child is born to us.” Ancient cultures viewed children as society’s most vulnerable members, yet Isaiah assigns this infant impossible titles. Wonderful Counselor combines divine wisdom with intimate guidance. Mighty God attributes full divinity to human flesh. Eternal Father suggests timeless protection. Prince of Peace promises not just war’s cessation but cosmic wholeness. These paradoxes stretch language beyond breaking, attempting to capture incarnation before anyone could imagine how God would accomplish such impossibility.
John Wesley, Methodism’s founder, taught that God’s grace operates in our lives before we even recognize it. He called this “prevenient grace” – the Divine working ahead of us, preparing salvation’s path through history’s darkest chapters. Isaiah’s prophecy perfectly embodies this Methodist understanding. Centuries before Bethlehem, grace was already orchestrating redemption. Before Mary’s yes, before shepherds’ wonder, before wise men’s journey, God was already at work.
This passage reveals how God refuses to abandon creation to chaos. The promised child doesn’t avoid darkness but enters directly into it, transforming suffering from within. That’s incarnational theology – God choosing vulnerability over force, presence over distance, participation over observation. The titles Isaiah gives this child aren’t just for show but they are revelations of divine character: wisdom that provides a personal guide through confusion, power that liberates completely from oppression, fatherhood that protects eternally against abandonment, peace that heals universally across all divisions.
Wesley also taught about “social holiness” – the idea that personal salvation always leads to community transformation. In our tradition, such grace doesn’t just save individuals but transforms entire communities. We become agents of the very hope Isaiah proclaims, not through our strength but because God’s spirit empowers ordinary people to bear extraordinary light. This calling moves us naturally toward examining how Isaiah’s ancient promise speaks to contemporary darkness.
Isaiah’s promise speaks directly into our twenty-first-century darkness. Look around McPherson today, and you’ll find plenty of people walking through pitch-black circumstances. A family somewhere in town facing foreclosure after medical bills destroyed their savings. A teenager at McPherson High probably battles depression so severe they can’t imagine making it to graduation. Veterans drive past our church every day, perhaps carrying invisible wounds from Iraq or Afghanistan. Single parents work multiple jobs, wondering if stability will ever come. Each person asks the same question: will morning ever arrive?
Yet Isaiah insists God’s light shines especially in such darkness. Consider how congregations become witnesses to this truth. When churches host recovery meetings, people discover freedom from addiction’s chains. That’s Wonderful Counselor at work, offering wisdom when life feels utterly unmanageable. When faith communities walk alongside families breaking poverty’s generational cycle – that’s Mighty God demonstrating power through relationship rather than force. When youth groups show up to serve elderly neighbors or volunteer at food pantries, they embody Prince of Peace, creating wholeness through simple service. Across this nation, in churches like ours, ordinary Christians become light-bearers simply by showing up, serving others, and refusing to let darkness have the final word.
This truth extends beyond individual struggles to systemic darkness. When school board meetings erupt in anger over curriculum or bond issues, when political divisions fracture decades-old friendships, when climate anxiety paralyzes young adults who wonder about bringing children into this world, Isaiah’s message remains unchanged: darkness is real but temporary. God specializes in transformation that seems impossible.
The capital campaign we’re undertaking represents this same hope in concrete form. We’re not just maintaining buildings or updating our heating and cooling systems; we’re ensuring McPherson continues having places where light breaks through darkness for generations to come. Every first fruits offering declares faith that God’s promises outweigh present problems. That’s not naive optimism or wishful thinking – it’s Isaiah hope, rooted in God’s character rather than circumstances.
The good news is that hope isn’t something we manufacture through positive thinking, personal effort, or pulling ourselves up by our bootstraps – it’s God’s gift, already accomplished, simply waiting for us to receive it. The child Isaiah envisioned did come. In Jesus, we witness Wonderful Counselor walking alongside confused disciples, patiently explaining parables until understanding dawned. We see Mighty God calming storms with a word, feeding thousands with a boy’s lunch, raising the dead with a touch. We experience Eternal Father claiming outcasts as beloved children, welcoming prodigals home without condition. We encounter Prince of Peace reconciling enemies through sacrificial love, breaking down walls between Jew and Gentile, slave and free.
This same Jesus who entered history’s darkness continues entering ours. When depression whispers that you’re worthless, Christ names you as beloved. When addiction claims you’ll never break free, resurrection power declares otherwise. When grief insists joy has died forever, Easter promises morning comes. When injustice seems insurmountable, the kingdom of God advances anyway, often through the smallest acts of faithfulness.
God doesn’t wait for perfect conditions to begin restoration. The Divine works through hospital night shifts and community meal programs, through recovery meetings in church basements and youth ministries in gymnasiums, through ordinary people who refuse to let darkness win. You don’t need superhuman faith or unshakeable optimism. You simply need to trust that the God who transformed Israel’s exile into return, who raised Jesus from death to life, who has sustained the church through twenty centuries of challenge and change, remains passionately committed to bringing light into your darkness too. The night shift never stops working.
So, this week, consider trying one or more of these practices to embody Isaiah’s hope:
For the reflective soul: Start a simple Light Journal. Each morning, name one darkness you see. Each evening, note one glimpse of God’s light you noticed that day. By week’s end, you’ll have collected evidence of God’s night-shift work.
For the helper’s heart: Think of someone walking through a difficult season. Choose one practical way to be their light-bearer – perhaps delivering a meal, sending an encouraging text, offering to help with errands, or simply being present to listen without judgment.
For the action-oriented: Your First Fruits offering can become an act of hope. Whether you’ve already made a commitment or still praying about it, consider how your giving declares trust in God’s promised future.
For the spiritually curious: Read Isaiah 9:1-7 with fresh eyes, focusing on one divine title each day.
Choose what resonates with your spirit today.
Remember that while we sleep tonight, God’s night shift continues working – in hospital rooms and homeless shelters, in troubled hearts and divided communities, in places we cannot see and situations we cannot imagine. Isaiah’s promise stands firm: darkness ends, light wins, hope prevails. Not because circumstances automatically improve, but because God keeps promises. You’re called to join heaven’s night shift, bearing light wherever darkness tries to claim victory. That calling starts now.
Will you pray with me?
Light of the World, when darkness surrounds us, remind us your dawn is coming. Make us light-bearers today. Through Jesus Christ, Prince of Peace. Amen.
In crafting today’s sermon, I employed AI assistants like Claude and Apple Intelligence, yet the ultimate responsibility for its content rests with me. These tools offered valuable perspectives, but the most influential sermon preparation hinges on biblical study, theological insight, personal reflection, and divine guidance. I see AI as a supportive aid to enrich the sermon process while ensuring my own voice in proclaiming the Word of God.
Rev. Andrew Conard 