ARISE | "Shine with Beauty" - Fr. Aaron Damiani

A reading from the prophet Isaiah.

Arise, shine, for your light has come, and the glory of the Lord

has risen upon you. For behold, darkness shall cover

the earth, and thick darkness the peoples.

But the Lord will arise upon you, and His glory will be seen

upon you, and nations shall come to your light, and kings to the

brightness of your rising. Lift up your eyes all around and

see. They all gather together.

They come to you. Your sons shall come from afar,

and your daughters shall be carried on the hip.

Then you shall see and be radiant.

Your heart shall thrill and exalt, because the abundance of

the sea shall be turned to you. The wealth of the nation shall

come to you. A multitude of camels shall

cover you. The young camels of Midian and

IFA, all those from Sheba, shall come.

They shall bring gold and frankincense and shall bring

good news, the praises of the Lord.

All the flocks of Kedar shall be gathered to you.

The Rams of Nebayoth shall minister to you.

They shall come up with acceptance on my altar, and I

will beautify my beautiful house.

Violence shall no more be heard in your land, devastation or

destruction within your borders. You shall call your walls

salvation, and your gates praise.

The sun shall be no more your light by day, nor for brightness

shall the moon give you light, but the Lord will be your

everlasting light, and your God will be your glory.

Your sun shall no more go down, nor your moon withdraw itself,

for the Lord will be your everlasting light, and your days

of mourning shall be ended. Your people shall all be

righteous. They shall possess the land

forever, The branch of my planting, the work of my hands,

that I might be glorified. The word of the Lord.

Good morning and happy 5th Sunday of Lent.

We're almost through and I will invite you to turn to Isaiah 60,

Isaiah 60 as we come toward the end to the end of our series

called Shine, our Spiritual Beacon call.

This is bringing us to our midpoint, our commitment Sunday

in our two year initiative to prepare for our spiritual beacon

calling. And we'll have a moment in a few

moments to renew a commitment or make a new commitment to the

Lord and to just the vision that he's given to us as a church.

So Isaiah 60 bulletins or Bibles, would you pray with me?

Lord, we're so thankful that you are truly Emmanuel, God with us.

And we thank you that Isaiah saw that this was true of you and

that he turned the diamond ever so slightly to see all of the

beautiful ways that Emmanuel desired to shine the glory of

God on the people of God. And so we pray that even this

morning in 2026, you would shine your Emmanuel light on us.

In the name of Jesus we pray. Amen.

Well, in his book Every Valley historian, Charles King tells

the story of a once powerful man named Charles Jennings.

Despite his wealth, Charles Jennings was depressed, anxious

and very lonely. He took a political stance in

his day. This is the 1700s in England

that had cost him his position in society.

And so he was kind of exiled. He had lost many of his friends.

There was a just a higher mortality rate in that day.

And so he didn't have a lot of community to speak of.

What's worse, the news of the day was really gloomy.

There was a lot that he saw around him and that he read

about in the newspapers that just increased his sense of

doom. And many times, you know,

Jennings was so depressed and so lifeless that it was hard for

him to even, like, take a step, take a walk around his empty

house. But at one point, a Jennings was

inspired to pull down off of his shelf the book of Isaiah,

including Isaiah 60. And he pulled off his shelf

other prophets from Israel and the gospel writers and the

epistles of the New Testament. He pulled off the Anglican Book

of Common Prayer. And he just began to pour over

the pages and just sort of noting all of the notes of

surprising hope, all of the things that he didn't

necessarily feel were true, but he saw that with a glimmer of

light, the saddest stories of his life.

We're not going to end in sadness, but we're going to end

it. Something that he could couldn't

even imagine. And as he began to take notes,

he actually began to piece together all of the different,

the best lines. And he began to imagine what

would it be like if a choir were to sing these words?

What would it be like if a soloist were to sing these

words? What it would be like to set all

of these words of beauty to something beautiful in form.

And he wrote that down. And then at the top of all of

these notes, he he wrote this line, Let us sing of greater

things. And then he took this what he

called a word book and he handed it off to his friends, to his

friend George. George was an artist past his

prime. George was not in a good place

in his life either. He was deeply in debt.

He was recovering from what may have been a stroke.

And and yet he spent 24 straight days giving his best laborers to

taking his friend Charles's word, Book of Hope and Beauty,

and setting it to music. He poured everything he had into

this artistic endeavor into a work that would lift up the

hearts of anyone who was close to despair.

And as he neared completion of this work, George Frederick

Handel began to weep. And as his servants asked him

what was happening, he said, I did think that I see all of

heaven before me, and the great God himself seated on his throne

with his company of angels. And thus these two friends,

rather than sinking into despair, gave the world handles

Messiah. It's a work of beauty that has

thrilled hearts, awakened hope and sustained the soul for

almost 300 years and counting. There's something about beauty

that can summon us out of the gloom of despair, isn't it?

The prophet Isaiah shows us that the source of all beauty is God

Himself, and not only that, that He is ready to generously pour

out His beauty upon us, to bathe us in His beauty.

We actually in, in our day have the privilege and call to

reflect God's beauty to the city that we love.

We're going to explore what that could look like.

And it begins at the beginning of Isaiah 60.

And that is this, that God's beauty summons us.

God's beauty summons us out of gloom.

Look with me at verses one and two and hear these words ring

for us today. Arise shine, for your light has

come, and the glory of the Lord shines over you.

For look, darkness will cover the earth, and total darkness.

You could translate this as thick fog, the peoples, but the

Lord will shine over you, and his glory will appear over you.

Now the summons to arise are spoken to a people who are lying

flat on their backs. They've been flattened by life.

They're in despair, they're in darkness.

They're not exactly resting, but they're not able to rise either.

It's like the anxious fog of a sleepless night.

Have you ever had a sleepless night?

You wanted to rest, but you couldn't, but you just were

lying there, immobilized. And then something happens.

The Lord shines over people who are lying prostate, prostate

like a dawning sun. Think of the most beautiful

sunrise you could ever imagine. And it gets them up and they

have this call to go up and to go out, to arise, and then to

shine, to reflect the power and the glory and the beauty which

has filled your life and filled your vision.

And to say to anyone who will listen, come and see.

Come and see this beautiful light which shined on me in my

darkest moment. Now I think the genius and the

inspiration of Isaiah's prophecy is how timeless this imagery is.

When he says, look, you know, darkness will cover the earth

and and thick darkness. The peoples, every generation

can relate with those statements.

The darkness of our world can sort of take on a life of its

own. You might be familiar with like

a black hole, a black hole, this phenomenon in space that

swallows up anything that comes near to it.

Just if matter gets near to the black hole, it just sucks the

matter in and doesn't give anything out and and the

darkness of human misery can can do the same thing.

Conflict between people has a way of like acting like a black

hole, just like drawing in more and more people.

War has a way of doing that, drawing in more and more

nations. Hatred has a way of doing this,

just drawing in more and more hatred.

Evil has a way of doing this, just perpetuating itself like a

black hole. We get anxious and then we get

anxious about maybe we will feel more anxious.

We feel ashamed, but then we feel shame because of the fact

that we feel shame at all. Recently, someone shared with me

about a very dark moment in his life.

He was under incredible pressure.

He was missing his family. He did not feel a sense of

purpose in his life. And so in this place of sadness

and despair, he began to to drink with the friends that he

did have. He would drink three times a

day. He would work as well, getting

up really early, early. So he was exhausted is abusing

alcohol. He was in despair.

He, his heart was broken and this lasted for for months.

And he got to the point where he couldn't sleep at all at night.

And he was literally just lying on the floor of the bathroom

after a day of drinking, after a night of drinking, completely in

despair. And then he said, and then I

felt what I knew to be the presence of holiness in that

room. And I looked up and I saw that

shining out of, I kid you not, the shower drain was light and I

had no idea where it was coming from.

And I got up, I arose and I looked at the light and I

couldn't believe my eyes. So I went outside and I looked.

This is in the middle of the night.

Is there any light source coming from outside the house inside

this bathroom? I couldn't find one.

Goes into every room inside the house.

Is there light somehow coming? Where's this light coming from?

He couldn't find the source and it left him so just, you know,

in shock, but he, he knew that God was reaching out to him.

Now, eventually one of his friends who happened to be

staying at that same house found him, said what's happening?

He told her about the light. She went in.

She saw the same thing. She comes back to him and she's

like, this is the Lord and he's reaching out to you.

And she prayed with him, and she prayed for him, and this man

turned his life to the Jesus Christ, was soon thereafter

baptized, and to this day is shining with the light of Jesus

Christ. He arose physically and

spiritually and continues to shine.

This is what the beauty of the Lord does for every generation.

It summons us out of thick darkness, which always wants to

envelope us. Now listen.

Once we're on our feet and we're walking in the light of God's

beauty, reflecting it, you know, humbly to the world, that's when

things get interesting. Beauty summons us, and then

beauty surprises us. You ever been surprised by

beauty? Just a moment catches you off

guard, takes your breath away. Beauty has a way of surprising

us. And in Isaiah, the beauty takes

the form of an unlikely reunion. People we'd never expect to see,

never expect to love, never expect to come under one roof

together will gather around us. Why?

Because beauty has this attractive magnet like quality

which draws people, draws people you would never expect.

And thus, verse three, nations will come to your light, and

kings to your shining brightness.

Now listen for Israel. Kings and nations did not

represent peace. These were former enemies and

former oppressors and former rivals.

And it turns out they're gathering to the light which is

shining on Israel, not with armies and not with Spears, but

they come in verse 6 with camels and gold and frankincense and

praises to the Lord. Now just imagine all of your

frenemies and all of your old bosses and all of your strict

teachers and everyone from your past gathering around and

saying, we saw you shining with God's light and we saw his

beauty, and we've come to share in it with you.

Would you let us surprise? Beauty surprises us.

Notice also not only unfamiliar people, but also familiar

people. Come verse 4.

Raise your eyes and look around. They all gather and come to you.

Your sons will come from far away and your daughters on the

hips of nursing mothers. Now listen, this isn't a day

before FaceTime and inexpensive flights and cars and and

transportation being easy and cheap.

No parent wants to have their their children, whether small or

grown, exiled some faraway place where they never get to see them

again. But this was Israel's reality.

They were separated from sons and daughters and people that

meant as much to them as sons and daughters.

Familial connections, beloved connections.

And they're separated. And they thought that separation

was forever. They thought I'd never see them

again. But Isaiah says no.

Lift up your eyes. There's this reunion coming

that's so good to be true you can scarcely believe it that the

story you thought was over is actually coming to a a, a soul

thrilling conclusion of healing. And for all the pain of

separation, it's going to melt into an embrace and into a meal.

And maybe Isaiah is giving us this vision for all those people

who are meant to be with us, but they aren't for some reason.

But now beauty surprises us by drawing them back.

Like the beauty of the Lord. It's so powerful.

It's powerful because it can do things that our words can't do,

that our actions can't do, that human beings cannot muster on

their own. And all those sad fragments of

love and connection are get woven back together.

And verse 5, then you will see and be radiant, and your heart

will tremble and rejoice. Then everything sad is coming

untrue. And that is the gospel writer

Luke said that our like will disbelieve for joy.

It's too good to be true. This surprising gathering,

friends, is nothing less than the community of Jesus.

And, and we see that whenever Jesus arrives in this world as

Emmanuel, God with us, the unlikeliest of people are drawn

like a magnet to him. The first time he arrived, you

know, the wise men came with their gold and frankincense and

myrrh and, and they worship Jesus.

And it was totally unlikely. And the second time Jesus will

arrive, people from every tribe, tongue, people and nation will

bring the wealth of the world and the praises of their hearts

to worship the King of Kings. And in between those two

arrivals, he's here with us now. He's Emmanuel and he's

beautiful. And we will be surprised to see

whom he draws. Now, some of my friends, you

know, they realize this. They decided to, to, to shine

the beauty of God's light. They lived in Lakeview at the

time, about a mile from here, and they invited one of their

children's teachers to their apartment for dinner.

And they just spent an evening of conversation, just great

conversation, the chaos of the kids and, and the, and toward

the end of the meal, the teacher said to them, something to this

effect. She's like, you have something

very special here that I don't have.

And I can see it. I can't quite put my finger on

it, but there's a reality here. There's a beauty here that I

cannot deny and see The thing is that this is the this is the

beauty of Jesus Christ shining through us in ways we don't even

know. One prayer that we can put in

our pocket this week is this Lord, let your beauty shine

through me and through a manual and then surprise me with an

opportunity to share the hope that I have with someone.

Or how about this prayer? Lord, let me open my table or my

schedule to your surprising guests.

Beauty will surprise us. Beauty will surprise us.

That's God's beauty. And the more we share with that,

share it with others, actually, the more it surprises them too.

Not with bad news that shocks, but as we'll all see in the next

verses, with good news that secures God's beauty, not only

surprises us, it becomes our sanctuary.

It becomes our sanctuary. Isaiah pictures the day when

God's beauty surrounds us protectively, that we kind of

live inside of it like like architecturally.

Verse 18 says this of Isaiah 60, verse 18, violence will never

Isaiah 60:18

again be heard of in your land. Devastation and destruction will

be gone from your borders. You will call your walls

salvation and your city gates praise.

Is our world like this? We hear about violence and

devastation all the time, and so we rightly have locks on our

doors and security systems and bulletproof glass and bodyguards

and borders and walls and they surround us.

And this is just sort of the living reality of human

existence in the air that we're in.

But listen to the promise. The promise of the Lord is that

one day his beauty will be our sanctuary.

Instead, we'll have different names for our security systems.

We'll literally name them after what God has done for us.

We will name them salvation. Salvation is when God sweeps

away all that violence and threat from our world.

And do you know that this work begins now?

This work, this security work, this sanctuary work begins now.

It begins when the beauty of the Holy Spirit of God fills our

hearts and addresses areas where we are given to violence, all

those areas in the 10 commandments that we named and

beyond. The Holy Spirit fills our heart,

fills our life and begins to say, no, let me clean that out

because I'm going to make You Beautiful.

And then Christ, as we give ourselves to the Lord, Christ

himself becomes our shield. He, he protects us above us,

behind us, before us, all around us, beneath us even.

And He guards us until we are secure in His forever city,

where there are no need for walls and gates and security

systems. This work of salvation and

sanctuary begins now. His beauty is within us and

around us. And as we come together, we

reflect the beauty of His glory together in our habits, in our

interactions, in our praises. And there's a sanctuary and

there's a safety, and there's a surrounding here of the beauty

of the Lord. As we come together, the very

atmosphere we breathe as the people of God is suffused with

God's beauty. Verse 19, The sun will no longer

be your light by day, and the brightness of the moon will not

shine on you. The Lord will be your

everlasting light, and your God will be your splendor, your

splendor. You know, look at the sanctuary.

As beautiful as this sanctuary is, this is not our splendor.

As beautiful as Anglican liturgy is, that's not our splendor

either. And as beautiful as the city of

Chicago is, the city of Chicago is not our splendor that we wear

as a garment. The most beautiful gift we share

is the presence of the living God.

God will be our splendor. You know, I think for all the

soaring language of Isaiah, there's something really

humbling about this. This is good medicine for people

with good taste. Because we're not the source of

our own beauty. We're not the selectors even of

our own beauty. It's a gift.

It's a gift. Just like these stained glass

windows are a gift. We didn't build them.

We didn't create them. We just received them.

The sunlight behind the stained glass shining in, that's also a

gift. We're just receiving it gladly.

And the source of all of this beauty?

Emmanuel got himself. He is a gift.

He's a gift of grace. He's our splendor and he's our

radiance. And we're basking in a beauty

that is not our own. Thus thus, we must not think of

ourselves as special and deserving of it.

We must not keep it to ourselves.

Otherwise, we'll start putting up borders and walls.

We'll stop praising and start protecting.

Because when God's beauty is our sanctuary, there's always to be

a way for others to take shelter with us in the same splendor.

Now, once we make our home inside that sanctuary, here's

what we find. And that is that God's beauty

sustains us. God's beauty sustains us.

And this is so important because the city has a way of chewing

people up and spitting them out. You may read, as I do every few

weeks. It's like Peeps, people moving

away, restaurants closing, school shuttering, churches

folding. The city can be a tough place,

and it takes a lot of resilience to thrive here, doesn't it?

The these final verses offer an encouragement to those who love

Chicago, who want to thrive in Chicago, who want the people of

God to flourish. Isaiah speaks about a permanent

beauty for people who have known only of temporary homes and

instabilities, as the first audience only knew instability.

Here's a permanent homes being spoken of verse 20.

Your sun will no longer set and your moon will not fade, for the

Lord will be your everlasting light, and the days of your

sorrow will be over. The Lord offers a permanent,

never ending light which shines upon a branch of His own,

planting His people. As verse 21 says, All your

people will be righteous. They will possess the land

forever. They are the branch I planted

the work of my hands so that I may be glorified.

Where has God planted us? Where has He asked us to

flourish? If God has planted us in

Chicago, His beauty will sustain us.

Our roots will deepen right here.

If He's called us elsewhere, His beauty will sustain us there.

All of us are called to be planted ultimately upon this

earth. It is here that the Scriptures

speak of that the Sun of Righteousness will shine with

healing in His wings. It is here where we as His

people will flourish in His light and give Him glory and

honor forever. In the meantime, it's a

struggle, isn't it, to flourish here in this earth.

I think one of the reasons that our city wears people out is the

scarcity mindset. Are you familiar with the

scarcity mindset? The scarcity mindset says

there's not enough to survive and thus we need to protect what

we have so that our Kingdom can come and so that we can be

glorified. We feel the scarcity mindset

when we're new to the city and can't keep seem to catch a

break. Rents keep rising, jobs are

scarce, friend groups are really hard to break into.

Jobs go to people with an in and we are on the outside.

We feel it. We feel it once we have just the

smallest of toe holds in the city.

But the cost keep rising and the Co workers are ruthless and the

schools are competitive and our car gets towed because we didn't

see that sign over there. Scarcity mindset.

Someone steals a package off our porch.

Like everyone here is just out for themselves.

We're like, well, maybe that message starts to seep in and we

go, well, maybe I need to. Maybe if I'm going to survive,

I've got to operate the same way because I can't afford to

overflow. Now being a spiritual beacon

church really takes Isaiah 60's promises to heart.

And that means that we we operate in the abundance mindset

that he talks about throughout his book.

And there's a confidence that comes from this abundance

mindset, which is that the Lord has us here.

We're the branch that he planted.

And he's going to provide all that we need so that we can give

generously. We can open up our homes.

We can invest our time in the next generation.

We can put others 1st. And we'll be like that well

watered garden that Isaiah talks about in chapter 58, flourishing

even as we seek the flourishing of the city that doesn't seek

our flourishing. Though deeply in debt when

composing the Messiah, George Handel was greatly enriched by

the beauty of this text. This text, Isaiah 60 made it

into Handel's Messiah. Arise, shine, for your light has

come. And he was greatly enriched by

all the other texts that he included from the Scriptures, so

filled with divine beauty, so surprised by it, so sustained by

it, so cultivated by it, handled, made a radical,

generous decision about really one of the finest works in the

Western world that he created, that he helped create, which was

this. He was going to bequeath the

rights to the Messiah to the Foundling Hospital.

The Foundling Hospital served the poorest of the poor and it

was specifically designed to care for abandoned children,

which were everywhere in England.

This hospital was overflowing with kids with no parents.

They had been deserted on the streets of of of London and

Dublin, other places. And he's like the rights to the

Messiah go to that place. And in the years following his

death, George Handel's death, the Messiah shook the Western

world with that same beautiful vision that had gripped him and

gripped his friend Charles before him.

One historian who attended the Messiah's performance about 25

years after Handel's death at the Westminster Abbey, he it was

performed and the historian reported this this great work,

the Messiah has been heard in all parts of the Kingdom of of

England, Britain, with increasing reverence and

delight. It has fed the hungry, clothed

the naked, foster the orphan, more than any single musical

production in this or any country.

This same beauty that shine through Isaiah's words is the

same beauty that shine through Handel's songs.

And it is the same beauty that shines through our lives and

through our church, my friends, it's the same beauty.

And so Emmanuel Anglican, this is our day to arise to shine,

because the glory of God has risen upon us right here where

He's planted us, right here where the pain is real and

undeniable, right here where He has actually called us to shine

His truth and goodness and beauty until the pain becomes

glory and until the gloom becomes His grace.

So, friends, let us lift up our eyes and see all those around us

who would be drawn into this beauty, who would be sustained

by it, who could take sanctuary in it.

And you could join us in the praises of the glory of the King

of kings, who is Emmanuel, God with us, in the name of the

Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit, Amen.

Let's just take a moment to tell the Lord where we need His

beauty to shine in our life, in our world, in our church, and

open up our souls to His light. And Lord, we do pray that you

would now fill us with the Holy Spirit.

And we pray that the presence of Emmanuel, God with us, would

bring us encouragement and light and hope until we overflow for

the life of the world in Jesus name, Amen.