A reading from the prophet Isaiah.
Thus says the Lord keep justice and do righteousness, for soon
my salvation will come, and my righteousness will be revealed.
Blessed is the man who does this, and the Son of Man who
holds it fast, who keeps the Sabbath, not profaning it, and
keeps his hand from doing any evil.
Let not the foreigner who has joined himself to the Lord say,
The Lord will surely separate me from his people.
Let not the eunuchs say, Behold, I am a dry tree.
For thus says the Lord to the eunuchs who keep my Sabbaths,
who choose the things that please me, who hold fast to my
covenant, I will give in my house and within my walls a
monument and a name better than sons and daughters.
I will give them an everlasting name that shall not be cut off.
And the foreigners who join themselves to the Lord, to
minister to him, to love the name of the Lord, and be His
servants. Everyone who keeps the Sabbath
and does not profane it, and holds fast My covenant.
These I will bring to my holy mountain, and make them joyful
in My House of prayer. Their burnt offerings and their
sacrifices will be accepted on my altar, for my house will be
called a House of prayer for all peoples.
The Lord God, who gathers the outcasts of Israel, declares I
will gather yet others to Him besides those already gathered
the word of the. Lord, would you pray with me?
Lord, in order to bring ourselves to you, we need your
power, your forgiveness, your grace.
We need your vision and your heart.
Lord, everything that we need as a church comes from you.
So we pray now, Lord, that the living God would dwell in our
midst. As we open the words of the
prophet Isaiah, to whom you spoke so many years ago, let
them be words for us, for Emmanuel Anglican for Chicago in
2026. We pray this in the name of the
Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. Amen.
Please be seated and good morning.
If I haven't met you yet, my name is Father Aaron Damiani and
I'm just glad to be journeying through this season with you.
In Lent, the 40 days plus preceding Easter, we're in a
five week series called Shine our Spiritual Beacon Call, Shine
our Spiritual Beacon Call. And we're going to be looking at
the chapters of Isaiah, Isaiah chapters 56 all the way through
chapter 60. And this particular series marks
the midpoint of what we've called Arise.
And Arise is like a two year journey that we're on as a
church to really prepare for and begin to commit ourselves to
this calling we have in Chicago to be a spiritual beacon.
We want to make sure that the message of Christ and the and
the beauty and the glory of Christ is known to as many
people in Chicago as possible through and beyond our church.
And that's why we're in this two year series, this two year
commitment. There is going to be a
culmination of this particular sermon series.
It's going to culminate after five weeks on March 22nd, I
guess the 5th Sunday from now, but one month from now where we
commit ourselves financially to this vision.
And some of us have been here from the start of Arise and it's
an opportunity for us to recommit for the next 10 months
to being a part of this for praying, giving to and
participating in this vision. Some of us have joined Emanuel
since we started Arise at the end of 2024.
And, and you might feel called, you'll be invited to, to join in
and make a new commitment for the next 10 months.
And then some of us since starting have seen God do
something in our lives or we, there's an increase of faith.
We have more faith, potentially more finances to commit to this
vision. And there will be an opportunity
to increase our vision and see God provide for us.
And even now, my invitation to you is just to open your hearts
up to the Lord and say, Lord, how do you want me to
participate in a rise? What are you asking of me?
And what would be a joy to give and to commit to?
Well, here in the next few weeks, in the Sundays of Lent,
just about this calling and about this vision.
And so you can even begin to pray like, is this a vision that
I feel to be a part of? Well, I don't know if you've
been watching the Winter Olympics.
I, I hope you've been able to catch some of the games.
I've been enjoying them. One of the most inspiring parts
of the Olympic Games is the beginning of the Olympics.
And this is when the runner carrying the Olympic torch,
carrying one of the torches, runs in to the Coliseum, to the
central Coliseum where all of the nations have gathered to
mark the beginning of the Olympics.
And as they enter into the the Coliseum, the crowd cheers and
they run to to the center of the of the Coliseum and light what's
called the cauldron, The Olympic cauldron, which is the central
flame, which tells the world the games are on and you're welcome
to come and join. What's interesting about that
flame, if you trace the the origin of that flame all the way
back, like, where does it come from?
It actually doesn't come from the runners themselves.
What happens is that the original torch of the flame is
actually lit in Greece, in Olympia, Greece.
And what they've done is they've created a, a mirror, a compact
mirror that actually sort of channels the rays of the sun.
And that when the first runner dips their torch, as it were,
into that mirror, the heat it captured from the sun's rays
sets the torch ablaze. And that torch is carried from 1
runner to the next over land and sea, until finally it makes its
way into the central cauldron of the Olympic Games.
The runner does not create the flame.
The runner carries the flame. What does it mean to be a
spiritual beacon, Church friends?
It means that we carry and display the light of Jesus
Christ for all of Chicago to see.
It means that we're making the gospel, the gospel of Jesus,
personal and tangible and visible to the people of
Chicago. We're not claiming friends to be
the source of the light that we're carrying.
That's so much the mistake that people can make is they think
that they are the light rather than that they are stewards of
the light who display it for the good of the city.
What could this look like? Well, it could look like a team
of liturgical artists from our church walking into a cinder
block prison Chapel and making it beautiful so that the inmates
who feel forgotten and unseen can encounter beauty and light
when they pray. It could look like a family in
our parish saying yes to fostering, yes to adopting
because they believe that in Jesus they were chosen and they
were adopted before the foundations of the world.
Could look like 2 Emmanuel Co workers offering to pray for one
of their colleagues who is suffering from a bout of an
anxiety attack and seeing the peace of Christ wash over their
colleague right in the midst of their crisis.
Could look like a living room filled with friends and and
neighbors who are spiritual but not religious.
The coffee is brewing and the Gospel of John is opened and
people from all walks of life discovering that Jesus Christ is
more compelling than they ever imagined or expected could look
like a special needs teacher from Emmanuel who treat treats
each student with incredible dignity and care because he sees
that the image of God is born by each individual student.
It could look like a business owner who refuses to cut corners
because she values the Father's name and the Father's
righteousness more than profits. And then it could look like all
of these gifts. Imagine all of these gifts being
brought together in praise and worship to the One who sent them
out in the first place, right here, gathering for praise and
worship in a way that draws people from our city who want to
know more about the hope that we carry.
Those are just a few of the ways that it could look like for us
to carry the light that does not originate with us.
But where do we begin? Let's consider in Isaiah 56 the
original blueprint for a spiritual beacon.
You can turn to Isaiah 56 in your bulletins or Bibles.
You know, Isaiah 56 was was written to to a very particular
people and God was calling them. God was calling them to be a
light for the nations. They had failed over and over
again. These people were called to be a
light for the nations and they had laid down their mandate.
And yet God had not given up on them.
He was, He was re upping on God's call to Abraham when God
said to Abraham, I'm going to bless you and through you all
the nations of the world would be blessed.
And it's a fresh articulation of that call.
The first thing that we're going to see in Isaiah 56 is that a
spiritual beacon welcomes the presence of God.
This by a spiritual beacon church welcomes, anticipates,
joyfully receives the presence of God.
Verse one begins this way. This is what the Lord says.
So Isaiah is listening to God and he's speaking what he hears
and the Lord says this preserve justice and do what is right.
Preserve justice and do what is right.
And the implication is they weren't doing either one of
those things. They were not acting justly, nor
were they doing what was right. They were not shining the light
that they had been given. For instance, some of them were
oppressing their workers. They were after prophets.
Some were worshipping what's called false gods.
They had turned that they their hearts were trusting nation
States and kings and false like Pagan gods rather than the one
true God. What's worse, they were smug.
They had this sort of like self-righteous attitude that
they were it that they had what it they know they had what they
needed and all the while they were ignoring God and they were
unprepared for what was just around the corner.
In the second-half of verse one, we see God say this.
My salvation is coming soon and my righteousness will be
revealed. God was on the cusp of revealing
His salvation, which is His saving acts that brought His
people through the Red Sea, and He was on the cusp of revealing
His righteousness, His Holiness. Now when God reveals Himself,
it's not a one. It's not like watching a movie.
It's a conversation where when God reveals Himself, He's going
to reveal us too. Something's going to come out of
us that maybe we don't even know.
We don't even see. Have you ever been in a
conversation like that? Someone's opening up their
heart. You all of a sudden you realize
that there's things inside your heart that you need to share
with them that you're seeing for the first time.
Imagine that, electrified all the way to its NTH degree.
And you realize that as God reveals Himself and His
Holiness, one thing that happens is that I reveal myself and my
sinfulness. And it can be a terrifying
moment that you don't want to be unprepared for.
Now, Isaiah experienced this as a young man early on in his
prophetic career. Isaiah had a vision.
Now, this is kind of weird. This might not make even make
sense. But imagine a young man having a
vision, whether in the body or maybe it was a dream, but he
finds himself in what's called the heavenly throne room where
God exists in his purity. And he describes God as being on
a throne high and lifted up. So God's beauty is revealed.
And he says the train of his robe filled the temple.
And and what happened was that as Isaiah, as God revealed his
salvation and righteousness to Isaiah, what did Isaiah see?
He said, woe to me for I'm a sinful man and I dwell among a
sinful people. He realized that he was not
ready for God's salvation and righteousness to be revealed.
And he, he described his lips, his lips felt unclean.
And I don't know why. Maybe it was because Isaiah was
a verbal person. You know, he's a really good
writer. But maybe he realized that he
had not been honoring God with his words.
But anyway, he felt that his lips were unclean.
His, his very lips were unworthy to stand in the presence of God.
But what happened was this, he didn't just see God's holiness,
he actually experienced first hand God's saving power.
And it came in the form of, and again, this is maybe a strange
image for some of us, but it was like a, you know, those charcoal
briquettes when they're hot, they're kind of glowing.
All right. So he saw an angelic figure take
something like that, a a burning coal straight from from the
throne room of God and fly down with it all the way to Isaiah
and it touched his lips and it burned his lips and it purified
him Something and I something in Isaiah felt that he had he had
been made right because the, because this creature said,
behold, I touched your lips, you, you know, he had been
forgiven, that he had been cleansed and that the that God
didn't come to destroy him. God had come to heal him.
So Isaiah knew what he experienced, the whole nation
was going to experience, and one day the whole world was going to
experience. And what happened was that
beyond Isaiah, God didn't just send a burning coal to touch the
lips of humankind. God sent his Son Jesus Christ,
who is absolutely pure, absolutely sinless, from God's
throne room, and He would take on the sins of the world as He
hung on the cross. But in so doing he would reveal
how sinful we actually are and how loving God actually is.
God's holiness and God's mercy, His salvation and His
righteousness meet at the cross. And when anyone comes into the
presence of the cross and the Holy Spirit reveals the heart of
God, they too can be cleansed. They too can be made right.
And it is a moment that we want to prepare ourselves for.
And that is why we are in a season of repentance.
The season of Lent is a time where we welcome the presence of
God by confessing our sins, confessing all of the ways that
we are not ready for the presence of God, where we are
looking at our lives like do we actually love God?
In fact, verse 2, you know, talks about preparing by doing.
It's not just in our heads. Verse 2, happy is the person who
does this, who does this, the Son of man who holds it fast,
who keeps the Sabbath. Isaiah says speaking on God's
behalf without desecrating it and keeps his or her hand from
doing any evil. You know, love at some point has
go needs to go beyond words. If you want to prepare for the
presence of someone in your life, you're going to change
your life to make room for them and make space for them.
And the same is true for God. Jesus said at one point, I've
called you friends. Friends are do my commandments
and not to say I'll only be friends with you if you do what
I want, but like if you're my friend, you'll know what I love
and you'll want to do that. You know, God's people at the
time were like carrying the torch, but there was no flame in
it. But they were like proudly
walking around being like, look at this bejeweled, awesome, cool
torch. I'm so religious.
I'm so good. I do all the right things.
I say all the say all the right things.
I give off a religious vibe. You know, I wear perfume that
smells like godliness, but there's no flame in the torch.
There's no spirit, there's no life.
You don't actually love God. You just love the religious
life. When you actually looked at
like, when you drill down into like, all right, how are you
spending your time? OK, How are you spending your
money? OK, How are you treating people
when you drill down and be like, let's talk about like the
tangible ways that you're preparing for the presence of a
God. Like, well, I carry around the
torch, but I basically do what I want.
Happy is the person the Lord says, who does what God
commands. Now, if the presence of God were
as immediate to us as it was to Isaiah as a young man, would he
find us prepared? Would there be a flame of love
for God in the torch that we carry?
Do we love God with what is precious to us?
Do we actually love God with our time, which is very precious?
Do we actually love God with our money, which is usually tight?
Do we actually love God with our relationships, with our
priorities? Is there passion in our heart
for the presence of God? Do we love His presence?
Do we seek His presence? Would he find the flame in the
torch or would he find us kind of carrying it with a bit of a
smug self satisfied? We're on the right side of God.
We're on the right side of history.
We're the good guys, not the bad guys.
And we've all found ourselves there, haven't we?
We've all had the torch, but no flame.
And truth be told, you know, at the end of the day, if the
presence of God were to be manifest right here, right now,
I don't know if any of us would truly be prepared for what we
would encounter. Yet we can still welcome Him
with joyful, humble repentance. We can tell the truth about how
far we've fallen. We can ask for the flame of the
Holy Spirit, which was given on the day of Pentecost to be given
to us by grace and not by works. And we can confess our sins, not
just liturgically, but personally and together and
individually. We can confess our need for
grace and we can by our power, change our ways.
Friends, we can. That's part of repentance is
changing our ways. It's, it's, it's, it's the the
tangible ways that we show that there really is a flame of love
in our hearts. We're willing to make changes.
A spiritual beacon Church loves. Loves the presence of God, seeks
the presence of God. You know, he is our greatest
treasure. It's the name of our church,
Emmanuel, God with us and it if we didn't have the presence of
God, we wouldn't have a church. We would have nothing to gather
around. Eventually a a torch without a
flame would not be enough to gather us.
So let us ever devote ourselves to him with our whole heart, our
whole mind, our whole strength. But it doesn't stop there.
It doesn't stop with welcoming the presence of God, as
important and primary as that is.
Isaiah was sent outward with a message, and so we are sent
outward with a message as well. The, the, the, the torch is not
meant to stay hidden. A spiritual beacon not only
welcomes the presence of God, a spiritual beacon church welcomes
the presence of the stranger. There are people who would be
new to us, who would be unfamiliar to us, maybe
unexpected to us, that the Lord wants to include in our midst.
Here's who the Lord has in mind as He spoke to his people.
Verse 3, No foreigner who has joined himself to the Lord
should say, the Lord will exclude me from his people.
And the eunuch should not say, look, I'm a dried up tree.
These are two types of strangers whom no one was expecting to
join God's covenant. The foreigner wasn't born into
God's family. They don't speak the language,
they don't get the inside jokes, they don't They kind of enjoy
different kinds of foods and they feel like everyone else is
in on the secret. The eunuch had a physical
liability keeping them from procreation and and and in their
day having a being married and having kids was what it meant to
be fully human and so the eunuch people saw them as like less
than human. Now notice how deeply the Lord
is aware of the painful story that they are telling
themselves. The Lord will exclude me from
his people. Or look, I am a dried up tree.
It's worth saying that the Lord knows them well enough to draw
out and speak hope into the painful story they're telling
themselves in their heads. You have to know someone really
well to know the painful story that's running, cycling through
their hearts and heads during the day.
Because the Lord knows it and he, he's like, it's not true.
Don't say that. This is how well friends the
Lord knows us. This is how well he knows our
friends, Co workers, neighbors, classmates that paint.
He knows the painful thoughts and they might go like this.
I don't belong here. These people are judging me.
I can tell I should leave or I stay busy.
I need to stay busy because I'm so lonely and depressed.
Or how about this one? I have to be perfect or my life
is an absolute failure. Or what about this?
What if my best days are behind me?
What if my kids are falling behind?
Am I doing enough? I'm probably failing everyone in
my life. The Lord doesn't just know those
thoughts, He speaks hope and healing directly into those
thoughts. He interrupts the cycle and
actually imagines a future for these outsiders and for us and
for the people out of our life where they become the major
stakeholders in His story, in His covenant.
Verse 4 is what He says. The Lord says this for the
eunuchs who keep my Sabbath and who choose what pleases me and
hold firmly to my covenant. I will give them in my house and
within my walls a memorial and a name better than sons and
daughters. I will give each of them an
everlasting name that will never be cut off.
And the Lord can see a future where these eunuchs are first
class citizens of his Kingdom and notice that like they're not
holding on to some watered down version of the faith.
They're not second class citizens.
They're described as like grasping the covenant firmly in
their hands, like it's the most precious treasures they've ever
received and they're never going to let it go.
And God makes them stakeholders. He gives them a legacy and a
future in his house. A memorial is set up in their
honor. An eternal name is given to
them, a legacy and an impact that goes on forever in God's
Kingdom. Now let me for a moment speak to
those of you who call Emmanuel Anglican your home.
You think of this as our church, my church.
So I want to ask you this, can we imagine strangers, people who
we don't know yet, being celebrated here at Emanuel,
platformed here at Emanuel, having a stake in the future of
Emanuel, People that are not currently here?
If we can begin to imagine people who are currently stuck
in pain loops actually that getting interrupted and they
join us here and walk forward and hope and become stakeholders
here. That's how we know we're
starting to become a spiritual beacon church.
Can we see Chicago neighbors with no church connections
currently loving the gospel, loving the word of God, love it,
clutching the Book of Common Prayer like it's the best gift
they've ever been given? Can we imagine them kneeling
next to us next Lent? Can we imagine them dancing next
to us in Easter? Can we imagine them serving the
poor with us during Ordinary Time?
Can we imagine them becoming the next prayer ministers?
The next parish council members, the next missionaries, The next
Sunday school teachers? The Lord can see this.
He says I will bring them to my holy mountain.
He promises that. He says they're burnt Offerings
and sacrifices will be acceptable on my altar and this
is very intimate language. There's no there's no
limitations being set against them.
If they love God, he will love them in response and they will
have a future in his Kingdom. The most unlikely will not only
belong that but be part of the leadership.
In fact, this inclusion of outsider of outsiders is tied to
the very name of the house. He says my house will be called
a House of prayer for all nations.
You could translate this. All peoples, it's, it's global
now. Friends, listen, when we lose
this identity, we lose our purpose for existing.
We exist for the glory of God. We exist for people that aren't
here yet. Israel was called to be God's
holy people for that purpose, to shine for the nations.
God gave them a torch and said run with this.
Let it be seen. Let it draw the eunuchs and the
foreigners and all who would honor my name.
Now, something interesting happens when when that Olympic
cauldron is lit, because it does send a message to all the
nations, to all the peoples, anyone who could like, you know,
watch it on the Internet or watch it on TV.
This these games are open and they're open to you.
If you want to compete, you can try now.
No matter what your background, no matter what station in life,
no matter what country, people can see that flame and start
taking a journey. It might be a long journey and
find their way inside that Coliseum now.
In the early 1980s, a young girl named Kathy Freeman caught sight
of the Olympic signal. She was from a working class
Aboriginal family in Queensland, Australia, and this was at a
time when people from Indigenous peoples in Australia faced
systemic racism and marginalization.
And so there was a, you know, enormous, like, limits on her
life glass ceiling on many different levels.
But Kathy could run fast. And so as a as a young girl, she
wrote, she wrote down her dream Olympic gold.
And she's like, I want to win the gold, not only for my nation
of Australia, but for my people. And so 16 years later, she found
herself running inside the Australian Coliseum, carrying
the Olympic torch, lighting the cauldron to start the games.
And she didn't just run with that torch, she actually ran in
the 400 meter women's race. There was enormous pressure on
Kathy from her people and her country and herself and her
family. She wanted so badly to answer
the call of that beacon. And so she took off.
She ran a conservative race, sprinted at the end and won the
gold and she couldn't even celebrate.
She was so relieved. She just doubled over to let all
of the all of the hopes just sort and all of the pressure
just sort of like fall off of her shoulders before she
ascended to that top platform receive the gold.
But it didn't stop there. She spent the rest of her life
with Indigenous kids from Australia, mentoring them,
speaking to them, lifting them up, using her platform to get
where she got and beyond. Kathy Freeman, kind of.
You could say she embodies the Olympic spirit.
But there was a time when all she could see was the flame.
All she, she was an outsider, completely looking in all 'cause
she could. She was the flame and she just
went toward it. Now a spiritual beacon church by
its very nature is going to welcome the presence of a
stranger and give them a place and give them a stake in the
mission. Yet there's one final feature we
can't miss. Even as we welcome the presence
of God and welcome the presence of a stranger, there's like this
take away. There's a So what?
There's a way that we can walk this forward even this week.
And it's, it's encouraging because it's very doable and God
is setting the example and it's a challenge for everyone here.
In verse 8, Isaiah ends with a solemn declaration from the
Lord, verse 8. This is the declaration of the
Lord God who gathers the dispersed of Israel.
I will gather to them still others besides those already
gathered. I will gather still others to
them still others besides those already gathered.
So the Lord doesn't just sit around and wait for the people
to come to him. He goes out like a Good Shepherd
looking for them, and he gathers them.
Now gathering is a gentle image, isn't it?
It's a Shepardly image. It's even a motherly image.
It's not coercive. There's no high pressured sales
tactics. It's not obnoxious.
It's lots of small steps. It's lots of Invitational
openness. It's not a big service or a big
program. As great as those are.
It's personal. Our God is in the work of
gathering, and the question is, will we join Him?
All of us can join Him, and this is what it means to be your
Spiritual Beacon Church. It's 7:00 AM on a Tuesday
morning and we've got about 6 minutes before the bus arrives.
Do we scroll on our phones or do we pray?
Spend those 6 minutes praying for the presence of God and for
God to send us to the people that He is gathering that He
would like to employ us to partner with us to gather it.
It's dinner time on a Thursday evening.
Will we spend our dinner with Netflix or neighbors?
Kind of comes down to choices like that.
It's Saturday afternoon, we got some free time.
Will we spend that free time catching up on the sports scores
or will we reach out to people, friends of ours from within a
manual and beyond a manual who don't have a, you know, church
connection and actually go to the park and play sports with
them? A Spiritual Beacon Church is a
whole congregation of people carrying the gospel torch,
joining God in the gathering process, engaging people in
loving ways about life and the gospel, befriending people who
have no church home, praying for them regularly, knowing their
pain points, and gathering welcome.
Welcome to our home. Welcome to our Citigroup.
Welcome to our service. Welcome to Saturday afternoon
sports. Remember, Emmanuel, Remember
this. In a city that is filled with a
lot of people who are very, very anxious and hurting, The Lord
has gifted our church with a gift of of healing and
compassion. And in a city longing for
beauty, we are a community filled with artistic vision and
hope. And in a city longing for
authentic spiritual connection, we are a people rich in prayer
and spiritual formation and liturgy.
And in a city skeptical and cynical about truth claims, we
have the deep resources of the Gospel that speak to those
pressing questions. God has planted us here for a
really beautiful purpose, and that is to make the gospel
personal, tangible, and visible for the people of Chicago.
Now, once that final runner lights the cauldron, you know
they don't just put the cauldron out 15 minutes later.
It stays lit and serves as a beacon to the world that the
games are underway and that everyone is invited to come and
see. So, friends, we are carrying a
light that does not originate with us.
It's the light of Jesus, the light of the Son of God.
It's intended to shine, not glare with love and truth to
every foreigner, every eunuch, every friend, every neighbor,
every companion of our city. And Chicago is like looking and
watching to see. Is that light real and is it for
me? So let's run with hope and
courage and grit, and let's not put down our torch until the
people are gathered and the beacon is lit and the Son of God
is lifted high in the city of Chicago, and that all are drawn
to Him in the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy
Spirit. Amen.