A Sermon for the Salem United Church of Christ of Harrisburg, PA

by Rev. James Eaton, Interim Pastor ©2025

Second Sunday After Epiphany/Year A • January 18, 2026

Isaiah 49:1-7 * 1 Corinthians 1:1-9 * John 1:29-42

Down in the Chesapeake Bay, just east of the Magothy River, a little north of Annapolis, south of the Patapsco, there is a squat little lighthouse called Baltimore Light. It marks the start of the channel that leads to Baltimore. It was first lit in 1908 and ever since sailors have looked out for it, especially in fog or darkness. It isn’t much to look at but it does this one thing: it provides a light to guide all of us safely on our way. Out in San Francisco, the entrance to the Bay is marked by the Point Bonita light; up in New York, of course, there is Lady Liberty, holding high a sculpted torch, the first sight thousands of immigrants including my great-grandmother first saw when they came to this country. We are in the season of Epiphany and it’s all about light showing forth the light of God, walking together in that light, reflecting that light.

That’s what’s happening in the story we read from the Gospel of John. John doesn’t tell the whole story of Jesus’ baptism but he knows that the presence of God’s light, personified as God’s Spirit, is present in Jesus. Perhaps the baptism has already happened.

The next day he saw Jesus coming toward him and declared, “Here is the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world! [John 1:29]

Don’t miss the verb here: ‘see’. Throughout John, things start with seeing, move to knowing, and finally to witnessing [Pulpit Fiction] We need to see to go forward. That’s what the lighthouses do: they give mariners their location, they help them see where they are and where they should go. John sees Jesus and knows his path: he is the forerunner, and just like a lighthouse, he points out the direction: “Here is the lamb of God.” The lamb of God is the signal of God’s grace, the one sacrificed before Passover, whose blood marks the children of God for salvation. Now John sees him; now John points the way forward.

John’s disciples get it. Once again we have the language of seeing: “”Look, here is the Lamb of God!” [John 1:36] and two of his disciples, Andrew and another, do indeed look and seeing Jesus, follow him. They ask where he’s staying and once again we have this vision language: Jesus replies, “Come and see.” [John 1:39] This is Jesus’ whole approach; he never compels, never demands discipleship, he tells people to wake up and come and see. Andrew does, and he goes and gets his brother Peter to come along with them. When Jesus sees Peter, he renames him. 

Isn’t this what we do in families? My daughter Amy had a best friend when she was young who called her ‘Amoos”; she liked the nickname and used it and then it got shortened to “Mo”; she even had a t-shirt at one time that said “Mo the Motorcycle Maniac”, although in truth I don’t think she’s ever been on a motorcycle. In the family, it got transformed to “Moee” and sometimes I still call her that. You see what Jesus is doing here? John sees him, the disciples see him, they recognize him and he takes that sight, that light, and makes it the center of a new community. One writer said, 

We have to live the story. We have to stay with Jesus; where are you staying, they asked. The word for remain and stay …is menei. Later in John it will be translate as abide: abide in me. Simply put, we have to live with him, and in him.  It means following, hanging out with him, studying him. Then we will find him, and find the meaning in him. It will become real. [One Man’s Web]

When we stay with him, then we discover the same light John saw, then our paths become his path, our way becomes his way, our light is the reflection of his light.

Isaiah tells us why God sends such light into the world. For centuries, prophets had spoken about God’s special care for Israel. Now, Isaiah says, 

“It is too light a thing that you should be my servant to raise up the tribes of Jacob and to restore the survivors of Israel; I will give you as a light to the nations, that my salvation may reach to the end of the earth.” [Isaiah 49:6]

God has sent this light for the whole world. You know the song, “He’s got the whole world in his hands”; this is the expression of that. God’s justice, God’s mercy, God’s love is going to shine in the whole world and God sends individuals to do it. 

For God’s light to shine, we must become lighthouses. Claudette Colvin was a black teenage girl in Montgomery, Alabama, in the  1950s when racism was legally enforced. She grew up in segregation: water fountains marked “white” and “colored”, rules about where she could go to the movies, that she couldn’t go to a park, or the zoo or swim in a pool in the hot summer. The rules said black people had to sit in the back of the bus and give up their seat to a white person if the bus filled up. Claudette was 15 but one day she had the courage to refuse to move from her bus seat. She was arrested and jailed. 

Later, Rosa Parks would do the same thing; she became the face and spark plug for the early Civil Rights movement. Her arrest led to a bus boycott that changed the law forever. Colvin was largely forgotten, but her light was the dawn of that movement for freedom and justice. Colvin died recently at 86. Five years ago, when she sued to get her conviction expunged, she said,

“I want us to move forward and be better,” Colvin said…“When I think about why I’m seeking to have my name cleared by the state, it is because I believe if that happened it would show the generation growing up now that progress is possible and things do get better. It will inspire them to make the world better.”[https://www.cnn.com/2026/01/13/us/claudette-colvin-death}

Isn’t that what God challenges all of us—to inspire others to see that God’s light can spread, justice can come, we can become a loving community that cares for all?

Today is our Annual Meeting. I imagine there will be reports on what we did this past year, so many fellowship events held, so many worship services, so much money budgeted. Some will be quietly feeling sad that our budget or attendance or influence is not what it once was. I imagine Colvin felt small when the police arrested her. Sometimes we feel small. But the real question before us isn’t what we spent last year, what we did last year, it’s what are we going to do this year. How can we be a lighthouse here? There’s about 30 of us on any given Sunday, a few more who can’t get here but are with us in prayer. It’s not many. But look at this story. Isaiah speaks of God sending a single servant. John asks us to behold the lamb of God. Jesus starts with these two disciples, Andrew and someone else who apparently dropped out. He finally ends up with just 12, less than half the people here. 

But just a few years later, Paul is already writing to a group thousands of miles away in Greece, in Corinth, reminding them of what we ought to remember in our meeting: 

in every way you have been enriched in him, in speech and knowledge of every kind just as the testimony of Christ has been strengthened among you so that you are not lacking in any gift as you wait for the revealing of our Lord Jesus Christ.[1 Cor. 1:5-7]

The most important question for us is how will we take the gifts of God and share that light.

Not long after Colvin was arrested, when Rosa Parks was arrested for the same thing and the community began to react in what became the Montgomery Bus Boycott, they turned to a young minister in his first church to lead them. His name was Martin Luther King, Jr., and surely the light of God shone from his work, surely he was a lighthouse for God’s love. Tomorrow we remember his life with a holiday, but we should remember his work. One thing that always impresses me is that while we know him as a national leader for freedom and justice, he never stopped being a local pastor. It’s hard to do that. I recently read a biography about King and at one point the writer mentioned how his secretary would send him daily reports on correspondence and calls. In one of those reports, she mentioned calls about his national campaign for justice and also that the key for the coke machine in the office had been misplaced. I laughed: that’s just like a pastor’s life. “Pastor, tell me how I can be saved,” one moment and the next—where is the key?

Shortly before King was murdered for leading a march for economic justice, he preached a sermon to his home congregation at Ebenezer Baptist in Atlanta. He talked about the prospect of his death. He didn’t want a long funeral, he said. He didn’t want his eulogist to talk about his Nobel Peace Prize or his college degrees. “I’d like someone to mention that day that Martin Luther King Jr. tried to give his life serving others,” he said, his voice loud, strong and quavering, the word “tried” full of grit and gravel. The congregation was rapt. His father was silent. “I’d like for someone to say that day that Martin Luther King Jr. tried to love somebody! I want you to say that day that I tried to be right on the war question! I want you to be able to say that day that I did try to feed the hungry … I want you to say that I tried to love and serve humanity! Yes, if you want to say that day that I was a drum major, say that I was a drum major for justice. Say that I was a drum major for peace, that I was a drum major for righteousness, and all of the other shallow things will not matter … I just want to leave a committed life behind.”

That’s what I hope for myself; that’s what I hope for our church. It’s wonderful that we are an historic church; it’s great that we have been here so long. But what really matters is this: are we a lighthouse for Jesus? Are we reflecting the light of God here today?

We have this little light: let it shine! 

We have this little light: let it show the way to justice.

We have this little light: let it show the way to people walking in darkness.

Amen