Sermon for Sunday, January 11, 2026 || Epiphany 1A || Isaiah 42:1-9

I wrote a version of this sermon on Tuesday, which is my normal sermon-writing day. Then the events of Wednesday happened – ICE agents shot and killed Renee Nicole Good in Minneapolis – and I knew I would be writing a new sermon on Saturday. But the more I reflected on what I had planned to say, the more the bulk of the words I wrote on Tuesday made sense to share this morning, not despite of the events of Wednesday but because of them.

Besides being a horrific tragedy for her family and community, the shooting of Renee Good is the latest in a long line of violent critical moments in the recent history of the United States. While I have not been alive for as long as most of you, my lifetime has seen more than my fair share of such critical moments – moments of horrible violence that could also be possible inflection points where the future could diverge from the past in new and lifegiving ways. The killing of George Floyd was one. The killing of Trayvon Martin was another. The shooting at Sandy Hook. The shooting at Columbine. The terrorist attacks on September 11th. In each of these moments of violence, among many many others, our collective society had the opportunity to say, “No More”; to say, “We will repent. We will change our hearts and lives, and in so doing, we will remake our society with more justice, more peace, and more love.”

In each case, after glimmers of possible change, the old state of society retrenched itself, and in recent years, brought reinforcements. The killing of Renee Nicole Good is the most current in this long line, and we have the opportunity, personally and collectively, to break the cycle of crisis and retrenchment. With God’s help, this could be the inflection point that turns the tide away from violence, division, falsehood, scapegoating, and oppression; that turns the tide toward peace, harmony, truth, love, and justice.

But there’s one primary reason why this inflection point will probably follow the same pattern as all the others. People, both individually and collectively, have very short attention spans. News cycles move on to the next big story with stunning rapidity. And those who are trying to sustain the march toward a new way of being get left behind. In order to keep that from happening this time, I’d like share with you a verse of scripture from the Prophet Isaiah that we read this morning. This verse crystallizes for me how God is present in our current crisis. The verse goes like this:

Here is my servant, whom I uphold,
my chosen, in whom my soul delights;
I have put my spirit upon him;
he will bring forth justice to the nations.

Last week I focused on our role in standing with the tormented and oppressed. For the rest of this sermon, we’ll talk about God’s role in granting us the ability to do this. And we’ll examine God’s role by taking these words from the Prophet Isaiah bit by bit.

“Here is my servant.” God gives us this identity as ones who serve. But our service is not a result of coercion or enslavement. God calls us into service, calls us from the depths of our restless hearts as we seek restfulness in so many other unquiet things. When we hear and respond to this call, we find freedom from these other things that entice us. And in our freedom we choose to serve God, which is when we find true rest for our hearts. As St. Paul says to the Galatians: “You were called to freedom, brothers and sisters; only don’t let this freedom be an opportunity to indulge your selfish impulses, but serve each other through love. All the Law has been fulfilled in a single statement: Love your neighbor as yourself” (Galatians 5:13-14 CEB).

We are God’s servants, “whom God upholds.” This is Isaiah’s verb for what God does in our lives: God “upholds us.” This wonderful word makes me imagine God like a parent helping their child learn to walk. The parent is bent over, two fingers out, with little fists grabbing those fingers, little legs toddling forward on unsteady feet. God is also the ground upon which the child places those little feet; while the feet are unsteady, the ground is not. The ground is the foundation of all there is.

So we are God’s servants, whom God upholds. And not only upholds, but chooses and delights in. Here is “my chosen, in whom my soul delights.” God calls us, holds us up, and chooses each one of us like a shopper picking out apples for a pie. Except that God picks all the apples, even the ones with bad spots. God chooses us, each one in our uniqueness, in our glories and in our scars. In the first story of Creation in the book of Genesis, God calls Creation good and indeed, very good. Right from the beginning, Creation existed as something in which God approved and took great delight. The story of the beginning is not the story of original sin but of original blessing, not of adversaries but of beloveds. While we stray away from God and distort our relationships through sin, there is nothing we can do to erase that fundamental identity of God’s chosen and beloved.

And that is some good news because we will need to embrace that fundamental identity as we move into the second half of Isaiah’s verse. The first half of the verse grants us an identity to claim and embrace. The second half of the verse gives us a mission to live and serve, a mission that is sorely needed during these days of violence and oppression.

“I have put my spirit upon” you, God says through the prophet. In Hebrew, this Spirit is the very breath of God, the same breath that God breathed into the nostrils of the first human in the second Creation story of the book of Genesis; the same breath that animated the dry bones in Ezekiel’s vision; the same breath that Jesus breathes on the disciples in the upper room on the night of resurrection when he says, “Receive the Holy Spirit.” We breathe this Spirit with each breath of air. The Spirit animates our soulful actions just as oxygen infuses on red blood cells. The Spirit is both the animating force and the anointing presence that sets our mission before us. 

And what is that mission? The last words of Isaiah’s verse tell us: to “bring forth justice to the nations.” Justice here is the reconciliation of all things back to God; in other words, the work of justice removes the distortions of sin and brings people into right relationship with God. And this justice is not just for Isaiah’s own people, his own limited tribe, but for “the nations,” the Gentiles, those who live outside the story that Isaiah’s people tell about themselves. Justice extends to the nations and indeed to all of Creation. Our role as chosen, delightful, beloved, and anointed servants is to partner with God in the work of reconciliation.

Isaiah hears the word of God speak of a special anointed servant. Jesus extends this anointing to all who follow him. And so each of us can hear these words as a promise and a mission from God. As we confront the powers of this world who seek to divide us, terrify us, and shock us into submission through acts of violence, remember Isaiah’s words, which were written at another time of upheaval in this world. Remember:

You are God’s servant. 
God upholds you. 
You are God’s chosen. 
God delights in you. 
You are God’s beloved. 
God breathes the enlivening Spirit into you.
You are God’s hands and heart in this world.
God calls you to do the work of justice.