2026.01.25 | Burning and Blooming
Burning & Blooming
2 Corinthians 4:1–9
Preached by
Rev. Dr. Marvin Lance Wiser
Eden United Church of Christ
Cherryland, CA
25 January 2026
The world is both burning and blooming. That line may be one of the most honest theological statements I’ve read in a long time. That sentence names something we all know in our bones, and those who have eyes to see, see it.
Everywhere we turn, there is evidence of burning: systems fraying, violence recurring, truth distorted, hope exhausted. We carry grief in our bodies. We carry fear in our newsfeeds. We carry weariness in our souls.
And yet. . . children still laugh. Neighbors still show up. Love still refuses to disappear. The sun still rises. The world is burning—and the world is blooming.
Karen Salmansohn, a self-described “Middle-of-Life” Doula, and columnist for Psychology Today, is a pioneer in the Mortality Awareness Movement. She doesn’t want us to fixate on death; she wants us to fuel the now. A mortality-focused lens helps one focus on what matters.
She penned a poem, entitled “The world is both burning & blooming” that really resonated with me this past week, perhaps it will with you as well:
You get the bad news
and the sunrise in the same day.
You cry over the headlines, then you laugh at a baby
wearing a hat shaped like a bear.
This is the dual citizenship of being alive.
Rage and reverence,
Grief and grace.
You are allowed to feel both.
You are allowed to scream,
& still notice how good the soup is.
You don't have to choose.
Let it all in.
It’s a bit like Ecclesiastes 3—you know, the Byrds’ song, “Turn, Turn, Turn: To Everything There Is a Season.” But instead of life unfolding neatly in seasons, our reality is that those seasons blur into one another. We carry grief and we notice beauty anyway. And friends, it is not a denial to do so. That is what it means to be alive and live honestly—to hold that tension, the burning and the blooming.
And it is precisely this tension that the season of Epiphany dares us to inhabit. The Apostle Paul knew it well. Listen to his defiance in 2 Corinthians:
“We are afflicted in every way, but not crushed;
perplexed, but not driven to despair;
persecuted, but not forsaken;
struck down, but not destroyed.
Epiphany is not about pretending darkness isn’t real. It’s about discovering where light is already at work, even now.
El mundo arde y florece a la vez: una verdad que sentimos en lo más profundo de nuestro ser. A nuestro alrededor vemos sistemas que se desmoronan, violencia que se repite y la esperanza que se desvanece, y cargamos con ese dolor, ese miedo y ese cansancio. Y, sin embargo, los niños siguen riendo, los vecinos siguen apoyándose mutuamente, el amor perdura y el sol sigue saliendo. Como la sabiduría del Eclesiastés, que nos enseña que las estaciones de la vida se superponen y se entrelazan, la fe nos invita a vivir con honestidad en medio de esta tensión; se nos permite sentir rabia y reverencia, dolor y gracia, al mismo tiempo. La Epifanía no niega la oscuridad; revela dónde la luz ya está obrando, haciéndose eco de la esperanza inquebrantable de Pablo: aunque afligidos, no estamos aplastados, y aunque derribados, no estamos destruidos.
The apostle Paul writes to the Corinthian community in a moment of deep strain. They are criticized, discouraged, exhausted. And Paul opens with a confession that feels almost defiant:
“Therefore, since it is by God’s mercy that we are engaged in this ministry, we do not lose heart.”
Notice what Paul does not say.
He does not say that suffering has ended.
He does not say that darkness disappears or even dissipates.
Paul says: we do not lose heart. That’s not a feeling, it’s a decision. Ministry, Paul says, happens because of mercy, not strength. Faith is honest endurance. What I call compassionate persistence.
And then Paul tells us why endurance is even possible:
“For it is the God who said, ‘Let light shine out of darkness,’ who has shone in our hearts,” and “We have this treasure in clay jars.”
The light of God does not hover safely above us. It did not come in one solitary event two millennia ago. Nor does it wait at the end of history. It burns within our hearts. We are those jars.
Here an ancient idea helps us hear Paul more deeply. In the ancient Greek world, many believed in what is called extramission theory of vision—the belief that vision works not because light enters the eyes as we understand it today, or intromission, but because light flows outward from within the person, illuminating the world.
According to this view, the soul carries an inner flame, and to see is to project that light onto the world. You don’t simply observe reality. You illuminate it, like the LiDAR technology that is in our iPhones, that uses pulsed laser light to map out objects and “see,” like sonar, but with light. So, sight conceived in this way, as Paul undoubtedly did, is not simply passive reception, it’s participatory. You don’t just receive light. You project it. To see was to participate. To look was to reveal.
Paul’s theology echoes this ancient concept: “We have this treasure in clay jars.” The light of God lives within us, shining outward into a world in desperate need of light.
To be "blinded" by the "god of this age" then is to have your internal fire extinguished. When we buy into narratives of scarcity, hate, and exclusion, our flames are snuffed. But love—love fans that flame.
Escribiendo a una comunidad agotada y asediada, Pablo insiste no en que el sufrimiento haya terminado, sino en que la misericordia hace posible la perseverancia: «no nos desanimamos». La fe, enseña, no es negación, sino persistencia compasiva, arraigada en la convicción de que la luz de Dios brilla en nuestro interior como un tesoro en frágiles vasijas de barro. Basándose en una antigua concepción de la vista como luz proyectada hacia afuera, Pablo nos recuerda que no solo recibimos iluminación, sino que participamos en ella, incluso cuando las falsas narrativas de escasez y odio intentan apagar nuestra llama interior. Esta verdad es importante en un mundo que, sin duda, está en llamas, como se ve en Minneapolis —desde el asesinato de George Floyd hasta la continua violencia estatal con los asesinatos de Renne Good y Alex Pretti a manos de agentes de ICE— y, sin embargo, sigue floreciendo a través de la ayuda mutua, la resistencia colectiva y la claridad moral. La Epifanía nombra esta realidad dual, asegurándonos que el lamento y la alegría van de la mano, y nos llama no a retraernos, sino a permanecer presentes, compasivos y comprometidos, portando y reflejando la luz de Dios en la justicia y la alegría.
Epiphany asks us: what light are we projecting into a world that is burning and blooming?
And when we say the world is burning, we aren’t being poetic.
We can name Minneapolis plainly. We remember the murder of George Floyd and the embers of grief and trauma that still linger.
Fire can destroy, but fire can also illuminate. The fire revealed how fragile our peace was. It revealed the normalization of racial injustice.
And yet, something bloomed. Mutual aid. Collective organizing. A moral clarity that cannot be unlearned. But the burning continues. Just yesterday morning another person was executed in the street by state-sponsored terrorists. His name was Alex Pretti, an ICU nurse and legal observer. He now joins the award-winning poet Renee Good as being the second legal observer executed in the streets in Minneapolis. We see the world burning. And we hear the abomination that is this administration’s gaslighting as we hear the cries from the detention centers.
But we also see the bloom. Last week, 600 clergy, some from the Bay, and tens of thousands of people joined a general strike, a concerted resistance, that is showing the rest of this country how to hold the line against illegal unconstitutional actions carried out by the executive branches’ brown shirts. That is light shining in collective solidarity. We see the world blooming with our own eyes.
Here is the Epiphany word you need to hear: You are allowed to feel both.
Some of us feel guilty in these times for allowing ourselves to feel joy. “How can I enjoy anything when the world is groaning like this?” But the wisdom of faith says: you don’t have to choose. Paul’s grammar insists on it. Both things are true at once. Lament is faithful. Joy is not betrayal. Gratitude is not apathy. That’s why movements for liberation sing deeply, and break bread in celebration—afflicted, but not crushed. That’s why we’ve been saying this past year and continue to say, “In Justice and Joy.” May we not be blinded to the blooming, and may we not be deprived of our joy, for both are from above.
So Paul’s encouragement is not passive. Do not lose heart is a call to stay woke, stay tender, stay engaged. In a time of exhaustion and cynicism, do not numb out, do not retreat. Because illumination does not come from being perfect, it comes from being present. In burning and blooming, may we practice a compassionate mortality-focused presence with ourselves and one another. And rest assured that we ourselves are not the light, but we carry it. May we tend to it and reflect it well together. Amen.