Advent 4c -- Dec 21, 2025

 

author: Dale Hathaway
date: St. Alfred's Episcopal Church
title: Advent 4 Sermon Draft 3

Intro

I remember sitting up late beside the bunk beds that were shared by my little brother and my cousin Peter who was older than I. We were forcing ourselves to stay awake in order to see the signs of Santa flying across the sky and appearing in our house. Peter was several years older than I, so I looked to him as an authority. There was a part of me that was old enough to be silently wondering, "Was I being too childish or childlike? Surely Peter is old enough to know."

We didn't make it that night. We were asleep when Santa arrived. There's some part of me that, with some kind of irregular schedule in my subsequent years, I never gave up. I have looked for signs throughout my life. Signs of what's really going on. Signs in the midst of chaos happening in my life that might indicate that it was going to be okay. Signs as I grieved when my children moved 1,000 miles from me. I found I could trust in the words of Jeremiah:

16 “Restrain your voice from weeping and your eyes from tears, for your work will be rewarded,” declares the Lord. “They will return from the land of the enemy. 17 So there is hope for your descendants,” declares the Lord. “Your children will return to their own land.

I was looking for a sign when I was seeking to discern whether to go to graduate school or to return to the process of ordination for the Diocese of Colorado. At that time, in the Sacred Heart Chapel (now “Basilica”) at Notre Dame, I heard a Voice say: “ I don't care what you do as long as you love me with your whole heart and soul and mind and strength.” I took that to be a sign from God. As it was, I tried to go to graduate school and proceed with the ordination process.I knew, however, that for the rest of my life, no matter what I did, I would try to do it while loving God with my whole heart, soul, mind, and strength.

Sometime later I was serving at a little tiny parish that took me about 2 hours to drive to. I did that for a year or so and the Sundays were peaceful, but with a lot of driving. On one of those days, nothing particularly striking about it except that it was a mostly blue sky with fleeting clouds here and there, I looked up and one cloud formation in particular stood out. I immediately recognized it as an angel. Not that it looked like an angel. It looked like a cloud. But it was an actual angel, a messenger from God. The message was something like, "Everything is going to be okay." But my main response was not to the content of the message, but rather that at that moment in time, in that place, God was somehow reaching out to me, and I knew that it was a sacred moment. I made the sign of the cross and kept on driving but, I knew that I had been blessed, and I can still remember the event as if it were earlier today.

Signs

Our scripture readings for today feel overwhelmingly concerned with signs, with messages from God that inevitably turn our lives topsy-turvy and bring into our presence the unexpected. Signs of what God is doing in our lives.

The Lord spoke to Ahaz and gave him a sign. It had to do with a young woman giving birth to a son whom they named Emmanuel. That sign was then taken by later followers of Jesus, some seven centuries later, as a sign that Jesus himself was that son.

People looked for signs then as well as now. People sought reassurance and confirmation then as now. God delivered the assurance to them then as well as now, but then and now as well, God delivers an abundance of surprises and unexpected turns.

The psalmist repeats as if in the refrain of a song: show us the light of your countenance, let us see your face oh Lord, let us see your face and live and not die.

We say to God, "Show us your face." But we never really know what that face is going to look like. It may well come in the form of a cloud. One day at a weekday Eucharist in Hawaii, God showed up in the form of a bird. A woman came forward for the laying on of hands, and as I laid hands upon her head, a bird flew out of her abundant hair. Not much to do but to cross myself and to acknowledge that God had manifest himself in my presence.

In Matthew's account of the birth of Jesus God appears in the form of a dream to Joseph. "Do not be afraid" was the message. It was the message given to Mary by an Angel in the Gospel of Luke. God often gives the message: do not be afraid, it will be okay.

A thousand years later God appeared to a woman living alone so that she could spend her days with God. Her name was Julian. Around her there was death and dying and chaos. It was the time of the Black Death in Europe. And then she was struck with an illness that seemed as if it would kill her. Instead, God appeared to her over and over again. She spent the rest of her days writing down all the messages God gave her. She is most famous today for the short phrase that was among those messages: "All will be well and all manner of things shall be well."

Then and now

Then and now it seems as if there's something deep in the heart of humanity that we seek signs. We seek reassurance from the face and the voice of God. Signs are not as simple as we might think they should be. In just the stories I've shared with you today God has appeared in signs as varied as:

• A voice
• A cloud
• A dream
• A bird
• A prophet’s message to a king who lived centuries before

Signs are particularly associated with human beings. We are who we are in some deep way because of signs, our use of signs. Signs are powerful. Consider this sign:

Such a sign is capable of bringing to a halt a many-tonned truck -- or in the Panama Canal -- even a ship. We find meaning in that sign even without the letters. Constantine saw a sign in the sky in the form of a cross. It was the 4^th century and the history of the next 16 centuries was deeply changed and impacted by that sign and by the fact that that man at that time recognized it.

Meaning

Signs have power because they carry meaning. The octagon carries with it the meaning that one should end whatever it is they're doing and begin to do a new thing. There's nothing special or magical about an octagon. The English "s-t-o-p" is of no meaning whatsoever to someone who speaks Hindi. The meaning is really conveyed by the shape itself.

Where does the meaning come from? Clearly in the cases we're looking at today, the meaning comes from God. "Show us the light of your countenance, o Lord." In the Sacred Heart Chapel, big enough to be holding a wedding at the main altar while at the same time at the back I was having a private prayer time, in that place at that time God showed up. God might well have been at the wedding taking place way up in front of me, I don't know. Actually I assume God was there too. But I knew that God had spoken to me.

Signs can be strange like a burning bush or as common as a cloud in the sky. God is perfectly at home in either place. If we have eyes to see and ears to hear, we may find God in places as common as a butterfly in the Butterfly Garden or in the most unexpected places, like the immigrant hero at the Australian Hannukah massacre.

Signs of the times

We live in a time when it is customary to say, "You've got your truth and I've got mine. You have your truth and I have mine." It turns out that's not such a new thought, but is quite ancient. In 1 Kings 18 (9^th BCE).

• a country was divided between South and North
• There were bitter feuds between those who thought themselves to be liberals and those who were convinced that they were the true conservatives
• There was a lone voice who "wasn't from around here (an immigrant if you will." He was saying, "Pox on both your houses." (At the time there was a terrible drought -- climate change if you will). The lone voice said, "When you read the signs of the times, you're getting it all wrong."
• ½ the population thought that the solution to the drought was to call on the God Baal.
• ½ the population thought that the solution was to sacrifice to the Goddess Asherah.

It turns out, as you may have guessed, that neither of those gods were relevant. The lone voice, his name was Elijah, understood the meaning of the signs of the times and he called on the God he knew, Yahweh. Centuries later, at the time of Jesus, people wondered if he might be the long-expected Elijah. That theme about Elijah is a part of the overall theme of Advent.

From the 1960's onward, the (Catholic) Church has consistently understood that "the church should listen to, and learn from, the world around it", which is to say listen to the signs of the times.

The joys and hopes, the grief and anguish of the people of our time, especially of those who are poor or afflicted, are the joys and hopes, the grief and anguish of the followers of Christ as well. [Gaudium et Spes]

There are Elijahs in our midst; we should listen to them. What are the sign that they are seeing?

The signs we crave

As we look around the signs of our times include:

• A tyrant who wants to be a latter-day Ivan the Terrible.
• Bizarre weather that is far outside of the norm.
• Immigrants who are treated as if they are less than human and
• citizens who are apprehended by masked agents of the state.

I must tell you that when I look at the signs of our times I feel deeply troubled. It feels like the end of the world I have known all my life. I sense an approach of apocalyptic scale. But I know that such signs could apply to many ages, both then and now. When I look and listen with the eyes and ears of Elijah, what is the message?

Consistently when God spoke in the past through his messengers, the angels and the prophets, one thing God said was, "Don't be afraid." He said it to Moses, to Samuel, to Hezekiah, to Ruth, to Jeremiah, to Mary, to Joseph. "Don't be afraid." The message was not an elegant or easy, "Everything will be all right." It was, "Don't be afraid." God has this.

The word of the Lord

The sign for me in the last few weeks came in the form of a Christmas carol. It was recommended by a friend and colleague; so I think it's accurate to say that that friend was an "angel" – messenger is the meaning of the Greek word that is translated "angel." This particular carol is many centuries old and it comes associated with surrounding catastrophes not unlike those we face today.

• The Black Death.
• The Protestant Reformation.
• An old library in England burning the manuscripts stored there.
• The bombing of England in the second world war.
• A request for God's forgiveness, for friend and foe alike.

The town is Coventry, England. As the town was withstanding the heaviest bombardment of the war, throughout the dark night, the people received hope from the bells of their cathedral that kept ringing into the morning light. Only then was it discovered that the only thing left standing was the bell tower. All the rest of the Cathedral lay in ruins. The name of the carol: The Coventry Carol.

It's in our hymnal. #247.

Lully, lullay, thou little tiny child,
Bye bye, lully, lullay.

But here's the thing. It's not a song about the baby Jesus in the manger. It's a haunting lullaby-like song about the mothers and their babies who were killed by Herod in the wake of the message of the magi. The event is described in the Gospel of Matthew and nowhere else. It appears on the church's calendar as the "Feast of the Holy Innocents" on Dec. 28, but is avoided in the lessons of Christmas time. It's right there in the Gospel of Matthew: ch. 2:17-18. It's a part of the Christmas story that we tend to avoid.

And that's where God's message comes through for me. I can hear God's words, "Don't be afraid", when they are accompanied by the recognition that there is catastrophe all around. Life is about birth, followed by a life-time, followed by death. The "Don't be afraid" covers all of that. Christmas is above all about the Incarnation. But the Incarnation makes no sense without the death and resurrection of Jesus -- Passion & Resurrection.

The sign of the times for me is along the lines of: "Don't be afraid. I am with you. I am with you (Emmanuel) in the pain and the suffering as well as in the excitement and hope of new life."

I, the Lord, am with you through it all. No need for fear.