Daily Archives: December 28, 2025

Holy Innocents: A Sermon for the First Sunday after Christmas, 2025

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December 28, 2025
Christmas I

Merry Christmas! While the world and even most Christians, at least in the US have turned their backs on Christmas, are putting decorations away, and the like, for us, we are still in Christmastide. It’s the fourth day of Christmas—four calling birds, remember? It is also the First Sunday after Christmas but we’re taking some liberties with the lectionary today. 

In the Episcopal Church, the gospel appointed for the First Sunday after Christmas is always John 1:1-18. That’s something of a challenge because the gospel for Christmas Day is virtually the same reading: John 1:1-14. As I told the congregation on Christmas, I’ve preached on that text every Christmas Day since becoming a priest, and a couple before that, and on many of the following Sundays as well. It’s one of my favorite gospels of all. But if you want to hear a sermon on that text from me, you’re going to have to wait until next Christmas, or check out my website, where I post many of my sermons.

Instead, we are observing the Feast of the Holy Innocents today, which in the liturgical calendar falls on December 28, but because today is a Sunday, the observance would normally take place on Monday. We’re doing that at the request of our Stonecatchers group who has an activity planned later in the day, and thought this gospel story spoke especially well to the moment we are in.

There’s a historical connection with Grace as well. Our oldest stained glass window, the Vilas Window, was dedicated on the Feast of the Holy Innocents in 1887, commemorating Esther Vilas’s deceased husband and five of her children. That too speaks to our moment, for it’s a reminder that before the rise of modern medicine, many children died of childhood diseases that had been eradicated, or nearly so, thanks to vaccines.

Still, on this the fourth day of Christmas we should still be in full celebration mode. There are still Christmas cookies to be eaten, at least at our house; we’re looking ahead to New Year’s and another round of celebration, and the Packers have made it into the playoffs, although with three straight losses and all those injuries, it’s not looking good for them.

For all the joy and celebration of Christmas, and the nativity stories, in both versions related by the gospels of Matthew and Luke, there are ominous notes. That’s especially true of Matthew’s story in which Herod plays a prominent role. While this particular incident is not recorded in extra-biblical sources, we do know from the Jewish historian Josephus that Herod was a ruthless, murderous tyrant, and such an action would not have been out of character.

Still, the story is upsetting on several levels. First of all, to hear it now is to wreak havoc with the chronology of Christmas—it comes after the visit of the magi, which we will commemorate on later, on January 6, the feast of the Epiphany. And the utter evil of it—to kill all children, not just males, under the age of two. Such indiscriminate violence is more in keeping with our contemporary age, familiar as we are with genocide, carpet bombing, and school shootings.

Matthew isn’t content just to tell the story, he places it in the larger context of Israel’s salvation history, beginning with Joseph himself, who like his namesake in Genesis, is a dreamer of dreams. The flight to Egypt recalls the resettlement of Jacob and his family from the promised land of Canaan to Egypt in a time of famine, and the massacre of the holy innocents itself is an echo of Pharaoh’s decree that all the Hebrew baby boys should be killed.

It’s hard not to see another parallel to our own day. The image of the Holy Family desperately fleeing an evil ruler to save their lives, calls to mind all those who have fled evil regimes and desperate circumstances. We have heard horrific stories over the last year of refugees, asylum seekers, and others who have been forced to return to places where their lives would be placed in danger, families ripped apart.

While it may be overly facile to draw an exact parallel between the fate of the Holy Family as related in this story and the plight of refugees, it should give us pause to think. One of the realities of our day is the way in which many have dehumanized others unlike themselves, deriding them as subhuman as recent photos of tattooed refugees in incarceration (they’re all criminals); dismissing them as “illegals” or fear-mongering about their eating habits. To draw a connection between the Holy Family on the flight to Egypt and the plight of refugees and asylum seekers is to challenge all of us to see these vulnerable people as fellow humans, deserving respect and humane treatment.

So too with the massacre of the innocents. As one commentator wrote, “Tradition makes them the Holy Innocents, a remarkable kind of saint who never knew Jesus, but who were his companions and proxies in death.”

One of the interesting elements of the story is the juxtaposition of different understandings of kingship. On the one hand, there’s Herod a ruthless tyrant who for all his power rules only at the whim of the Roman Empire. In the background, there’s also Pharaoh, equally ruthless, like Herod, capricious and yet fearful. 

And then there’s Jesus, identified in this story by the magi as “King of the Jews”—a title mentioned only here in the Gospel of Matthew, and at the end of the gospel, when Jesus is labeled as “King of the Jews” first by Pilate, then in the inscription on the cross. Herod, a king who murders his subjects; Jesus, the king who identifies with his people, is crucified, suffering alongside and for them.

Later today, members of Grace and other Christians from throughout Madison will gather to bear witness to suffering that is taking place in our community and across our land. As you know one of the groups targeted by the current administration and their supporters are members of the trans community, beloved children of God. The Stonecatchers movement seeks to protect vulnerable communities in this time of division and hatred, and through their worship and action today, hope to express their solidarity with some of the most vulnerable people in society.

Many of us struggle with how to respond appropriately and effectively, offering a Christian witness of love and inclusiveness when weaponized hatred and all the power of the state are arrayed against the vulnerable. In many places, clergy and faithful people are taking a stand against ICE activity, speaking out against hatred and state violence. 

We may not know how to respond; we may be fearful ourselves, but this powerful, violent story reminds us that the Jesus we follow is a victim of such state violence, both in his family’s forced flight to Egypt and in his crucifixion, that Jesus stands on the side of and with the vulnerable and the oppressed, and that he calls us to join him in that witness.

And as the collect for the day reminds us, ultimately, it’s not in our hands but in God’s: “Receive, we pray, into the arms of your mercy all innocent victims; and by your great might frustrate the designs of evil tyrants and establish your rule of justice, love, and peace; through Jesus Christ our Lord.

Amen.

The Word became flesh: A Sermon for Christmas Day, 2025

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“And the Word became flesh and lived among us, and we have seen his glory.”

I’ve been at this preaching thing for some twenty years, and for all of those years, except during the lockdown, I have preached on Christmas Day. It hasn’t become any easier over those years. I’ll be honest, I’m twenty years older than I was a started out as a priest, and my body feels that every day, but especially today. I got home after midnight last night, and the alarm woke me at 6 this morning.

There’s another reason it doesn’t get easier. After twenty times preaching on this gospel text, actually more than that, because it’s also the gospel appointed for the 1st Sunday after Christmas, you might think it difficult to come up with something new to say. Well, you’re right, but at the same time, who needs something new when you’ve got the majestic prologue to John’s gospel: In the beginning was the Word and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.

I’ve been thinking a lot about this text as it relates to our cultural moment. We live in a post-truth world. Politicians lie brazenly and are not called on it. Our social media feeds are filled with fake videos produced by AI; having lost our moorings in reality, we are at the whim of the loudest shouters, the most spectacular influencers; the billionaires with infinite wealth who can spread falsehoods and sway millions. We can create AI friends in our loneliness and despair.

And it is coming into the institutional church as well. You’ve probably all heard of the various chatbots used by churches and denominations—perhaps you’ve even found yourself using them. I was appalled this past summer when I saw an ad for a webinar sponsored by a major Episcopal entity that promised to show us how we might make use of AI, in our communications, outreach, and evangelism. I know there are many clergy who use AI in crafting their sermons.

But this: in the beginning was the Word and the Word was with God and the Word was God. Our Christian faith proclaims that there is a deep relationship between our thinking, our words, and the Divine Word. No matter how inadequate our words may be to express our faith, to convey the truth of our faith, when we use them, we are touching in some way, the Truth of the Word. We stretch ourselves to understand, comprehend, we stretch ourselves as we try to communicate our faith with others, and when we do, we are touching the Divine Word.

“The Word became flesh and lived among us.” The incarnation is a great mystery of our faith, something that we should ponder and treasure in our hearts, something we should puzzle over, ponder. More than that. The Word connects us with God because our words, our thoughts are attempts to approach and understand the Word. By thinking, reflecting, struggling to understand the meaning of the Word become flesh, there’s a way in which our thinking itself makes Christ present in our minds and in our lives.

You may find all this very abstract. It is, but John doesn’t stop there. He goes on. The word became flesh and lived among us. 

With this verse, John brings us back to Bethlehem, to the reality of the incarnation. Literally the Greek reads, “and the word became flesh and tabernacled among us.” While John likely wants us to think of the tabernacle that was the symbol of God’s presence to the Israelites in the wilderness, it’s also the case that we are to think of Christ being among us, “living among us” in a temporary, make-shift way, like a tent. That is to say, the word took on frail human flesh to be like us. 

This paradox, this mystery is quite beyond comprehension. The Word taking human flesh. St. Augustine captures the paradox in one of his sermons on this text for Christmas:

“He so loved us that for our sake He was made man in time, through Whom all times were made; was in the world less in years than His servants, though older than the world itself in His eternity; was made man, Who made man; was created of a mother, whom He created; was carried by hands which He formed; nursed at the breasts which He had filled; cried in the manger in wordless infancy, He the Word without Whom all human eloquence is mute.” — St. Augustine, Sermon 188

John goes a step further. For John, this infant, this tiny human creature, incapable of speech, vulnerable, utterly dependent on others for life itself, this infant reveals God’s glory to us.

So we are back in Bethlehem, back in the confusing paradox that God became incarnate in a very ordinary way, in the poorest of circumstances, in the weakest of all human forms, a baby. And it is in that paradox, that we see God’s glory. For John, it is the same paradox as the cross, which he almost always refers to as the glorification of Christ. What he is telling us is that in these moments of weakness, we see God’s majesty and power.

To see and know Christ, the Word, in the babe in a manger, is to see and know God’s glory. To see and know Christ in the cross, is to see and know God’s glory. To see and know Christ, to taste Christ in the bread and wine of the Eucharistic feast, is to see and know God’s glory. 

May we experience, may we see and know the glory of God today, in our lives, and in the world around us, in the Christ made flesh in a manger and as we kneel at the altar. May we know and believe the mystery of our faith, the mystery of the Incarnation, the mystery of God’s love for us, today at Christmas, and throughout our lives. Amen.

Things earthly and heavenly gathered into one: A Sermon for Christmas Eve, 2025

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December 24, 2025
Christmas Eve
2025

On Christmas Eve, I always feel the chasm between the way things are and the way they ought to be especially acutely. There’s the beauty and brightness of our church, our worship, and our music; the joy of our celebration, our happy faces, excited children. And then outside, there’s the darkness of night, the realities of a world, suffering people, breaking hearts, hunger, homelessness, violence and evil.

Those differences have always been present, but in the past decade or so, I’ve been feeling that disjuncture more acutely, and it seems that gap between the world’s suffering and our celebration grows ever wider.

We live in tumultuous, chaotic times, as we watch our society collapsing, behavioral norms vanishing, as we witness the attacks on civility, on science, and learning, as institutions we held dear are under attack. We are fearful, anxious, and we know that others around us are even more frightened as families are ripped apart and immigrants deported. We avert our attention from the news because we can’t bear knowing all the details, whether it’s suffering in Gaza, war in Ukraine, or attacks on our healthcare system that put all our lives in danger.

This chaos has even come to Christianity as it is experienced and practiced in the United States. The rise of Christian nationalism has transformed the figure of Christ from the Prince of Peace to a Warrior, as it rejects his message of love of neighbor and enemy, and his embrace of the outcast, the vulnerable, and the foreigner.

It may be that you are tuning me out right now, because you came here to get away from all of that, to have a little peace and quiet, to sing familiar carols, to be reassured of well, normalcy, in these strange and unsettling times. We want to keep the barbarians, or our deepest fears, outside the gates, and activate security systems in our homes and our psyches to keep the chaos at bay.

But there are similar contradictions at the heart of the Christmas story, at the heart of the Christian faith. Think about Luke’s story of the birth of Jesus. On the one hand, he places his narrative squarely in the context of the Roman Empire: “In those days a decree went out from Emperor Augustus that all the world should be registered. This was the first registration and was taken while Quirinius was governor of Syria.” We see the reach of empire—a capricious, violent ruler demanding that the population be counted, why, so imperial domination could extend its way to the furthest reaches of the population. Rome, the eternal city, the city to which all roads led, the greatest power the world had ever seen.

On the other hand, and the contrast couldn’t be greater, another city is mentioned, the city of David, Bethlehem,  a tiny village far from the centers of power. But with the mention of David, an allusion to a long-ago monarchy that was conquered, a subject people, and a far away history.

And the people: the emperor, the governor, men in power, men of power, and Joseph, a powerless nobody, Mary, a pregnant, vulnerable teen. Their places: palaces, sumptuous furnishings and meals, many attendants; the other, Joseph and his family at a manger, in a cave? Because there was no room in the inn. Even more: The emperor would be announced throughout the empire as Savior, bringing peace; that’s the good news, the euangelion, the gospel. But the angels use the same language: a savior is born.

These contrasts like other contrasts of the season: light and darkness; the contrast between the emperor who reigns in Rome, and the king who is born in Bethlehem; the empire that rules by violence and intimidation; and the reign of God that ushers in peace and justice.  

Such dichotomies are present throughout Luke’s story. Think of the Magnificat, Mary’s great song of praise:

He has shown the strength of his arm, *
he has scattered the proud in their conceit.

He has cast down the mighty from their thrones, *
and has lifted up the lowly.

He has filled the hungry with good things, *
and the rich he has sent away empty.

Such divisions, between the weak and the powerful; rich and power are divisions we know too well today, as the differences between the haves and have nots grow wider, billionaires increase their wealth while people go hungry and unhoused around us. These divisions which we know so well are used to divide and demonize the other.

But it’s not just in the world around us where we see such stark differences. We see them in ourselves, as well. We know the person we want to be, and the person we so often are; the differences between our hopes and aspirations and the realities of our lives; the differences between what we should do, and what we actually do, all the ways we fall short and disappoint ourselves and the ones we love. 

Our tendency, when it comes to our own lives, and the dichotomies in the world in which we live, is to overlook or try to ignore those differences, to hide them from ourselves, to insulate ourselves from the suffering and pain in our hearts and the world around us. We may even want to hide them from Christmas, in our efforts to have the perfect celebration in an imperfect world.

But that’s precisely the sort of misguided exercise we humans tend to attempt. In fact, what we are celebrating at Christmas is the breaking down of those barriers: God becoming human, the word becoming flesh. In the words of a blessing often used at Christmas: “Christ, who by his incarnation gathered into one things earthly and heavenly…”

Or St. Paul: “In Christ, God was reconciling the world to Godself”

Christ comes into the chaos of the world, into its suffering and pain; takes on that suffering and pain, redeeming it, and us. In Christ, we receive adoption through grace, grafted onto his body. In Christ, all things are made new.

We see that taking place as Christ takes on human flesh, as a baby, in all the vulnerability and weakness that symbolizes, in the dependence of a baby on the love of parents and others. 

We will go from this place out into a cold and dark world, the light of our candles extinguished, but the hope in our hearts rekindled. The world will not have changed. There is still suffering, pain, despair; in the dark places of the world, and in the dark places of our heart.

But the coming of Christ brings rays of hope and love into that darkness for the light, the light of Christ, shines in the darkness and the darkness cannot overcome it. May the light of Christ, may the light of Christmas, shine in the darkness of the world, the darkness of our despair and fill us with his light and grace.

God with us: A Sermon for Advent 4A, 2025

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You may have seen the stories over the last couple of weeks about the nativity scenes set up by various churches across the country that protest the actions of ICE. At a Roman Catholic Church in Dedham, Mass, the figure of the baby Jesus was removed and replaced with a sign “ICE was here.” Apparently the Archbishop protested and demanded it be removed, but the last I heard, it was still there. Similar scenes have been displayed in Chicago and Charlotte, where ICE activity has been especially pronounced.

We may find this sort of political protest unseemly or offensive, but it’s hardly new. There were similar displays during the first Trump administration and two years ago as Israel was reducing Gaza to rubble. Our tendency, our temptation is to want our Christmas celebrations to be escapes from the realities of the world and our lives, but the fact of the matter is that the story of Jesus’ birth is the story of God breaking into the world in all of its messiness and pain.

“Now the birth of Jesus the Messiah took place in this way.”

Today, on this fourth Sunday of Advent, we hear the story of the birth of Jesus as related by the gospel of Matthew. And I’ll bet that as you listened, you may have found it a bit strange, perhaps even unfamiliar. For it’s a very different story than the familiar one from Luke that we hear on Christmas Eve, with Bethlehem, the manger, shepherds, swaddling clothes, and all of that.

Matthew’s story seems to focus on Joseph. Mary and her pregnancy seem to be problems that need solving, and the birth itself is recounted in the sparest of terms. The focus on Joseph is odd in a way, if you think about it. It’s even odder when you put the reading we just heard back into the context of Matthew’s gospel, for these verses appear after a lengthy genealogy that relates Joseph’s ancestry back to Abraham. Thereby Matthew links Joseph not just to the ancient patriarchs and matriarchs—Abraham and Sarah, Isaac and Rebecca, Jacob and Rachel, but also to the Kings—David and Solomon. 

What’s odd about this is that of course Joseph is not biologically the father of Jesus.

Matthew gives us a genealogy for Jesus, and it’s worth considering why he thought it was appropriate, or important, to do so. There’s even something more interesting in all of this, because the words he uses to introduce the genealogy at the very beginning of his gospel, and the first words we heard in today’s reading, are very similar—both make use of the Greek word genesis—and it’s likely that Matthew intends his reader to think of the first book of the Hebrew Bible, Genesis. 

So it’s curious, isn’t it, that Matthew, after providing all of that background to the birth of Jesus, taking the time to carefully construct a genealogy that links Joseph back to Abraham, then tells the story of what basically constitutes an illegitimate birth.

The story that we heard is familiar. Joseph and Mary are engaged, or to use the traditional language, they are betrothed. It’s not just that he’s given her a ring, and they’ve begun to plan for the big day, scheduled the date and the venue, hired the caterer and the like. No, in Jewish law, the betrothal meant they were legally married, even though the marriage had not been consummated and they were not living together.

Because they were legally married, Mary’s pregnancy was not just an inconvenience. It indicated to Joseph that she had been unfaithful to him. Legally, because, as the text says, Joseph was a righteous man (in other words, he kept the law), he was obligated to divorce her publicly—something that might result in her execution for adultery. But Matthew tells us that he wanted to spare her the indignity, and perhaps himself as well, and divorce her privately.

So he’s got a huge problem on his hands, what to do. It’s likely, though Matthew doesn’t tell us, that Mary is feeling considerable anxiety and fear as well. After all, it’s in Luke’s version of the nativity that Mary is told by an angel that her pregnancy is miraculous, that she’s carrying the Son of God. 

In Matthew’s story, the angel comes to Joseph to explain things to him. He does as he’s told, and almost as an afterthought, Matthew tells us that the child is born and Joseph names him Jesus. Again, to use contemporary language, Joseph adopts Jesus as his son.

Christmas, which the songs tells is the “most wonderful time of the year,” can also be a time of great sadness and struggle. We are presented with images of the perfect family or the perfect holiday celebration but so often, our own experiences of Christmas are very different. We live in a messy world, we lead messy lives. Our families can be complicated; there can be ruptures or conflicts with family members; there are all the complications of modern family life, divorce and remarriage, blended families. We want everything to be perfect, just so, and so often the reality is very different.

I think there’s something reassuring for us in the twenty-first century in the way Matthew tells this story. He wants everything to be perfect, too. He fashions a genealogy that links Joseph to Abraham, carefully constructing 14 generations from Abraham to David and 14 generations from David to the exile, 14 generations from the exile to Joseph. To put it language from American history, it would be as if Joseph were descended from the Daughters of the Revolution and the descendants of the Mayflower. But it’s not just that the link from Joseph to Jesus is tenuous—it’s that in the midst of that genealogy are prostitutes like Rahab, and victims of rape and incest like Tamar, foreigners like Ruth.

And in the embarrassment of Mary’s unwed pregnancy, in the embarrassment of that genealogy, is an important lesson for us today. Just as we want our celebrations to be perfect, we assume that there’s something wrong with us if things don’t live up to those expectations and we wonder whether in the midst of our struggles, we can hope for God to come to us, for God to be with us.

The story of the birth of Jesus as told by Matthew is a reminder to us that God didn’t choose the wealthy, or powerful, or the Norman Rockwell family in the Norman Rockwell New England town. God came to Mary and Joseph, to a peasant woman and her fiancé, in the outmost corner of the Roman Empire. God came to people in the midst of enormous struggle and great heartache. 

The message of this story is that God is with us—here and now—no matter what our situation is, no matter what our lives are like, no matter what struggles we have, or worries, no matter what shame or guilt we might be experiencing. God comes to us. God is with us. That’s the point of this story. That’s the point of Christmas. God is with us. Here. Now. Emmanuel.  God with us. Thanks be to God.

Stir up thy power, O Lord: A sermon for Advent 3A, 2025

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Advent 3A

December 14, 2025

Stir up thy power, O God, and with great might come among us…

The collects for Advent are beautiful and powerful, none more so than this one which provided the name this Sunday is known as” Stirrup Sunday.” It is a profoundly Advent prayer, bidding God to come to us in the midst of the suffering and evil in the world, which we experience so profoundly. With all the suffering that is taking place, our hearts breaking and broken, we may feel that we cannot bear anything else. But then…

I went to bed last night amid the news of the mass shooting at Brown University. This morning, as I was looking over my sermon again, I heard about the mass shooting targeting a Jewish Chanukah celebration at Bondi Beach in Sidney Australia. How do we maintain our faith that God is coming among is in the presence of such tragedy, such evil? Our gospel reading seems especially appropriate for us today.

Last week we saw John the Baptizer at the height of his power and career. Crowds were coming to see him and to be baptized by him. Even the movers and shakers were coming—the Pharisees and the Sadducees. How do think he was feeling as he saw the response to his preaching, the adoring crowds and the changed lives. As evidence of his power, we hear him attacking the religious insiders with language of great drama and violence.

Now, some weeks or months have passed and John is in a very different position. Herod had arrested him because John had criticized him for marrying Herodias, his brother Phillip’s wife. Another important point to note is that in the synoptic gospels of Matthew, Mark, and Luke, Jesus begins his public ministry only after John is arrested. In other words, John doesn’t actually see Jesus’ preaching and healing ministry in action. He only hears about it second hand. 

John is in prison, waiting. In the Roman world, prison was a place of waiting, not of punishment. Prisoners were waiting to find out what the judgment would be, whether they would be found innocent or guilty, and what their punishment would be. Execution, sentenced to the galleys or the mines? John was waiting.

John had been waiting for a long time, not to find out his fate. He, like Israel, had been waiting for the one who was to come; he was waiting for deliverance. And so, from prison, he asks that question, “Are you the one who is to come, or are we to wait for another?”

As we saw in last week’s gospel, John was looking forward to a great reckoning; the day when God’s justice would come down to vindicate the righteous and punish the wicked. John had prophesied, “Even now the ax is  lying at the root of the tree; every tree therefore that does not bear good fruit is cut down and thrown into the fire.”

John was now in prison, hardly evidence that God was making things right. And Jesus, the one whom John had baptized, the one in whom he had placed his hopes, had continued John’s preaching. He, like John, was proclaiming the coming of God’s reign. But there seemed to be no signs of its arrival.

So, John, lying in prison, wonders. He wondered whether everything he had been about had meant anything; whether his preaching had been worth it. So he sent two of his followers to ask the question. It’s an obvious question, but still it’s a very interesting and important one. And it is a profoundly “Advent” question. Advent is a time of already but not yet; it is a time when we recognize Christ’s presence among us, Christ’s having come among us as a human. But at the same time, we are looking ahead to that final reckoning. Like John, we are looking ahead for that time when God makes all things new; when God’s justice rolls down like water, and God’s righteousness like an ever-flowing stream.

John’s disciples asked Jesus the question, “Are you the one who is to come or are we to wait for another?” 

Jesus’ reply is not a simple and unambiguous affirmative. Instead, he instructs John’s disciples to tell him what they have seen, “the blind receive their sight, the lame walk, the lepers are cleansed, the deaf hear, the dead are raised, and the poor have good news brought to them.”

We hear this passage and we think it’s all so obvious and we may even wonder how John the Baptist could have had any question about who Jesus was.

But think about it a moment. Think about all of the suffering in the area where Jesus was preaching and healing. He may have performed some healings, but there were many other people who continued to suffer and the oppressive yoke of Roman occupation was as harsh as ever. Did Jesus’ answer convince John’s disciples? Did it convince John?

Like John, we are living in a time of already but not yet. We believe and proclaim that Christ has come into the world; that Christ has ushered in something quite new; that his death and resurrection have changed everything.

At the same time, we continue to see the suffering and injustice around us. Many of us experience great suffering and pain in our own lives. It may so overwhelm us that we despair.

Jesus’ answer to John’s disciples is his answer to us. In the midst of the world’s suffering, in the midst of our own pain, he challenges us to see signs of his coming; to look for signs of God’s coming reign; signs of his healing power. Those signs may be faint; they may be overwhelmed by the bright lights and glare of the world.

Like John, we want to see clear evidence; we want to see God coming in glory, destroying evil, beating down the devil. We want to see the carnage and a complete and total victory.

Instead, we are pointed toward this. A few people are healed; a few hear the good news and are transformed. God’s reign breaks in, tentatively, quietly, almost unnoticeably. So we have to pay attention. 

There are signs, but we need eyes that will see them; ears that will hear them. I invite you to look for those signs, to imagine what such signs might be in our world today. In the midst of the suffering in the world, in the midst of all of our troubles, where do we see Christ’s healing power? Where do we see God’s justice rolling down? Where do we see God’s reign breaking in and transforming lives and the world?

The Magnificat, Mary’s song, gives us another perspective on this, and another perspective on time. She sings:

My soul proclaims the greatness of the Lord,

my spirit rejoices in God my Savior; 

He has cast down the mighty from their thrones, *
and has lifted up the lowly.

He has filled the hungry with good things, *
and the rich he has sent away empty.

Mary sings about God’s mighty acts, but she is not looking into the future, hoping for God’s making all things right. She sings in the past tense, these are things God has already done; this is God making things right, bringing justice and equity to the world.

Look for those signs, in the world, in the lives around you. Become those signs, to the world, to the lives you encounter. God is here among us, healing us and the world. Christ will come again to make all things new. May we rejoice to see his coming; and may we see the signs of his coming in our faith and in our actions.

Advent 1A

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November 30, 2025

Time is a funny thing. There are times, as when we are in the middle of something exciting, when it seems like it passes in an instant. And then there are those times when we’re sitting in a waiting room and time seems to pass slowly, especially when the doctor is late for our appointment. Years ago, I would schedule my doctor’s appointments for first thing in the morning, so when I had to wait a half-hour for him to finally show up, I could let my outrage boil over, knowing the delay wasn’t due to them dealing with another patient, but rather they were just late getting into the office. Needless to say, I eventually tired of this and found a new primary care physician.

There’s also the way in which time can seem to pass in an instant. One of the realities I’ve had to deal with as I have been rector of Grace for now more than 16 years is the disorienting way in which time passes. I’ll find myself recalling some event, or someone, thinking that it occurred a few years ago, and suddenly realize that it’s been more than a decade. It’s particularly disconcerting to encounter young people who I baptized when they were infants and are now graduating high school.

The season of Advent challenges us to reflect on the meaning of, as well as our experience of, time. In the first place, it is the beginning of the liturgical year; for Christians who follow the liturgical calendar, the first Sunday of Advent is New Year’s Day.

While thinking about today as New Year’s Day would seem to help us place ourselves in time, in fact, we find it does something else entirely. It is profoundly disorienting to our sense of time, and our sense of our place in time. Advent encourages us to look forward—to Christmas and the birth of our Savior, but as it does so, it also prompts us to look backwards, to those events that took place two millennia ago in Bethlehem.

Simultaneously, though, Advent propels us forward not to December 25 and the rituals and stories of Christmas, but to the end of time itself, to the second coming. 

This disorientation and reorientation is fundamental to the season of Advent; and it is fundamental to the Christian faith.

One way in which we are being reoriented is through the changes in the lectionary. Each of the three years of the lectionary cycle, we focus on one of the synoptic gospels. This past year it was Luke. This year, it will be Matthew. This focus allows us to spend some time getting to know the gospel writer and the context and community within which they were writing. In Matthew’s case, as we shall see, there is a particular interest in laying out the similarities and distinctions of the Jesus movement with first-century Palestinian Judaism. At the same time, Matthew, like Luke, draws on the gospel of Mark for much of its chronological structure and many of its stories about Jesus.

Today’s gospel is one of those places where Mark’s influence is particularly evident. We have a section of what scholars call the “little apocalypse—” a sermon of Jesus given in the last week of his life, while he is teaching in and around the temple. We actually heard Luke’s version of some of the same material in recent weeks.

When I was a kid, for some reason, one year one of the local churches was given the opportunity to show Christian-themed movies in the schools. One of those films, I don’t know the title anymore, was about the second coming. I remember one scene especially. A man was in his bathroom shaving, and suddenly he was gone. It was a movie that aimed to depict what is called the rapture, an idea that emerged in nineteenth century Evangelicalism and captured the fascination of many—the idea that at the second coming, the faithful would be transported to heaven while the rest of humanity remained on earth to face the consequences.

One of the proof texts for the rapture is in this passage: “Then two will be in the field; one will be taken and one will be left. Two women will be grinding meal together; one will be taken and one will be left.”

It’s a frightening image, and especially as the idea has played out in modern Christianity, it has captured, and traumatized many. But it’s a misreading of scripture, and a profound perversion of the notion of the second coming. Contrast that fear-mongering with Isaiah’s vision from the first lesson:

they shall beat their swords into ploughshares,
and their spears into pruning-hooks;

nation shall not lift up sword against nation,
neither shall they learn war any more.

This vision, cast in the ninth century bce, continues to inspire. The idea of an age of peace, of justice and equity, when God reigns is a powerful image, reminding us that even as we experience all the ways in which our world and our lives fall short of that vision, our faith continues to express itself by hoping that God will make all things right.

But it will happen in God’s time, not ours. One lesson that Advent teaches is that even as we look ahead to Christ’s coming at Christmas, as well as Christ’s second coming, the day and the hour are not ours to set. God’s time spans past, present, and future. Indeed, God is outside of time.

Yet as the reading from St. Paul’s letter to Romans reminds us, our waiting, our experience of time is not flat and meaningless. “Salvation is nearer to us now than when we were first believers; the night is far gone, the day is near.”

Both the gospel and the reading from Romans point to the ways in which early followers of Jesus were disoriented in time. There’s a great deal of evidence that those early Christians expected Jesus’ imminent return. When he seemed to tarry, they began to wonder whether their hopes were real, and if there hopes of an imminent second coming were not going to be realized, what would that mean for their faith in Christ?

Jesus warns his listeners, “But about that day and hour no one knows, neither the angels of heaven, nor the Son, but only the Father.”

In a way, Jesus’ words are doing to his listeners just what Advent is doing to us. He is trying to reorient them toward a new understanding of time, to change their expectations and experiences of it. So too does Advent do this to us. We are betwixt and between. Even as the circles of time continue through the years, Advent breaks in upon us and presents us with a different sense, or senses of time. As we look ahead for four weeks to Christmas, we are looking even further beyond to Christ’s second advent and those two markers remind us that ultimately, we are not in our time, or time of our making, but in God’s time. And in God’s time, God will make all things new, and we will beat our swords into plowshares and our spears into pruning hooks. And we will study war no more.

Thanks be to God.