Sign of the times?

Sermon preached at Our Lady of Walsingham and St Francis on Advent Sunday 2013.

Off the top of your head,

what signs of the Church

are there outside now?

There are the two signs on the door

 and there are the two signs

on the walls of the porch.

There’s even that A-frame outside,

but is that it?

Is the church flag a sign?

What about the statue of Our Lady,

 is that a sign of the Church?

It’s amazing how many signs there are

that we pass by on our way to Church.

There are road signs telling us to

Stop!

Give way!

There are signs all around us

telling all kinds of information

 – “Please Pay Here”,

“No Dogs Allowed”, “No Smoking”,

that weird sign that looks like

a man trying to open an umbrella

that is supposed to mean

 “men at work”

or rather “men on a tea-break”.

How much attention do you pay

to the signs that you see on an everyday basis?

[PAUSE]

There are other signs too.

“Red sky at night…”

If the sky is clear at night

in December, you’ll know

it’s going to be frosty the next morning.

 If the green man at the pelican crossing has gone out,

 then you know that crossing the road

is not going to be good for your health.

So what would you make of a sign

which showed a man on a donkey

saying “Danger, Messiah at work”?

 It’s a strange sign indeed, especially

when it’s more suited to Palm Sunday than Advent,

but it’s more correct than you think.

Remember, “Advent” means “arrival”,

or perhaps more literally “carried to us.”

When we see Our Lord Jesus on Palm Sunday,

 we see Him carried to us on an ass.

He comes into Jerusalem as the King of Peace,

not on a great war-horse to conquer,

but to broker a new relationship

between God and Man.

It’s such a familiar sign to us Christians,

our Lord entering Jerusalem on an ass.

This takes us back to that Christmas scene

when Joseph brought a pregnant Mary

 into Bethlehem on a donkey.

Or does it?

[PAUSE]

Nowhere in the Bible do we see

that traditional image of Our Lady,

big with child,

coming into Bethlehem on a donkey.

The only mention of anyone riding on an ass in the Gospels

is what we see here on Palm Sunday.

Like angel wings and three kings,

the donkey ride into Bethlehem is just a romantic idea

– it’s not biblical.

Human beings are very good

at remembering things that aren’t really there

in addition to not seeing things that really are.

There are some signs which are not really signs at all. 

The idea of a Christmas donkey ride into Bethlehem

is quite plausible,

but the fact it is not included in the Bible

does mean that it is not important to our Faith.

The donkey ride into Jerusalem on Palm Sunday

is a sign that tells us that

Our Lord Jesus is precisely who He says He is

and is thus terribly important to our Faith.

It is important to get the signs right.

In the book of Revelation,

we are told that the number of the beast is

six hundred and sixty-six

and it seems most likely that

the beast that was meant

by St John in his book

was in fact the Emperor Nero.

 However,

this has caused some Christians

to try and fit that number to all kinds of people

from the Pope to Martin Luther

to Adolph Hitler to Aleister Crowley

 to Nelson Mandela!

They believe that it is a sign of the future Antichrist.

Yet this is not what St John is actually saying!

We Christians cannot afford to live like this,

seeing signs that aren’t there and ignoring the signs that are.

Our Lord Himself warns us,

“Then if any man shall say unto you,

Lo, here is Christ, or there;

believe it not.

For there shall arise false Christs,

and false prophets, and shall shew great signs and wonders;

 insomuch that,

if it were possible,

they shall deceive the very elect.”

As in the case of 666,

some Christians spend too much time

analysing the signs too closely

and ignoring the message

 that the sign is giving us.

It is the obsession with avoiding sexism and homophobia

that is leading some Christians

to fall away from their faith.

It is also an obsession with homosexuality

that prevents some Christians

 from seeing the person

beneath who needs

Christian love and charity in order to live.

It is the indiscriminate and misdirected hatred of abortion

that is preventing some Christians

from seeing the pain of women

who have been raped.

The sign of Christ can only ever be Love.

Wrangling about signs takes us away from love.

If we stand in the middle of the road

trying to work out whether

the colour of the green man is significant,
whether it should be a lighter green,
          or a darker green,
          or blue,
          or turquoise to mean what he is suppose to mean

 then when he goes out,

we will get run over.

 If we get stuck too far in the signs that God gives us,

then we will miss the sign

that draws us ever closer to Him.

It is the duty of the Christian

to love God and Neighbour,

to pray and to be active in helping others.

As we see the signs

 of the Christmas lights going up,

so are we reminded that Our Lord is coming again.

To ask “when” is to miss the point.

All we can do is our duty

to the best of our abilities

and to wait for His coming.

He is coming soon

and will ask us what we have done for Him

while we’ve been waiting for Him.

What better sign of God’s goodness

can we be to the world

if we seek to live our lives

truly awaiting His arrival joyfully?