The Fourth Sunday of Advent (A Seven-Week Advent)
November 30, 2025

Advent I Year A
Isaiah 2:1-5
Psalm 122
Romans 13:11-14
Matthew 24:36-44

Collect of the Day
Almighty God, give us grace to cast away the works of darkness and put on the armor of light, now in the time of this mortal life in which your Son Jesus Christ came to visit us in great humility; that in the last day, when he shall come again in his glorious majesty to judge both the living and the dead, we may rise to life immortal; through him who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, now and for ever. Amen.

Homily
|In the Name of the One who was, who is, and who is to come: the God of Jacob. Amen.

There are several strange phrases in our scriptures today, and one line of text that peaks my curiosity is right at the beginning of our reading from Isaiah: “The word that Isaiah son of Amoz saw…”  The “word” that Isaiah “saw”? Does anyone else find this a curious turn of phrase? Or are we so used to biblical Hebrew rendered awkwardly into English that we fail to note the startling difference between the way we think about scripture and the prophet’s way of understanding the word of the LORD?

Just consider this: When I say “the word God” what do you think of? Don’t most of us think of a book, or the book… the Bible? Not so with the son of Amoz. To Isaiah, the word of the LORD is something he sees, not something he reads. Let this rest in your imagination for a moment: “The word that Isaiah son of Amoz saw…” Isaiah experiences the word of God in visions and dreams, in premonitions and poetic flights of intuition and imagination. Guided by the oral tradition of Jacob’s people and the Laws, Poems, and Stories attributed to Moses, it seems that Isaiah’s allowed his body, mind, and spirit to become the scroll upon which the word of the LORD was composed. His life became the text of God’s word for Israel. Isaiah had no book; he had visions. And his visions at once humbled him and gave him his identity as the prophet of the God of Jacob.

Do any of us have visions? Do any of us dream dreams? Do any of us feel like there are times when we see the word of the LORD? And if so, how many of us also feel qualified to bring scripture and tradition to bear in order to test our visions and dreams and promptings? Very likely, the answer for most of us is no. But I wonder: is that because the LORD has stopped calling prophets, or because our culture has taught us to believe that the prophetic utterance of God’s people is an ancient and obsolete phenomenon. That is to say: we have the Bible so why do we need prophets? For too long, we’ve been taught that scripture is a closed book: that nothing can be subtracted and nothing can be added, that we can never have any insight into the Divine that is fresh and immediate. But Isaiah saw the word of God! He didn’t read it! The saving acts of God were told to him by the generations of those who knew the LORD before him, and then in his own time God’s salvation welled up in his heart and mind and body untilled it poured out and gave life to God’s people. I wonder, is there anyone here who feels called to share their experience of the reign of God’s righteousness, their intuitive perception of the ultimate victory of God’s everlasting love.

When I was ordained to the priesthood of the Episcopal Church through apostolic ministry of the Rt. Rev. Gladstone Bailey Adams III, I made this confession: “I do believe the Holy Scriptures of the Old and New Testaments to be the Word of God, and to contain all things necessary to salvation.” The Word of God: yes. But that doesn’t mean that are not other things in creation which are also the Word of God. Indeed, how else could the psalmist proclaim: “The heavens declare the glory of God; and the firmament sheweth his handywork.” (Psalm 19:1) And the scriptures contain all things necessary to salvation: yes. But that doesn’t mean that the scriptures contain all things. Indeed, at the Last Supper on the night Jesus was betrayed, he said this to his disciples: “I still have many things to say to you, but you cannot bear them now. When the Spirit of truth comes, he will guide you into all the truth…” (John 16:12-13) In other words, there’s lots more to know and to learn, but you’re not ready. When you are ready, the Spirit will inspire you. We need the scriptures, and the ways those texts form us, don’t hear me wrong: the life of Jesus portrayed in the Gospels is the litmus test for authentic and prophetic human life and community. We must not worship the book, however; we worship the one to whom the book points.

What then shall we say about these things?

We will say that all through the Scripture and in the tradition of the Church, it remains the lives of faithfulness lived by the people of God which are the true manifestation of the Living Word in every generation. The Bible is not less than, but also not more than the story of that faithfulness in other generations.

Like Isaiah, I wonder if we can imagine allowing our lives to become the location and expression of the Living Word? Are we ready to live into the biblical truth that human visions and promptings which align with the life of Jesus are gifts from the Spirit. Are we ready to respond to all the experiences of our lives in light of this one prophetic idea: We can see the word of the Lord.

When Jesus tells his friends and followers, “Keep awake therefore, for you do not know on what day your Lord is coming,” I think he’s encouraging them to take up their prophetic calling. Because people who have learned to see the world as Jesus does—who are able to distinguish between the world that is coming to life and the world that is passing away—these are able to “lay aside the works of darkness and put on the armor of light.” May it be so among us. May those who are called to be prophets tell us what they see, that we all might become the salt of the earth and the light of the world, making all things ready for the coming of the Lord.

Amen.