Sermon - Signs of the (Christmas) Times

Fairy and Christmas Ornaments – Christmas Card by Andy Warhol 1953-1955

A sermon given during Holy Communion at St Giles-in-the-Fields on Sunday 24th December 2023 (The Fourth Sunday in Advent) based on readings from Philippians 4.4-7 and John 1.19-28

[Organ improvisation based on Jingle Bells]

Thank you! Mr Jonathan Bunney, our talented organist and Director of Music. 

 

In the name of the Father, the Son and the Holy Ghost, Amen.

Did you recognise the tune he was improvising on there? 

Well hold on tight to your jingle bells, because it’s not quite time for them yet. We celebrate the birth of Jesus tomorrow! (OK clever-clogs, or later tonight if you go to an early midnight mass at some of the other churches round here!) Today is Christmas Eve. We’re still in the season of Advent – as my boss, the Rector has been reminding me for weeks now. But - I’ll let you into a secret. When he’s not around I’ve been getting mine out and giving them a jolly good shake. Let me show you! 

[Shake Jingle Bells]

I’ll let him have a go tomorrow. 

Listen! 

Such a “Christmassy” sound isn’t it?!

But it’s a sound we hear in songs and adverts an awful lot in the run up to Christmas. 

A few years ago it started to become a bit of a thing amongst those in geeky church music circles to say that Christmas has only truly arrived once we hear this:

[Choir and organ sing the first nine bars plus the ‘Word’ chord of verse seven of Willcox arrangement of O Come All Ye Faithful. Sustain the ‘word’ chord for as long as possible!]

Thank you! An excellent illustration!

 

That – for all you music nerds out there - was the half diminished seventh chord in the ninth bar of the last verse of David Willcocks’ arrangement of O Come All Ye Faithful. A beautiful, jazzy, slightly dissonant and searching sound.

 

And it's that chord – when we sing “Word” of the Father, now in flesh appearing – that people have been getting hot under their Santa hats about. All because some musicologists have claimed that that chord has some sort of special significance. That it is Christmas itself compressed into a single harmony. And to prove their point they found it in virtually every Christmas tune they looked - from Mariah Carey to Bing Crosby.

 

Other musicologists argue that they’ve gone Christmas crackers after having too much sherry trifle!

But – as I say, it’s not Christmas yet. We’re still in Advent. 

As the hymn we all sang at the start of our service reminded us. 

O Come, o come, Emmanuel! A great piece (in all senses of the word)! But it’s a long carol for a very good reason. 

Each of the seven verses is based on an ancient liturgy known as the O Antiphons, which call out seven different names for the Messiah found in the Hebrew scriptures.

 

In their Latin translation, these are:

 

O Sapientia (which means Wisdom)

O Adonai (which means Lord and Ruler)

O Radix Jesse (which means Root of Jesse)

O Clavis David (which means Key of David)

O Oriens (which means Dawn of the East)
O Rex Gentium (which means King of the Gentiles)

O Emmanuel (which means God With Us).

 

Do these Latin phrases seem familiar? Well, the eagle-eyed among you will have noticed they form part of our Christmas decorations this year – designed by our talented parishioner Thomas Hardin. 

You can see the O Antiphons in each of the wreaths hanging on the columns of the nave. Which sign are you sitting near?

 

Traditionally sung in sequence, one a day during the last seven days before Christmas, when arranged backwards, the first letter of each antiphon – after the O - spells out the phrase “Ero Cras” which means “Tomorrow I Come.”

Members of the clergy in particular love that sort of thing. 

Signs and symbols are part of our stock in trade. The posh academic name for the study of which is semiotics.

 

We’ve sung, heard - and seen examples of it at work already. And in the past few minutes I’ve stuffed this sermon with even more cliches, double-entendres and metaphors than usual to try to illustrate, in my rather tabloid, wrong-side-of-the-tracks kind of way, the semiotics of language. 

It’s also at work through what we wear. At this end of the church we’re wearing cassocks and surplices and the clergy are also wearing a stole. A sign that we have been ordained. Tom’s hangs down around his neck. Mine is worn diagonally and is clipped at the side. Which symbolises that I’m a sort of Sergeant Wilson to Tom’s Captain Mainwaring.

 

Now those of you who didn’t get that obscure reference to a British sitcom from the late 1960s might have seen from the Rector’s reaction that I meant to convey something other than a reference to our dress. If you were close enough to see Tom’s face you might even have worked out from his expression that I was being extremely cheeky.

Semiotics is social. It’s no use just being a clever clogs and ‘cracking the code’.  The meaning only has true value when it is shared. Semiotics is about how we interact – how we flirt, how we joke with each other. It’s the nod and the wink. The nudge, nudge how’s your father. I’ll find out in the vestry later whether I got away with it. 

 

My veiled reference to Dads Army also shows that semiotics is cultural. But even if we don’t get the cultural reference, sometimes a meaning is so “significant” (note the spelling - semiotics in a single word) - sometimes a meaning can be so significant it can shine through the signs and symbols, however they are conveyed and however prepared we are to receive them. 

 

The gospel reading we heard today describes how the Priests and Levites were sent into the wilderness to question John the Baptist. To find out why he was attracting so many people to the River Jordan.

 

This account of their meeting comes from a text written long after the other gospels. 

 

It doesn’t mention the quirky, hairy clothes John the Baptist was wearing - or the strange things he ate - that we read about in Mark’s gospel. 

 

Or the cheeky exchange he has with the Pharisees and Sadducees in Matthew’s account. 

 

Not does it mention - as Luke’s gospel does - that John the Baptist was born to be a herald of the Messiah - and even in his mothers womb jumped for joy when the pregnant Mary, came close. 

 

Perhaps, by the time today’s gospel was written, those signs and symbols of John the Baptists “otherness” were embedded into the consciousness of the community for whom this text was originally intended? Or perhaps, they just weren’t considered important. 

 

 

Our gospel reading today - this last Sunday in Advent - reminds us of the significance of the message that John the Baptist – a ‘living sign’ - was sent to convey.

 

A message so powerful that even those who were least receptive to it had an inkling of its presence and a desire to understand it. 

 

A melody so strong that it’s still recognisable two thousand years later, after being transposed across different cultures and through diverse media - architecture, dress, language, and embedded in our moral, ethical and intellectual systems. A light so strong it still shines through all the darkness humanity has created in the world.

 

An idea so central, so absolute to everything in this contingent, changing world that intellectually we try to conceive of it as a single word - search for it in a single chord. 

 

A reality that we could only begin to comprehend when it took on human flesh and was born among us. 

 

The truth of God’s love. 

 

 

I rejoice in the knowledge that that message is so strong, you still "get it" - through all of the sugar-plum-fairyness of this sermon and this season.  

 

My earnest prayer is that over the next few days especially - and, I hope for longer - that we will tell each other of that love - and in whatever way we can – to show that we mean it. 

 

So that every hill and valley in all the corners of the earth might echo with the Good News of our Saviour. 

 

Happy Christmas. When it comes! 

Image: Fairy and Christmas Ornaments – Christmas Card by Andy Warhol 1953-1955