The fourth of a series of five Advent talks based on the prophecies of Isaiah.
This one for The Epiphany, Gipton. Texts: Isaiah 7:10-16/ Matthew 1:18-25

Most of us, I expect, will have a few favourite hymns. They might be from among the best-known Christian songs, or something more obscure that just speaks to you because of a particular time in your life. Some become favourites quickly, others gradually lodge themselves in the memory.

One of my all-time favourites is the one I chose to open our service this morning: Immortal, Invisible, God only wise.[i] I first came across it at school: so long ago in fact, that I can’t remember whether it would be at primary or secondary school. Like many favourite hymns, it may have been the tune that attracted me to it. One of those traditional Welsh hymn tunes, an easy rhythm and full of melody, but with no tricky high notes.  But the more I sang it, the more the words spoke to me. They speak of God the great creator, the perfect judge[ii], the life-giver, so wonderful that even the angels cannot directly look at him. If you didn’t know it already, I hope it may become one of your favourites too.

The reason I picked it today, though, is that our readings on the fourth and last Sunday of Advent take us at last to the birth of Jesus. A story told in both Matthew and Luke’s gospels, and also predicted – at least some people see it that way – by Isaiah.  

In the ancient world, almost every religion had an image of its God, usually carved as an idol to be worshiped in a temple. The Jews were the exception. Right from the days of Abraham, they were convinced that God was invisible. Yes, he had created men and women in some sense ‘in his image’, but God was someone so utterly above earthly things that it would be impossible to see him physically. He could be worshiped only in faith. Even Moses had to turn his back, and the great prophet Elijah had to hide in a cave, while the majesty of God passed them by.

But when it comes to the birth of Jesus, we see a different story. For a start, there are angels. Now this is nothing new in the Bible. There are many accounts in the earlier books of visits by angels to declare what God is doing or about to do: Abraham, Jacob, Joseph (he of the dreamcoat), Hannah, and many others.[iii]

If you have been following the lectionary readings through Advent, last week we heard the prophecy of Isaiah, fulfilled in Jesus, that among other signs of the Messiah would be that he opens the eyes of the blind – both literally and in a symbolic sense of making people understand God in a new way. This is what angels are also doing. They open people’s spiritual eyes to understand what is going on around them, which cannot be seen with our physical eyes.

You know well, of course, what we call such a sudden realisation of spiritual reality: an Epiphany. (As an aside, if anyone knows why those who founded this church chose this particular dedication, please tell me after the service!) Now I know you have your patronal festival in two weeks’ time, when we particularly remember the visit of the magi. But everyone involved in the Christmas story had their own epiphany: Elizabeth and Zechariah, Mary, Joseph, the shepherds, the magi. All of them had a dream or an angelic visit that caused them to see this incredible truth: God, immortal and invisible, was for the first time ever appearing in a physical, visible form.

The Word of God, as John calls Jesus in the opening lines of his Gospel, had always been present, from the very moment of creation. We do not have a God who just set the universe going and walked away. Instead, he has always been in his creation, always present to hear our prayers and receive our worship. It’s just that until the birth of Jesus, people had to have faith in the invisible. With him, the invisible became visible, or as Paul put it in his letter to the Colossians, ‘Christ is the image of the invisible God, the first-born over all creation’.[iv]

In the Celtic tradition of Christianity, a key idea is that of the ‘thin place’: a place of epiphany, somewhere that the veil between earthly and heavenly reality becomes transparent so that we can see through it and encounter God. Bethlehem, it seems, was such a thin place.

As we read through the rest of the New Testament we find other accounts of epiphanies. Perhaps most famously among them the encounter between Cleopas and his wife and Jesus on the road to Emmaus, Paul’s vision of Jesus on the road to Damascus, and the Revelation to John the Divine. All these confirm that Jesus, after His ascension, remains eternally present, just that most of us don’t have the privilege of seeing him with our eyes.

Beyond the Biblical account, there have been many accounts down the centuries of sudden epiphanies or angelic appearances. I make no claim to having seen angels myself, but have met one Christian who said that he did. The existence of angels remains a key part of many Christian traditions, and it would be foolish not to believe in them.

But even for those of us who are not granted this kind of epiphany, there remains another way open to us of seeing the invisible: the Holy Spirit. The Spirit is available to all of us who believe in Jesus. His role is to open our eyes to spiritual reality, to show us how God is working in the world around us, and to give us the spiritual gifts that God wants us to use as we serve him. For some Christians, those spiritual gifts include the gift of discernment. People with this gift are given to know what is the right and God-given way for their own life or the life of someone they are praying for. They may even be able to see spiritual forces at work in a situation, for good or evil. This in itself is a form of seeing the invisible.

As we go into the final days of Advent and prepare to celebrate the appearance of the Word of God as a newborn baby; and as we go into the new year and the celebration of Epiphany, may I encourage you once again – or maybe even for the first time – to ask God to open your spiritual eyes. Ask him to give you a true and living faith that the risen Jesus is always present with us. To fill you with his Holy Spirit to help you understand the world around us as God sees it. And to give you, if it be his will, the gift of discernment.

And may this church be for you, and for many, a ‘thin place’, where people can take time out from the world around to encounter God in a new way. To quote again the last verse of our first hymn:

Great Father of Glory, pure Father of Light
Thine angels adore Thee, all veiling their sight;
All laud we would render, O help us to see:
’Tis only the splendour of light hideth Thee.

I wish you all a joyful Christmas, a happy New Year, and a celebration of the Epiphany that opens the eyes of many. Amen.

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[i] By Walter Chalmers Smith, 1824-1908. Lyrics at https://www.hymnal.net/en/hymn/h/14

[ii] See the second in this series of Advent sermons https://pilgrims.org.uk/wp/2025/12/04/trusting-in-gods-judgement/

[iii] The account of such angelic visits (including to Mary, though not, it seems, to Joseph) follows a familiar pattern: The angel appears suddenly and greets someone, they express fear (well, who would not?), the angel announces God’s promise, along with a sign that would prove it to be a true word from God, and finally there is a song of praise to God for what he is doing. See ‘Jesus’ by Jacques Duquesne, 1994 (English translation Catherine Spencer, published by Arthur James Ltd, 1996), p.30

[iv] Colossians 1:15, NRSV