St Nick meets Advent 2 - It's time to get sent.

Sermon for the Patronal Festival of St Nicholas of Myra — Advent II 

“In the year that King Uzziah died, I saw the Lord.”

So begins Isaiah’s great vision — the veil drawn back, heaven touching earth. The temple shakes with glory; the seraphim cry “Holy, holy, holy,” and Isaiah trembles, aware that he is dust and unclean. Then a coal from the altar — flame from sacrifice — touches his lips, and he is made whole. “Whom shall I send?” asks the Lord. And the prophet replies, “Here am I; send me.”

That burning coal is the beginning of everything. Fire from the altar becomes the means of healing and sending. God takes what is ordinary — ember, ash, matter — and makes it sacrament. The holiness that sears also saves, and Isaiah discovers that to behold God is to be changed, to be commissioned.

In the Gospel, Jesus does the same. He sends out seventy disciples with nothing but trust and blessing. “Carry no purse, no bag, no sandals.” Go vulnerable, go poor, go as you are. “Say to every house: Peace to this house. Heal the sick who are there, and tell them, The kingdom of God has come near to you.”

Both readings speak of being sent. But they also speak of transformation — of holiness that burns, of encounter that commissions. This is Advent’s rhythm too. We stand in the half-light, between what is and what shall be, and the voice still asks, “Whom shall I send?”

The American priest Mike Marsh says that the word of God and the wilderness always go together. Advent is that wilderness — the holy space where our defences fall, where we discover again our hunger for God. It is not a soft season, but one of fierce tenderness: God stripping away pretence, preparing a people for the coming of Christ.

And when we hear Isaiah’s cry or feel the seventy’s vulnerability, we hear our own calling too. For the Church is not a club of the saved; it is the Body through which Christ still heals, still blesses, still walks the streets of the world. In the sacraments we are not mere observers but participants. Every time we come to this altar, the burning coal touches our lips. “See, this has touched you — your guilt is taken away.” We are forgiven not to stay safe, but to be sent.

The Theologian Debie Thomas reminds us that every yes to God costs something real. It is never sentimental. It is the yes of Mary, the yes of Isaiah, the yes of Nicholas. It is the yes that opens hands to give, hearts to break, and feet to go.

And so we turn to our patron, St Nicholas of Myra — a bishop who lived his vocation as one aflame with mercy. 

Every year during Advent we are barraged with carols, artwork, and traditions about a fat man dressed in red who climbs down the chimney with gifts.  There is nothing wrong with the comfort that these images bring to most of us, but they water down the true story of St. Nicholas, who was far from an overweight man in a sled.

The legends are many, but they carry a single truth: holiness is generous. He did great things to help the young Church grow, risking his life to stand for the Truth. Critically, Nicholas spent himself for the poor, stood up for the innocent, and fed the hungry. He didn’t wait for others to act; he became the answer to his own prayers. In him, the holiness of Isaiah’s vision and the mission of the seventy found flesh.

His giving was sacramental: a visible sign of invisible grace. He dropped gold through windows, broke bread with the starving, defended those condemned by power. 

Every act was an epiclesis — an invocation of the Spirit over the raw material of the world. Nicholas reminds us that charity and justice are not optional extras to faith; they are its liturgy lived beyond these walls.

And that brings us to the challenge of this feast.

For it is no honour to Nicholas if we simply venerate his memory and go home unchanged. The world he faced — of corruption, poverty, fear — is not so distant from ours. The wilderness of our time is crowded: the homeless, the anxious, the earth itself groaning under the weight of human greed.

Like St Nicholas, I believe we can not separate our devotion from our discipleship. If the Eucharist is truly the Body of Christ, then our bodies, our hands, our lives must become Eucharistic too — taken, blessed, broken, and given for the life of the world.

The Spirit who sanctifies bread and wine longs to sanctify our compassion, our courage, our politics, our use of money, our care for creation. The Spirit who touched Isaiah’s lips wants to touch our speech: so that our words in public life may be truthful, our conversation seasoned with grace. The Spirit who sent the seventy still whispers: “Go — proclaim peace, heal the sick, tell them the Kingdom has come near.”

So let us not leave the altar without understanding what it demands of us. We come to be set on fire, not comforted into inertia. The coal touches our lips that our tongues may bless; the Host touches our hands that our hands may serve; the wine warms our hearts that our hearts may burn for justice and mercy.

There is a challenge here for us all  -  the Spirit is already moving. 

The only question is whether we will go with her. Will we, this Advent, allow the holiness of God to send us as Nicholas was sent — into the world’s darkness with gifts of light?

The call still sounds: Whom shall I send?

May we answer, not only with our voices but with our lives:

Here am I; send me.

And may this altar, this community, this moment become again what it has always been — a place where heaven touches earth, where holiness kisses humanity, where the Spirit ignites hearts for the work of God.

In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit.

Amen.