11.30.25 - Sermon written and preached by Leigh Rachal @ FPC Abbeville, LA

SCRIPTURE INTRODUCTION (Daniel 3)

Last week, we listened as the prophet Jeremiah spoke to a people living in uncertainty, urging them to build and plant and seek the peace of the place where they found themselves exiled.

Today we remain in that same long season of displacement, but we turn to another voice from the exile, another glimpse into what faith looked like for a people trying to remember who, and whose, they were.

By the time we meet Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego, the Babylonian empire has not only conquered their land but tried to reshape their identity, language, and loyalty. Everything familiar has been stripped away. Everything stable has been shaken.

And yet, in the midst of that dislocation, today’s reading shows us what steadfast faith looks like when the world around you is demanding compromise.

Let us listen for a word of hope, a word of courage, and above all, a word of presence.

GOSPEL INTRODUCTION (John 18:36-37)

We continue hearing these ancient stories through the lens of John’s Gospel, which keeps pulling us back to the God who draws near, who abides, who chooses presence over power.
Let us listen for that same nearness in today’s Gospel reading.

Advent 2025: Preparing Our Hearts for the God Who Draws Near

Sermon for Advent Week One: Trust – God’s presence meets us in the fire.

Have you ever stepped into a pitch-black room
and felt that momentary wash of disorientation
where everything in you tightens because you cannot see
what is in front of you?

You stand still….. waiting….
your heart beating a little faster than usual……

And slowly, slowly… your eyes begin to adjust…..
And you realize the room is not entirely dark after all….

There is a sliver of light coming from somewhere,
maybe a thin line under the door,
or a soft glow from a window you had not noticed,
or perhaps there is a faint reflection your eyes needed time to recognize.

And that tiny bit of light,
as fragile as it seems,
is enough…..

Not enough to see everything.
Not enough to feel certain or safe or in control.
But enough to take the next step.
Enough to know you are not lost.
Enough to remember that darkness is rarely absolute and never final.

Advent begins a bit like that.
Not with full illumination.
Not with answers.
But with the slow realization that there is light already present in the shadows
if we are willing to pause long enough
for our eyes to adjust.

Advent always starts in the places where shadows linger.
The shadows of exhaustion.
The shadows of grief that sits heavy on the chest.
The shadows of a world stretched thin by worry and weariness.
The shadows where we ache for God to come near.

And into those shadows come the old stories that have carried God’s people for generations.
Stories that remind us of who God has been.
Stories that tell us what God is still doing.

One of those stories begins with three young men whose names feel like courage themselves:
Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego.
But those were not the names their mothers gave them.

In chapter one of the book of Daniel we learn their true names, their Hebrew names:
Hananiah, which means “The Lord is gracious.”
Mishael, which means “Who is like God.”
Azariah, which means “The Lord has helped.”
These are names that carried the memory of the Holy One.
Names rooted in their identity as the people of God.

But Babylon tried to rename them.
Tried to reshape them.
Tried to absorb them into a system where allegiance to the king
mattered more than faithfulness to God.

The world still does this.
It still tries to rename us.

We are often renamed by our failures,
our exhaustion,
our fear,
our scarcity,
our status,
our usefulness.

The world often tries identify us (or cause us to identify ourselves) by the wounds we carry….
But those are not our true names.

Just as Hananiah remained Hananiah
even when the empire called him Shadrach,
we remain who God has always said we are:
We are Beloved.
We are the Children of the Most High.

We are chosen. Forgiven, and set free.

No empire, no system, no season of hardship
can rename someone God has already called beloved.

Hananiah, Mishael, and Azariah were taken from their homeland,
educated in the king’s court,
surrounded by a culture that rewarded conformity and punished any sign of resistance.
Everything around them whispered that survival required surrender.
But they remembered who they were and to whom they belonged.

So when the king demanded allegiance,
when music played and the crowd knelt low,
they stood tall.
Not out of pride.
Not for attention.
But because their faithfulness ran deeper
than their fear of the consequences.

Their courage carried a cost.
And that cost was fire.

And God showed up.
Not later.
Not once the flames died down.
Not from a safe distance.
But right there in the blaze itself.

It does not surprise me that God met them there.

This is who God has always been.

Through the deep waters, God says, I am with you.
In the valley of shadows, you will fear no evil, for I am beside you.
When the flood rises, it will not sweep you away.
Not because we are strong enough to stand on our own,
but because God is steadfast enough to stay…..

In every story of God,

Before deliverance, there is presence.
Before rescue, there is companionship.
Before the ending we long for,
there is the God who steps into the fire and makes it holy ground.

And if that is who God has been,
then that is who God still is.

Which means when we quietly think the question that we rarely dare to ask out loud:
Can you meet me too, God?
we ask the One who has already walked through flame for us….

And still, I find myself asking:

God, can you really meet us in the dumpster fires of today?

Can you meet the single mom in line at the grocery store,
standing under flickering fluorescent lights,
and calculating every dollar…
sliding items out of her cart one by one,
because the rent is due
and her paycheck is small
and the fire of “not enough” keeps creeping closer?

Can you meet the weary ones
at the graveside of someone beloved,
with their hearts burning in grief that seems like it will never ease up,
because their world has shifted beneath their feet?

Can you meet families walking through season after season
of uncertainty and worry,
carrying hope in one hand
and heartbreak in the other,
all while doing their best to hold onto each other together
in a world where stability is fragile?

We may all feel different flames.

But there is the same pressure:
The pressure to bow.
The pressure to harden.
The pressure to shrink our compassion so our hearts do not break quite so easily.
The pressure to match the world’s fear.
The pressure to settle for cynicism
or lose ourselves in distraction
or forget who and whose we are.

And yet.

God keeps stepping into fires.
God keeps breathing life into bones that feel dry and exhausted.
God keeps parting waters that looked ready to drown us.
God keeps carving pathways through the wilderness.
God keeps bringing green shoots out of barren seasons, and blooms in the desert soil.

This is who God has always been:
Strength when we are weak.
Breath when we are empty.
A presence in the fire.
A companion in the valley.
The light that does not wait for morning.

Advent does not ask for certainty.
But Advent asks for trust.

Trust that God has and will – and even now does draw near
to the places we thought were godforsaken.

Trust that God comes to the rubble, and can turn it into places of beauty.
Trust that God is already standing in the fire we are naming for the first time.
Trust that the fourth figure still walks among the embers of our life,
still turns the empires punishing furnace floors into holy ground,
and still draws close enough to whisper through the smoke,

“I am here.
Even in this.
Especially in this.”

So we begin this Advent season watching for God who has always shown up in the shadows of death,
in the quiet corners of grief,
in the places too small or too broken to seem holy.

We begin this season trusting not in our own ability to hold it all together,
but rather, trusting in the One who keeps finding us right when and where the world says we should not expect to be found.

As God who draws near and stands with us.

We see that it is God who lights the first candle in the very heart of the darkness.

Thanks be to God. Amen.