Service for December 21 Fourth Sunday of Advent

Sermon for  December 21, 2025                                         Fourth Sunday of Advent

This is the third Sunday of Advent and the third Sunday we’ve heard from Isaiah, each week another snapshot of God’s dream for creation, reminding us what it is that we’re waiting for. Again and again, Isaiah describes the time when the whole world will be healed from the wounds of hatred and violence. This is a vision of God’s dream for all humanity. Isaiah calls God’s people to wait — not passively but actively wait with courage knowing that God keeps God’s promises.

It takes an active faith to trust that God is not about putting band aids on the gaping wounds the world is suffering. God is determined to heal all of creation until every part of it is whole and has realized its original potential.  When God’s dream is reality, creation itself will be transformed: The sandy desert will yield a harvest of abundance. Those who experience any disability will join in the dance of celebration with the whole of creation. In that renewed and healed creation, all those who long for God’s justice and peace will find their way to God. None will go astray, not even we who are fools will be lost as all return to God’s heart where there will be only joy and gladness!

Advent waiting longs for that reality to be true, here and now among us but it’s not a passive waiting. Isaiah and all the prophets make clear that waiting, for God’s people, is busy as we do the work of bringing God’s dream into our world. It is to care for widows, share with the poor, feed the hungry, and provide hospitality to strangers. “The ultimate promise may be far off, but the faithful can act on its behalf here and now.” 1

That is the background, the context within which we hear the story of Joseph and his decision to go against the social and religious norms of his time, to embrace this relationship with Mary and the unborn baby she carried. That understanding of actively waiting for God’s dream to become fully realized in the here and now among common human beings that Isaiah describes repeatedly, that is how Joseph and Mary understood the part they were playing in making the choices they made. They understood that every choice is a decision to participate in God’s dream or not; to do the next, right thing bringing God’s justice and peace in each action and every word … or not. They understood that God’s dream is not realized in one grand gesture but in the lives of average people, like us choosing to enact that dream in our own lives.

Matthew 1:18-25

Now the birth of Jesus the Messiah took place in this way. When his mother Mary had been engaged to Joseph, but before they lived together, she was found to be pregnant from the Holy Spirit. 19 Her husband Joseph, being a righteous man and unwilling to expose her to public disgrace, planned to divorce her quietly. 20 But just when he had resolved to do this, an angel of the Lord appeared to him in a dream and said, “Joseph, son of David, do not be afraid to take Mary as your wife, for the child conceived in her is from the Holy Spirit. 21 She will bear a son, and you are to name him Jesus, for he will save his people from their sins.” 22 All this took place to fulfill what had been spoken by the Lord through the prophet:

23 “Look, the virgin shall become pregnant and give birth to a son, and they shall name him Emmanuel,”  which means, “God is with us.” 24 When Joseph awoke from sleep, he did as the angel of the Lord commanded him; he took her as his wife 25 but had no marital relations with her until she had given birth to a son, and he named him Jesus.

When Joseph found himself in this messy situation, betrothed to a woman who was pregnant, he had no more certainty about what he should do than any of us would have had. He must have had the same doubts and questions we would have. What he did have going for him was the tradition of his faith at that time that says that God calls people to work with God in bringing God’s salvation, God’s dream into reality in our world. He had that tradition to fall back on, to help him make his choice when faced with an impossible situation.

Joseph didn’t know what would happen. He didn’t know the consequences of either choosing to accept Mary and her baby or reject them. Joseph had to act in the dark, not knowing the result of his choices; going against the norms of his culture and religion and law because God asked him to. Joseph had to imagine and trust a new story, despite his uncertainty and his fear.

In Gareth Higgins book, How Not To Be Afraid, he talks about the competing stories that shaped his childhood in Northern Ireland during the long time now called “The Troubles.”
Higgins says that one story that was told in Northern Ireland at the time was that you had to choose a side -- either support for the United Kingdom or support Irish re-unification. When you made that choice, you were accepting the premise that the "other side" had caused the conflict in the first place and that "our" side was merely defending itself.

But there was an alternate story of people who refused to live their lives according to that narrative.  Higgins writes, "People were refusing to use violence to get what they wanted and were caring for the suffering and the bereaved. People were initiating conversations with their political opponents, including those who might harm them, and moving into neighborhoods where they didn't [technically] 'belong' in order to show that everyone belongs. People were laying aside vengeance in favor of cooperation."2

Those people were bravely making choices to participate with God in making God’s dream of justice and peace more fully a reality. In our time, many of us have grown weary and even exhausted from waiting. We’re tired of the same old arguments and the two steps forward, three steps backward that seems to be the reality in our world. We’re tired of seeing people suffer from lack of nutritious food and warm, safe housing in this richest of all countries. We’re tired of the drumbeat pounding out the rhythm of the tired song that we are a Christian nation, when there is nothing Christlike in how people are cared for or the violence that is used in the name of God and country. We’re tired of the injustice that dictates one future for privileged, white children and another future for the poor and people of color. We’re tired of people dying for lack of equitable health care and access to medicine. We’re tired of division and taking sides prevailing over acknowledging our shared humanity.

Isaiah and all the prophets who guided Joseph and Mary and Elizabeth and Zechariah and all the other ancestors in faith insist that we practice the Kingdom’s justice in our own time. It’s not history! It’s not a pie-in-the-sky dream! As followers of Jesus, it is supposed to be our story as we live it now, together!

Diana Butler Bass suggests that “Maybe if we are tired of waiting, it is because we don’t really understand waiting. Waiting isn’t about looking for miracles to fall from the sky. It isn’t about magic fixes. Waiting entails acting. Waiting beckons us to jubilation. Waiting isn’t quiescence. In the biblical tradition, it means looking clearly into the broken world and caring for what is wounded. It means facing down the powers of injustice with drum and dance. It means living the promises that God’s people trust with all their hearts.” This is our calling. This is the waiting that is our purpose in being here.

The brokenness of this world is real. The veneer of Christmas carols and glittery cards and candles and even the love of family and friends cannot cover up that reality. Many are suffering and we know that things are not as God would have them be. Things look dark and at times even hopeless, much as it must have looked for Mary and Joseph as they lived in the oppressive rule of the Roman Empire, as they were forced to find shelter outside among the animals, as they were forced to become refugees in Egypt. In this time, God calls us to live the promise that God’s dream for justice and peace for ALL God’s children, for ALL people is just waiting for us to live it, here and now, loving All people with open and generous hearts.

Living with the world’s great brokenness is so difficult. Please join me in this prayer from Kate Bowler:

o God, i am done with broken systems
that break the very people
they are meant to serve.

o God, harness this anger!
channel it into worthy action and show me
what is mine to fix and what boundaries to patrol
to keep goodness in and evil out.

blessed are we who are appalled
that brute ignorance can so easily dominate
over decency, honesty, and integrity.

blessed are we, who choose not to look away
from systems that dehumanize, deceive, defame, and distort.

blessed are we who stand
with truth over expediency,
principle over politics,
community over competition.

o God, how blessed are we who cry out to you:
empower us to see and name what is broken,
what is ours to restore,
guide us to find coherent and beautiful alternatives
that foster life, hope, and peace.
help us use our gifts with one another in unity.

Blessed are we who choose to live in anticipation,

Our eyes scanning the horizon,

For signs of your kingdom –

Heaven-come-down-

As we wait in hope

And act in courage. Amen.

1Diana Butler Bass

2Gareth Higgins, How Not to Be Afraid