Advent 4A’25
21 December 2025
Matthew 1.18-25
St. Luke’s Episcopal Church North
Little Rock, Arkansas
The Rev. Carey Stone <+>
Loving Creator, who has made both the light and the darkness for your divine purposes: Grant that as we sit in the darkness of Advent; the enlivening of our hearts with hopeful expectation of the coming of your Son, Jesus Christ, the Light of the World. Amen. – The Rev. Carey Stone<+>
Today as we stand here on the threshold of the coming of Jesus the Light of the world, let us not leave the darkness too hastily. Let us not leave the darkness of Advent behind before learning to value it. Without the darkness of Advent there could be no celebration of Light. It is in the dark that God does some of God’s best creative work. It is in the depths of the dark earth that a seed germinates and sprouts. It is in the darkness of the womb where new life is conceived and grows until a new life comes crying to life! The rays of Advent darkness are not to bring us to despair – it is here that our faith says that the dark place we find ourselves is not a tomb but a womb.
Old Testament scholar Walter Bruggemann suggests that there are three stages of any spiritual journey, orientation, disorientation, and new orientation. He indicates that the stage of orientation is when we are in a place in life where things seem to make sense, and while nothing is ever perfect in this stage of orientation there is an order, a rhyme and a reason to the happenings in our lives. The next stage is disorientation, this is where the darkness comes in where we can’t see clearly and we lose our bearings. This is the place where the universe seems to be playing a cruel joke on us and we aren’t laughing. When we are in this place we usually try to deny it or fight it. It’s here in the dark where we discover that old maps can never take us to new places, places where light and new life are in abundance. When we embrace the darkness we find ourselves in a powerful place, the place Bruggeman calls “new orientation.”
Today on the fourth Sunday of Advent, we are given an expert guide to follow. Onto the stage filled with Advent darkness comes a true unsung and often overlooked hero of the faith, a humble carpenter from Nazareth – Joseph. The person that much has been written spoken and even sung about is Mary, the mother of Jesus. But in today’s gospel we hear about a gentle giant of faith.
It had been 400 long years since the last verse from the last prophet of the Old Testament had been written, the people of God had been living in an extended period of orientation., but in God’s perfect timing the silence is broken by choosing to show the highest honor to a lowly peasant girl by making her the Mother of God.
Today in Matthew’s gospel we hear the remarkable story of the encounter between heaven and earth, between the human and the divine. Both Mary and Joseph had very much been living in the orientation stage of faith. They were warmed by the glow of the new love that was shared between them. Their love had been recognized by their families with the recent announcement of their engagement. But like all marriages of the poor the upcoming nuptials wouldn’t have made the cover of a magazine or even an honorable mention in their lives together. But God had much more in store!
Mary would hear words from the angel, Gabriel that would throw her life into a st.age of disorientation that boggles the mind: “Greetings favored one! The Lord is with you.” These words of Gabriel and the action of the Holy Spirit blew the lives of Mary, Joseph, and their families into a storm of disorientation. Can you imagine that fateful day when Joseph dropped by Mary’s house to check on wedding plans only to find an engorged Mary. Joseph couldn’t believe his eyes, had Mary overdone it with too many of her mom’s cream cheese bagels and gallons of matzo ball soup – what in heaven’s name and on earth had happened to Mary?
Mary explains the ‘goings on’ that had preceded Joseph’s visit. That her pregnancy was in spite of any help from him or any other man – the child within her was of Divine origin. It’s really hard for us to imagine the great predicament and scandal a pregnancy ‘out of wedlock’ would have put them in.
As Joseph left Mary’s house that day and went back to his house, he had much to contemplate. ”How can this be? What is the right and righteous thing to do? What does God and the law require of me? How can I shield Mary from the great backlash and shaming?” Joseph wanted to do all he could to minimize the fallout and had determined to quietly break off the engagement. It must have been with a very heavy heart that he went to sleep that night.
The Holy Spirit wasn’t done and gave Joseph a dream- in it he saw an angel of the Lord that spoke these words: ‘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. She will bear a son, and you are to name him Jesus, for he will save people from their sins!” Joseph then wakes up from the dream. And if we were in Joseph’s sandals and had this dream what would we be thinking and feeling? We often dismiss our dreams as ‘crazy’ and blame something we ate for dinner or perhaps the Netflix series we had watched before bed. But Joseph was a man of faith, who walked closely with his God, and was sensitive to the Spirit’s leading – he got up and obeyed the message, they cut short the engagement period and hired their local rabbi to perform a quick wedding!
In a world where we are taught to hog the spotlight and make everything all about us, Joseph chose to make it all about Emmanuel- God with us. He chose the role of a servant who would stay behind the scenes, quietly following the leadership of God the Holy Spirit.
Joseph is our very human guide through the darkness; he shows us that it’s ok and quite normal to be perplexed by the events in our lives, to not have any understanding of what’s really going on. But Joseph shows us what to do – to ponder what God may trying to accomplish in the midst of our questions, doubts of our disorientation to bring our dilemmas to God and to trust that God knows where he is taking us. Joseph shows us that it’s not only ok to question and doubt but to see them as merely the back door to genuine faith, where we are enabled to surrender to God’s will not knowing where we are going.
My friends as the time of Jesus’ appearing draws near and you find yourselves in a place of darkness and disorientation- take heart! You are in good company. Like Joseph, let us embrace the disorientation, bring our perplexing, pondering, questioning, and doubting selves and then may we pay close attention, God’s direction may come from an unexpected source, at an unexpected time the new life within us that has been waiting to be born will be and with this Holy birth our period of new orientation will come to pass. Amen.