What would make Christmas special for you this year?  What would make Christmas especially meaningful for me this year?  In our culture, we are surrounded by a lot of images depicting the perfect party, family gathering, meal, outfit, gift – all to make Christmas special.  We’re not against gatherings and meals and outfits and gifts, of course.  I don’t believe in putting extra pressure on ourselves, so perhaps the question should be re-phrased:

What has God done, what is God doing, and what will God do to make this time of year special?  While we consider this question let us hear the prayer of the Psalmist and the repeated chorus f the song that is before us in Psalm 80 – “Restore us, O God, O God of hosts, O Lord God of hosts, let your face shine, that we may be saved!”  God’s love comes to us as a gift, and we’ve been given a song to sing in response to it.  Restore us, O God, let your face shine, that we may be saved.  That we may be forgiven/delivered/made whole/enabled to live in the way you created us to live – in love of You and love of one another and love of your whole creation.

So we light the fourth candle of Advent.  How fitting that we light the lights during these shortest days of the year.  How fitting that we light the candle of love on the day of the year which brings the most darkness.  What is it about God that makes this time of year special?  We remember John’s words, “The light shines in the darkness and the darkness did not overcome it.”  We know about the darkness in our world – that hatred, the violence, the vitriol, the enmity.  We know the mixed feelings and moods that this time of year can bring – oftentimes in the same person.  Feelings ranging from excitement and looking forward to events to pressure to fulfill expectations and obligations to sadness that Christmas is not what it once was.

We have heard this Advent of how hope in the kingdom of heaven is not simply wishing for a certain outcome, but the confident expectation of good.  We have heard how peace is not simply the absence of active conflict but flourishing and goodness for all - mutually assured flourishing.  We heard last week of how joy in the kingdom of heaven is not dependent on circumstances, but is rather the confidence that we of travelling along together on the freedom highway, the deliverance highway.   As we rest in God’s love for us this day, let us hear the good news, no matter our personal circumstances or

In God’s vast, indescribable, immeasurable, unfathomable love, God has not abandoned us.  God refuses to abandon us.  “They shall name him Emmanuel,” Matthew quotes from the prophet Isaiah.  It’s not a direct quote because Isaiah speaks of the young woman naming the child.   “They shall name him Emmanuel,” says Matthew, and he’s talking about all of those who will name this baby, whose birth we celebrate, “Emmanuel,” which means “God is with us.”  God has broken into human history in a whole new way.  God has already made Christmas special, and the good and fitting and proper response is to be one of those who call him “God is with us.”  To be one of those people who pray, “Restore us, O Lord God of hosts, let your face shine, that we may be saved.”  To step into the specialness of Christmas this Advent 2025, let my prayer be “Restore me, O God, let your face shine, that I may be saved.”

Because we need saving, right?  Whether we’re considering global/national/local events or the circumstances of our lives, we need saving.  We need restoration.  In Isaiah 7, it was an existential threat to the kingdom of Judah.  The old Israelite kingdom of David had been divided in two – Israel (or Ephraim) and Judah.  Ahaz was king of Judah which was threatened by invasion from a coalition between Israel and Syria.  The Syro-Ephraimite coalition wanted Judah to join them in the fight against the Assyrians, and would use military force to make that happen.  King Ahaz looked to the Assyrian empire for help.

There’s a call here, and the call is to trust in God.  “If you do not stand firm in faith, you shall not stand at all” is what we read right before our passage.  The call is to unswerving trust in God.  The question “Who or what will save us?” is particularly meaningful when things have not gone the way we thought they would or should, when things are spinning out of control (or at least beyond our own ability to control), when the myth of our self-sufficiency (whether on a global or personal scale) is clearly shown to be a myth.    

King Ahaz of Judah was facing forces beyond his control.  Literally - military forces from Israel and Syria, which threatened Judah.  “Trust God” is the message from the prophet. In fact, “Ask the Lord for a sign,” Isaiah tells him.  “I will not ask, and I will not put the Lord to the test,” replies Ahaz.  The king is clothing his refusal in most pious language.   The clothing is just to cover the fact that his refusal to ask God for a sign has more to do with his refusal to trust God at all.  Ahaz has a plan, and it’s his own.  He will make an alliance with the Assyrian Empire rather than trust in the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob.  This will end badly for Judah.  For now, though, Isaiah tells the king, “Is it too little for you to weary mortals, that you weary my God also?  Therefore, the Lord himself will give you a sign.  Look, the young woman is with child and shall bear a son and shall name him Immanuel.”

The sign is God with us.  The sign is a child.  Deliverance from the forces that threaten is at hand.  “He shall eat curds and honey by the time he knows how to refuse the evil and choose the good.” Curds and honey signify blessing.  It means goodness by the time this child is old enough to know right from wrong. “Before the child knows how to refuse the evil and choose the good, the land before whose two kings you are in dread will be destroyed.”  Before this child comes of age, the threat which you dread so much will be taken away.  Goodness. Blessings. Deliverance. Freedom from fear.  The promise of God with us.

Which brings us to our nativity scene.  A story is told of a little girl who came home one day from school, excited to tell her parents about her part in the school’s Christmas Play.  The only problem was that she couldn’t remember what part she had been given.  She only remembered that it started with “B.”  Her family spent some time trying to figure out who “B” might be, but couldn’t come up with anything.  On the night of the play, it was revealed that their daughter played one of the bystanders.

When we look at the Christmas story as it is told by Luke, it is very easy to see Joseph in a kind of bystander light.  He’s mentioned only in association with going to Bethlehem because he is descended from the family of David; at being amazed by Simeon’s words in the Temple; at being mentioned by Mary as she’s telling Jesus how worried she and his father have been when he went AWOL during their visit to Jerusalem when Jesus was 12.     

Oftentimes, the people whose stories we come to know in the Bible are not shining examples of faith or doing the right thing.  Oftentimes, they are a reminder of our need for God’s grace and how God transforms us.  Mary and Joseph are a couple of young people who are doing the right thing when it comes to God.  Mary and Joseph are shining examples of trust, commitment, and devotion.  Mary’s “Let it be with me according to your word” to the angel in Luke) and pondering truths in her heart.  Joseph’s wanting to temper what the law required with mercy and stepping out in faith.

Joseph is not at all a bystander in Matthew’s story.  In a most personal way, things have not gone the way he expected them to.  In the middle of such situations, we have choices to make.  Joseph wanted to do the right thing.  Engagement would typically last one year and was as legally binding as marriage to us.  Mary is found to be with child.  The law required that the whole thing be called off, but Joseph did not wish to expose Mary to public disgrace.  He wanted to call off the whole thing quietly. 

Joseph receives a sign – an indication of God at work.  An indication of God’s promise being fulfilled.   Do you believe God speaks to us in dreams?  I do, absolutely.

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 (do not be afraid to trust God), 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 his people from their sins.’  All this took place to fulfil what had been spoken by the Lord through the prophet: ‘Look, the virgin shall conceive and bear a son, and they shall name him Emmanuel,’ which means ‘God is with us.’”

Trust in God is not always easy, and it could be costly (at least in terms of things we may value – though we may come to find they were of little value in the first place).  We don’t know what Joseph and Mary faced in terms of reaction to this scandal in Nazareth or Bethlehem.  Someone has said, “Our choices are not always easy to make or to keep. The consequences are sometimes painful, but there are always choices. We need not be bystanders to our own lives. We can, like Joseph, make the hard choice to believe that God is at work, that God is present, even in the most troubling of situations. We can choose to be obedient to the call to commit ourselves to follow, to commit ourselves to honour… even when it becomes difficult to do so.”

But what else would we do?  Here's the wonder of the sign of Emmanuel, of God with us.  God refuses to abandon us.  What else could we do but to trust and commit ourselves to follow? What else could we do but put ourselves into this Nativity story, which has been ongoing for over 2,000 years?

There are two things I pray we do as we close.   The first is this - Let us name Jesus this Advent season.  There are two names given to the child born in our Matthew 1 passage.  The first is Jesus.  Yeshua.  “God saves.”  Deliverer.    The second is Emmanuel – “God is with us.”  Look at the last thing that Joseph does as a sign to us – “… and he named him Jesus.”  To name this child meant that Joseph was claiming him as his own.  I am his.  He is mine.  May we ask God to give us eyes to see the signs of God’s promises all around us.  May we ask God to give us eyes to see the signs of God’s wondrous love all around.  Signs that God refuses to abandon us.  Such signs are all around us. 

Example

Example

Example

Signs of the Word made flesh – the incarnation of the love of God.  The birth of  “God saves.”  The birth of “God is with us.”

Secondly, pray that God would make us signs of God’s wondrous love.  The angel’s message to the shepherds was, “This will be a sign for you…”  May our prayer be, “Let us be a sign to all.”  May God call things into being in and through us – things like the hope that is to be found in Jesus, the vision of peace described by Isaiah, the joy that is known in Christ, no matter our circumstances, the wondrous love of “God with us,” – the wondrous truth that God refuses to abandon us.

May God help us see such signs and be such signs.  May this be true for each and every one of us.  Merry Christmas, dear family.

Amen