Second Sunday of Advent - December 7, 2025

23:08 I was going to tell you all to clap later, but you did it already. Patrick, Ryan, choir, thank you so much for this gift that you gave to the community. Will you please join me in prayer? holy spirit may you speak to our hearts to our minds and to our souls remove me if you need to pray all this in your name amen so last sunday after worship and after post-church naps for both my toddler april and i we began to set up our christmas decorations around the house which for us means setting up the tree and putting out two nativity scenes. Now, Deacon Amelia Vogler Topping has told me that her parents have an enormous amount of manger scenes in their house, like she has lost count, like it's somewhere up in the 30s. Now, we are nowhere near Mama Vogler's count, but with our count at two, we got one small wooden carved manger scene that I bought in Bethlehem in the West Bank a few years ago. And then our very first nativity set was given to us by my mom.

24:24 It's a small set with Charlie Brown characters around the manger scene. Sally Brown is the angel Gabriel, Lucy is Mary, and good old Charlie Brown is Joseph. Now this Advent season, we are taking a closer look at these characters that set up your manger you're seeing around your homes, whether you have one of them or 38 of them. Now last week, Pastor Scott introduced us to the angel Gabriel, and one of the things that stood out to me was that the angel always has a greeting of peace. And perhaps not just because you would be startled by the sight of an angel, but also because in a world in which strangers are thought to bring in fear and terror, God's angel reminds us that sometimes it's the foreigner the unexpected other who comes caring not fear but peace and one of the things that I love about these manger scenes is that besides the presence of the angel the other main characters are common folk like you and me Mary Joseph and even Jesus enter the story as ordinary people indistinguishable from the countless others in their time, and not at all different from us. And yet through their quiet, unremarkable lives, God chooses to make something extraordinary known. So who are these common people in this story? Who are the common creatures? In the next couple weeks, you'll hear more about the animals, and Mary, and the shepherds. But this week, we turn our attention to Joseph.

25:55 So listen to the word of the Lord as it comes to us from Matthew chapter 1. elude the father of eleazar and eleazar the father of matan and matan the father of jacob and jacob the father of joseph the husband of mary who bore jesus who is called the messiah so all the generations from abraham to david are 14 generations and from david to the deportation to Babylon, 14 generations, and from the deportation to Babylon to the Messiah, 14 generations. 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. Her husband Joseph, being a righteous man and unwilling to expose her to public disgrace, planned to divorce her quietly. 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. 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 fulfill what had been spoken by the Lord through the prophet. Look, the virgin shall become pregnant and give birth to a son, and they shall name him Emmanuel, which means God with us. When Joseph awoke from his sleep, he did as the angel of the Lord commanded him. He took her as his wife, but had no marital relations with her until she had given birth to a son, and he named him Jesus. This is the word of God for you, the people of God. Thanks be to God.

27:52 April's uncle David likes to send me religious memes that often make me giggle, most I can never ever share from the pulpit. But one he sent me made me laugh. It was an image of Joseph with baby Jesus, and Joseph is wearing a t-shirt that says, I'm not the stepdad, I'm the dad that stepped up. And when I look at this passage we see Joseph stepping up in so many big ways. But what do we know about St. Joseph? From the scriptures we actually don't know much. He's only mentioned a few times in the gospel of Luke and Matthew but quickly disappears from the narrative after Jesus's childhood. And he never actually says anything. He doesn't have any dialogue. He's never named in the Gospel of Mark, and in the Gospel of John, he is only talked about when people are grumbling about Jesus. They ask, isn't this Joseph and Mary's son?

28:57 So again, who is Joseph? According to the 2017 Fifth Avenue Presbyterian Church Family Ministries Christmas pageant, my first pageant here at Fifth Avenue, the character description on the on the script says that Joseph is an honest and straightforward person, and that Joseph was well played by actor Angus Roberson, who is now a junior in the youth group. Now, there is a Gnostic gospel that speculates that perhaps Joseph was an older widower chosen to be more of a guardian-like for Mary, perhaps someone who married Mary as a favor to her family. But there really isn't any real historical evidence of this being true at all, but it's a creative way of imagining what Joseph's story might be. But the reality is that we simply do not know much about him, except his lineage to King David that we see in the verses leading up to this.

29:56 And maybe that's why it matters so much that Joseph shows up in the genealogy at all. In a gospel that is so careful to trace a line from Abraham to David to the exile to Christ, Joseph stands like a quiet bridge between promise and fulfillment. Even though he is not Jesus's biological father, he's the one who names him, claims him, and places him within the story of God's people. through Joseph Jesus is grafted into the long complicated beautiful lineage of Israel a reminder that belonging isn't only about blood but about faithfulness courage and the choice to say yes to what God is doing in the world so let's look at the passage we read a little more closely but to really understand what is happening we have to let go of our modern ideas about romance chemistry, and finding the one. In the first century, marriages weren't built on love stories.

30:58 They were built on family agreements, survival, and legacy. A marriage was arranged between families as a way of securing honor, stability, and an heir to carry on a household name. Love might grow later, but it wasn't the reason people got married. So when Matthew tells us that Mary and Joseph were engaged, and it already calls her her husband in the passage that we read. That's because in this world, this arrangement already carried legal and social weight. Mary simply hadn't moved in to his home yet. And in the time before DNA tests and medical explanations, the only proof of a child's legitimacy was the faithfulness of the woman. That meant that Mary's pregnancy didn't just raise questions. It didn't just wasn't talk in the rumor mill. It put everything at risk. Her future, Joseph's reputation, and both of their family's honor. Faced with that reality, Joseph's first instinct is to end the marriage quietly, protecting her from public shame while trying to salvage what he can of a broken situation. But just as Joseph finally settled on a plan, an angel of the Lord shows up in the middle of the night with a disruptive dream.

32:16 The angel says, Joseph, son of David, don't be afraid to take Mary as your wife. What's happening here is not betrayal or shame. This is God at work. She is going to have a child and you will name him Jesus because he will save the people from their sins. And then just in case Joseph needed a little extra reassurance or perhaps the readers of Matthew. Matthew zooms out and says, by the way, this was always part of the plan. Straight out of the prophet Isaiah, a virgin shall conceive and bear a son and he shall be called Emmanuel, which means God with us. So Joseph wakes up from this wild, holy, life-altering dream and does exactly what the angel told him to do. There's no arguing, no follow-up questions no second opinion he takes Mary as his wife and when the baby is born Joseph gives him the name Jesus and just like that Joseph becomes not the biological father but the chosen faithful present diaper changing let's figure this out dad who stepped into a story that he never planned for but said yes to anyway so when I really think about it I am so impressed by Joseph's sneaky righteousness. In a world where revenge and name-calling and public shaming are a spectacle of the day, Joseph shows us there is a sneaky way of having righteousness.

33:47 Joseph values trust and relationships over the rules, and his righteousness is based on love, not law. It astounds me that even when he did not have the full information, before the angel of the Lord even shows up. Joseph chooses to act out of compassion. Now this doesn't mean he didn't feel betrayed. His gut at first might have been to blast Mary on Twitter, to do a whole Instagram story about his betrayal, to clear his name. The texts don't tell us how he felt, but it's hard to imagine that Joseph wasn't angry. I mean, think about it. Wouldn't you have some feelings? and yet even with those feelings he still chooses to act out of compassion. Friends I've heard your stories about how many of you have felt that you've been done dirty and I think your feelings are valid but what if we learned something from Joseph here about how we react. Sometimes when we react out of compassion we tune into a larger story of grace and maybe that's one of the strange lessons of Advent that before the angels, before the manger, before the shepherds, the star, there is Joseph who chooses love over reputation, mercy over being right, and compassion over control. That kind of quiet, inconvenient kindness is not normal, not in our world.

35:20 It's counter-cultural, and it's exactly the kind of world Advent is always trying to wake us up to. Advent is deeply countercultural and so are the dreams that come with it. The late and brilliant Old Testament theologian Walter Brueggemann reminds us that in scripture dreams are not just nighttime brain activity. They are God's intrusion into a settled world. They are God's intrusion into a settled world. They're an unbitted communication in the dark of the night that unsettles what is familiar and opens us to a world different from the one we think we knew. From Jacob running in fear, to Joseph imprisoned in Egypt, to Daniel's dreaming, to the Magi fleeing Herod, dreams are the places where God interrupts, reorients, and rebirths people into new life. And it's the same with Joseph here. I think he's scared. I think he's confused. He's trying to do the right thing when a dream cracks open a larger story of grace.

36:26 He wakes up changed, and just like those before him, he finds new purpose, new promise, and a new courage. Matthew calls him righteous, but Joseph's righteousness isn't rigid rule following. It's rooted in love, imagination, and trust in what God is doing underneath his fear. That's why Advent doesn't fit neatly into our culture of noise, certainty, and instant answers. While the world tries to drown out the darkness with glitter and distraction, the church dares to sit in the shadows long enough to dream. Joseph leads the way, inviting us to holy imagination, to name our deepest hopes, to believe in God's impossible nearness, to dare to dream of a world made whole, and that dream has a name, Emmanuel, God with us. so friends what are your dreams where is God showing up in your dreams you might be thinking Warner I had the weirdest dream last night I literally had a dream last night about an In-N-Out burger good dream but you ask a good question I'm not asking you what did you dream last night or even what you wish because what you wish might not be good for you or this world what I'm asking you in the words of Brueggemann, where is God's intrusion into your settled world? That is what I mean when where is God showing up in your dreams? Where is God turning things upside down in your life to usher in grace, peace, hope, and love?

38:07 I think about a story that I saw this past week. On Black Friday in a mall in San Jose, California, a shooting occurred and shoppers scared ran out of the mall and two young women ran to a house nearby where Martin and Irene Garcia live. They ring the doorbell and since the camera, it's a doorbell with a camera, it was all caught on film. Martin Garcia opens the door and the two young adults say quickly, there's a shooter, can we please come inside? Martin Garcia assesses the situation within a second and sees other people running. He lets the two women in and then he quickly shouts to the crowd, come inside. If you need a place to go, come inside my house. They welcomed over 30 strangers into their home until everything was safe. And even after everything was all clear, they noticed how scared and traumatized these strangers were.

39:06 So instead of kicking them out, they ordered pizza and watched holiday movies together. Friends, this story gives me a glimpse of the characters in the manger scene. An ordinary door, an ordinary family, an ordinary Friday that suddenly cracked open to something holy. Martin and Irene Garcia didn't have the time to workshop a moral response or to pull out biblical commentary. They simply opened the door. In the middle of fear and chaos and uncertainty, they chose to make their home a sanctuary. This is the shape of a God dream. It's not flashy or polished, but it's brave and interruptive and soaked in compassion. It's the kind of dream that turns the living room into holy ground and strangers into neighbors. That quiet, reflexive hospitality is exactly what it looks like when God intrudes into a settled world, tilting it towards grace. So friends, where is God interrupting your settled world this Advent?

40:17 Where is love asking you to be brave, to be softer, to be more open, more generous, more human? Perhaps it looks like extending patience instead of irritation with your child, your partner, a co-worker, or that stranger on the train. Perhaps it looks like noticing who's being left out, overlooked, or spoken over, and choosing to draw them back into the circle. Perhaps it looks like advocating for justice, raising your voice for those without power, and working towards a world that reflects God's dream of peace and love.

41:00 Advent is not just about preparing for a baby in a manger. It's also about preparing space in our lives for grace to take root. May God give you the eyes to see these interruptions that are actually invitations. And the courage to live into the holy, counter-cultural dreams that make this world feel a little more like Emmanuel, like God with us.

41:28 Friends, if you're willing, will you please stand as we affirm our faith together as it comes from the confession of 1967 of the Presbyterian Church USA? Already, God's reign is present as a ferment in the world, stirring hope in all people and preparing the world to receive its ultimate judgment and redemption. With an urgency born of this hope, the church applies itself to present tasks and strives for a better world. It does not identify limited progress with the kingdom of God on earth, nor does it despair in the face of disappointment and defeat. In steadfast hope, the church looks beyond all partial achievements to the final triumph of the kingdom of God.