SUNDAY, DECEMBER 21, 2025 | ADVENT FOURTH SUNDAY OF ADVENT (A)

Activities

Children’s Message: "God Has Toes!"

Goal: To help children understand the Incarnation through their own physical experiences.

The Message:"Good morning! Today is the last Sunday before Christmas. We are waiting for Jesus! Sometimes we think of God as being way up in the clouds, like a superhero who stays far away. But the Bible tells us a secret: Jesus came to be Immanuel, which means 'God with us'.

Let’s try something together. Reach down and wiggle your toes. (Wait for children to wiggle). Can you feel them? Now, pat your tummy. (Wait for children). Sometimes your tummy gets hungry for snack time, right? And finally, give yourself a big hug. (Wait for children).

The 'scandalous' and amazing thing about Christmas is that God decided to have toes that wiggle, a tummy that gets hungry, and arms that give hugs. Jesus wasn't a ghost; he was a real baby who cried and took naps just like you.

Because God had a body like yours, God knows exactly what it feels like when you are happy, when you are tired, or even when you are hungry. God is not just watching us from far away; God is right here in the 'trenches' with us.

Prayer: Dear God, thank you for becoming one of us. Thank you for having toes, fingers, and a heart that loves us. Help us to remember that you are always with us. Amen."

Intercessory Prayer

We pray for all who hunger, for families struggling to survive, and for children who rely on the grace of neighbors for their daily bread; that as we celebrate Immanuel—God with us in the flesh—we may be moved to stand in the trenches with the marginalized and work for a kingdom where no one is forgotten.

God of Grace. Hear our prayers.

Sermon

Good morning,

Fourth Sunday of Advent is here! Where did all of December go? Almost all gone, just like the chocolates of our Advent calendars. Today, Matthew gives us a brief account of the events preceding Jesus’ birth: Mary and Joseph were betrothed, but before they lived together, Mary became pregnant through the Holy Spirit. Joseph, feeling betrayed, initially sought a quiet divorce to remain honorable, but an angel in a dream redirected him to marry her.

A few things are a bit confusing here - first of all, Joseph is already referred to as husband (aner) after the discovery and we read he wanted to divorce her. In our culture, betrothal is a step towards marriage that may still not happen for many years, but in the Jewish marriage, it is already legally binding and all is left for the man to do is to take his wife home in a festive manner.

Secondly, there is disconnect between the prophecies in Isaiah and Matthew - Isaiah talks about the mother as “young woman,” whereas Matthew has “virgin.” And that has two reasons: 1. Matthew was likely reading the Greek translation of Isaiah, which uses language that leans towards young maiden being a virgin (parthenos - which is also used by the Septuagint in Isaiah) and secondly, the Hebrew word ha almah (young woman) implies virginity by the cultural expectation of the young woman of a marriageable age to be sexually chaste.

I think both issues highlight that we should not get too hung up on the whole virginity thing - that isn’t the point, especially not in the convoluted way the later church would come up with in the form of “perpetual virginity of Mary” which is is the Christian belief that Mary remained a virgin for her entire life: before Jesus’ conception, during his birth, and after his birth. We have no use for such detailed elaboration in our theology - we have no need to have everything figured out, some things can simply be a mystery.

Is Jesus’ conception and birth surrounded by miracles and fulfillment of prophecies? Definitely. But it is more important to focus on what it represents and we can begin with the name Immanuel/Emmanuel - God with us. On the surface, the meaning is pretty understandable - yes, God IS with us, yup! More granularly, it relates to a very important concept for us Lutherans - the incarnation of Jesus, Jesus coming into our flesh, into our reality. Simply put in Luther’s words:

“This means that he ate, drank, slept, awakened, was tired, sad, and happy. He wept and laughed, hungered, thirsted, froze, and perspired. He chatted, worked, and prayed. In brief, he required the same things for life’s sustenance and preservation that any other human being does. He labored and suffered as anyone else does. He experienced both fortune and misfortune. The only difference between him and all others was that he was sinless.”

Martin Luther, The Interpretation of Scripture, ed. Euan K. Cameron et al., The Annotated Luther (Minneapolis, MN: Fortress Press, 2017), 6:437.

That’s a biiig deal. Theologian Hans Schwarz underscores thusly why:

“When God becomes a part of human history, he also comes into contact with our sinful alienation from him. Yet he does not himself become sinful, but deals instead with our sin. Jesus Christ, as the Wholly Other, stands completely on our side in order to bring God to us.”

Hans Schwarz, True Faith in the True God: An Introduction to Luther’s Life and Thought (Minneapolis, MN: Fortress Press, 2015), 63.

Which, in a final quote, Martin Luther really considers crucial to our belief in Jesus:

Only the person who believes in Christ’s incarnation, who confesses that Christ is born ‘in my favor’ and ‘in my flesh and in your flesh,’ believes correctly.

Sammeli Juntunen, “Christ,” in Engaging Luther: A (New) Theological Assessment, ed. Olli-Pekka Vainio (Eugene, OR: Cascade Books, 2010), 72.

If you believe Jesus is only some ethereal, disembodied entity, then that is not it, sorry not sorry! It is why all 3 confessions of faith have some mention of Jesus coming into our flesh - it is one of the base beliefs!

So not only God is with us proverbially, but literally - God entered human history in a very tangible, fleshy way. It is what we are truly gearing up towards, this crescendo of the incarnation realized, concentrated in one fleshly bundle that cries, poops, observes, sleeps, and drinks mommy’s milk and later, day by day, would grow into Jesus as we typically think about him - able to walk around, speak, relate with the world in many ways, eat solid food, drink wine.… It is scandalous - the king of kings, the prince of peace, the savior, … wasn’t born in a palace to some high born people with midwives, wet nurses, cooks, and other servants, but to a seemingly ordinary family while visiting with some relatives with limited room, which we will talk about soon in 3 days. It is of course in the details, where the extraordinary nature of Jesus’ birth shows, but even then not everybody could understand the impact of the event on the whole universe.

This "fleshy" reality has deep implications. In Czech, we say sytý hladovému nevěří—the sated does not believe the hungry. Because God entered human history, God doesn't just know about suffering intellectually; God feels it. There are many with influence in this world that claim to know what it is like to be poor, starved,, unhoused, and marginalized, but not all of them have real experiences to back their claims up - it is one thing to see profound suffering and yet another to experience it .

When I was in my final year of my theological studies in Slovakia, I learnt a thing or two about rationing canned food, having to walk for a long time in rain, shine, or snow, and finishing up my degree under some less than ideal conditions with little privacy or quiet. It is why I now believe that it is essential to provide food for kids learning in school and food for families and individuals that are struggling to survive in the neighborhood. Everything is so much harder when you are malnourished and/or starved. Jesus’ priorities on feeding the hungry, caring for the poor, and welcoming the stranger speak volumes about his own experience - it must have been tough, when the holy family had to live as refugees in Egypt, waiting out the reign of King Herod who sought to kill Jesus as one example.

I trust Jesus to know what he is talking about, but I don’t always trust leaders that have never really experienced any significant hardship - perhaps their pet died or they lost their favorite mitten, but their families have always had enough to eat, vacationed somewhere twice a year, and never in their life had to take a bus or a train. Especially those that tell us that schools don’t have to provide free food to kids at school or that the public transit doesn’t need any improvements or financing. Again, Jesus would be the one riding a bus and serving meatloaf in the cafeteria, not taking helicopter rides to avoid the traffic downtown and having a private chef.

Immanuel, Jesus, is with us and through him God - he is in the trenches with us, so to speak, getting all muddy and worn by the searing sun - he understands. That is the good news: God understands our suffering because God lived it, inviting us into a Kingdom where that suffering finally ends and into which we are invited to live into right here and right now. Our guide is one of us and yet, so much more than that. Amen.

Note

Isaiah:

Look, the young woman (עַלְמָה ʿǎl·mā(h) marriageable girl; young woman) is with child and shall bear a son and shall name him Immanuel., 15 He shall eat curds and honey by the time he knows how to refuse the evil and choose the good. 16 For 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 deserted. New Revised Standard Version: Updated Edition (Friendship Press, 2021), Is 7:14–16.

Romans: Paul affirming basic Christology

Matthew:

“Look, the virgin shall become pregnant and give birth to a son, and they shall name him Emmanuel,” which means, “God is with us.” New Revised Standard Version: Updated Edition (Friendship Press, 2021), Mt 1:23.

Virgin:

4221 παρθένος (parthenos), ου (ou), ἡ (hē) or ὁ (ho): n.fem. or masc.; ≡ DBLHebr 1435, 6625; Str 3933; TDNT 5.826—1. LN 9.39 (female) virgin (Mt 1:23; 25:1, 7, 11; Lk 1:27, 27; Ac 21:9; 1Co 7:25, 28, 34, 36, 37, 38; 2Co 11:2+; Mt 1:16 v.r.); 2. LN 9.33 (male) virgin (Rev 14:4+); 3. LN 34.77 unmarried person, one not necessarily a virgin (1Co 7:25+), for another interp, see prior James Swanson, Dictionary of Biblical Languages with Semantic Domains: Greek (New Testament) (Oak Harbor: Logos Research Systems, Inc., 1997).

Yes, the Hebrew word ʿalmāh in Isaiah 7:14 and the Greek parthenos in Matthew 1:23 are related through the Septuagint, but they are not exact semantic equivalents. Their “connection” is literary and theological: Matthew leans on the Greek Isaiah to reread the older sign in light of Jesus’ conception.