Sermon for fourth Sunday in Advent

21^st December 2025

Isaiah 7, 10-16

Psalm 80

Romans 1, 1-7

Matthew 1, 18-end

May the words of my mouth and the meditation of my heart be acceptable to you, O Lord, my rock and my redeemer.

Amen

It isn’t often that priests find themselves represented in films, books and other media in a positive way.  From Chaucer’s friar who makes money from hearing confessions to Jane Austen’s Mr. Collins who worships wealth and status it’s really unusual to find a positive representation of a fictional priest.  And any real priest who makes it into the headlines nowadays is usually associated with some crime or misdemeanour.  Earlier this week we settled down to watch a film which looked set to follow a similar pattern- a detective, Benoit Blanc,  played by Daniel Craig arrives to investigate the murder of a fire and brimstone parish priest and the chief suspect is his newly appointed curate, Father Jud Duplenticity.  But solving the murder takes second place to exploring ideas about faith, belief, guilt and forgiveness…..in one of their first scenes together, set in an empty church, Blanc hits out at stories like the one we hear in today’s Gospel, ‘It’s like someone has shone a story at me that I do not believe, that’s built upon the empty promise of a child’s fairytale’ he tells Father Jud, who is sitting enveloped in darkness, as if defeated by the detective’s contempt for what he believes.  Initially Jud agrees, saying that yes, the stories he preaches on have more in common with Disneyland than any fixed reality, but then, as the light breaks in through the windows behind him, he asks

‘I guess the question is, do these stories convince us of a lie, or do they resonate with something inside us that’s profoundly true and that we cannot express in any other way?’ 

It’s an extraordinary moment in a film which somehow manages to combine popular appeal with theological insight.  And that notion of stories resonating with something we can all recognise as being part of who we are and so profoundly true is central to today’s readings, which help us to share in mysteries which are set long ago and yet help us to see God’s presence in our lives today , and which, if we give them space and time to break through can transform us and how we see the world. And as we come to the end of Advent, a time intended to test and challenge us, and look forward to the promise of Christmas, we can begin to think of how we ourselves might become ready for that transformation.

Nothing is more universal than being born-when our grand daughter was born in early September, I found myself suddenly aware of how every birth is both an experience we all share and yet unique to each of us, and in Isaiah and in today’s gospel birth is both a shared human experience and a singular expression of God’s Grace.  Matthew’s storytelling combines the human and the divine with wonderful simplicity and clarity.  There is Joseph, desperate not to incur the scorn of a society ready to reject Mary and to treat her unkindly for becoming pregnant and being unmarried, and then in the same moment there is the angel, who breaks into the everyday world of human prejudice, fear and meanness of spirit and tells Joseph with great simplicity that Mary’s child is from the Holy Spirit and is to be called Jesus, ‘for he will save his people from their sins’.  No ifs, no buts- the angel’s message is absolutely clear- Here is God at work in the messy reality of human prejudice and cruelty- God coming to live and suffer within and around us and in the most challenging of situations.  This living presence of God in a dangerous and prejudiced world has been captured this Christmas by churches in the USA protesting against the way in which vulnerable and impoverished members of migrant communities are being rounded up and detained by Immigration and customs enforcement officials.

At Lake Street church in Chicago , the crib features baby Jesus lying in a manger in the snow – but this C21st Jesus is wrapped in the kind of thin, foil blankets issued to migrant detainees by immigration officers, and has his wrists zip-tied as if he were a criminal.

The figure of Mary stands nearby just outside the church, wearing a gas mask, which anti-immigration control protesters have been wearing to protect against teargas. She is flanked by figures of Roman soldiers, dressed in tactical vests labelled “ICE.”

By imagining the ancient story of Christ’s birth taking place in a contemporary setting these churches are demanding that we respond to the suffering and fear experienced by modern day victims of persecution and prejudice. They invite us to think about the enduring mystery of God’s being born into the most disadvantaged and dangerous of circumstances.  The truth expressed in the Christmas story, which is the holy family’s lowly status as homeless refugees and God’s presence in their hardship and suffering, becomes a way of representing the  fears and experiences of families in immigrant communities around the world; their forced separation from loved ones , the deportation of working family members, the loss of income and poverty but amongst it all, the reality of God living in and with them in their hardships. 

Something in the story we hear in today’s Gospel, of the birth of a child to parents afraid of prejudice and rejection, a child whose coming has been prophesised in Isaiah and announced to his parents by angels reminds me of the words of the priest in the film, here really is a story that ‘resonates with something inside us that’s profoundly true and that we cannot express in any other way.’  Mystics like Hildegard of Bingen and Meister Eckhart would identify that ‘something inside us’ as God - This is the truth which connects Isaiah with Matthew and with us today, that every life is precious because every life has the inexpressible mystery of God at its centre.

As we look ahead to Christmas  today’s Gospel suggests to us that the profound truth we sense when we listen to those familiar stories of stables, shepherds, angels and Kings in the coming week is that God’s love informs and shapes everything we experience as ‘life’. And as we wait for the promise of new life in the form of Jesus to show us again that truth in its purest form, we, like the priest in the film, can wonder again at these stories which resonate with something inside us that’s profoundly true and that we cannot express in any other way.

In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the holy spirit, Amen.