December 21 2025 Advent 4
Isaiah 7.10-16 Psalm 80.1-7, 80.17-19 Romans 1.1-7 Matthew 1.18-25
Each year Advent takes us on a journey. That journey sets us up for Christmas. And over the three years of our lectionary it does so across the three synoptic gospels, Matthew Mark and Luke. This being year A, it is taking that journey through Matthew. So the stories through which we journey differ slightly each year. The different authors each give us different aspects of the journey, Mark doesn’t give us a nativity story but kicks off with John the Baptist. Luke, reportedly a doctor gives us a very human account of Mary’s journey. Matthew gives us some idea of Josephs journey including the fact that, being a righteous man and unwilling to expose Mary to public disgrace, he planned to dismiss her quietly. One has to wonder what Joseph’s emotional Journey was like. Betrothed, promised in marriage but not yet married he finds out that she is pregnant. He knows he is not the father of the child. And you have to ask whether it was just for Mary’s sake that he decided to “dismiss her quietly”. Was there some sense of betrayal as well. Or did he accept her account of the encounter with the angel. Whatever the reason, whatever he believed about how this pregnancy came about, all his plans, his expectation of the life that lay ahead of him, were shattered, gone. At the very least grief enters the picture, maybe even anger. How could this happen. Why has God done this to me. You could have chosen anyone, why choose the girl I was about to marry?
It's only in Matthew that we find this part of the story.
One thing that is common across the four Sundays of Advent is our lighting of the Advent wreath and we allocate a theme to each of the Sundays as we sing about it. The first week we sing, “Light one candle for HOPE. Week two we add, PEACE, then JOY, and then this morning we added LOVE. For reasons I am not quite sure about, after the events of last Sunday at Bondi, I fixated on JOY, even though none of those events brought joy with them. But the theme of JOY kept bouncing around in my head, and all I could think about was that on that day JOY was snatched away from our collective experience.
Channukah is the Jewish festival of lights which commemorates the Maccabean revolt and the dedication of the second Temple in Jerusalem over 2,000 years ago. It is celebrated by lighting candles, playing games, singing songs, giving gifts, and eating fried foods, and is celebrated over 8 days. This year it is celebrated from December 14 until December 22. The celebration celebrates the time when the Maccabean Jew regained control of the Jerusalem Temple and rededicated the temple after the occupation by the Seleucid Empire. It is a joyful celebration, free from religious obligation. Two things are forbidden during Channukah. One must not lament or fast. Joy and feasting are the given.
It was for this that the Sydney Jewish community gathered on Bondi beach last Sunday. And it was in the midst of this celebration that joy was snatched away.
Two men, a father and his son consumed by hate opened fire on the celebration killing 15 and wounding many more.
The lighting of candles is often associated with the expelling of darkness. The prologue to John’s Gospel declares that the light shines in the darkness and the darkness shall not overcome it. The lighting of the 9 candled menorah commemorated that oil enough for one day was found in the temple once it was retaken, but the oil miraculously burned for 8 days until new consecrated oil could be found. The candles on the eight branches represent the eight days of Channukah and the candle of the main trunk is referred to as the slave candle or the Shammash from which the others are lit.
Just as darkness cannot overcome darkness neither can hate overcome hate. Only light can overcome darkness and only love can overcome hate. It has long been established that violence begets violence. We have witnessed that family based violence becomes learned behaviour and is passed from generation to generation. It takes one person to say, “it stops here”, to choose not to continue to follow that learned behaviour of violence. We have seen communities torn apart reliving and renewing violence that goes back generations, even millennia. It is often seen that two groups see their only chance of survival is through the total elimination of the other. This is the darkness that has enveloped us. It is into this darkness that light must shine.
Darkness brings judgement, judgement brings condemnation, condemnation brings division and rejection which in turns brings more violence. This is not a time for blame, it is not a time for revenge or retaliation. It is instead a time to stand together to console, to protect, to shine a light into the darkness.
In the days since the tragic events at Bondi we have seen anger levelled at the Muslim communities, there has been vandalism at the mosque at Bald Hills. But we have also seen Jewish and Muslim leaders embrace.
It almost seems providential that the theme for the Fourth Sunday in Advent, today, is Love. The kind of love that drives someone to disarm a gunman despite the risk to self. The kind of love that brings people together despite their differing beliefs, despite centuries of alienation and mistrust. This is true religion, as the prophet Micah declares, what does the Lord require? “The Lord has shown you, O mortal what is good. And what does the Lord require of you? To act justly, and to love mercy and to walk humbly with your God”. There is no room there for hate, no room for retaliation, no room for graffiti on places of worship or even political point scoring.
Renegade priest and peace activist Daniel Berrigan wrote:
I can only tell you what I believe; I believe:
I cannot be saved by foreign policies.
I cannot be saved by the sexual revolution.
I cannot be saved by the gross national product.
I cannot be saved by nuclear deterrents.
I cannot be saved by aldermen, priests, artists,
plumbers, city planners, social engineers
nor by the Vatican,
nor by the World Buddhist Association
nor by Hitler, nor by Joan of Arc,
nor by angels and archangels,
nor by powers and dominions,
I can be saved only by Jesus Christ.
We could add any number of things to his list of things that will not save.
Jesus’ response to the declining situation that surrounded him was to love the broken, the crushed in spirit, the outsider, the reviled and those whom many believed did not belong.
As Jesus said in conclusion to the parable of the good Samaritan, “Go and do likewise”.