FOURTH SUNDAY OF ADVENT

21 December 2025

THEME: The Path to Christ’s Birth is Love

SUB-THEME: Walking alongside the excluded

Old Testament: Isaiah 7:10-16

Psalm: 80:1-7, 17-19

Epistle: Romans 1:1-7

Gospel Reading: Matthew 1:18-25

NOTES ON THE READINGS

During this final week of Advent we rejoice in the endless love that God has for us and the beauty of creation, subsequently are invited to reflect on the good news of God’s love brought to us from the angel Gabriel. In this last week we ought to ask ourselves whether we have prepared our hearts for this abundant love which is brought by this Great Festival of Christ’s birth. Are you (we) ready to still take the path to Christ’s birth as co-creators of this magnificent cosmos?

In the first reading taken from Isaiah,
Isaiah 7: 10-16 – Isaiah addresses King Ahaz, threatened by Israel and Syria, urging trust in God rather than Assyria. Here, God promises a sign: a young woman shall bear a son, and name him “Immanuel”- God is with us. Historically fulfilled through the prophet Hezekiah, we see this prophecy in the gospel of St. Matthew later applies it to Jesus. Like Joseph, we also must trust God’s presence amid crisis and that faithful obedience brings deliverance today – God is with us as we take the path to Christ’s Birth.
________________________________________________________________________
In the Psalm,
Psalm 80 –  is a communal lament crying out to the Shepherd of Israel to restore life to a suffering people. The repeated plea, “restore us,” echoes both the human and ecological brokenness. In a land where water is misused and neglected, the psalm’s imagery of tears and desolation speaks volumes. To walk alongside the excluded is to hear this cry, of communities without water [for example, the city of Makhanda, in South Africa (where the College of the Transfiguration is based) is one place that cannot be forgotten when speaking about poor sanitation of water]. The psalm, therefore, calls us to turn again to God, whose face brings salvation, and to respond in love by nurturing life, by protecting resources, and seeking restoration for both humanity and the earth. Such a psalm claims that we beings belong to God and thereby remain accountable to God through obedience. Put colloquially, “we are not our own”; we are God’s, suited for God’s glory.

A life of integrity is a life in imitatio Dei, met literally, a godly life formed from following God’s “way” or “path” (Psalm 119:15). Therefore, using the metaphor of the “path,” it portrays life as a dynamic journey shaped by choices. Our challenge this week is (I want to suggest), as St John of the Cross (a Spanish Carmelite Friar and Mystic) once said, as so often echoed by the late Pope Francis in his homilies and address, “At the end of life, we shall be judged by charity (love).” The righteous walk blamelessly, imitate God’s character, and subsequently flourish like a well-watered tree, while the wicked drift toward instability. ________________________________________________________________________

In the gospel taken from Matthew, Matthew’s infancy narrative highlights Joseph’s obedience. Betrothal, a binding marriage contract, preceded the wedding feast. Between these stages in the life of Joseph and Mary. Mary’s pregnancy threatened severe punishment. An angel instructs Joseph in a dream to proceed, name the child Jesus, “Yahweh saves,” for he will deliver his people from their sins according to Jewish marital custom law.
________________________________________________________________________
In the second reading taken from St. Paul’s letter to the Romans
Romans 1: 1-7 – St Paul’s emphasis is that we are “called” to belong to Christ (to be apostles) and, therefore, live holy lives, as Paul is set apart for the gospel or ‘good news’ promised in Scripture. Paul’s message in this reading is clear: Grace leads to obedient faith. Perhaps, contrasting King Ahaz and Joseph, the reading today urges choosing obedience over societal pressures that so often neglect both the marginalized and God’s creation, we are then “called” to trust God as those who are ‘sent out’ as we travel the path to Christ’s birth and reminded not to exclude.
________________________________________________________________________

SERMON OUTLINE

LISTEN TO THE WORD: If we were to focus on the first part of this psalm, it is a good example of what Hermann Gunkel terms the communal lament, with the requisite laments (vv. 5-7, 13-14), petitions (vv. 2-4, 8, 15-20), vocative addresses to God (vv. 2, 4, 5, 8, 15, 20), impetus for God’s action (vv. 9-12), and the typical use of “why” or “how long,” though it lacks any assurance that the lament has been heard by God.[1] The refrain (vv. 4, 8, and 20) is a distinctive feature among the recognized communal laments.

The superscription states that the psalm is directed to the leader (presumably of a choir), associates it with lilies (perhaps a tune), calls it a testimony, and attributes it to Asaph. The psalm proper begins by imploring God as the shepherd and leader of the flock of Israel to show Godself “before Ephraim and Benjamin and Manasseh” and to save the people (vv. 2-3). Next follows the refrain of “Restore us, O God; let your face shine, that we may be saved” (v. 4), which remains unchanged in vv. 8 and 20 apart from a lengthened appellative with each repetition.[2] The call for restoration in the refrain sums up the theme of the entire psalm. Verse 5 begins the first round of lament by asking how long God will smoke at the people’s prayers, followed by a twofold accusation that God has fed them tears (v. 6) and has made them a laughingstock (v. 7). The refrain appears a second time in v. 8 as a reinforcement of the psalm’s basic petition.

In what ways can the psalm’s lament and petition speak to contemporary struggles, such as the neglect and misuse of water, and the need to care for marginalized communities?

LINK TO THE WORLD: The ultimate goal in many lives today is little more than perpetual self-satisfaction. Every object, every idea, every circumstance, and every person is viewed in light of what it can contribute to one’s own purposes and welfare. Lust for wealth, possessions, fame, dominance, popularity, and physical fulfillment drives people to pervert everything they possess and everyone they know. Employment has become nothing more than a necessary evil to finance one’s indulgences. As is often noted, there is constant danger of loving things and using people rather than loving people and using things. When that temptation is succumbed to, stable and faithful personal relationships become impossible. A person engulfed in self-will and self-fulfillment becomes less and less capable of loving, because as their desire to possess grows, their desire to give withers, as the Psalmist reminds us today. And when they forfeit selflessness for selfishness, they forfeit the source of true joy.

Contemporary environmental issue, inspired by recent UNEA7 updates
One of the most urgent environmental challenges in South Africa and worldwide is the exploitation and neglect of water, a life-giving gift of creation—described by Revd. Dr. Canon Rachel Mash as the “lungs of creation.” Such misuse reveals a failure of love and stewardship, harming both the earth and vulnerable communities. Anglican discipleship therefore calls us to protect water as sacred, walk alongside those excluded from access, and uphold the Fifth Mark of Mission by safeguarding, sustaining, and renewing God’s creation.

Additionally, a recent report notes that, as of 27 May this year, access to safe, adequate, and reliable drinking water and sanitation, recognized as a basic human right vital for health and daily living, remains deeply unequal, both worldwide and within South Africa.
Selfish greed progressively alienates a person from everyone else, including those who are closest and dearest. The end result is loneliness and despair. Everything that is craved soon yields to the law of diminishing returns, and the more one has of it the less it satisfies. In the words of Edna St. Vincent Millay in her poem “Lament,” he can only say, “Life must go on; I forget just why.” Or, like the central character in one of Jean-Paul Sartre’s novels, he may say nihilistically, “I decided to kill myself to remove at least one superfluous life.”

As co-creators, our call as those “called” to be apostles, Paul reminds us, is to be those who are “set apart,” from the world. The word: apostle translates apostolos, which has the basic meaning of a person who is sent. It referred to someone who was officially commissioned to a position or task, such as an envoy or ambassador. Cargo ships were sometimes called apostolic, because they were dispatched with a specific shipment for a specific destination. Now, in the New Testament the term apostle appears seventy-nine times and is used in a few instances in a general, nontechnical sense (see Rom. 16:7; Acts 14:14). In its broadest sense, apostle can refer to all believers, because every believer is sent into the world as a witness for Christ. But the term is primarily used as a specific and unique title for the thirteen men (the Twelve, with Matthias replacing Judas, and Paul) whom Christ personally chose and commissioned to authoritatively proclaim the gospel and lead the early church.

How are we witnessing this invitation of being “called” apostles in this path to Christ’s birth these last few days of this Advent season? Have we time to look back at what and who we have left behind?

THINK ABOUT GOD’S CALL: The Gospel of Matthew presents Jesus as the definitive expression of God’s presence and power in the world. After the Romans destroyed Jerusalem in 70 CE, Jews and Christians alike grappled with foundational theological questions: How and where was God’s presence to be discerned? Had God abandoned God’s people? Were the prophetic promises of restoration and liberation misplaced? Had God’s power gone over to the Romans? Was the empire of Rome really the manifestation of divine will and destiny? How were God’s people to understand and engage anew the traditions and institutions and especially the God they knew from experience and through the biblical writings? How could faithful vision, hope, and practice be nurtured under the brutal and violent dominion of a world power that proclaimed itself the embodiment of “salvation” and “peace” (the pax Romana)?

For Matthew, God’s presence and power are not discerned in association with human forms of power, whether Jewish elites or Roman emperors, but in Jesus of Nazareth, to whom all power in heaven and on earth has been granted. The crucified and risen Jesus is present among disciples as “God with us” (Matt. 1:23; 28:18–20) the fulfilment of the prophecy in our first reading. As the incarnate presence of God and the agent of God’s power, Jesus breaches the boundaries between the human and the divine, between heaven and earth, and between those who have and do not have. Matthew’s story trains audiences for faithful ways of living in the transformed time and space that is the “empire [or “kingdom”] of heaven.”

In today’s Gospel reading, the sense of dislocation is strongest when the genealogy arrives at the birth of Jesus, where a shift to the passive voice verb signals divine agency in the birth (1:16). Matthew also presents the birth of Jesus as a riddle for the audience to solve: Matthew states that each segment of the genealogy has fourteen generations (1:17), but the last one turns out to be defective [from Shealtiel (son of Jehoiachin, king of Judah) to Jesus is thirteen generations]. Is this a mistake? Is Jesus to be counted twice, as Jesus and as the crucified and resurrected Christ? Is God the implied but missing generation? Matthew does not resolve the puzzle for us, but compels the audience to become active interpreters who must determine what to make of this one who continues and fulfills Israel’s history, while radically disrupting it.

The story of Jesus’ birth reveals that the Holy Spirit is the primary agent in Jesus’ conception (1:18); Jesus is both a “Son of God” and a “new Adam,” a wholly new human generation. Joseph, who is the husband of Mary but not the birth father of Jesus, becomes the conduit of divine communication and the model of one who acts righteously, not according to conventional expectation, in his dealings with Mary. Joseph claims Jesus as his own when he follows the angel’s directive in naming him “Jesus, the one who will save his people from their sins” (1:21). Matthew’s use of titles to define Jesus’ identity culminates in the designation “Emmanuel,” whose importance Matthew signals by interrupting the narrative to make sure that the audience knows its meaning: “God with us”” (1:23).

On this last Sunday of Advent, normally referred to as the ‘Sunday of Love,’ the measure of how much we have love for God, our neighbor, and the world(creation itself) ought to be the question we ask ourselves.

How is our response to today’s readings?

Are we like King Ahaz, or Joseph?

God says to Ahaz: “Ask me for a sign, anything at all.”

Nothing is too great for God. It may reach to the depths or to the heights of heaven; God wants to show Ahaz that God is with him. But Ahaz refuses. He turns instead to political calculation, strengthening his ties with the Assyrians. Because of this, Isaiah rebukes Ahaz for his pretended faith and calls out his unbelief. Yet here is the remarkable part. God will give the sign anyway. It will not come through powerful nations, armies, or political strategy, but through a baby: Emmanuel. And each time that child cries, the people will hear the reminder that “God is with us.”

God’s love constantly keeps reaching out, even through our unbelief and our cynicism.

RESPOND ‘Take home message’: 

1. A wise, retired cleric once said to me the following words, in Afrikaans, “Groter as my stryd, is God sê mag” meaning (Greater than my struggle is God’s power). There is no struggle, problem, nor issue that is greater than God.
2. Let us practice (Imitatio Dei), a theological concept meaning owing our obligation to imitate God and God’s actions. Be careful, here, not to be like God rather to follow the attributes of who God is, the first is Love. Love for God, the neighbor and creation.
3. Billy Graham said it even better almost a decade ago and offered this answer: “It isn’t just because of the dangers we face from pollution, climate change or other environmental problems — although these are serious. For Christians, the issue is much deeper: We know that God created the world, and it belongs to him, not us. Because of this, we are only stewards or trustees of God’s creation, and we aren’t to abuse or neglect it.”
4. In his book, “Faith In Action,” the Former Archbishop of Cape Town & Metropolitan of the Church of the Province of Southern Africa (subsequently the Anglican Church of Southern Africa) +Njongonkulu Ndungane, from 1996-2007, Ndungane himself notes the following:

“… We faced a common enemy and we had to survive together … If only we can recapture that spirit of togetherness and co-operation as we face a common challenge in nation building and the eradication of poverty and inequalities…”

Perhaps, a hunger for a staunch trust in the God of provision, the God of justice, the God of freedom, and the God of hope and love… maybe this is the the kind of breath that our nation needs to have in our day and time. The question then stands, how big is our trust in such a God?

Are you (we) prepared to still take the path to Christ’s birth as co-creators of this magnificent cosmos? Are we assessing those that we are traveling with and making sure that we do not exclude anyone?

ILLUSTRATION:

The Path to Christ’s Birth is Love – Love for God, Love for the other, and Love for God’s Creation

REFERENCES:

Books:

1. MacArthur, John. 1991. Romans 1-8: MacArthur New Testament Commentary. 1st ed. Moody Publishers. Accessed December 6, 2025. https://www.perlego.com/book/3901549
2. O’Day, Gail, et al. 2009. Theological Bible Commentary. Westminster John Knox Press. Accessed December 6, 2025. https://www.perlego.com/book/2100462
3. Carter, Warren. 2001. Matthew and Empire: Initial Explorations. Harrisburg: Trinity Press International.
4. Carter, Warren. 2000. Matthew and the Margins: A Sociopolitical and Religious Reading. Maryknoll, NY: Orbis.
5. Ndungane, Njongonkulu. 2005. Faith in Action: Archbishop For The Church And The World. Epping, Western Cape: ABC Printers.

Websites:

1. Jesuits Global. 2025. “Walking with the Excluded.” Accessed December 13, 2025. https://www.jesuits.global/uap/walking-with-the-excluded/
2. Dynamic Catholic. 2025. “Advent Candles.” Accessed December 13, 2025. https://www.dynamiccatholic.com/advent/advent-candles.htmlsrsltid=AfmBOooOm8Sa8QzBsfqoCcPVY0_vVQtL77HPJ8Ox_jgWl4bpSiHhyp2X#third-week 
3. Baptist News. 2025. “People of Faith Should Lead the Way in Protecting the Planet.” Accessed December 08, 2025. https://baptistnews.com/article/people-of-faith-should-lead-the-way-in-protecting-the-planet/fbclid=IwdGRjcAOs8rZjbGNrA6zqb2V4dG4DYWVtAjExAHNydGMGYXBwX2lkDDM1MDY4NTUzMTcyOAABHim_33WNwe1u6_zc2LWlFzL7CSefWlzk6YeWiihEWlMVhnu9gu38UlnSG69f_aem_ogvUyl1fUnswIDSyiBCkHQ
4. Statistics South Africa. 2025. “Poverty Trends in South Africa: An Examination of Absolute Poverty Between 2006 and 2015.” Accessed December 15, 2025. https://www.statssa.gov.za/?p=18433
5. Revd. Dr. Canon Rachel Mash speaking at UNEA 7 – Multistakeholder Dialogue. Accessed December 15, 2025. https://www.facebook.com/share/v/1Re1pdrpjP/