Download Sermon TextChristmas One December 28, 2025
Fourth Day of Christmas
HOMILY DECEMBER 28, 2025
Anna Ostenso Moore
For those of you who I haven’t met, Lisa and I were ordained together. I also live in the neighborhood. I currently serve as the convener of the Episcopal Church in Minnesota’s racial justice and healing team.
I would love to talk to any of you about that at any time. I’m also a liturgical calendar girl. I have a passion and delight in our seasons, and now they have the potential to shape our lives.
When Lisa emailed me about this day, I was thrilled about the invitation to preach and celebrate the fourth day of Christmas. Although I enjoy much of the hubbub of cultural Christmas, the ugly sweaters, the sparkling decorations everywhere, cards from family and friends, gift-giving, gathering, that time can have a frenetic quality that does not inspire reflection. Sometimes it feels like I’m just squeezing in at the practices of waiting, wondering, and lighting candles.
The gift for me of the 12 days of Christmas is that it feels like a calm afterwards where we can dwell with the story of God who came here on earth. There is space to ask in these 12 days, what is the faithful work of this short season? There is not one right answer to this question, and I encourage you to wonder about your answer. Where my imagination goes this year is to the secret stories of the season, the passage from the beginning of the Gospel of John that Rex just read, and the Nativity story of Matthew, Matthew being the gospel we focus upon this year.
I believe that loving and sharing our sacred stories is one of the answers to the work of this season. For example, the beginning of John could inspire a year of Sunday sermons. Today, I’m merely letting the poetry settle.
The familiar refrain of the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. Or other parts, like He gave power to become children of God, and the Word became flesh and lived among us. The beauty, for me, of these words provides balm and centering on a God who lived among us, a God who loved us so much that we are God’s beloved children.
The Nativity story in Matthew contains many riches too. The disadvantage of a short season, and the design of our lectionary, is that we can easily miss parts of these two chapters in our Bible. I encourage everyone to have a moment to sit down and read them.
They can easily be read in a few minutes. Next Sunday is a big community you will dwell with the epiphany stories, the wise people who come and visit Jesus. A part that often doesn’t receive the same amount of focus is that following the wise man’s departure, Joseph is warned in a dream to leave Bethlehem, to flee, to save his family.
They go to Egypt and stay there until he inherits death. We don’t know exactly how long that is, but we do know from this story that baby Jesus is also refugee Jesus. Some of our work is to share the stories of faith.
We don’t have to be professional theologians who know all the things that theologians know. We only have to love them so much that we share them. That we share the good news of Jesus who was the Lord in the beginning and came to live among us.
That we share the sacred story of a God who began their life on earth as a refugee, receiving care and comfort from others until it was safe to return to their home country. Imagine if those were the guiding narratives for each Christian in our country. Imagine our cities now if refugee Jesus was as common a used phrase as baby Jesus.
Imagine. How do we share these sacred stories in our lives? Unfortunately, I don’t have all of the answers. This has been something I’ve been asking these past months.
And I know that the answer can be different for each of us. For me, one place I start is at home. Making sure that these are the stories we also read to my child.
And that I read and listen to myself. I believe we also share them with our actions. And I know that the good people of St. John’s, you all, are active in your community.
We share glimmers of the story when we share meals across lines of differences. We share glimmers of these sacred stories when we show up to show our neighbors they matter when ice is nearby. We share glimmers when neighbors drive groceries to those who are unable to leave their homes, whether from health or from food.
We continue to be called each day to love and share these stories so that those glimmers can become all that we see. That the love of God becomes so wrapped up in who we are, in who our world is, that we could not imagine it another way. This is where I find hope this Christmas season.
