Download Sermon TextDecember 21 Advent 4: “From Fear to Mercy, Courage, and Action: Walking the Way of Love with Joseph and Emmanuel”
Rex McKee
“From Fear to Mercy, Courage, and Action: Walking the Way of Love with Joseph and Emmanuel”
Good morning on this Fourth Sunday of Advent, The Winter Solstice now behind us as the advent candles burn low and the season draws toward its holy completion, scriptures invite us into a very human story; one shaped by fear, mercy, and courageous action.
This is not the soft-focus Christmas card version of nostalgic faith. This is God entering our world in chaos, at the point of its fracture, its trembling, its uncertainty. Meister Eckhart wrote 13th Century that we are all called to be mothers of God—that the birth of Christ is not finished, not locked in the past.
God is always seeking to be born, here and now, in us. Mary shows us the way by affirmation, making room and trusting enough to become a dwelling place for God. But the story does not stop with Mary. It also turns on Joseph’s decision.
Joseph chooses mercy before he has clarity. He lets go of fear, reputation, and control, and in doing so he makes space for God’s new life to enter the world.
From Eckhart we learn that this is how Christ is born again: when we quiet our inner noise of ego and fear, and when we consent—like Mary, like Joseph—to become bearers of divine life. An inner birth that does not stay hidden. It takes flesh as justice, compassion, and courageous love, for the life of the world.
Today’s readings are grounded in fear.
Ahaz is terrified, caught between empires, facing invasion, unable to trust in anything beyond political strategy. The Prophet Isaiah tells him to ask for a sign, but Ahaz refuses. He hides behind piety “I will not put the Lord to the test” when the truth is he is afraid of what God might reveal. Fear can disguise itself as faith, as caution, as common sense.
And then Joseph who, like Ahaz, finds himself facing a problem with no road map or operating manual. Mary the teenage girl to whom he is committed, is pregnant. The world Joseph expected the life he thought he was building, the rules he believed governed the universe, all of it suddenly collapses.
In Matthew’s Gospel he faces the fear that always accompanies God’s disruption, waking from dreams that overturn his expectations and threaten his reputation, yet choosing compassion over judgment, relationship over rigidity.
Scripture suggests that Joseph was “righteous.” But righteousness here does not mean perfection; it means being grounded in compassion. Joseph does not want to expose Mary to public shame, so he plans to dismiss her quietly.
Nevertheless, he is still afraid. Fear is where God often meets us first. Not because fear is holy but because it is honest. It is the doorway through which the deeper work of Advent begins.
Joseph is not yet aware how God is at work in this strange holy disruption. Something extraordinary happens: God comes to him in a dream. Not with thunder. Not with judgment. But with reassurance and invitation:
“Do not be afraid to take Mary as your wife, for the child conceived in her is from the Holy Spirit.”
And this is where the Way of Love begins; with Turn.
Turning toward God… turning toward truth… turning toward one another… even when we tremble.
Advent asks each of us: where will you turn? Where are you afraid to turn?
Where are you tempted to shrink, hide, or flee? What truth are you afraid God might reveal?
This season is not about pretending we are ready. It is about letting God meet us exactly where we aren’t.
Let me share with you a personal story. Linda and I were married in January of 1970, in the midst of another disruptive time in our history. I/we had two major decisions to make. One, if I failed to receive my status as a conscientious objector would we move to Canada or risk my incarceration.
The other, to be honest my dilemma, did I want to father children. I lived in the shadow of Bob Dylan’s haunting prophetic Masters of War
You’ve thrown the worst fear
That can ever be hurled
Fear to bring children
Into the world
For threatening my baby
Unborn and unnamed
You ain’t worth the blood
That runs in your veins
Clearly, both dilemmas we resolved. Thanks be to God I was granted CO status, and we made the decision to have children…. two remarkable sons we love dearly. I am not suggesting that Gabriel the archangel came to me in a dream… but in some way I turned to say Yes, though like Frodo I did not know the way.
Joseph’s dream does not erase the family scandal. It reframes it—and in doing so, redefines righteousness. It invites Joseph to see that God rarely arrives wrapped in familiarity or comfort. God arrives in the unexpected pregnancy, in a precarious political moment, in the fragile “yes” of a teenage girl, and in the hesitant “yes” of a man learning that righteousness is mercy.
Joseph chooses mercy before he understands.
He chooses compassion before he has clarity.
He chooses to protect Mary’s dignity before he knows how the story will end.
His decision was not rigid adherence to purity codes, but rather a steadfast courage and commitment to the dignity of another human being.
Joseph does not wake from his dream with just a warm feeling. He wakes and acts. He takes Mary as his wife. He welcomes her into his home. He gives Jesus a name, grafting him into his lineage, giving him identity, stability, and belonging.
Joseph’s love involves risk. It requires stepping into a future he does not fully understand—trusting that love may wound him, and that a sword may yet pierce his heart. It is love refusing to be passive. It is grounded in mercy, courage, and action.
Joseph chooses to be family with someone the world is prepared to reject. He chooses to shelter the vulnerable. He chooses to trust God’s future more than his own fears.
We are living in a time when fear is the practice of the day…. fear of the other, fear of immigrants, fear of those who look or speak or love or worship differently, fear of losing control of our democracy. And fear, when nurtured, becomes cruelty.
To walk the Way of Love is to stand with those the world wants to cast aside. It is to say yes to God’s unexpected invitations. It is to practice mercy that becomes justice, hospitality that becomes protection, courage that becomes transformation. And then… it is to open ourselves to the presence of Emmanuel—God with us—who strengthens us for the work love demands.
And nowhere is this movement from fear to mercy to action more visible than in the tradition of Las Posadas.
Las Posadas began in 16th-century Mexico, emerging from the early evangelization period after Spanish colonization. Catholic missionaries adapted existing Indigenous winter rituals, ceremonies that marked the movement of the seasons, the honoring of travelers, and the welcoming of sacred presence into a Christian preparation for Christmas. They created a nine-night celebration symbolizing the nine months of Mary’s pregnancy.
The ritual reenacts Mary and Joseph’s search for shelter in Bethlehem, moving from house to house, asking for posada “lodging” or “dwelling.” Originally performed within church atriums and village streets, it gradually became a beloved community procession, blending Indigenous music, local storytelling, and Spanish liturgical forms. Over time, it became a powerful spiritual and cultural practice across Latin America, the U.S.–Mexico borderlands, and many immigrant communities today.
At its heart, Las Posadas is a border-crossing spirituality: a tradition born from both Indigenous and Christian roots, shaped by colonization and resistance, and carried forward as a communal proclamation that God arrives among the poor, the displaced, and the ones seeking refuge.
We follow Mary and Joseph as they knock on door after door, carrying the fear that every immigrant family knows, the fear of being refused, unseen, unwanted, unwelcome. And Posada “shelter,” “dwelling” refuses to let us sentimentalize that fear. It is a mirror held up to our own hearts and to our nation.
Each night the procession asks the same question Advent asks of us: Will we make room for Christ when he comes to us as the stranger at the border, the parent seeking safety, the child whose only mistake was being born on the other side of a line we drew?
Mary and Joseph become, in this season, the faces of every person wandering the deserts of bureaucracy, poverty, and persecution, praying for even one door to open.
Posada insists mercy is not passive pity; it is the moment someone rises, unbolts the door, and declares that fear will not have the final word.
Mercy becomes resistance.
Advent calls us to that same holy defiance: moving from fear to mercy to bold, public action. the question before us is not theoretical. It is moral, spiritual, and yes political.
Will we be the locked door, or will we be the people who open it? Will we cling to comfort, or will we join Christ at the threshold where justice begins? Will we open our doors to our Casa Maria family and welcome then in?
When we choose welcome, we are proclaiming God’s revolution of love is breaking in, right here, right now, through us.
Scripture teaches that when faith loses cultural power, it does not disappear it clarifies. Scriptures teach that God works not through majorities, but through remnants: exiles who learn how to pray without a temple, wanderers who learn how to trust without certainty, communities who discover that love is stronger than control.
From Babylon to the wilderness, from the early church to the desert monks, from Mary Magdalene to Dorothy Day, from Bonhoeffer to Tutu, God has always been forming a people who know how to live faithfully without winning. We are living in a biblical moment; we have been here before.
Advent does not ask us for our perfection. It asks for our willingness.
Willingness to move from fear… to mercy… and with courage to action.
Willingness to let God interrupt the story we thought we were living.
This is how Christ is born in us. This is how hope enters the world through trembling people who choose mercy, through ordinary people who choose courageous love, through faithful communities who choose to walk the Way of Love even with the world in chaos.
Mary and Joseph’s “yes” changed the world.
Your “yes,” and mine, with God’s help, will make a difference in our broken world.
And so, as Emmanuel draws near, hear now a blessing for those whose hands tremble and still choose to open the door:
So when Emmanuel knocks at your front door
Clutch the knob tightly and open on up
And run forward and far into his widespread, greeting arms
With your hands outstretched before you
Fingertips trembling, though they may be
Shake the Dust Anis Mojgani
