Advent Four - It is Time

Reverend Sue
Dec 17, 2025
4 min read

As the familiar story of the birth of the Christ Child comes into view we pause for a moment to remember and recognise the hopes and struggles, the mystery and the confusion, the new heaven on earth and the old broken world, all meeting in this moment. (Advent Four. Isaiah 7:10-16; Psalm 80:1-7, 17-19; Romans 1:1-7; and Matthew 1:1-18.)

Sentence:

“When Joseph awoke from sleep, he did as the angel of the Lord commanded him; he took Mary as his wife but had no marital relations with her until she had borne a son; and he named him Jesus.” Matthew 1:24-25.

Collect:

God of power and tenderness,

you have come to awaken us from the sleep that diminishes life and hope.

Help us to hear your voice in our dreams and newsfeed,

give us the clarity to discern your commandments from all the competing noise, and the courage to follow your promptings

and to play our part in your good purposes.

For the sake of the world you love, we pray. Amen.

Reflection:

When we come to the Christmas story through the lens of the gospel of Luke we hear the voice of Mary responding to archangels, sharing with her cousin Elizabeth, and proclaiming the hope she knows she carries! But in the year we approach the story through the gospel according to Matthew Mary is present but mute. It is the story of the part Joseph, and his family line, play in the story of the coming of the Child of God that our attention is drawn to. While Joseph himself does not have much to say it is from his perspective and it reveals much of importance.

You may like to read my reflections from previous years on these texts.

Advent Four

Firstly, it is the line of Joseph that the genealogy traces: a line of men and women who struggled, were often outside the conventional and did what they had to (especially the four grandmothers Tamar, Rahab, Ruth and Bathsheba) to stay alive and carry the blood line forward. Yes, they included the Kings David and his son Solomon, but also the outcast and the foreigner! Joseph is the fruit of struggle and endurance, faithfulness and striving, strategy and conviction of justice – the promises of God brought to fruition.

I have reflected on the curious grandmothers of Jesus in my Advent Novena.

Advent Novena

Secondly, Joseph is chosen to father Jesus not only because he was of the line of David but also because Joseph was a righteous man. We might presume that God chose Joseph and Mary as a couple, as a family unit, to raise the Child of God. But it seems that Joseph’s righteousness to start with is of a conventional nature. I say this because he was prepared to dismiss Mary when she was found to be with child. Joseph is kind, he intends to do it quietly to make sure she is not punished for adultery, but he does intend to dismiss her – which is right and proper from a conventional moral position. But Joseph is visited by dreams (and was his namesake Joseph with the coat of many colours who was taken into slavery in Egypt and in the fullness of time is therefore able to rescue his family from starvation!).

And thirdly, it is Joseph’s willingness to listen to the messengers who come to him in dreams that awakens him to his full humanity and purpose and Joseph is activated to play his part, even though it is regarded by history and religion as a ‘bit part’. Joseph, like many of the greats of faith in the Hebrew Bible, is visited by visions and dreams which provide guidance on the way to serve God’s purposes. Joseph is told to take Mary as his wife; to take his new little family out of harms way to Egypt; and when to return and by what route. As Joseph ‘awakes’ and follows the prompting of the messengers of God that come to him in his dreams Joseph goes beyond being conventionally good to becoming the inspired actor of his God given purpose in life. In this he is a good role model and encourager of what it is to be a willing and inspired ‘bit player’ in the dream of God.

Intercessions:

Gracious God,

Creator of all that was, is and is to come,

come awaken us the beauty and need of your creation and all your creatures. Give us grateful hearts to see and give thanks,

and to hear the cry of all that is in distress

and the desire to respond with justice and mercy.

We pause to reflect on the gifts and needs of this created world.

Jesus our Redeemer,

Forever vulnerable child and cosmic Lord of light

let us discern the whispers of hope and the shouts for justice

from friends and foes, neighbours near and far.

May our faith be a candle of light where there is darkness