Opening Prayer
Gracious and loving God, we come before you in this season of waiting and wonder. Open our hearts to receive your Word today. Quiet the noise around us and within us. Let your Holy Spirit move among us now, that we might hear not just with our ears, but with our souls. Speak, Lord, for your servants are listening. In Jesus' name, Amen.
The Sermon
There's a story I heard about a young couple in Birmingham, Alabama, back in 1963. The husband's name was James, and his wife was eight months pregnant with their first child. They lived just blocks from the 16th Street Baptist Church.
On that September morning, James kissed his wife goodbye and headed to work at the steel mill. But something told him to turn around. He couldn't shake it—just this feeling deep in his chest that said, "Go home." His foreman wouldn't understand. He'd probably lose half a day's pay. But he turned around anyway.
When he got home, his wife was confused. "Baby, what are you doing here?" He didn't have an answer that made sense. "I just... I needed to be here."
Twenty minutes later, the bomb went off. Their windows shattered. Their walls shook. Four little girls died that morning—Addie Mae, Cynthia, Carole, and Carol Denise. But James was home. And when the chaos erupted, when fear could have won, he held his wife and that unborn baby and he whispered, "God is with us. Even here. Even now. God is with us."
That baby was born six weeks later into a world that seemed bent on destroying her before she could even take her first breath. But she lived. She grew. She became a teacher who taught two generations of children that love is stronger than hate.
That's Emmanuel. God with us—not in the easy times, but in the impossible ones.
Church, we're in the season of Advent, and this week we're talking about love. But we're not talking about the kind of love that shows up when it's convenient. We're not talking about the love that sends a greeting card or leaves a casserole on the porch.
We're talking about the kind of love that Isaiah prophesied about seven hundred years before it happened. The kind of love that looked at a teenage girl named Mary and said, "I choose you." The kind of love that took on flesh and moved into the neighborhood—our neighborhood—knowing full well what it would cost.
Let's go back to Isaiah 7. King Ahaz is terrified. Two armies are coming to destroy Jerusalem. God sends Isaiah with a message: "Ask for a sign. Ask for anything—as high as heaven or as deep as the grave."
But Ahaz, in his false piety, says, "I will not test the Lord."
So God says, "Fine. I'll give you a sign anyway. A virgin will conceive and bear a son, and will call him Immanuel—God with us."
Now here's what we miss: This wasn't just a nice prophecy about Christmas. This was God saying, "Ahaz, you're scared because you can't see Me in this moment. But I'm coming. I'm not sending another prophet. I'm not sending another king. I'm coming Myself. And when I come, you'll know that I have never left you, not even when you couldn't feel Me."
Fast forward seven centuries. Mary—young, poor, Black or brown-skinned girl from Nazareth—gets a visit from an angel. And the angel essentially says, "God is about to do something through you that will cost you everything. Your reputation. Your safety. Maybe your life. But God will be with you."
And Mary says yes.
Joseph could have walked away. The law gave him that right. But Matthew tells us that Joseph was "a righteous man." And here's what righteousness looked like: When the angel came to him in a dream and said, "Don't be afraid to take Mary as your wife," Joseph didn't argue. He didn't negotiate. He didn't ask for a committee meeting.
He woke up and he did what the Lord commanded.
That's the love of Advent, church. It's the love that shows up when everyone else would be justified in walking away.
You know what gets me about this story? God didn't choose a palace. He didn't choose Rome or Athens or Jerusalem with its marble temple. He chose a teenage girl's womb. He chose the scandal. He chose the whispers and the shame and the danger.
Because Emmanuel—God with us—means God with us in the mess. God with us in the pain. God with us when the bills are due and the diagnosis is bad and the world feels like it's falling apart.
I think about our ancestors who sang, "I want Jesus to walk with me... in my trials, walk with me." They understood Emmanuel. They understood that love isn't just the feeling you get on Christmas morning. Love is God saying, "I will not watch your suffering from a distance. I'm coming down there. I'm going to feel what you feel. I'm going to know what you know. And when it's all over, you're going to know that you were never, ever alone."
Some of you are in your Advent season right now—your season of waiting for something that seems impossible. Maybe it's a child who's walked away. Maybe it's a healing that hasn't come. Maybe it's a dream that died so long ago you're afraid to even whisper its name.
And you're wondering, like Ahaz wondered, "Where is God in this?"
Let me tell you where God is: God is on the way. Not sending help—coming Himself. Taking on flesh. Taking on your pain. Taking on your tears.
The love of Advent is audacious enough to believe that nothing—not armies, not scandal, not even death—can separate us from the presence of God.
Matthew says that all of this happened "to fulfill what the Lord had said through the prophet." But here's what I need you to hear: It's still being fulfilled. Every time someone chooses love when hate would be easier. Every time someone shows up when everyone else has walked away. Every time we look at the impossible situation and say, "God is with us"—Emmanuel becomes flesh again.
This week, as we light the candle of love, I'm asking you: Where do you need to believe in Emmanuel? Where do you need to trust that God hasn't abandoned you, that God is closer than your next breath, that the love that showed up in Bethlehem is still showing up today?
Because the good news—the gospel—is that God looked at this broken, hurting, dying world and said, "I love them too much to stay away."
Emmanuel. God with us.
Not someday. Not eventually. Not when we get it all together.
Right now. Right here. In this very moment.
God. With. Us.
A Poem: Before Emmanuel
Before the angels broke their silence,
Before the star began to shine,
Before the virgin's womb held heaven,
Before God crossed that boundary line—
We waited in the darkness, heavy,
With prophets' voices growing dim,
Four hundred years of heaven's quiet,
No burning bush, no seraphim.
The powerful still crushed the powerless,
The rich still built their walls up high,
The sick still died without their healing,
And mothers taught their sons to cry
In whispers, soft, behind closed doors,
"Remember child, don't lift your head,
Keep low, keep quiet, keep on moving,
Or you'll be counted with the dead."
We worked the fields that weren't our own,
We bent beneath the empire's heel,
We wondered if the God of Abraham
Could see us, hear us, know our ordeal.
The priests still offered up their sacrifices,
The scrolls still told of days gone by,
When God would part the raging waters,
When manna fell from heaven's sky.
But where was God in Roman occupation?
Where was God in daily bread denied?
Where was God when children hungered?
Where was God when hope had died?
And then—
Oh, then—
A teenage girl said yes to scandal,
A carpenter chose love over law,
A baby cried in borrowed shelter,
And shepherds fell in holy awe.
God didn't send another message,
God didn't write across the sky,
God put on flesh and bone and heartbeat,
God chose to bleed, and God chose to cry.
Emmanuel—the end of distance,
Emmanuel—the end of "someday soon,"
God-with-us in the midnight darkness,
God-with-us beneath the threatening moon.
Before Emmanuel, we were waiting,
But after Him, we're waiting still—
Not for God to finally show up,
But for us to know He always will.
A Christmas Story of Love: The Night Mama Walked
Let me tell you about Christmas Eve, 1955, in a small town in Mississippi. There was a woman named Mama Ruth—that's what everybody called her, whether they were kin or not. She was seventy-three years old, walked with a cane, and had raised eleven children, six of them her own and five that just showed up at her door over the years.
That Christmas Eve, word got around that the Johnson family's house had caught fire. They lost everything. Seven children, the youngest just three months old. They were staying at the church, but they had nothing—no clothes, no food, and certainly no Christmas.
Mama Ruth heard about it that evening. She was already in her nightgown, her swollen feet propped up, exhausted from a long day of cooking for the church's Christmas dinner. Her daughter said, "Mama, there's nothing we can do tonight. We'll take them something tomorrow."
But Mama Ruth said, "Baby, tomorrow is when you give presents. Tonight is when you give love."
She got dressed. She packed up half of everything she'd cooked—the ham, the sweet potato pie, the collard greens, the cornbread. She went through her house and gathered blankets, coats, her own grandchildren's outgrown clothes. She even took down the doll she'd been saving to give her granddaughter and put it in the pile.
Her children protested. "Mama, you can't walk all the way to the church in the cold. Your heart—"
"My heart," Mama Ruth said, "is exactly what I'm following."
So they walked—Mama Ruth, her cane, and her children carrying boxes. It took them forty-five minutes to walk what would have been a ten-minute drive, because Mama Ruth had to stop and rest. But she kept going.
When they got to the church, Mrs. Johnson was sitting in the fellowship hall, holding that baby, crying silent tears. She looked up when the door opened and saw Mama Ruth coming through with her whole family, arms full.
Mama Ruth didn't make a speech. She just said, "Jesus came to us on a night like this, with nothing but love. So we're here, bringing what we got."
They stayed. They warmed the food. They sang carols. They dressed those children in warm clothes. And when Mama Ruth finally left around midnight, Mrs. Johnson grabbed her hand and said, "Why? Why would you do all this?"
Mama Ruth smiled and said, "Baby, when God became flesh, He didn't wait for a convenient time. He didn't wait until Mary had a proper house or Joseph had steady work. He came anyway. And if God can do that, then I can walk a few blocks on Christmas Eve."
That baby that Mrs. Johnson was holding? She grew up to become a nurse. She spent forty years taking care of people who couldn't afford care. And when someone would ask her why she worked so hard for so little pay, she'd tell them about Mama Ruth walking through the cold on Christmas Eve.
She'd say, "I learned that night that love isn't about what's convenient. Love is about showing up. Love is about being Emmanuel—God with us—to somebody who needs to know they're not alone."
That's the love of Christmas, church. It's not about the perfect gift or the perfect meal or the perfect decorations. It's about showing up in the mess, in the pain, in the impossible places, and saying, "You are not alone. God is with us. And because God is with us, I'm with you too."
Call to Action: Be Emmanuel
Church, I want to ask you something. I want to ask you to do something powerful this Christmas season.
I want you to be Emmanuel to somebody.
Not next year. Not when you have more time or more money or more energy. Right now. This week.
Here's what I'm asking:
First, I want you to think of one person—just one—who feels alone right now. Maybe it's the elderly sister who doesn't have family nearby. Maybe it's the single mother who's barely holding it together. Maybe it's the young person who's struggling and thinks nobody notices. Maybe it's someone you've been meaning to check on but haven't gotten around to it.
Second, I want you to show up for them this week. Not with a text message. Not with a social media post. Show up. In person. With your presence. Bring a meal if you can. Bring a listening ear. Bring a hug. Bring your time. Bring yourself.
Third, I want you to tell them this: "I want you to know that you're not alone. God is with you, and I'm here with you too."
That's it. That's the assignment. Be Emmanuel—God with us—in flesh and blood to one person who needs to know they matter.
Because here's the truth: The world is waiting to see if we really believe what we say we believe. They're waiting to see if the Emmanuel we sing about on Sunday shows up on Monday, Tuesday, or Wednesday. They're waiting to see if God-with-us is just a nice theological concept or if it's a living, breathing, showing-up-in-the-hard-times reality.
We are the body of Christ. We are Emmanuel now. We are God's hands and feet and voice in this world. And somebody is waiting—right now, this very moment—for love to show up in skin.
Don't wait for the perfect moment. Don't wait until you have it all figured out. Don't wait until you feel ready.
Just go. Just show up. Just love.
Because that's what God did. God didn't wait for the perfect time or the perfect place or the perfect people. God just came. God just showed up. God just loved.
And that love changed everything.
So let's go and do likewise.
Closing Prayer
Emmanuel, God with us, we thank you that you didn't love us from a distance. Thank you that you took on flesh and walked this hard road with us. Thank you that even now, you are closer than our next breath, nearer than our heartbeat.
Lord, we confess that sometimes we are good at talking about love but slow to show it. We are quick to say "I'll pray for you" but slow to show up. Forgive us. Awaken in us again the power of your presence.
As we go from this place, make us brave enough to be Emmanuel to someone who's waiting. Give us eyes to see the lonely, the hurting, the ones who think they're invisible. Give us feet that will walk toward the pain instead of away from it. Give us hands that will hold on when it's easier to let go.
And Lord, for those of us who are in our own darkness right now, who are wondering where you are in our waiting—remind us. Whisper it to our hearts again: You are here. You are with us. You have never left. You will never leave.
Emmanuel. God with us. Not someday. Not eventually. Right now. Right here.
In the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit, we pray. Amen.
Go in peace. Go in power. Go in love. And be Emmanuel to a world that's desperate to know it's not alone.
