The Love of Advent

Christmas isn’t a one-time event or a season we decorate for. It’s a way of life. A life where God’s love becomes incarnate in you and me.

I don’t know if this has ever happened to you, but the other day while pulling clothes out of the dryer, a loose thread had somehow lassoed a sock to a towel.

Since both were the same color, I had no idea which one this barely visible thread belonged to. But I did know that if I didn’t carefully untangle it, either the sock or the towel could unravel leaving me with a new rag.

Of course, this little laundry moment got me thinking about how the Christmas story ties right into our new theme—Woven Together by God.

The way I see it, is that God doesn’t yank on our loose threads nor does God turn us into rags when we start to fray. Instead, God steps gently into our unraveling and becomes a stitch in the fabric—threading divine love into the very places where life feels like it’s coming apart.

And honestly, there’s no one in the Christmas story who knows what that’s like better than Joseph— the quiet, unassuming saint who becomes one of the strongest threads God uses to hold the whole story of salvation in place.

Now the birth of Jesus the Messiah took place in this way. When his mother Mary had been engaged to Joseph, but before they lived together, she was found to be pregnant from the Holy Spirit. Her husband Joseph, being a righteous man and unwilling to expose her to public disgrace, planned to divorce her quietly. But just when he had resolved to do this, an angel of the Lord appeared to him in a dream and said, “Joseph, son of David, do not be afraid to take Mary as your wife, for the child conceived in her is from the Holy Spirit. She will bear a son, and you are to name him Jesus, for he will save his people from their sins.” 
                                                                                                            Matthew 1:18-21

Like so many parts of the Christmas story, this passage is both complex and controversial. But before we wander off into the theological weeds, let’s zoom out and see what love looks like when we actually say yes to it.
 
As you heard, there’s nothing in the text that tells us Joseph was in love with Mary. In their world, marriages weren’t built on romance. They were family contracts and property agreements. I can only imagine what was about to unravel when he learns Mary’s pregnant with a child that isn’t his.
 
So Joseph weighs his options. He knows what the law allows. He could expose Mary, clear his name, and walk away.

Or he could choose to get a private divorce that would protect her dignity and safety. Despite his embarrassment and heavy heart, Joseph chooses kindness.
 
That alone is an act of courageous love.
 
But that’s not where God leaves things. Before Joseph does anything, an angel shows up in a dream and tells him, “Don’t be afraid to take Mary as your wife.”

Now, in Scripture, whenever we hear “Do not be afraid,” it almost always means pay attention. God is stitching something new into the tapestry of life. That newness is the incarnation of God’s love made manifest in Mary’s belly.  
 
But here’s where it gets a bit weird. The angel explains that the child growing inside Mary is from the Holy Spirit. (Apparently, abstinence is only 99.99% effective.) Then Joseph is tasked with the fatherly duty of naming the child. He is to call the boy Jesus— “God saves.”
 
In all the Christmas hoopla about mangers and magi and star-lit nights, we often overlook this quiet moment where God is literally asking Joseph to help hold the world’s unraveling edges together. How does Joseph respond?

He says yes. And let’s God weave him right into the heart of the story.
 
In the adventurous novel, Wild Pork and Watercress, Barry Crump writes about a young foster kid named Ricky who never seems to belong anywhere—until he’s placed with Bella and her cantankerous husband, Hector.

Bella instantly welcomes the boy and loves him for the gift that he is. Their bond forms almost overnight. Not so with Hector. He has no time or patience for Ricky.
 
When Bella dies suddenly and the foster system threatens to take the boy back, Ricky panics and runs deep into the New Zealand wilderness—forcing Hector to reluctantly go after him. Hector didn’t have to show up. He could have looked away. Or turned Ricky in. But he didn’t. An act of courageous love.
 
Crump tenderly tells his readers, “No child belongs to the bush, but sometimes the bush is kinder than the world they came from.” As the story reveals, love can take root anywhere—sometimes in the most unlikely places, between the most unlikely people.
 
I like to think Joseph is the Hector of the Nativity. He seems like a secondary, bit player or a background extra. He doesn’t preach or prophesy. In fact, he has no dialogue anywhere in Scripture. He just shows up - for God, for Mary and for a child who isn’t biologically his.
 
Another act of courageous love. 
 
By saying yes and showing up, Joseph becomes the vertical warp God uses to stitch redemption into the world.

As I said last week, God’s great tapestry isn’t woven from grand gestures but from small yeses. Those unprepared yeses. Hesitant yeses. The unsure yeses that God takes and turns into love that’s visible, tangible, real.

That is the holy work of incarnation.
 
Joseph steps into a story he didn’t choose, trusting that even if he can’t see the whole picture, God is still quietly at work. He refuses to let his own honor, or fear, or prejudices overshadow what God is doing.
 
Which beg a few questions: How do we respond to God’s calling? How do we react when the suffering on our streets unravels the fabric of our community? How do we acknowledge the weight of injustice pressing down on someone we love?
 
Do we respond like Joseph? Or Hector? Do we react like Jesus? All three of these people teach us the same thing: When we show up, when we say yes, we become a thread of love in God’s mending work.
 
Mother Teresa, whose whole ministry was just showing up for the poorest of the poor as they died, said, “It’s Christmas every time you let God love others through you.”
 
Joseph became Christmas when he said yes. And we become Christmas each time we say yes to compassion over cynicism, justice over apathy, kindness over indifference, truth over lies. Because Christmas isn’t a one-time event or a season we decorate for. It’s a way of life. A life where God’s love becomes incarnate in you and me.
 
Every time we stitch a bit of healing into a place that’s been torn, Christmas arrives. Every time we stand with those the world overlooks or rejects, Christ is born in us and through us and all around us.

In the same way, Advent is more than just lighting candles. It’s about becoming the ones who welcome the Christ child in the faces of others.
 
When we say yes to being the light of love, we become hope in human skin. We become peace with hands and feet. We become joy that shows up with a ride to the doctor, or a surprise text that reads “You are loved.”
 
Richard Rohr reminds us, “We were made in love, for love, and unto love, and it is out of this love that we act.” Whenever you show up with food for the hungry, water for the thirsty, shelter for those who feel exposed, God’s love moves through you. And Christmas comes.
 
So, let your love-light shine. Because every time this light moves in us and through us, Christ is born again and again.
 
In an Advent sermon years ago, Frank Logue admitted, “Not every one of us will be asked to do such a monumental task like Joseph was. But we will no less take part in what God is doing—bringing divine love into fruition through ordinary acts and ordinary people.”
 
That’s the invitation of Advent. The call of Joseph. The light of love that still breaks into the dark spaces.
 
So, let’s show up. Let’s stitch our small “yes” into God’s great tapestry. And let’s trust—as Joseph did, as Mary did, and as Jesus did—that God will take our simplest offering and weave it into a gift that the world never saw coming.