Fourth Sunday of Advent

The wonder of love
​Rev. Jennifer Masada - St. Augustine’s Episcopal Church - Kapa’au, Hawai'i
December 21, 2025 - Fourth Sunday of Advent, Year A
Isaiah 7:10-16; Romans 1:1-7; Matthew 1:18-25; Psalm 80:1-7, 16-18

Ever-present God, you are always coming to us as the light of love. Help us find the compassion to love in a world where trust seems broken. Ignite our faith in the Holy Spirit’s invisible work. Spark our sense of renewed wonder as our lives are rewired by your arrival in our hearts.  Amen.

When I was growing up, I remember feeling such joy, anticipation, and wonder during Advent. I was lucky to have few cares in the world. This is in stark contrast to the ways in which my parents grew up. They both experienced poverty and hardship. Both knew the sharp edge of hunger. Both experienced rejection and ostracization. 

Maybe that's why they worked so hard to make sure my life and that of my brother and sister were so easy. 

That's the gift of wonder the very youngest among us hold. Their wonder is filled with trust and love for the world. I thought about this as we lit the candle of love this morning. Today, we are asked to revisit trust and love, not as naïve children, but as wiser, more experienced adults capable of choosing to trust and love. Our loving Creator teaches us – and is equipping us – to be compassionate in a harsh and uncertain world. 

I realize that even during my childhood, life was uncertain. I just didn't know it. Uncertainty has always been part of the human story. Even in seasons we remember as simple or joyful, there were undercurrents we didn’t yet know how to name. Our parents knew them. Our grandparents certainly did. And in today’s gospel, Joseph knows them too.

Matthew tells us that Joseph is a righteous man. That word doesn’t mean perfect or unafraid. It means he is attentive—to the law, to his conscience, to the well-being of others. When he learns that Mary is pregnant, his world turns upside down. The future he imagined dissolves. He stands at the edge of heartbreak, confusion, and risk. And so he chooses the quietest, least harmful path he can see. He plans to step away.

What’s striking is that Joseph’s righteousness does not spare him from fear. It is fear that meets him in the night. But in the dream space between sleeping and waking, love speaks to him. Do not be afraid, the angel says. Do not be afraid to trust what you cannot fully understand. Do not be afraid to stay. Do not be afraid to love beyond certainty.

Joseph wakes up and does something so simple and yet so extraordinary. He aligns his life with love. That’s not because he suddenly knows everything. He does not receive guarantees. He simply chooses to walk alongside Mary—to accompany her, to protect her, to name the child growing within her. This is not naïve wonder. It is courageous wonder. This is the kind of wonder that chooses tenderness in a world that could easily harden the heart.

Perhaps that is what Advent is inviting us back into—not the untested wonder of childhood, but a deeper wonder shaped by compassion. A wonder that remembers how much unseen struggle lives in every human being.

This week, I was moved by a reflection from Krista Tippett, who recalled an ancient wisdom passed down through centuries: Be kind, for everyone you meet is fighting a great battle. To her, this is not a silly sentimental phrase. She calls it a form of “quiet intelligence”— with the power to reshape how we move through a violent, anxious, and fractured world. 

When we take this wisdom seriously, it changes how we absorb the news. It changes how we hold our grief, how we respond to those who confuse or frighten us. It reminds us that every person we encounter carries depths we cannot see. She says, “We and they are more than the sum of our struggles, and we are all capable of surprising ourselves, and of healing and changing, our whole lives long. Tenderness on the part of beloveds and strangers goes a long way to help.”

Moved by his faith, Joseph understands this. He looks at Mary not as a problem to be solved, but as a person to be protected. He chooses kindness over condemnation. Presence over withdrawal. Love over fear. And in doing so, he becomes part of the story through which Emmanuel enters the world. Emmanuel--God with us.

I admit that in the chaos of these past weeks, I have longed for that childlike wonder I once knew. I have wept over the news of illness and death, unrest and overwhelm in places far away as well as here in Kohala. I have cried out to God asking, “When did I lose my wonder? How can I get it back?”

I am so grateful for today’s story about Joseph – how he is called back from fear and despair by the Holy Spirit. The power of the story calls me back, calls us back from our despair. Rather than lamenting the wonder we’ve lost, we get to ask a different, more faith-filled question:  What kind of wonder is being born in us now? Can we reclaim a wonder that makes room for complexity? Can we reclaim a love that sees the hidden battles inside others and responds with gentleness? Can we rediscover a trust that does not deny fear, but walks through it, hand in hand with compassion?

When we began this morning, we sang E ho mai, asking for God’s knowledge and wisdom. And then we lit the candle of love. Let’s sit with that for a moment. 

This is the love we light today. It is not fragile or fleeting. 
When we ask for God’s wisdom, we invite this love. It fills this room. 
This love ignites our faith in the invisible work of the Holy Spirit. 
This love sparks our sense of renewed wonder! O light of love, stay with us while we wait. Even if we don’t know it yet, our lives are rewired by your arrival, here, in our hearts. Amen.

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