December 2025 – By Another Road

Lo, He Comes Anyway: A Christmas Sermon

I preached this sermon at St. Anne Episcopal Church, West Chester, OH on Christmas Eve, 2025.

Here’s the thing about the circumstances of that first Christmas: it was the best they could do.

We’ve heard the story so many times, and maybe we’ve imagined it as something quaint and simple, but it was not. Consider: there’s a young woman soon to give birth, and man who is not quite yet her husband, both suddenly compelled into a long, challenging journey to Bethlehem. It’s place that is not their home and where no familiar faces wait to welcome them.

And so they did the best they could do, these two, but by the time they got to their destination, there was no space left. And no time left, either. No choice for Mary and Joseph but to do their best—to make way for the baby now, to prepare the way of the Lord now, in this wilderness of happenstance, for he is coming, here, right now, this mysterious, urgent, holy child. He will not wait for the peaceful or convenient moment to appear; God rarely does.

No, the birth pangs of a new creation have come, as they so often do, in the midst of displacement and discomfort, and Jesus emerges, ready or not, into the messiness of life, just as it is.

As that old Anglican hymn tries to put it politely, with classic British understatement: lo, he comes.

Replace “lo” with whatever word slips out of your mouth when things go wrong, and you probably have a more accurate sense of the scene.

Lo, he comes, as all babies do, with tears and cries. Lo, he comes into a world not quite ready to greet him. Lo, he comes, from up beyond the drifting clouds and the blazing stars, to see how our tense and divided world might yet learn to love again.

No space? No time? So be it, for lo, he comes anyway—God emerging from outside of space, outside of time itself to make a home with us, just as we are.

And yet, we might think, surely, surely, despite all the challenges in their journey leading up to this, surely when this moment comes, Mary and Joseph will at least be able to welcome him properly. Surely this birth-of-God moment, despite our long and imperfect history, will itself be perfect.

But, lo, there is just that one little problem: no space. No time. And no cradle, either. And so poor Mary and Joseph have to plop the precious little Creator of the universe into a manger, which is, let’s not sugar coat it, a feeding trough for livestock, and, we can imagine, not a very clean one.

Given the circumstances, it was the best they could do.

Blessedly for us, though, I think Mary and Joseph set a precedent for Christmases to come, because saying “just put the baby in the trough” is somehow representative of all those moments when our plans fall apart. Those moments when, due to circumstance or desperation, we have to make a hard pivot towards “good enough.”

Maybe I wanted to wrap all my presents perfectly, but end up stuffing them into gift bags sometime late on Christmas Eve. Or I planned the perfect dish, and it burned (and I definitely said some word other than “lo”), so my potluck contribution will just have to be some extra napkins and my winning personality.

Or, more significantly, perhaps I thought this would be the year that I finally mended a few fences, patched up a few broken relationships, helped to make a more just and compassionate society take shape, but it didn’t quite go that way. So I come and sing Silent Night one more time hoping it’ll stick this year, that such peace will exist someday for me, for my neighbor, for this world.

It’s the best I can do.

And the baby in the feeding trough gets it. He has understood from the very beginning.

If you take some time with the story of Jesus’ nativity, and if we can look past, for a moment, all of the beautiful art and poetry and pageantry that accompanies our observance of this night, you will find that it’s actually the story of a big old mess. I think that’s what helps it feel so true.

We have the manger, yes, and the rushed journey to Bethlehem, and there are also the shepherds—not considered respectable company in those days—and then there’s just the fact that there are all these people running around in the dark of night, shouting strange news at each other by starlight. Dirt and sweat and stumbling and confusion. There is absolutely nothing perfectly composed about this moment. Nothing clear or easy about the arrival of the answer to our deepest questions. Just a bunch of imperfect people doing the best they could do and finding themselves bathed in grace anyway.

Lo, he comes, just as we are.

And that is the most hopeful thing I can imagine. Because I don’t know about you, but I am more intimately acquainted with messiness than I am with perfection. I know quite well what it feels like to have no space, no time. I am less familiar with transcendent and abiding peacefulness.

I look around, most days, and that is what I see: people doing the best they can do. Trying to understand themselves, trying to endure. Trying to love their neighbors. Trying to provide for their families. Trying to know who God is. Trying to cultivate some small moments of joy and contentment and right relationship in cultural, economic, and political landscapes that are not always hospitable to those things.

I see people, against all odds, still looking up at the drifting clouds and blazing stars, seeking a reassurance that it will all be ok—that we might sing Silent Night this yearand actually feel it. That it is not all just a pipe dream, this Kingdom of heaven bending down to kiss us and dry our tears.

And so how wondrous and how wonderful that, on this night, God is precisely what he is: a baby born of displaced, stressed parents, resting in a resting in feeding trough, making his home amidst our foibles and fears and tremblings. How glorious that God looks at all of our various “best that they could dos” and says to all of them: Yes.

Yes, I am here for that. Yes, I am here to love you in the middle of that.

You may think that this is the God of perfectly wrapped gifts and finely seasoned dishes, but I am here to tell you this is also the God of unmade beds and messed up schedules and burnt tongues. You may fear that this is the God who demands fine garments and unstained reputations, but in truth this is the God of shepherds; of dark places; of those who sorrow and those who survive.

And this God has come to you this night. Yes, you—you who may be questioning yourself or questioning all of this or wondering how we can sing any song at all while the world is heaving with grief and this God is here to tell you: you have to sing and you have to pray and you have to just “put the baby in the trough,” because we have to start with the best we know how to do, and then we just keep going.

And that will somehow be enough.

So says the God who has been working, working, working since the world began to help us see that we are enough, that perfection was never his purpose for us, but connection. Connection with each other and connection with the infinite divine Love by which we were made. Connection with the beauty of the earth and the beauty hidden within our hearts, broken and burdened though they might be.

And though our long history with God has been full of ups and downs, of misunderstandings and missed opportunities, tonight God is trying something new.

Perhaps he realized, in the end, that this was the only way to truly connect with us: to be with us completely, to experience the same failures that we do, to gather them into himself and guide us toward another type of world, one where there is plenty of space and all the time in the world.

And if it all has to begin in a manger, so be it.

For lo, he comes anyway, ready to give his whole life to us.

Ready to risk everything to see us, at last, face to face.

When you think about it, I think it was, perhaps, the best that he could do.

Empathy: A Sermon

I preached this sermon on Sunday, December 21, 2025 at St. Anne Episcopal Church, West Chester, OH. The lectionary text cited is Matthew 1:18-25.

Most of us, while growing up, have certain moments when we realize something difficult about the way the world works. Perhaps that things are not as safe or pleasant as we had thought them to be; that people are often lonelier and more lost than we had imagined, and that we ourselves might someday feel that way, too. These are not happy discoveries, but they are important ones.

When I was in the fifth grade, I had a group of friends, and every day at recess we played foursquare. If you’re not familiar with that game, it’s essentially a group of four people bouncing a large rubber ball back and forth among, you guessed it, four squares, and trying to get each other out. We loved it.

But one of my friends at the time had a little bit of a schoolyard bully streak in him, and one day at recess he started taunting another boy who was not in our group. The particulars of his taunt don’t really matter—they were made up and casually cruel. But they stuck, and soon some of the other kids joined in. I did not, but I also didn’t say or do anything about it.

This went on for a few days, and I just remember that it started to bother me more and more. Until one day, I told my friend in the middle of the foursquare game that he should stop saying those things, that he was being mean, and that I was not going to be “one of his followers” who went along with this. Oh, this enraged him. He turned on me in a fury and starting aiming that rubber foursquare ball at my face. The other kids didn’t join in, per se, but they didn’t say or do anything, and I soon found myself exiled from that particular group. This is how the world works sometimes.

Now this is not an after-school special on tv—there was no happy ending where I befriended the bullied boy and started a new group of misfit friends. I wish I had. I did realize though, that there are choices to be made, and a price bound up in them, when we encounter those ways the world works which we simply cannot abide.

But I think the most important thing that I learned in that situation was the power of empathy—of placing yourself in the shoes of someone else and letting your own heart break for them a bit. It is a wondrous thing, empathy—a small, simple choice made in a million different instances that can transform everything within us and among us.

Now there are some in popular culture and other circles these days who are claiming that empathy is toxic. That it’s dangerous to morality and social order to care too much about others’ feelings or experiences. And for such people….I try to have empathy. We are all afraid or resentful of what we don’t understand, sometimes. But we must decide what to do in response to that fear.

Which brings us to our gospel today. Another fearful, confused person who has to make a decision about circumstances he does not understand is Joseph. At least that is how I imagine him when I try to empathize with his situation: shocked, bewildered, conditioned by the strict codes of honor and shame within his own culture.

Before any divine dreams or angelic messages come to explain the circumstances to Joseph, there is simply a regular man, alone, with more questions than answers. Presumably through family or friends, Joseph has been given the news of Mary’s mysterious pregnancy. And, according to the standards of his time, no one would have questioned it if he reacted with rage or rejection. The taunts of schoolyard bullies would pale in comparison to what Mary was up against.

But instead, we have the first Christmas miracle before Christmas even arrives, and it is simply this: the choice of empathy. So quick you might overlook it: Joseph, being a righteous man and unwilling to expose [Mary] to public disgrace, planned to dismiss her quietly.

It is good to dwell on this sentence. We may not fully understand the patriarchal culture of 1st century Galilee, but we can understand this much: Joseph, in this moment, is not going along with the way that his world works. He is choosing, as best he knows how, to be empathetic with whatever Mary’s situation is.

This is a risky choice for him. Some people already knew that Mary was with child, so Joseph’s decision to protect her practically ensures the whispers of his neighbors or even their outright derision of him. He is refusing, after all, to punish her and to thereby protect his own honor, as his culture would expect.

But he is a righteous man, as Mathew tells us, righteous in the ways of God, not of culture wars, and somehow that means he is willing to pay the price of empathy.

Imagine that—empathy as the hallmark of righteousness. A concept that I wish the whole of the Christian church would embrace.

Because we should not overlook this in the narrative: Joseph’s empathy comes BEFORE his angelic dream, which then reveals God’s plan. Joseph’s empathy is the precondition of his participation in the Kingdom of Heaven.

I am going to say that one more time for the ones who need to hear it: his empathy is the precondition of his participation in the Kingdom of Heaven.

Not his knowledge or his power or his strength. Not his social standing or his wealth. Not his capacity for censure or his commitment to cultural purity.

His empathy is the precondition of his participation in the Kingdom of Heaven.

Miracle of miracles! At the end of Advent we finally see it clearly: Empathy is “the way of the Lord” we have been commanded to prepare. Empathy is the means of fulfillment of the ancient promises of God. Empathy is the nature of the One who is coming. Who knew?

Well, actually, all of the prophets knew this; all of the patriarchs and matriarchs; all of the saints of every age knew this and continue to say it. But somehow, in 2025, we need to keep saying it, and so we will:

Empathy is the precondition of our participation in the Kingdom of Heaven. We let our hearts break a little bit for someone else, and God rushes in.

This will come as less than good news to some—the schoolyard bullies we encounter at any age and in every age. The self-righteous and the judgmental. The condemnatory and the incurious. The ones who have confused discipleship with the hard, glossy veneer of social acceptability. They are not yet on board with empathy, but just you wait.

Because Jesus is coming and has already come to assemble his own group of misfit friends, and nobody is excluded from this group except the ones who lack empathy. They’ll be welcome too, once the veneer cracks. It usually does. Eventually we all discover that things are not as safe or pleasant as we hoped them to be. That we are all a bit lonelier or more lost that we thought we’d end up.

And that is when empathy is born in us, and when God’s advent can truly begin.

So here is my invitation to you, friends, in the spirit of St. Joseph: between now and Christmas Eve, think of one person you don’t understand, or whom you resent. It could be anyone, but ideally someone close to your daily life. And as challenging as it might be, I want you to take just five minutes alone and do your prayerful best to empathize with them. Imagine what struggles or fears might be shaping their decisions. Consider what hidden wounds might still plague them. Try to remember even one thing that you probably both share in common.

And that’s it. You don’t have to write a letter or tell anyone at all. Just give your own heart the brief gift of empathy—the tiniest crack of compassion—so that God can achieve his advent into you. Who knows what dreams or visions might follow.

I have no idea whatever happened to the boy I defended or the bully I enraged. All I do know is that the empathy I chose that day is something I would never take back. And if I accomplish nothing else in life, I hope that by the end my heart is broken all the way open by love, I hope it is broken into a thousand glimmering pieces of grace given and received, and that God alone will know what do with all of it.

I know that this is not always how the world works, but how beautiful it will be when it does.

When at last, in perfect empathy, He comes.

Answer: A Sermon

I preached this sermon on Sunday, December 14, 2025 at St. Anne Episcopal Church, West Chester, OH. The lectionary text cited is Matthew 11:2-11. A version of this sermon was also published by The Episcopal Church for its Sermons that Work project.

Yesterday as I watched the snow billowing down, interrupting more than a few well-laid plans we’d had for this weekend, I was reminded that as much as we try to prepare and plan ahead, uncertainty and ambiguity still find us sometimes. They descend upon us, soft and muted like winter, blurring the sharp edges of our assumptions. And we tend not to like this very much.

Because we want answers, most days. We crave them; we seek them; sometimes we demand them. We peer at stars and read between lines and survey the vast, muddied landscape of our experiences hoping to catch sight of something clear and telling.

Often they are quite matter-of-fact, the questions we ask and the answers we seek: is church go to happen tomorrow or not? what should I make for dinner? Where should I go next weekend? How long til Christmas?

And yet at other times they are more subtle and lingering: is the church going to endure? what should I make of my life? Where should I go to feel like I am not alone? How long til Christ makes all things new?

But whether our questions are practical or existential, it is still the case that decisive answers are usually what we’re after. And especially because we are formed and guided by words, we often imagine an answer as a thing that coheres nicely into a single phrase or insight. Surely, we think, whatever it is that we want to know is waiting out there just beyond the tip of our own tongues.

Unfortunately, though—perhaps more often than we’d care to admit—answers are not so easily translated into simple turns of phrase. The more important the question, the more likely that this is so. Despite our human fascination with fortunes told and secrets disclosed, the truth is that answers to our most profound questions are more often discerned slowly, in broad shapes and patterns of meaning, than they are discovered in revelatory, obvious flashes.

This is important for those of us who follow Jesus on the Christian path, and it is especially important in this Advent season as we engage the sense of heightened anticipation that God will, somehow, come and make an answer to all of our enduring sorrows and longings. What is the Word we await? What sort of answer are we expecting to receive from on high? A crisp, clear phrase with which to flatten our enemies; to unlock the mysteries of the ages; to solve the conundrums of ourselves?

What if that is not what’s coming?

In today’s Gospel, John the Baptist has a question, too, and it’s quite clear that he wants a “yes or no” sort of answer. Are you the one who is to come, or are we to wait for another?

So much—everything, really—depends on the answer, and we can’t blame John for wanting to know plainly. He has given his whole life over to this question. He has been made wild and holy by the yearning of this question. He has become stricken by the weight of this question. And ultimately he will die for the implications of this question.

Because to ask whether Jesus is “the one who is to come” is to assert that nothing and no one else in this world can be. No emperor or king, no treasure, no philosopher or fortune-teller can contend with the one who is to come, because this One will be the answer to every question and the remedy to every wrong. And so of course, as his own days dwindle down in captivity, John desperately wishes to know if his waiting has been in vain.

He, too, maybe like you and I, he is blanketed in the soft white drifts of uncertainty and he is asking, what have I made of my life? Am I alone? How long til God makes all things new?

And yet Jesus, as is so often the case, does not answer the question directly.

Just as when he teaches in parables, in this moment Jesus replies to John with images and with an invitation to look closely at them. Go and tell John what you hear and see: the blind receive their sight, the lame walk, the lepers are cleansed, the deaf hear, the dead are raised, and the poor have good news brought to them.

In other words, John, the answer is all around you. It is in the shapes and patterns of healing and life and justice that come forth wherever love reigns. It is not found in simplistic assertions of identity or authority.

Anyone can claim to be a messiah or a king—and goodness knows many have done so. But only God can bring forth the fruits of the Kingdom within us and among us. Only God can transform our wildernesses into a sanctuary. Only God can show us, as I said a couple weeks ago, how to be the answer rather than just wait for one.

This is the essential paradox of the Messiah we are given in Jesus—he is the Expected One who will not conform to our expectations. He is the One who has come, and yet he points away from himself the moment he arrives.

He does not respond directly because he refuses to succumb to the idolatry of easy answers. And it is perhaps in this, in Jesus’ rejection of the deceptive simplicities of our lesser gods, certainty and control, that we begin to know that he is the Son of God. For only Truth would be content to let the results speaks for themselves.

So what does this mean for us—we, like John, who are still captive to the world’s many ambiguities and are still hungering for a clear and piercing response to our questions?

It means, quite simply, that we must reorient our search for answers. The things we are seeking to understand as followers of Jesus are not insights locked away somewhere, reserved for the especially wise or powerful or pious.

The answers, instead, will always be found in the living enactment of the good news—the practice of love and righteousness in our churches and communities and homes. The real answers are to be found in doing the same things that Jesus did: listening, healing, reconciling, liberating, giving thanks, and letting go. And if we do these things, then we will look back one day and say, oh, yes, I see: there it was. There was my answer. There were all of the answers to every question.

It means, too, that we should be wary of any institution or figure, political, religious, or otherwise, who claims that they alone have the answer or, even worse, that they are the answer.

In the face of such assertions, we must resist and remember that even Christ himself was loathe to claim his Messiahship. He was most concerned with helping others find their own inherent dignity, not with worshipping his. Let that be a benchmark for the ones whom we entrust with authority.

And finally, hopefully, joyfully, it means that perhaps we can rest a bit in the midst of all our Advent anticipation. Instead of waiting with bated breath like John, with our whole lives dependent upon a single word of response from God, perhaps we can look around at how the answers to our deepest questions are already springing up around us—how they are already being given.

This is the gift and the power of a sacramental life: how you will catch a glimpse of God in the gleam of a candle or in the phrase of a protest song; in a bag of groceries left on a doorstep or a hand reached out to you in forgiveness. It may come to you in liturgy on a Sunday, or in the broader liturgy of your life.

The point is: God’s answers are here, in the words you already knew how to speak. They have come, John, oh yes, they have already come. But they have come softly, like falling snow, like promises kept, like all those small mercies piling up around us—the ones we overlook while searching the skies for grander resolutions. They have come to us, John, these answers that contain the Answer, in a way that must be lived to be believed, not just seen or heard.

The question that Jesus asks of us is this: will you live it? Will you dare the joy of living it?

Maybe, just maybe, in this Advent, God is waiting for our answer, too.

Let it be yes.