December 14, 2025
• Rev. Mindie Moore
December 14: Where Are You Christmas? (Matthew 1:18-19)
Advent Candle: Joy
9am Service Pep Talk:
· Show slide from last week
· Try it out for a few months
· TODAY:
o Jim Ramsey is going to be leading prayer after service for the next few weeks as we prepare to grow to two services. Anyone can join!
o Matt Brown is going to be at the table in the Gathering Area after to answer questions and help you sign up to be part of it
PRAY
Third week of Advent, “Where are you Christmas?” looking at Songs of the season...today we are exploring the song which we named the whole series after!
My humble confession is that I did not realize the origin of this song until we were planning this series. I mean, I had heard it a million times on the radio, but as I was meeting with Beck and Sarah talking about how we would want to incorporate “Where Are You Christmas?” into the service for this week, they mentioned how it would be cool to do the song with the kids since it is from The Grinch. And I said, “well, it’s Faith Hill.” And they said, “yeah, but...Cindy Lou Who”. To which I just stared at them blankly.
And then I had to confess that I don’t really love the Jim Carey version of that movie and I prefer the animated one that Pharell narrates and I now know this may be a hot take.
But regardless of what version of The Grinch you prefer, this IS from the 2000 movie and it has become a classic Christmas power ballad. And it has a bit of a dramatic story behind it. Mariah Carey was actually one of the cowriters of this song, and she recorded her own version of it, but because of a legal dispute with her ex-husband, who was a music producer, she wasn’t allowed to release that version.
The Christmas queen herself, blocked from releasing a surefire Christmas hit. So instead, the pop version of this song was recorded and released by Faith Hill and now a million other people have covered it.
It’s a song that grew out of relational turmoil, and while that might make us feel a little yuck about it, if you think about it...Is there anything like relational turmoil and tension that makes us ask that question: “where are you Christmas?” Is there anything that makes it hard to get in the holiday spirit quite like conflict and drama?
Interestingly enough, relational turmoil isn’t just the background to this song or something we deal with in our everyday lives...it’s the background of the original Christmas story. That’s what the Scripture we read today centers on. We find a young couple facing what feels like an impossible situation, on the brink of divorce. If you’re Mary and Joseph, the circumstances don’t get much more tense or challenging than the one they are in.
This is probably a decently familiar story if you’ve been around church a bit, or even if you’ve just watched A Charlie Brown Christmas enough times. And sometimes with that familiarity, I wonder if we’ve lost some of the scandal within the story. I wonder if we truly understand what a strange and stressful position Joseph would have found himself in as he tries to navigate his culture and his family and the potential role he will play in all that God is doing through this baby to be born.
Because there would have been a certain way that life was intended to unfold if you were Mary and Joseph. This would have been almost certainly an arranged marriage, as was the custom at that time. You probably had these two nice people from nice families whose fathers had negotiated a coupling that would provide stability and economic security, as well as serve to extend the family line, which Matthew spends almost a whole chapter drawing out in this Gospel account. I know that doesn’t sound particularly romantic, but it didn’t really need to be, that was just kind of how things worked.
When we meet Mary and Joseph, they would have been in the betrothal phase of their engagement. That meant they would have been legally bound to each other, even though they weren’t officially married yet, so it wasn’t like they could just break up and move on. That’s why we see Joseph contemplating how he can quietly divorce Mary after the news of her pregnancy comes out. He doesn’t want to shame her, but he also doesn’t want to be dishonored by what has happened. The text tells us that he’s a “righteous” man, and that reputation of righteousness matters to him. Now he’s found himself caught up in something that looks completely opposite of that righteousness and the life he’s been working to cultivate for himself.
And so it SEEMS like we know how this story is going to end. It would be similar to stories we’ve heard a million times before. Joseph will leave Mary, in the most honorable way he can, and move on from the messiness that their life together is shaping up to be.
But that’s not what happens here. Because in this story, there IS tension, there IS challenge...but there’s also joy. There’s healing. And there’s a life that is able to be built, a family that is able to be formed, because we see Joseph be brave enough to be open to the possibility that this could actually be ok. That joy could still be part of his story and that it might come not IN SPITE of what they are going through, but IN THE MIDST of it all. He has a major perspective shift...and his ability to do that changes everything.
There are a couple of important things that happen that allow Joseph to shift his perspective. The first is that Joseph allows himself and his plans to be interrupted. Look at what it says beginning in verse 20: (SLIDE)
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. 21 She will bear a son, and you are to name him Jesus, for he will save his people from their sins.”
24 When Joseph awoke from sleep, he did as the angel of the Lord commanded him. (Matthew 1:20-21, 24)
(SLIDE) Joseph has made up his mind about what he’s going to do—he’s going to leave her as honorably as he can—but he doesn’t rush into action. He sleeps on it! This seems so simple but it is incredibly important to what happens in this story. The angel who changes his mind appears to him in a dream. The fact that Joseph can pause like this, that he can take a beat, that (SLIDE) he’s resolved but not reckless, it creates the necessary space for God to work. Because it’s in this very moment of pause that God is able to speak to him through the angel.
When I think about all the things we have to navigate in our relationships, I just wonder how many of our relationships would be restored or even not broken in the first place if we could just slow down like this? What could that change? I’ve come to realize that waiting to respond to a text or an email sometimes can be a great act of spiritual discipline. It is OK to let things marinate a bit, to take a breath or say a prayer; to let some wisdom and grace have time to grow in the middle of really hard moments.
It’s kind of interesting to talk about grace and joy together, because they are so closely related concepts. The Greek word for (SLIDE) grace is χάρις and the Greek word joy is χαρά, which is a directly derived FROM χάρις. These two things work together in our lives, and this is really important—they don’t just have a role to play in our lives when things are easy or going well. In fact, I would say we experience both grace AND joy in the most powerful ways when we are in moments that feel really hard to navigate. When we don’t quite know what to do or we want to respond in haste.
Joseph, because of his trust in God and his ability to listen TO God’s message for him, is able to focus on the grace he can give, instead of the disgrace he thinks he is experiencing. And as he chooses this kind of grace and healing, that choice opens the door for joy to be part of their story.
When we think about relationships like this, or really any tough circumstance we’re facing this Christmas, I think it’s important to remember the ways that grace and joy are connected, and it’s also important to remember that joy is something that we can carry with us.
So often, (SLIDE) Joy is something we carry with us even if we can’t find it in our circumstances.
Joseph making this pivot from leaving Mary to embracing their life together was just the first challenge they would navigate. After all, they are going to have their baby far from home, the birth taking place not even IN a proper home. And then they will have to flee their country to go to Egypt and hope that they will be safe there. Even once they are back settled in their hometown, I have to imagine that there is always a bit of a feeling of being outsiders because of this unconventional start to their lives together.
Joy isn’t just going to show up easily for them. But joy is something that could be IN them. And just like Joseph makes the decision to choose grace, Joseph and Mary together get to make the decision to choose joy again and again, even when times are hard.
This is a decision that you and I get to make too. It’s not an easy one. It’s not most of our initial responses. But when we can let ourselves be open to the Holy Spirit’s guiding and we can notice when joy has gone out of focus for us, it’s such a gift to be able to know that and recalibrate and choose joy anyway. From the really significant situations to the exceptionally mundane, making this choice to carry joy with us over and over again is what feeds our relationships and creates moments that make up the whole of what our lives will look like.
I’ll tell you about a really mundane joy choice I got to make last week. It was a struggle. On Monday, I took Rhys and a couple of his friends (SLIDE) to a Pacers game for his birthday, which is coming up at the end of the month (yes, a pastor had a baby on December 21...). And I have to tell you that I had to work REALLY hard to choose joy as we attempted to get downtown by tipoff. Rhys had an after-school event at Butler for a club he’s part of, so that was our first stop of the afternoon. Then, we picked up the other kids. Then we stopped at McDonald’s, which was supposed to be quick and easy and took 25 minutes to get 3 Happy Meals. (This is where I started to lose it, just in case you’re keeping track.) And then getting downtown, dodging construction barrels and Amazon delivery trucks, it just kept pushing me towards the limits of my patience. At one point we were just sitting on Pennsylvania, and I’m watching the clock creep closer and closer to 7pm and ALL my frustration is bubbling up.
And as I made some angry noise at yet another traffic obstacle, I had this thought—I'm about .5 seconds away from obliterating the vibe of this birthday party. Like these kids do NOT care if we arrive in time for tipoff. They are not basing their enjoyment of this activity on how this drive goes. They do not need this to all go perfectly for it to be a great night. All the stress that I’m holding, all the frustration that’s building in me...it didn’t have to be like that. I could just make a choice that I was going to hold on to the joy of that night instead of the irritation of the journey to get there.
So I took a deep breath...I couldn’t pull a Joseph and sleep on it, but a breath would do...and let my internal disarray calm itself down. I said some pep talk type words to the kids and tried to funnel my energy into being a hype person instead of a grouch. And you know what—the traffic did not magically clear up. There were still SO MANY AMAZON trucks. Now, we did end up getting to the game in time, so that was cool. But that couldn’t be the thing my joy was based on. It was too fragile. The joy had to come from someplace deeper than what was going on around me, because that kind of joy actually has sticking power.
And maybe that’s the lesson for all of us. Maybe that’s what we find in the story of Joseph and even in this Christmas song. Listen to what the lyrics say, towards the end:
If there is love in your heart and your mind
You will feel like Christmas all the time
Oh, I feel you Christmas
I know I've found you
You never fade away, oh
The joy of Christmas
Stays here inside us
Fills each and every heart with love
I love that line, “the joy of Christmas stays here inside us.” You know, it might sound silly, but I keep thinking about Rhys and his friends at this basketball game, and how their JOY is like their default setting as humans and it is just turned up to an 11/10 so often. They don’t have to look very far to find it, because it is so deeply part of them. And it flows out in this really pure and true way that I was so grateful to get to witness.
And I know it’s not going to always feel that intense or big. And life is hard and we get tired and anxious and all the things. But what an example to do everything we can to let our joy lead the way. To move at a pace where we can do that. To extend grace as a runway TO our joy. And to believe that God has given us enough joy to walk into whatever life has for us and know that we will make it through.
The Christmas season might be quick and move so fast...but the joy that we find in this season and through the work that happens through Jesus...that joy is something we can carry with us our whole lives long.
Let’s pray.