Love is the fuel of justice

 (I changed the font to one without serifs so that those who are visually impaired and who use assistance to read on a computer can read the content more easily.)

Matthew 1: 18-25
New Ark United Church of Christ, Newark, DE
December 21, 2025

Black and white photo of a person wearing a plaid shirt and neutral pants lighting a candle and adding it to many candles burning on the floor. A crowd of people is gathered to their right. 

Have you ever taken the fall for someone else? Someone did something, right or wrong, large or small, and they’re about to get caught, punished, thrown to the wolves, but then you stepped in and took the brunt of it. Has someone ever done this for you?



Looking back through my own life, I couldn’t think of one instance when I might have done that. I’ve stood up for others, advocated on behalf of someone, joined people in their cause, but taken one for the team? Not really in any way that would make a material difference.



It takes real moral courage to accept condemnation that is not yours.



In this version of the Christmas story (sorry, Matthew), we have Joseph as the hero, as the focal point of God’s justice. Joseph knows the law. He cannot go through with the marriage knowing that Mary is pregnant. It would implicate him as the father, and according to the laws of Moses, both of them would be committing a sin against God and God’s covenant. So being a righteous man, that is, being a moral person who follows God’s law, he decides to divorce her quietly, because an engagement was as legally binding as marriage and he doesn’t want to cause her public embarrassment. Even so, it would not save her from being punished for being pregnant outside of a betrothal or marriage covenant.



Make no mistake, Joseph is a stand-up guy. But God requires more than standing up. God requires solidarity. God needs a fall guy, someone willing to take one for the team.



God is asking Joseph to join with the women in Jesus’ lineage—Tamar, Rahab, Ruth, and Bathsheba—who were wronged, condemned, thwarted, and who were rescued, validated by men who took responsibility for their actions or who accepted the responsibility of the actions of others. God is asking Joseph to take one for the team, to take a risk for Mary—Mary who is the first to risk her life for Jesus.



More than that, God is inviting both Mary and Joseph into solidarity with God, to do the God things, to show that human beings are capable of doing the God things and that God is with us and acting through us when we take risks for God’s justice.



When theologians talk about the scandal of the incarnation, it is this: God becomes not only one with but actually becomes one of those who are wronged, condemned, and thwarted, all so that they may become God. “God with us” is a scandal because God is in solidarity with those whom we would judge as unworthy and invites us to join in this holy risk of being judged as unworthy ourselves.



In John’s gospel, Jesus says, “For God so loved the world that God gave God’s only son, so that everyone who believes may not perish but may have eternal life.” But it’s the next verse that usually gets neglected: “Indeed, God did not send the Chosen One into the world to condemn the world but in order that the world might be saved through him”. God joins with the creation not to condemn it but to save it, to repair it and make it whole.



At the end of the gospel of John, Jesus asks Peter, “Do you love me more than these?” “Do you love me more than your fishing nets and equipment, more than the certainty, the low-risk level these give you?” In essence, through the voice of an angel, God is asking Joseph the same question up front. “Do you love me more than shame?” “Do you love me more than your reputation?” “Do you love me more than what you think you know?”



God wants to know if Joseph is willing to get hit by the same stones that could be thrown at Mary. Stan Mitchell, the senior pastor of GracePointe Church in Franklin, TN, speaking about a young trans person in his church, once said: “If you claim to be an ally of a group of people—if you’re not getting hit by the stones that are thrown at them, you’re not standing close enough.”



Love is more than standing next to, advocating for, joining a cause. The love that liberates is the love that puts us on the same path as the ones who are being marginalized and criminalized. It’s the kind of love that makes justice possible. Political activist Cornel West said that justice is what love looks like in public.



It looks like clergy being pepper-sprayed, knocked to the ground, and zip-tied for attempting to care for people being detained by Immigration and Customs Enforcement. It looks like neighbors filming ICE agents, asking questions, standing in their way and chasing them off. Even as nearly 300,000 people have been deported and a record 65,000 are held in detention centers, this cruelty empowered by a Supreme Court that effectively legalizes racial profiling.



It looks like Boris and Sophia Gurman and Ahmed al Ahmed who disarmed the shooters on Bondi Beach, Australia. Another man, Reuven Morrison, ran toward the sound of gunfire and threw bricks at the attackers to give others time to escape.



It’s not always about risking one’s life. Most of the time it’s about disrupting our lives for others. It looks like serving at Code Purple or Hope Dining Room or at the Newark Empowerment Center. It looks like this church hosting the Empowerment Center and everything that comes with that, like dealing with more trash and helping people, loving people who some days can barely help or love themselves. It looks like building affordable housing on our site and the patience and hard work that it requires. It looks like calling our senators and representatives when legislation harmful to transgender youth is introduced. It looks like loving children as though they were our children and other people as though they were kindred.



Love is the fuel that keeps the fires of justice burning, the embers glowing through the night, love that warms us when this justice work could make us cold.



Love must be the center of everything we do, the reason how and why we are Church. We come from love, we live in love, until the day we die and we return to love. Love is what makes the future worth fighting for. Amen.

Benediction – enfleshed.com


Take heart! We know the story of hope.
The Divine is as close as our own breath.
The Sacred takes on the flesh of our lives.
Salvation draws near in the most ordinary of miracles.
May our lives be a practice of hospitality,
welcoming God to find sanctuary among us,
welcoming Love to grow in our care.
Come, O Come, Emmanuel.

Amen.