Sermon preached by Rev. Margie Quinn on Sunday, December 21, 2025
A teenage girl is really scared. Engaged to a man but not yet married. She understands the social and political risks of her situation. She finds herself pregnant with our Messiah through the Holy Spirit. Joseph doesn’t want her to suffer public disgrace from this sort of precarious predicament, so he decides to—did you catch that?—dismiss her quietly.
I have never liked that part of scripture. A man trying to dismiss me quietly. Not a passage I’m underlining with my highlighter. But I read it with new eyes this week. I realized that Joseph is scared too. To take Mary in would expose him to a lot of religious judgment. Mary could have been stoned for this suspected adultery, and Joseph could have been—and would have been—the victim of a lot of public shame.
We’ve got an unwed mother, a fragile family, an empire that meets any threat with surveillance and violence and control. And then we’ve got King Herod, who is on the lookout for this baby boy he’s heard about, who’s going to resist the status quo, and he will kill him when he finds him. Joseph is scared, and he has every right to be afraid. And he’s resolving to dismiss Mary quietly, to sneak her away.
And then this angel appears to him in a dream. And the angel says, “Joseph, son of David”—David, y’all remember David, the one that slayed Goliath kind of fearlessly—“don’t be afraid to take Mary as your wife. This child is from the Holy Spirit. Mary, she’s going to have a son, and you’re going to name him Jesus, and he will heal the brokenness of this world. God has already spoken through the prophets, Joseph. I promise you. And this son, he will be called Emmanuel, which means God is with us.”
Emmanuel. I don’t know if there’s any greater word in scripture. Any word better for our Advent season. God who doesn’t do life for us or without us. God who doesn’t try to fix us, but God who simply is with us—and with us in our fear. God who is holding our hand and reaching out to us in comfort in the midst of all the scary things we hold.
And Joseph, he woke up from this dream. And I do like this part. He did what he was told. Rather than letting fear isolate him, he lets it bring him into a greater connection. I want to repeat that: his fear doesn’t result in isolation; it results in connection. He could have taken a step back, but instead he stepped in.
And if you will allow a little biblical wondering, perhaps after this dream, maybe we can imagine Joseph speaking these words to Mary: “When you are afraid, give me your hand. I cannot fix everything, Mary, but I can walk alongside you. I can’t get rid of the risk that we’re taking here, but I can share the load with you.”
And here we have it. And this is so common in scripture—one of the many reasons I love it. We don’t have a hero of our story who saves this damsel in distress. No, we have one who remains in proximity with her. Emmanuel with her in her harrowing journey that they will share together.
And maybe Mary reaches out her hand as a plea for help, and maybe Joseph takes it as a gesture of support. I think many of us have experienced the connection that comes from holding a hand. I thought about this—all of the hands that we as a community might have held.
You might have held the hands of a loved one as you recited your wedding vows to each other. Or maybe you held the hand of a loved one who was passing on, stepping into the next realm. You heard their heartbeat slowing down. Many of you have held the hand of a partner as she was giving birth, letting her squeeze your hand gently—or maybe not so gently—as she welcomed a child into this world. You’ve given a hand as your child walks across the street, keeping them safe.
Some of us have held hands—I’ve held hands with you—at things like the Linking Arms for Change event, where we held hands that stretched three miles across Nashville as we advocated for safer gun laws. You have held the hand of a friend—I know you have—who is sharing something hard with you, perhaps voicing it for the first time.
And each Sunday—you know where this is going—each Sunday at the end of our service, we hold hands with a familiar or not-so-familiar person to our right and our left. Sometimes it might be a little awkward. And that hand may be soft, or it may be worn. The nails might be polished, or they might be chewed a little. The palms might be calloused, or they might be smooth. It doesn’t matter here. What matters is that sometimes we really need that time for a hand to reach out to us in support. And sometimes we are the person who reaches out first.
Some weeks we are the Mary, and others we are the Joseph. Maybe this ritual that we do at the end of the service is a reminder to us that there is always a hand that needs holding, church. There is always a hand that needs holding.
I was thinking about Peter when he walked on water. He noticed this really strong wind, and he got really scared, and he said, “Lord, save me.” That’s what he said to Jesus. And Jesus immediately—immediately, without any hesitation—reached out his hand and caught him. Maybe he remembered the sensation of his father reaching out for the hand of his mother. Maybe that was still in his body. He knew it so intuitively. He recognized what to do for Peter. Not to walk on water for him, not to abandon him, but to hold his hand.
Church, maybe the miracle is not that Peter walked on water. Maybe the miracle is that Jesus reached out and did it with him, holding his hand as he did.
So to be brief—or at least a little brief—this week, I’m not asking you, and I’m not asking me, if we will fix people. You know that we can’t. And I’m not asking you or me if we will fix the world. This week, I’m just asking you and me to take the hand of someone that you know or someone you don’t—someone that you love, someone that is not very familiar, someone who is scared, or someone who has great courage—and reach out that hand for support.
As we close our service a little later, I wonder if you will just say a quick blessing as you grab the hand to your right and the hand to your left, hearkening back to a frightened pregnant girl and a fearful, faithless man who are to welcome the one who doesn’t fix us, but who walks with us, reaching out his hand and saying, “I am with you.”
And that is the best Advent news of all. Amen.