Receiving The Long Awaited

[A reflection on the readings for the Mass of the Fourth Sunday of Advent, December 21, 2025, which may be found at this link: Fourth Sunday of Advent – The Episcopal Church]

For many, the long-awaited Holiday, whether you started counting down from Thanksgiving...or Hallowe'en...or Labour Day...or even last Christmas, is almost upon us. The excitement (or dread, for those nowhere near done with their preparations) is palpable and almost unbearable. Yet it is a pale shadow of what God's people awaited, looking for a sign that God's deliverance would finally come to pass, or for the final completion and consummation of that deliverance. While we signify this by the expectant nature of Advent, it really is only a symbol, a living, breathing representation, of a larger and more profound period of waiting for a greater and more profound event.

It is in this period of expectation and anticipation that Mary of Nazareth, a young woman of the House of David, herself expecting her own wedding to Joseph, a local carpenter but also of the House of David. Like the rest of her nation, she was waiting for God's deliverance of His people from their enemies. Little did she know when she woke up that day that part of that anticipation was about to come to be, that is, if she were willing to receive that eagerly awaited person, for the deliverance everyone knew would be in the person of a living human. However, like everyone else, she expected the Deliverer of Israel to come about by more or less normal means...sure, an angelic salutation is not normal by any stretch of the imagination, but everything else would work out as Nature intended.

Imagine her surprise when Gabriel let on that it already happened. Imagine Joseph's surprise, because, as Mary knew, she did not do anything to trigger the natural course of events, Joseph definitely knew he had played no role in it either. His reaction was natural but still showed his kind nature, quietly shoving it under the rug to spare Mary, the child, and him from a lifetime of rumour and innuendo. That was the plan until Gabriel let on what he had told Mary, that this was NOT the normal course of events and that, like Mary, Joseph had best prepare himself to receive the Deliverance of Israel now, in his own household.

Be careful what you wish for, right?

Still, it says much that both Mary and Joseph received the long-expected Messiah into their very home, knowing that in a short time He would be born, and that the work of the deliverance of God's people would begin in earnest.

We have before us a choice as well to receive the Deliverer of God's people in our midst. Like Mary and Joseph before us, that choice will definitely bring some hardship with it. People around us will not understand, they will think us crazy or delusional, they will believe that we have made the worst choice that makes very little sense in a hard, cruel world. However, it is this hard, cruel world that has made our deliverance necessary, and the Deliverer a true gift indeed, one worth everything for all time.

Come, Thou long-expected Jesus.