Raised eyebrows

Sermon by Pr. Craig Mueller on the Seventh Sunday of Advent + Sunday, December 21, 2025

There is an emoji for everything. Our texts to each other are unable to capture emotion without a little digital assistance. The emoji for this sermon: raised eyebrows. Raise your eyebrows with me. When do you do that? When you disapprove of something or someone? When you are shocked or surprised? This non-verbal quick “eyebrow flash” signals our attention or need for more information.

Mary’s unconventional pregnancy is certainly a reason for raised eyebrows. For his part, Joseph raises his when he learns that Mary is pregnant. Joseph is in a pickle. He could follow the law and divorce Mary quietly. The neighbors will think the child is of another father. Yet an angelic annunciation stops him short. In a dream, an angel urges Joseph to be courageous, for the sake of love. And for the sake of a deeper mystery not yet clear. This child is of the Holy Spirit. Joseph raises his eyebrows at such talk. Maybe we do, too.

But even if. Even if word gets out that the child is of the Holy Spirit, the neighbors will gossip, whisper, judge. Crazy talk, they say. Yes, all with raised eyebrows.

Joseph is the main character in this story in Matthew. Mary will get the spotlight in Luke’s account on Christmas Eve. And let’s be honest. Does Joseph even get speaking parts in Christmas pageants? In some nativity scenes, you can’t tell the difference between Joseph and a shepherd anyway!

And right before this story, Matthew begins his gospel with a genealogy. Tracing Jesus’ lineage from Joseph back to King David and even to Abraham. This should cause you to raise your eyebrows, especially since Joseph is not Jesus’ birth father, we learn. What’s going on here?

But if we really want to raise our eyebrows, analyze who is included in the genealogy. God doesn’t choose the most noble or saintly. Most of the characters are a bit shady. And Matthew’s genealogy is unusual because it includes five women. Not the well-known matriarchs in Genesis: Sarah, Rebekah, Rachel. No. Listen to this. Included are Tamar: an outsider, a Canaanite who disguises herself as a prostitute, then seduces her father-in-law to get a son. Rahab, another Canaanite outsider and a real, actual prostitute! Ruth, the Moabite, another outsider. And finally, Bathsheba, the woman from David’s adulterous scandal, that included David murdering Bathesheba’s husband. And finally, Mary, with her rather mysterious and questionable pregnancy out of wedlock.

Oh! Shocking! Dubious moral values. Raised eyebrows. A foreshadowing of Jesus’ ministry with tax collectors and sinners, prostitutes and lepers. One writer names Jesus’ “equal opportunity ministry” for the flawed and insulted, the cunning and weak-willed and the misunderstood. (Gail Godwin)

It is human nature to look down on others. To raise our eyebrows at the moral failures and foibles of others. We feel better about ourselves that way.

One of my favorite streaming shows is called Seaside Hotel. A Danish television hit, with English subtitles. You journey with wealthy hotel guests and the cooks and maids through the late 1920s, ending with World War II in the 1940s.

In later seasons, we meet Uwe Kiessling, a capricious German lieutenant for the Nazis. At first, Uwe drops by the hotel on official business with Amanda Madsen, the hotel owner. Though Uwe appears warm and kind, Amanda and the other guests are uncomfortable and nervous around him, even as he grows more interested in Amanda. At that time, most Danish citizens both feared and loathed the Nazis, and Germans generally.

From their union, Amanda gives birth to a child. Yet she dare not reveal the scandal to the guests at the hotel: not only a birth out of wedlock, that is the least of her concerns. But the hotel guests would never accept the fact that the father of the child is the German soldier they remember coming by so often. In fact, when the true story makes the rumor rounds, the guests do more than raise their eyebrows. They are outraged. They feel betrayed. Amanda offers to let them leave and refund their hotel fees. Yet when she tells them the whole story—that Uwe is not a Nazi and that he was involved in an assassination attempt on Hitler—in a very moving moment, one by one they say that they will stay. They will stick by Amanda. The guests move beyond suspicion and judgement to compassion and acceptance.

It takes more than an emoji to react to the events in our nation and world these past weeks, months, and even years. In addition to the ongoing never-ending news cycle drama, in a short amount of time there was gun violence at Brown. Fifteen murders at a Hanukkah celebration in Sydney. And the murder of the Reiner couple by their son. Hard to take it all in.

Advent stirs us to pray: come and save us. The beautiful text of the hymn we will soon sing was written this year. “Come to our world, Emmanuel. Come still the storm of the lies we tell. Come rouse us from oppression’s spell. Come as the seas of sorrow swell. Come to our world, Emmanuel.”

Joseph faces a complicated quandary. You do as well. Complicated family relationships. Complicated feelings about the holidays. Complicated decisions to make. Maybe the Holy One will come to you in dreams. Or in the wisdom of others. Or in a growing insight deep within you.

When Joseph’s eyebrows are raised, the angel tells him: do not be afraid! When your eyebrows are raised with concern or curiosity or fear, the good news of grace comes to you as well. Do not be afraid when you are invited to be courageous. Do not be afraid when you are called to stand with those accused of scandal, or otherwise shamed. Do not be afraid when God asks you to love your own messy, complicated life—and the people in your life as imperfect as you are. There is grace. Relax your eyebrows. Relax your face. Relax your body.

On this winter solstice day, we pray that Emmanuel would come to dwell with us in the darkness. In the mess. In the imperfections. God with you in the surprises. And in the invitations. And in the grace around this table. And in the wonder of it all.

Come to our world, Emmanuel. Come and at last make all things well. Till the woes of the world are ended.