Mercy. Letting People Be. God Is With Us.

The Rev. Brad Sullivan
Lord of the Streets, Houston
December 21, 2025
4 Advent, A
Isaiah 7:10-16
Psalm 80:1-7, 16-18
Matthew 1:18-25

When Mary ended up pregnant with a baby that wasn’t Joseph’s, he could have called for Mary’s death. Such was his right under Jewish law in Deuteronomy 22:23-27. Mary could have been stoned to death for being pregnant because she was engaged. Even if she had been raped, if she hadn’t screamed out loudly enough for someone to hear and stop the rape, she still could have been killed. We don’t know how often such killings took place in 1st century Israel, but we do know that Joseph had every right to have Mary killed. Some might even say he had a responsibility to fulfil the righteousness of the law, to have Mary killed. Joseph decided to go a different way.

He and Mary were probably both in their early teens, their marriage arranged by their parents, with Joseph and Mary still living with their parents at the time. So, when he found out she was pregnant with someone else’s baby, he could have, at the very least, called off the wedding. That was, in fact, what he planned to do. He would tell Mary’s family that since she was no longer a virgin and had been impregnated by another man, he would no longer accept her as his wife. 

Had that played out, Mary would have likely continued living with her parents. She would have had her baby. Maybe one day she would have gotten married, though her prospects for security and a husband weren’t that great. 

Then, of course, Joseph was visited by an Angel of the Lord who told him to take Mary as his wife because the child was given to her by the Holy Spirit, not by another man. Now, when Matthew wrote this story of Jesus birth, we find that it reminded Matthew of Isaiah 7:10-16, where the young woman gave birth to a son and the son was named, “Immanuel,” meaning God is with us.

Reminding us of that story, Matthew was telling us that God is with us in the birth of Jesus. God was with Mary as he chose her to become pregnant with Jesus and to raise him as her beloved son. God was with Joseph as he assured Joseph of his plan, that the pregnancy was God’s doing. God was also with Joseph before the angel visited him, when Joseph chose to let Mary go quietly.

If Joseph had had Mary killed, he would have fulfilled the letter of the law, but he would have missed God being with us, not to mention murdering an innocent young woman. Instead, Joseph chose to let Mary be, and God is with us.

God was with Mary when Joseph chose to simply let her go, rather than enforce upon her the full weight of the law. Even though she had seemingly broken the law. Even though she was engaged to him and gotten pregnant by some other dude, he thought, Joseph simply chose to let her go. 

She won’t be a part of my life, he figured, and that will be that. There had been a civil contract between his and her families, one’s daughter and one’s son, and since that contract had been broken by Mary, the two were no longer going to be married. That was all. No death. No condemnation. No public outcry. God is with us.

Now again, some would say he should have publicly disgraced Mary. She had done wrong, and they needed to keep Israel pure from such immorality. How could they be God’s people if they allowed such terrible behavior as Mary the tramp getting knocked up by some random dude? If they allowed that, how could God be with them? If they allowed Mary and others like her to live, wouldn’t they be making God angry with them as a nation? How could God be with them if they did not follow God’s laws of purity and sexual morality?

That could have been Joseph’s response, but again, he went a different way. Joseph chose mercy, and as it turns out, God was with them because of that mercy. God is with us because of that mercy.

So, trusting that God is with us, even when people do things that are considered unrighteous and immoral, how might we follow the example of Joseph? How might we show mercy, too?

Well, Joseph thought Mary had committed sexual immorality, and we have laws being proposed and passed aimed at what some consider to be sexual immorality. I am thinking of our LGBTQ brothers and sisters who are being targeted by laws written to uphold some people’s ideas of Christian sexual morality. Repealing marriage equality. Preventing doctors from helping transgender people transition. What if, instead of writing laws against our LGBTQ brothers and sisters, people just let them be?    

I’ve heard concern by some Christian preachers that God is angry with the United States for allowing LGBTQ people to have the same rights and freedoms as everyone else. That’s kinda like thinking Mary had to be killed to keep God from being angry with Israel. Turns out, despite what the law said, God wanted mercy, not murder.

Well, if we look to Joseph, his righteousness came not by enforcing the punishment of God’s law. Josephs’ righteousness came by showing mercy. Joseph’s righteousness came by simply letting Mary be. What if people who consider LGBTQ folks to be sinners just let them be, trusting that God is with us. 

What if Christians in general didn’t force their ideas of morality on others, but simply let people be? Could we still trust that God is with us? That would be following Joseph’s example of righteousness, showing mercy, trusting that God is with us.

What about other ways that people might show mercy, trusting God is with us, rather than enforcing punishment for doing wrong? What about when we lose our tempers, wanting to shout at or fight with someone because they did something against us? We’re so pissed off, and we want to teach the, to make them know they were wrong, to admit it, and to make it right. We want punishment and justice.

That is presumably what an 18-year-old wanted when he stabbed his 16-year-old classmate in the neck, killing him. The 18-year-old couldn’t find his vape pen and was convinced the younger man had taken it. A fight ensued and because of that, one young man is dead, and the other is in jail, facing murder charges and decades in prison. 

I don’t know what was going through his head at the time, but it’s a good bet it wasn’t mercy. A $21 vape pen, an assumption of theft, no mercy, and a young man is dead. That’s what could have happened to Mary. An engagement, an assumption of adultery, no mercy, and Mary would have been killed, but Joseph chose a different way, and God is with us.

Joseph choosing mercy was probably not an accident. He had probably been shown mercy himself, had been taught mercy. Vengeance is easy. All we have to do is listen to our emotions, get hurt, get upset, and do exactly what our emotions tell us to do. That’s what Cain did when he killed Abel. Be angry and do exactly what that anger says to do. That’s what Derek Chauvin did when he murdered George Floyd.

Vengeance is easy, and vengeance tends to rest on the idea that we’re alone. Vengeance is a fearful response that we have to take care of whatever problem ourselves. Judgment, justice, all up to us. Vengeance can also be a fearful response that if we don’t hurt the people we think are wrong, then God may hurt us. Neither of those were Joseph’s response. Joseph chose mercy and found that God is with us.

Mercy is taught and practiced. Mercy takes trust that God is with us, and so we don’t need vengeance. 

For the young man who killed his classmate over a missing vape pen, mercy does mean that he’ll need to be in prison if he’s convicted, and that he’ll need to be shown mercy when he’s there, helped to heal, not just beaten down and punished forever.

God is with us. Always and everywhere. God became human so we would know that he is with us. God became human to show us mercy. Mercy helps heal the world. May we follow Joseph’s example. May we follow the way of God. May we show mercy.

Remember Who You Are: God's Beloved People

The Rev. Brad Sullivan
Lord of the Streets, Houston
December 14, 2025
3 Advent, A
James 5:7-10
The Song of Mary Magnificat - Luke 1:46-55
Matthew 11:2-11

So, John the Baptist doesn’t seem to have been overly happy when he had his disciples go to Jesus and ask, “Are you the one who is to come, or are we to wait for another?” Jahn was in prison because Israel’s tiny, authoritarian, narcissistic king, Herod, had put John in prison for telling him the truth. Herod had married someone whom it was against the Jewish law for him to marry. When John told him that, Herod found John treasonous, and he wanted to have John killed immediately, but he chickened out and simply had him imprisoned instead. John was a political prisoner of a small and morally bankrupt king who even wanted to have sex with his stepdaughter, we find out later. 

John was understandably pretty upset at this point. It was hard times for Israel under Roman occupation. There was trauma, constant stress and fear, and it seemed like the whole world was against them. In that time of trauma, stress, and fear, John had given everything, his whole life to the idea that Israel’s messiah was coming and that Jesus was this savior who would rescue Israel from Rome, who would rescue Israel from their terrible and corrupt king. Then, as it turned out, John was imprisoned by this terrible and corrupt king, Rome still ruled over Israel, and Jesus didn’t seem to be doing anything about it. 

So, John wondered, “Have I been backing the wrong horse?” Is Jesus really the Messiah I have been claiming him to be? Have I been a fool, and am I here in prison for nothing? “Are you the one who is to come, or are we to wait for another?” John had his disciples ask Jesus. Behind that question was another question. “Are you gonna get me out of jail or not?” 

Jesus answered by telling John’s disciples to tell John what they saw. In short, people were being healed, and behind Jesus’ answer was, “No, John. I am not going to break you out of prison.” The messiah has come, and you are not going to see some world altering, monumental shift in the balance of power and world order. In fact, if you’re not concerned with the lives of the people around you, you may not notice much at all that the messiah has come.

Jesus helped, he served, he saved people, but he didn’t rule over the earth as a good-natured tyrant. He didn’t kill. He didn’t destroy. He didn’t force others follow his way and his will. That wasn’t the way of the people of Israel. God didn’t force the people to follow his way and his will. God offered his way and his will to Israel and told them that things would be better for them if they followed.

Sometimes they did, and things were generally better. Sometimes they didn’t, and things tended to be worse. In the dark times, those who stayed true to who they were as God’s people were the ones who found the light. 

So, when Jesus assured John that he wasn’t going to break him out of prison, and when Jesus told John that he was the messiah because people were being healed and the poor had good news brought to them, he was also telling John, remember who you are. 

John didn’t spend his life training people to become merciless killers so they could destroy Rome and kill king Herod. John spent his life reminding people of who they were: God’s people. John ministered to people in the desert, reminding them to follow God’s will and God’s way. That was how he prepared for the messiah to come, helping the people of Israel walk faithfully with God. John prepared for the messiah to come by guiding people to love God, to love others, and to let all of their actions flow from those two great loves. 

It should not have been a terribly great surprise then, that when the messiah did come, the way that he saved people was pretty darn similar. Love God. Love people. “What do you see, John? You see me loving God and loving people. With all the mighty power of God within me, you see me loving God and loving people. That’s how you know I’m the messiah.” 

So, I can imagine John being disappointed. Perhaps he was expecting something different: fires and earthquakes, floods and wars, and other apocalyptic craziness. Jesus didn’t bring that. Instead, he assured John that he was the messiah because he was healing people and giving them the good news that God is with them, even in the bad times, and that was Jesus’ message for John as well. “God is still with you, John. So do not despair, and do not lose sight of who you are.”

When we are in the midst of despair, we can lose sight of who we are. During hard times, with trauma, constant stress and fear, during times when it seems like everything is going wrong in the world, like everything is against us, Jesus is reminding us not to lose sight of who we are. We are beloved. We are God’s beloved, and we are made to be loved by God and one another, and we are made to love God and to love one another. We are made to join together in healing the hurts of the world. That’s who the people of Israel are.

When Jesus told John’s disciples that he was healing people and bringing them the good news that they are God’s beloved, he was reminding John of exactly what John had been reminding others of when he baptized them in the wilderness. We are God’s people made to heal the hurts of the world. So no, John, don’t wait for another. Remember who you are. 

Like the people of Israel, we too, as Jesus’ disciples, have been formed to help heal the hurts of the world. That’s hard to do in times of trauma, stress, and fear, feeling like everything is going wrong in the world or that the world is against us, and during those dark times, Jesus reminds us even more strongly to remember who we are: God’s beloved, made to love, made to heal the hurts of the world. During those dark times, we are reminded to seek help from Jesus, to stay true to who we are, trusting that we will find the light.

Even in the current darkness, our way is lit by love God and love people. That’s how we know where we’re going. That’s how we know Jesus is the messiah. We don’t need fires, earthquakes, wars, floods, or other apocalyptic craziness; we have quite enough craziness right now, thank you very much. 

So no, we don’t need to wait for another. We can follow Jesus and do what he did.

We may not get what we’re hoping for. John died in prison, but he died being the light. He died remembering who he was, God’s beloved, formed to help heal the hurts of the world. Whenever and wherever that healing happens, the messiah is here, and the savior reigns. Even in the darkness, whenever and wherever healing happens, the messiah is here, and the savior reigns.

The Batman/Jesus Fight Against Sin & Death

The Rev. Brad Sullivan
Lord of the Streets, Houston
December 7, 2025
2 Advent, A
Isaiah 11:1-10
Psalm 72:1-7, 18-19
Matthew 3:1-12

In the 1984 movie, Ghostbusters, Bill Murray, Harold Ramis, Dan Aykroyd, and Ernie Hudson played the heroes of the movie, the titular, “Ghostbusters.” They were three scientists and one brave man who joined up to get a steady paycheck, who fought ghosts together in New York. They were pretty good at it, caught a lot of ghosts and kept them locked away in their own custom containment unit.

Then, one of the city inspectors got upset with what they were doing, shut down the containment unit, releasing all the ghosts, and landing the Ghostbusters in jail. Then things went kinda wonky, and the mayor asked the Ghostbusters what they thought was going to happen. They described Biblical disasters: seas boiling, fire from the sky, 40 years of darkness, the dead rising from the grave, and then Bill Murray culminates their list of terrors with “dogs and cats living together, mass hysteria!”

I bring this up because, one, wouldn’t you start a sermon by quoting Ghostbusters, and two, because that’s what I thought of when I read today’s passage from Isaiah. “The wolf shall live with the lamb,” and “the cow and the bear will graze together.” That’s crazy, and yet, Isaiah wasn’t mass hysteria brought on by ghosts, but peace brought on by God. Now to be fair to Bill Murray, “dogs and cats living together, [that would be] mass hysteria,” but the rest of it, the wolf and the lamb playing together, and the bear and the cow sitting down to a nice brunch, that’s how Isaiah described God’s peaceable kingdom.

We’ve got these beautiful images, crazy, but beautiful images of such a fantastic peace throughout the world that wolves even give up eating the yummy, yummy sheep. You ever had lamb chops? It would take divinely inspired peace for me to say that ain’t tasty any more, but those are the kinds of images Isaiah gives us for God’s peaceable kingdom.

“What’s God’s kingdom of peace going to be like?”, Isaiah asks us. It will be like a baby playing right beside a venomous snake with no fear of being bitten, because the snake would no more bite the baby than the baby would eat the snake.

Don’t try that at home.

Isaiah is giving us an image of what God’s peaceable kingdom could be like. 

Now, we’re not going accomplish do this. We’re not actually going to be able to make bears eat grass or wolves frolic in the meadows with sheep. I don’t care how peaceful you feel, don’t anyone start the Rattlesnake-Nanny Childcare Center.

The image of the snake-baby-besties party is an image of just how deeply God intends to heal the world. 

Remember the unfortunate events in Genesis 3? The serpent tempted Adam and Eve to eat the fruit which God told them not to eat, and as a result, the serpent would always be the enemy of Eve’s offspring. The serpent would bite our heals, and we would crush its head. 

So, a baby playing around with a deadly snake? Yeah, that’s a reversal of Adam and Eve eating the fruit. A baby playing with a deadly snake is a reversal of the serpent tempting Adam and Eve in the first place. Isaiah’s images, which Bill Murray would call mass hysteria, are really a return to Eden. That is how much God intends to heal the world.

That is how much, one day, God will heal the world. It will be like Eden, once again, where we walk with God in the cool of the evening breeze. No fear. No worry. A life of love and being beloved. Being held. Being cared for. That’s what God will do.

With that return to Eden in mind, which God will accomplish, we now turn to John the Baptist, who said, “Repent, for the kingdom of heaven has come near.”

For us, my question is, “Repent of what?” Well, big picture, we have some pretty big ills in our society which need repentance. We have economic injustice, with the ultra-wealthy getting rich off of the labor of the working poor. 

We have drug epidemics, gangs, organized crime selling poison to people, which is also economic injustice because the folks at the top of the drug game get rich by enslaving people at the bottom to the poisons, the drugs, they sell.

We have rents increasing so much that wages can’t keep up, so people are working hard and ending up on the street simply because they can’t make enough to afford a place to live. 

Those are a few of the big societal ills of which we need to repent. 

What about personally. Of what do we need to personally repent? In the face of all our societal ills, how about we repent of apathy and rage? We can get so angry at all the problems of our society that we get overcome by anger and turn to rage, leaving hurt and hatred in our wake. We can also become so overcome by the enormity of societal problems, that we choose to do nothing, because we can’t fix it, so why bother trying? Both that rage and that apathy, choosing to do nothing, are things for which we often need to repent. 

Just because we can’t fix the world doesn’t mean we shouldn’t try. We’re not going to achieve Eden, but that doesn’t mean we don’t strive for it. 

Reading the latest Batman comic, Batman had to fight a basically unbeatable foe. After Batman won, Alfred was thinking about how he won, and he realized that for Batman, winning wasn’t the point because his fight was bigger than any war. His fight is “about doing what is right, no more, no less…He’s not fighting to win. He’s fighting to fight. The fight is the point. For home. For the people he loves.”

- Scott Snyder, Absolute Batman, Issue 14: Abomination: Conclusion, DC Comics, November 2025

That’s kinda like Jesus (minus the cape, and the cool weapons, and the massive violence). Jesus fought for a victory over sin and death. That’s an unbeatable foe, and yet Jesus won. Now Jesus won because he was God who became human, and as God, he united all sin and death to himself so that nothing can separate us from God. As a human being, Jesus trusted in God. Jesus trusted that one day, God’s victory would fully come to pass, and we would live together Isaiah’s vision of peace. 

So, what was Jesus’ fight? To do what was right, no more, no less. 

For us, too, as disciples of Jesus, we have a fight with sin and death, except that we don’t fight to win. Jesus has already won. We fight because it’s the right thing to do. We fight for one another. We fight for the people we love. We fight for people we don’t even know. We fight to live and spread as much of Eden as we can, knowing that we’re not going to win, and trusting that we don’t need to win. 

We just need to fight with the tools of repentance and love. Love is our weapon which does not harm others. Love only does harm to sin and evil, by weakening it so that it no longer has a hold on us and on those we love. Fight sin and evil with love. That’s what John the Baptist called repentance. 

Do you find that you are overcome by the sin and evil of the world? Do you find that rage and apathy lead your actions a lot of the time? Then set a new course for your life. Repent of anything that brings harm to others. Repent of anything that isn’t the way of love. If you don’t like where your life is headed, you’ve got to change what you do and how you do it. Let love be your weapon, a weapon which does no harm to others. Let love be your weapon, which does not insist that others follow you in love. Let love be your weapon, which is patient and kind. Let love be your weapon, which seeks not to blame everyone who is wrong around you, but seeks God’s help to change what is harmful within yourself.

 

Let love be your weapon so much so that a wolf living with a sheep, and a cow and a bear having a snack together actually seems possible. Let love be your weapon so much that a baby could play with a venomous snake and be fine (again, metaphor, don’t try that). Let love be your weapon so much that dogs and cats living together will still be mass hysteria, but you just won’t mind so much. 

Repent, John said. Love. Let love be your weapon in the Batman/Jesus fight against sin and death, trusting that God has already won, so we don’t need to win. We fight simply because it’s the right thing to do. We fight for one another. We fight for the people we love. We fight for people we don’t even know. We fight to live and spread as much of Eden as we can, with no weapon except love.