Tag Archives: faith

December 22, 2025

Fourth Sunday in Advent | Matthew 1:18–25 | December 21, 2025

By Bishop Craig Schweitzer

This sermon was offered to First Lutheran Church in Bottineau, ND, on December 21, 2025, on the Fourth Sunday in Advent.

View the livestream video of the worship service here.

Grace to you and peace from God our Father and our savior Jesus, the Incarnate One, Emmanuel, God with us. Amen.

It is so good to be with you this weekend First Lutheran Church. I again apologize for not being able to be with you in person during your recent anniversary celebration. I was with you in Spirit. And I was able to join you on the livestream too, which was awesome.

Ministry anniversaries are holy times. They invite us to look back. But, as we have witnessed throughout this season of Advent again this year, we are also mindful that anniversaries insist that we also look forward. Advent calls us to do the same.

So, on this Fourth Sunday of Advent, with Christmas just days away, today’s gospel does not let us linger too long in memory. Instead, it gives us a story about trust, about courage, and about God showing up.

Matthew’s telling the story of Jesus’ birth has always been interesting to me. I’ve always found it interesting in the way that it feels so surprisingly quiet.

There are no shepherds keeping watch by night.
No angels filling the sky with song.
Instead, Matthew gives us Joseph.

Joseph, who never speaks a word in this story.

Joseph, whose faith shows up not in what he says, but in what he does.

Joseph is engaged to Mary when everything changes. She is pregnant, and Joseph knows the child is not his.

Matthew tells us that Joseph is a righteous man. But in this case, being righteous doesn’t mean that he is a rigid rule-follower.

It means compassion. It means mercy.

It means he plans to dismiss Mary quietly, to spare her public shame.

But then God shows up and interrupts, as God does, God interrupts Joseph’s carefully planned solution. In a dream, an angel tells him not to be afraid. Do not be afraid to take Mary as your wife. Do not be afraid of what people will say. Do not be afraid of a future you did not choose.

Joseph wakes up—and he does what the angel of the Lord commanded him. He takes Mary as his wife. He names the child Jesus. He steps into a future that is not very clear, trusting the promise that God is with him. That God is at work.

A few interesting points to remember about this story. The virgin birth is actually not the hardest thing Advent asks us to believe.

The prophet Isaiah imagines a world without war.

John the Baptist proclaims that God’s kingdom has come near.

Mary sings of the hungry being fed and the powerful being brought down.

None of those things is easy to see. Or believe.

All of them depend on God interrupting what we have come to accept as “normal.” God showing up.

After all, that is what Emmanuel does. Emmanuel – God with us – enters the ordinary and interrupts it with grace. Emmanuel – God with us – shows up not only in moments of joy and celebration, God also shows up in moments of decision, when faith means trusting God enough to move forward without all the answers.

Joseph never gets certainty. He gets a promise.

And for Joseph, and for you and me too, that is enough.

During one of the recent anniversary celebrations here at First, Pr. Glenn said that someone had asked him what kind of communion you were doing on the weekend of the anniversary. Pr. Glenn’s response: “Holy.” And then he shared a prophetic word with us about why communion is holy.

“When we gather for communion,” he said, “it is a holy time. It is a sacred moment when we are in communion with God. We come into unity with God. We make a mistake if we think this is just a moment between Jesus and me, because this is much larger than that. When we come to receive communion, we don’t come alone. People from all time and all space are united with us.”

Throughout Matthew’s gospel, the author reminds us that God’s family is way bigger than we imagine. In today’s gospel reading, we see that Jesus’ lineage stretches across generations and includes unlikely people.

You belong to that story. I belong to that story.

Not because we are impressive or have everything about following Jesus figured out.

We belong to that story because God has claimed us.

We are part of God’s family not necessarily by blood, although some theologians debate that, we are part of God’s family by grace.

The saints of this congregation at First Lutheran Church, past and present, belong to Jesus’ family tree.

Believing in God as Emmanuel – God with us – is not something we think about only at Christmas.

It is a present-tense promise.

For 125 years, the people of First Lutheran Church have lived that same kind of faith. Out of that same promise from God.

Faith that reminds us that because of what God is doing, we are connected to one another and all of God’s creation in ways that we will never fully understand – at least not in this life, and in ways that are far bigger than anything we can possibly imagine on our own.

God is with you in this season of your life together today. God is with you in your leadership in this congregation, in your questions, in your hopes for what comes next.

I mean, think about it.

God is connecting us together with nearly 160 congregations across the western two-thirds of North Dakota, more than 50,000 sisters and brothers. God is connecting us together with nearly 9,000 congregations of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America, about 3 million sisters and brothers in Christ across the United States and the Caribbean. And God is connecting us together with tens of millions of other Lutheran Christians, 150 different Lutheran denominations, serving together on every continent on the globe through partner ministries like the Lutheran World Federation, ELCA World Hunger, Lutheran World Relief, Lutheran Disaster Response, Global Refugee, and many others.

Emmanuel – God with us. Wow!

Not always with certainty. Not always with clarity. But with trust.

Trust that God is present even when the way forward is not obvious.

Trust that love is always worth choosing.

Trust that God will never abandon this place or any one of us, ever.

Advent does not ask us to have everything figured out.

It asks us to recognize Emmanuel, even when God comes quietly.

To trust that God is near, even when the future is still unfolding.

To step forward, like Joseph did, believing that God is there.

In just a few days, we will celebrate the birth of a child. Let’s not rush too fast past the manger and forget that Advent is inviting us to hear his name again—Emmanuel—God with us.

As we hear that name, may we boldly step forward in faith, knowing that we have nothing to fear.

Since I won’t be able to offer this in person in a few days, I want to wish you a blessed, holy, Merry Christmas.

Sisters and brothers in Christ, God is with you. And for that eternal promise, we simply say thanks be to God! Amen.

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October 30, 2025

John 8:31–36 • October 27, 2025 • Banks Lutheran Church, Watford City

By Bishop Craig Schweitzer

This sermon was offered during worship celebrating the rite of confirmation at Banks Lutheran Church near Watford City, ND. A fantastic congregation on the prairies of North Dakota.

Brothers and sisters, friends in Christ, grace and peace to you from God our Father and our Lord and Savior Jesus, who is the Christ. Amen.

It’s a joy and a privilege to be with you, Banks Lutheran Church, on this Reformation Sunday. Today is a day when we are invited to give thanks once again for the many ways that the good news of Jesus still reforms and renews Christ’s Church.

And it’s especially good to be here as we celebrate with KC on her confirmation day—a day that centers on one of the most important and beautiful realities of our faith: promises.

So, let’s start with a question:
How many of us gathered for worship today—whether here in this beautiful sanctuary or joining us online—have ever made a promise?

Now… keep your hand in the air if you have kept every single promise, you have ever made.

Exactly. Not one of us should still have our hands raised.

And if we’re being honest – with ourselves and each other, we all know the truth: our promises sometimes fall short. Promises are often really hard to keep.

But the good news we celebrate today—the good news at the heart of the Reformation and at the heart of every confirmation—is that God’s promises never fail.

This is a day in which the people of God gather to celebrate promises.
The question before us is: how many of those promises will last beyond today?

The promises we talk about in worship have been part of the Church since its very early days.
And for 508 years, every time a Lutheran Christian has gathered around the waters of baptism, we’ve heard words like these, or very similar to them, but probably spoken in a language other than English – in the case of western North Dakota, maybe German or Norwegian or Swedish.

“In baptism, our gracious heavenly Father frees us from sin and death by joining us to the death and resurrection of our Lord Jesus Christ. We are born children of a fallen humanity; by water and the Holy Spirit, we are reborn children of God and made members of the church, the body of Christ. Living with Christ and in the communion of the saints, we grow in faith, love, and obedience to the will of God.”

Those words, spoken in Lutheran churches around the world, set our life in Christ in motion. And, set us free. They contain a promise. A promise from God. In the sacred and holy waters of the sacrament of Holy Baptism, God promises you and claims you as God’s own child. And that promise is the only one that will never be broken. As we live into the promise we have received from God, we realize that it isn’t just between me and God.

These promises are lived out in community—here in this congregation on the beautiful prairies of our great state, across the congregations of the Western North Dakota Synod, throughout the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America, and in relationships that we have with millions of Lutherans around the world.

Together, we are part of a global community of promise-caretakers…sometimes stumbling, always forgiven, and always renewed by God’s faithfulness.

KC, today is a milestone in your journey of faith. A journey of promise.
On this day, your confirmation day, you stand before this congregation, and before God, to affirm the promises made at your baptism.

My prayer for you—as your bishop, and a fellow child of God—is that you’ll live out these promises every day of your life in Christ.

That you’ll keep them joyfully, because you trust that God is present in your life, and that Jesus loves you and walks with you wherever you may go.

The white robe you wear today is not a graduation gown—it’s a reminder.

It’s a sign of your baptism, of your belonging, and of the promises God made to you long before you could make any promises in return.

And for all of us gathered here today or joining online, this is our moment to remember, too.
Every confirmation Sunday is a community promise day.

We promise to surround KC and all young people in faith across this church today, with our support, our prayers, and our example of living as beloved children of God each and every day.
We promise to live as people freed by grace.

People who embody Christ’s love in the world.

In a few minutes, KC will make some bold and beautiful promises.
She’ll promise, and you and I promise with her, to…

  • Pray for God’s world and to invite God’s presence into her daily life.
    Prayer isn’t just what we do before meals or tests or big games. Prayer is how we stay connected to the One who never leaves us, in every ordinary moment of the day.
  • Worship among God’s faithful people.
    Worship doesn’t stop when confirmation is done or when Sunday’s worship services are over. It’s a rhythm of daily life. A way of remembering who we are and whose we are. Wherever life takes you, KC, find a faith community where you can worship and continue to grow in in what it means to be a follower of Jesus.
  • Hear the Word of God and share in the Lord’s Supper.
    Scripture and communion keep us rooted and nourished. The Bible may feel like an irrelevant and ancient collection of books, but its promises are alive and meant for you today. Let it speak to you, shape you, and surprise you.
  • Serve all people, following the example of Jesus, and to strive for justice and peace in all the earth.
    Service begins right where you are—at school, at work, in your home, in Watford City and McKenzie County.
    And justice and peace? They’re not abstract ideas. They look like kindness when someone is left out.
    They look like compassion when the world feels anything but that.
    They look like the church standing with the hurting and speaking up for the voiceless.

Brothers and sisters in Christ, this is what it means to be part of the Reformation story.
To trust in the promise that God’s grace is enough.
To believe that God’s mercy is bigger than our failures.
To know that the freedom Christ gives us is freedom for others, not freedom from responsibility.

Today, we celebrate the promises God made in claiming each one of us as children of God in baptism.
We give thanks for the promises kept by parents, pastors, sponsors, and faith communities.
And we rejoice in the promises that God will keep in and through you, KC—and through all of us—as our life in Christ continues to unfold.

KC, our sister in Christ, my hope and prayer is that you are richly blessed by the promises made today.
And even more so, that you continue to become a rich blessing to others because of the promises you make today.

Thanks be to God. Amen.

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