Tag Archives: Jesus

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 21, 2025

130th Anniversary, First Lutheran Church, Harvey, ND • Luke 18:1-8 • October 19 2025

By Bishop Craig Schweitzer

Sermon shared at First Lutheran Church in Harvey, ND during their 130th Anniversary worship service on October 19, 2025. A video recording can be found here – https://www.youtube.com/live/i6y9TnEaO8U?si=gs9ZNWAZzhayicoU

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

First of all, thank you First Lutheran Church for welcoming me into your community again this weekend, especially for a weekend of celebration like this.  You are a gift to the mission and ministry God is calling us into in this little part of God’s good creation. Thank you!

Second, I offer greetings of abundant joy and congratulations from your sisters and brothers across the 158 congregations of the western North Dakota Synod, the nearly 9,000 congregations whom we are connected to in the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America, and the 150 Lutheran denominations who call us into relationship with 77 million other Lutheran Christians around the world in the Lutheran World Federation or LWF. LWF formed in the aftermath of World War II as a way to rebuild and restore congregations and communities impacted by the evil of war. We, as part of the ELCA, are the only representatives of LWF from the United States.

These relationships – within our congregations and local communities, across our denomination, and around the world enable us to serve as the hands, feet, voices, and financial resources of Jesus that bring forth healing and life on every continent on Earth.

You and I need to be reminded of that truth once in a while. Because one prayer offered in this sanctuary, one dollar given as an offering to this congregation’s ministry and mission, one stitch sown in the creation of a beautiful quilt – all of those things, bring abundant blessings to God’s children in ways far greater than anything we can imagine or do on our own.

So, today, we gather to celebrate 130 years of God’s faithfulness in this faith community. 130 years! Its kind of hard to wrap your head around that kind of history, isn’t it?

130 years of worship and witness.

130 years of God’s word proclaimed, of the waters of baptism flowing freely, of bread broken and wine shared, of prayers offered, songs sung, and love lived out in Harvey, Wells County, and beyond.

Just think about it – generation after generation, people of faith gathering right here – well, not always in this building, but right here in and around Harvey, North Dakota, trusting that God would meet them where they were. Some of their names are on plaques or in confirmation photos. Others are remembered in stories and family legacies. Some of them rest now in nearby cemeteries. All of them form part of the great cloud of witnesses who remind us that God’s faithfulness endures forever.

The gospel reading today is a parable that Jesus shares with his disciples to remind them “about their need to pray always and not to lose heart.” It’s the story of a widow who refuses to give up. She keeps showing up before a judge, day after day, pleading for justice. The judge doesn’t fear God or respect people, but he gives in to the woman because he’s tired of her bothering him.

At first, this story is kind of funny. But, I’m guessing that most of us have stories of someone bothering us incessantly until we finally say, “fine! Have it your way! Now leave me alone.”

I’m not sure that Jesus is encouraging us to badger God until we get what we want. In fact, I think he’s trying to show us the nature of faith itself – that faith doesn’t give up. That faith keeps showing up. That faith keeps trusting that God is at work, even when the answers to our prayers don’t come quickly or in the way in which we want.

If there’s ever been a story that fits a congregation celebrating 130 years of mission and ministry, this might be it. Because faith like that, the kind that keeps showing up, has built and sustained First Lutheran Church for more than a century.

Think of our ancestors who heard God calling them to plant a church on the North Dakota prairie. They probably didn’t have much more than faith, a bible, and a hope that God would be with them and bless their efforts. They worked hard, prayed deeply, and leaned on one another. They didn’t know what the decades ahead would bring – droughts and depressions, wars and pandemics, seasons of growth and new life and seasons of struggle and uncertainty about the future.

And yet through it all, the people of First Lutheran Church kept showing up. They kept worshiping, teaching their children and each other, serving their neighbors, praying without losing heart.

You know those stories better than I do…stories of pastors and Sunday School teachers, of quilting groups and confirmation classes, of baptisms and funerals, of Christmas programs and potlucks, of mission trips and Thanksgiving community meals.

Every one of those stories bears witness to the faithfulness of God.

That’s the beauty of this anniversary day. It’s not only about looking back, it’s also about recognizing that the same God who has been faithful through 130 years of mission and ministry at First Lutheran Church is still at work today, still calling, still guiding, still sending you and me out in the world to love and serve. A world that seems to long for the unconditional love and grace of Jesus more and more with each new day.

The story of First Lutheran is still being written. The Spirit of God that stirred in the hearts of your founders is the same Spirit breathing in you today. This is not the end of the story, it’s another chapter in a long grace-filled one.

Jesus ends this parable by asking the question, “When the Son of Man comes, will he find faith on earth?” Well, in Harvey, at First Lutheran, the answer is an easy and emphatic yes!

When the Son of Man comes, he will find faith in your worship and your welcome;

In the laughter of children and the compassionate service you offer one another;

In your prayers for each other the world God so loves and your care for your neighbors;

The Son of Man will find faith in the stories you tell and the love you share.

Faith endures here.

Grace prevails here.

So, people of First Lutheran Church, on this anniversary day:

Keep showing up.

Keep praying.

Keep loving.

Keep trusting that the God who has carried you this far will carry you forward still.

Thanks be to God for 130 years of grace-filled mission and ministry, and for all that’s yet to come. Amen.

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