Hope Is Unfolding

 “Hope Is Unfolding” was preached at First Presbyterian Church of Allentown, PA in our virtual worship service on January 25, 2026.

You can hear/watch this sermon here, starting at 24:10.
You can listen to a podcast version of the sermon here.

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Scripture texts:
Isaiah 9:1-4
Matthew 4:12-25

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Please take a moment and prayerfully consider what is happening in our country and world. Pay attention to your body as you do. What do you feel? What do you carry? 

Take a moment now. 

Although this may not be true for everyone, taking a moment to really reflect might lead us into a moment of heaviness.

Sometimes all of this settles in our bodies quietly, like background noise we learn to live with. But sometimes it presses in more sharply. And it’s not just our country or world. It can show up daily. It shows up in worry about finances, in the tension of navigating strained relationships, in concern for parents or children or grandchildren, in health scares, in exhaustion, in uncertainty, or really, in the steady stream of bad news that never seems to pause. 

Even when life is good, this heaviness can still linger, shaping how we move through the world, how we hold our bodies, how we sleep, how we hope…

And often, we don’t even realize how much we’re carrying until we pause long enough to notice it…

Our reading from Isaiah is found in the first of three sections in the book of Isaiah, which means we are standing inside a moment when destruction is unfolding right before the people’s eyes.

Assyria is building a vast empire driven by power and control. It their demand to have absolute dominance over every region they conquer. The northern kingdom of Israel sits directly in their path, small and vulnerable, yet agriculturally rich and strategically positioned along key trade routes.

So Assyria moves in, and it is their intention to break the spirit of the entire population.

One of Assyria’s most powerful weapons they will use is deportation. People will be forced to march hundreds of miles away, families will be separated, and communities will be scattered across foreign lands. This is intentional dismantling. Assyria understands that if they divide the community and uproot people from their land, their resistance collapses. Their very identity begins to fracture.

The first regions to experience this devastation are Zebulun and Naphtali, the northern borderlands that will later be known as Galilee.  But Assyria is not yet finished.

At this moment in the book of Isaiah, the capital city of the northern kingdom, Samaria, still stands. But within about ten years, Assyria will completely destroy Samaria, dismantle the northern kingdom, and deport most of its remaining people. They will effectively erase the northern kingdom’s identity. 

Isaiah 9 is speaking before the northern kingdom has fallen, even though it is coming. 

And it is in that moment Isaiah dares to proclaim, “The people who walked in darkness have seen a great light.”

This is hope unfolding in the middle of trauma.

The Gospel of Matthew brings us back to very same area; the very same fragile region where Isaiah once dared to proclaim that hope was already unfolding.

We are brought back to Galilee. To the land of Zebulun and Naphtali, and this area is still living in the shadow of empire. Only now, instead of Assyria, it is Rome that rules. 

And then the Gospel tells us something else. Jesus begins his ministry after John the Baptist is arrested. The consequences have already been made clear. Danger will come to anyone who opposes the empire.

Once again, hope is unfolding in the middle of trauma.

But this time, hope does not come only as prophetic words spoken into the darkness.

This time Hope will soon walk the dusty roads, visit people and communities, heal wounded bodies, and speak directly to their fear and despair. 

Hope is unfolding in the middle of trauma. But now, hope has a body. The Word made Flesh. The incarnate Christ. Jesus, Emmanuel. 

This past week I was in Chicago for a training event through Vibrant Faith, as our congregation begins a year-long, grant-funded research project on raising faithful children, especially within the context of worship. There will be many exciting announcements about that in the weeks and months to come, and I am deeply grateful for the ways our congregation continues to lift up faith formation across generations. This event was a gathering of ten churches from across the country who are all beginning this journey together.

And it was there that I met The Rev. Sarah Anderson, a pastor at Christ the King Lutheran Church in New Brighton, Minnesota, a suburb of the Twin Cities, in a located just minutes from the neighborhoods where Renée Nicole Good and George Floyd were killed. During one of our sessions, Rev. Anderson was invited to share what is happening in her congregation’s surrounding neighborhoods.

She shared ICE agents are circling schools and hospitals, monitoring entrances and exits. Families are afraid to leave their homes, and agents are going door to door, detaining parents in front of their children, and in some cases, holding children so that their parents will surrender. As a result, more than two hundred students from local schools have been reported absent because families are terrified of what might happen if their children leave the house.

You might have seen the recent news that ICE agents detained a five-year-old boy, Liam, and his father as they were arriving home from preschool. Witnesses say and video footage shows the agents used Liam to knock on the door of his own home, in an attempt to draw out other family members. When another adult begged officers to let her take Liam so he would not have to be frightened and alone, they refused. Instead, Liam and his father were taken into custody and transported to a detention center in Texas.

Five years old.

Still small enough to need help tying his shoes. Still young enough to carry a backpack that nearly swallows his shoulders. Still learning how to read. Still learning how to trust.

And now, learning fear by being grabbed by masked agents. 

And these agents are overwhelmingly targeting brown and black communities, which means we are not simply talking about immigration policy. We are talking about racial profiling, agents targeting specific people, neighborhoods, and schools. Entire communities shaped by intimidation.

This is trauma.

And in the middle of that unfolding trauma, Rev. Anderson described how her church has responded. Christ the King has organized a community care chain, where members bring food, supplies, and other necessities for families across the entire neighborhood. They have become a lifeline of support. They are the hands and feet of Jesus. This is embodied hope. 

In this kind of lived witness, we hear the same call from Jesus.

When Jesus walked along the Sea of Galilee and called Peter, Andrew, James, and John; he finds them at work, in the middle of their routines, with their hands in the nets and their feet in the boats. They are young men trying to make a living and feed their families

But Jesus calls on them. And they follow. They drop their nets. They leave their boats.  They loosen their grip on what has become the primary source of their security and identity. It is about trusting that their lives can be more than survival, more than routine, more than simply getting through another day.

And when Jesus tells them they will become fishers of people, he is asking them to join him in his care for all of God’s beloved. He calls them to join him into the slow and sacred work of drawing people out of danger and despair.

This is what discipleship looks like when hope has a body.

This is what Christ the King Lutheran Church is doing. Ordinary people. 

They are loosening their grip on safety. They are stepping out of their boats of comfort. They are letting go of control. And they are following Jesus into uncertain and costly spaces, trusting that God’s light is already there.

Embodied hope continues wherever ordinary people dare to carry light of Christ into dark places.

This is what it means to be the body of Christ in the world, not that we replace Jesus or become saviors ourselves, but that we become vessels of grace, mercy, love, healing. We become vessels of hope… 

Following Jesus is an invitation to step into the light God places before us, trusting that even small acts of love can ripple outward in ways we may never fully see.

Faithfulness often begins in paying attention, in compassion, in courage, and in presence. It begins in the commitment to show up for others when danger makes hiding away safer.

Hope unfolds as people choose love again and again in the middle of a world that so often makes silence and ignoring injustice so much easier. But when we take the bold enough step to be a vessel of hope in this world, we find ourselves part of a long and holy procession of people who have trusted across centuries and cultures that light is still stronger than darkness. We too can be embodied hope. 

Once again, hope is unfolding in the middle of trauma.

And hope has a body.

And because we are the body of Christ, that hope now shines through us. 

Amen.

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Photo Credit: Fibonacci Blue / CC BY 4.0 — Minneapolis ICE protests, January 2026