It can be scary to stand up to racial injustice. It can be confusing and disconcerting to recognize the ways that we have been, and perhaps still are, complicit in maintaining systems of white supremacy. We can be afraid, and we can be confused about the logistics of how it’s all going to work out, and like Mary we can still say "yes" to God’s plan.

God is counting on us to be that voice in this reading from Isaiah. The spirit of the Lord is upon me, all who are baptized and anointed with the Spirit. And She is calling us to bring good news to our world, our nation and our community. To comfort and help the victims of the hurricanes, the earthquakes, mass shootings, the extremism in Charlottesville, and the DACAs.

As followers of Jesus, we must do what God did: become fully human. We must identify with the lowest of the low, and adopt their causes as our own. During this time of Advent, a time of light in spite of darkness, our hope needs to be in one another and caring for each other.

The reality of Christmas is our call to directly confront white supremacy, to abolish an extractive and lethal energy system, and to end what Pope Francis calls an economy that kills; an unbridled capitalism that proliferates inequality and fuels the misdirected anxiety undergirding far-right nationalism.