Luke 1:5-13
Rev. Caela Simmons Wood
First Congregational UCC, Manhattan, KS
November 30, 2025
Our journey into Advent begins with these words: “In the days of King Herod of Judea, there was a priest named Zechariah….” I have to confess, I never really paid much attention to these words before. They sound a bit like “once upon a time….” Filler words that let us know we’re about to hear a story. I’ve always rushed on - Zechariah in the temple, his wife, Elizabeth, the angel, the promise of a baby who would be named John. This story is full of joy and hope, but can also bring pain to those who have struggled with infertility. If that’s you, rest easy - we won’t be spending too much time with Zechariah or the angel today. Instead, we’re going to sit with this first sentence, “In the days of King Herod of Judea….”
Sarah Speed’s powerful poem was what made me sit still and pay attention to those opening words this week. You’ll find it in your bulletin if you haven’t had a chance to read it yet. It begins:
I didn’t live during Herod’s time—that brutal, murderous king,
God save his soul.
But even hundreds of years later, I know the prayers of his people.
I know the prayers of the mothers and the children under his rule.
I know the prayers of the young men under his angry arm.
I know their prayers, because anyone who has ever lived in this
soft world for more than two days knows how to pray for a miracle.
(from “In the Time of Herod” by Sarah Speed)
We don’t live in the time of Herod, but we, too, know the prayers of the people who did, don’t we? The prayers of the mothers shuffling in sick to another day at work because they don’t have any sick leave. The prayers of the child stuck at home trying to catch up on school work because ICE is in the neighborhood so they haven’t been to school this week. The prayers of the elders who are putting off necessary dental work because they can’t afford it. The prayers of men isolated from their families because so many systems failed them but the cradle-to-prison pipeline works all-too-well.
We know their prayers because anyone who has been paying attention in “this soft world for more than two days knows how to pray for a miracle.” We know what it’s like to pray
“God, break through the yelling and the fear.
Break through the violence and the oppression.
Get past the Herods of this world, and come be here.”
Like every bleeding heart before, we know how to pray for a miracle.
It never ceases to amaze me how we can turn, time and time again, to this ancient book and find stories that sound like they could be zapped to our phones today.
Just who was this ancient king who set the stage for the season of Advent?
King Herod is remembered for two things: as a great builder who oversaw the construction of some of the most fantastic monuments in the world and as a cruel tyrant. He was incredibly paranoid, going so far as to execute one of his own wives and three of sons because he feared they would betray him. He was so afraid that people wouldn’t mourn him properly after he died that he left instructions for several other prominent men to be killed immediately after his death so there would be mass mourning. Some historians say that his paranoia was so intense that he had his own secret police to help control those he found threatening. Josephus says he had 2,000 soldiers as his personal guard. [1]
Fear dominated Herod’s life. He both lived in fear AND did his best to strike fear in others. Like Herod, we are no strangers to fear. It seems to be everywhere these days. We are aware that giant faceless powers are doing their best to make us all afraid all the time. We are told to fear those who don’t look like us, think like us, talk like us, vote like us - and on and on. We live in a world so fragmented that a simple car horn blaring can make us wonder if we’re about to find ourselves in an altercation. We are often afraid of the things we consume, afraid of Big Pharma, afraid of Big Brother, afraid of Big Government, afraid of climate disasters, afraid of job loss, afraid of the future. I mean, I could go on. But I’ll stop. You get it. We’re no strangers to fear.
The creators of this year’s Advent series want to invite us to do something that Herod probably never did: take an honest inventory of our fears, honoring and moving through them. Fear is, at its most basic level, a very useful human emotion. It can keep us safe when there actually is danger. Of course, the problem is that we often see danger where none exists. We allow ourselves to be controlled by fear, rather than using fear as the tool it's meant to be. And the more we live in fear, the more our fears seem to come true. Fear begets fear - an unrelenting whirlwind.
Fortunately, we have faith practices that can help us exit that fear whirlwind when it’s not serving us. Practices like lighting the Advent wreath together. Each week in Advent, we light a candle and each candle represents a different gift of this season: Hope, Peace, Joy, and Love. These words are short and sweet. They are the kind of words we might skip past without paying much attention. They’re words that are found in all of our Christmas carols and throw pillows. They don’t seem fancy enough to stand up in the face of fear.
But what if we don’t skip over them this year? What if we pause and pay attention to these seasonal gifts? The writers from A Sanctified Art ask us “What do you fear?” and in the next breath they remind us to “insist on hope this Advent.”
Just what IS hope? I bet if I asked every person in our church to define hope (or peace or joy or love) I’d get at least as many answers as we have people. Accepting the invitation to insist on hope this season, I went searching for a definition where I always search for definitions: in a book.
Hope: A User’s Manual by the Rev. MaryAnn McKibben Dana starts out by telling us what hope is NOT. Hope is not a prediction, optimism, cause and effect, toxic positivity, nor the opposite of despair. Fifty pages into this book, having dealt with all the things that hope is NOT, it’s pretty clear to me that Dana is not pedaling any needlepoint definitions of hope. Everything she has to offer is nuanced, but clear, inviting us into our own prayerful pondering as well. It’s a beautiful book, by the way, and would make a wonderful Advent devotional for anyone looking to dig a little deeper this season.
By the time we get to section two, I’m on my second cup of tea and Dana feels like an old friend. She begins her exploration of what hope IS with a short chapter titled “Hope is what we do” a phrase she borrowed from Lutheran pastor Mitri Raheb who lives and works in Bethlehem. Raheb shares about living under occupation his entire life and describes himself as a “prisoner of hope.” Dana says she loves his definition of hope as “what we do” because of its dual meaning. It’s both “what we do” as in our daily work like “I’m a teacher” or “I’m a grandfather” and it’s a powerful statement of how we make hope real through our actions. “Hope,” Dana says,”is wrapped up in what we make real. Hope isn’t what we think. Hope isn’t what we feel. Hope isn’t even what we imagine is possible. Hope is what we do in the face of suffering, pain, and injustice. Hope is what we do in the face of depression’s dull weight or grief’s harsh sting. Hope is what we do.” [2]
She illustrates this by sharing a story about her teenage daughter, who lived with serious depression while in high school. As college loomed, her daughter worried about making the transition. “What if I can’t handle college? What if I spiral like I did in high school?” McKibben Dana says her kneejerk reaction was to soothe, “Oh, you’ll be fine, honey. Don’t worry.” But, for whatever reason, she didn’t. Instead she said, “Well, what if you start to spiral?” At first her daughter panicked and went to all the immediate worst-case-scenario responses. “I’ll fail. I’ll flunk out. I’ll never find a job. I’ll have to live at home forever.” And her mom interrupted her, “No. Pause a second. I mean, really, literally, what will you do first? And then next?” And her daughter took a breath and then said, “I will ask for help. I will talk to my professors. I will schedule a therapy appointment.” [3] And that’s it right there. That’s hope. The knowledge of what we can do. The assurance that we aren’t alone in the struggle. The realization that even when things get bad, we can persevere. Hope is what we do.
Of course, in this fear-filled world, sometimes hope feels a bit more tenuous. The step-by-step responses aren’t so clear. The way through and out is murky, at best, and completely opaque, at worst. How often have we prayed in frustration, “God, just show me the way. I will do whatever you say, just say something!” No? Just me? Okay then.
We can feel so overwhelmed that we have no idea where to begin. And if we do feel like we get an answer to our prayers,, just a baby step we can take in the right direction, sometimes we are quick to brush it off because it seems too small. “That one little thing? That’s not going to solve these big problems.”
Dana knows this move, too. And she invites us to consider that hope takes a longer view than what we might be used to. She writes, “It’s a paradox—each small task we do…does not remake the world. It makes the present moment better, which is no small thing. But hope infuses those modest acts with meaning, not just to alleviate present suffering, but with the audacious goal to construct a new world.” [4]
She mentions the ancient site at Newgrange in Ireland. This stone tomb was built 5000 years ago - making it older than Stonehenge or the pyramids in Egypt. It’s a giant circle - as wide as a football field and over three stories tall. While the size alone makes it a unique feat of engineering, more impressive is its site orientation. At sunrise on the winter solstice each year, the sun lines up directly with a roofbox so that the interior chamber lights up. It’s absolutely mind-blowing to realize people in the Stone Age built something like this. Archeologists believe it must have taken decades to build the structure, meaning several generations of people passed down knowledge to build something the world had never seen before. Together, bit by bit, they built the impossible. The people who laid the first stones probably didn’t live to see the finished product, but without them, it would not exist.. They didn’t allow the enormity of the task to keep them from getting started. They did what they could and trusted the work would continue.
Hope is what we do.
Hope is taking the long view.
Hope is how we practice our faith in the face of fear.
Hope is a gift from the Spirit and it’s one we pause each Advent to remember. Let us give thanks for it as we insist on hope this season.
Amen.
NOTES
[1] https://historycooperative.org/king-herod-of-judea/
[2]
McKibben Dana, MaryAnn. Hope: A User's Manual (p. 50). (Function). Kindle Edition.
[3] Ibid., 49.
[4] Ibid., 73.
No comments:
Post a Comment