Scripture Readings: Lamentations 3: 46-57 and Luke 2: 1-5
Below is a rough transcript of Pastor Heather's sermon on November 30, 2025, the First Sunday of Advent.
So often, when we come to this season, we rush right to the pretty part. We hurry to the lights, the music, the cookies, and the sweet, gentle image of a newborn baby placed in a manger. We love the soft glow of Christmas. But Advent is not meant to be only soft, sentimental, or sweet. Advent begins in the dark.
Theologian and author Kellie Nikondeha reminds us that if we don’t engage the darkness—if we don’t tell the truth about the brokenness of the world—then we can’t fully experience Advent. Because Advent is not escapism. Advent is a protest. Advent is a refusal to ignore the world as it is. Advent is a declaration of hope in spite of the darkness.
So this Advent, we’re going to do just that. We’re going to look honestly at the world—both the world Jesus was born into and the world we are living in today. And today we begin by remembering some of the Jewish history that shaped the world of Jesus’ time.
Through the Hebrew Bible, we hear again and again how the Israelites—God’s people—were pushed out of their lands, conquered, occupied, enslaved, or oppressed. And then, at the end of what we call the Old Testament, the story seems to stop. In Protestant Bibles there are roughly 400 years of silence between the last prophet and the birth of Jesus. But those years were anything but silent.
Those stories are preserved in other Christian traditions—in the Apocrypha. Catholic and Orthodox Bibles include them, because in the Jewish tradition these stories mattered. They help us understand what the people of Jesus’ time had lived through.
So let’s tell that story.
After the Jewish people returned from exile in Babylon, they rebuilt the Temple and tried to rebuild their life with God—this time under Persian rule. But the world changed again when Alexander the Great swept through the region, spreading Greek culture, language, and influence everywhere he went.
When Alexander died, his empire fractured, and Judea was caught between rival Greek kingdoms. Some Jewish people blended in with the new Greek customs; others feared their faith and identity were slipping away. This tension sits in the background of many of the stories found in the Apocrypha.
Everything changed under a Seleucid king named Antiochus IV Epiphanes, who was determined to force everyone in his empire to live like Greeks. He outlawed Jewish practices. He desecrated the Temple. He snuffed out the eternal flame—the flame that symbolized God’s constant presence with the people. He even carried off the golden lampstand as his personal treasure.
Two years later, he returned and completely destroyed the Temple. He sacrificed pigs—an unclean animal—on the altar. It was an act of humiliation and domination meant to crush the people’s spirit.
But instead, something else happened. A priest named Mattathias and his sons—especially Judas, whom we know as Judas Maccabeus—rose up in revolt that we know today as the Maccabean Revolt. Against all odds, they pushed out the Seleucid armies, reclaimed Jerusalem, and rebuilt the Temple. The festival of Hanukkah celebrates that moment—when the flame that had been snuffed out was rekindled.
For a brief time, the Jewish people lived under their own kings again—the Hasmoneans. But eventually, political division and infighting weakened them, and Rome stepped in to take control.
That brings us right to the world Jesus was born into.
And if the Seleucids were awful, the rulers of Jesus’ day were not much better.
Herod the Great—yes, that Herod—wasn’t even born Jewish. He married into the Maccabean family to gain legitimacy. He rebuilt parts of the Temple to try to win the people over. But nothing could erase his brutality. He executed every remaining Maccabean, including his own wife, so that no one could threaten his throne. He kept a massive private militia because he was so deeply hated.
He launched huge, lavish building projects—not for the good of the people, but to impress Caesar and elevate his own name.
And who paid for it?
The people.
The census that was happening right before Jesus was born was not some innocent effort to get an accurate population number. It was a tax assessment. It was Herod calculating how much more money he could squeeze out of people already living on the edge.
Families were forced to take out loans just to keep their ancestral land. If they couldn’t pay those loans back, they lost everything. They were enslaved or turned into tenant farmers on land that had belonged to their families for generations.
This is the world Jesus was born into.
A world longing for deliverance.
A world desperate for hope.
A world praying for a Messiah who would overthrow their oppressors with military might.
And as we think about the darkness and brokenness of Jesus’ world, we need to acknowledge something: our world is not much better.
We live in a world where the poor grow poorer while the rich grow richer.
Where political leaders still cling to power and money at any cost.
Where people go hungry or live without clean water or safe housing.
Where homes and hospitals and schools are bombed.
Where people live in fear because of the color of their skin, their nationality, or who they love.
Where basic medical care is still out of reach for millions.
Where oppression—old and new—still crushes the vulnerable.
For so many, the hope they hold is not a soft, warm, candlelit hope.
It is a hope born from suffering.
A hope shaped by longing.
A hope that echoes the prayers of the Jewish people in Jesus’ day:
“God, come. Please come. We cannot bear this alone.”
And this is why Advent matters so much.
The first Advent—the birth of Jesus—was God answering a people crying out from the depths. Jesus’ birth was not sentimental. It was revolutionary. God entered a world full of fear, oppression, injustice, and violence—and declared that none of it would have the final word.
And Advent continues to be God’s call for us—not just to celebrate hope, but to participate in it. To make hope real for others. To carry light into the darkness. To refuse to let despair be the story of our world.
Our hope has come.
Our hope is with us.
Our hope is yet to come.
For God is with us—here, now, and always.
Amen.
