God With Us - ADVENT ONE

The first time I preached an Advent sermon was December 2023. 

It was a difficult task for a young preacher. Not just because I was new, but also because every pastor was preaching in the shadow of terrible violence. First, the devastating massacre of 1200 Israeli civilians by Palestinian militants on October 7. Then the horrific military assault unleashed by the Israeli government on the people of Gaza. By the time I was to give my sermon in early December, the Palestinian death toll was already in the tens of thousands. 

I remember beginning my sermon with this troubling news—that year, there would be no Christmas in Bethlehem. Most years, Christmas in Jesus’ birthplace is a bright, bustling season filled with tourists and pilgrams. But that year, because of security risks, celebrations were cancelled, and the city’s Christian leaders urged others to also scale back their festivities in solidarity with the suffering of their Gazan neighbors. 

I remember that year, feeling constantly overwhelmed by the violence unfolding in the land where Jesus once walked. I was exhausted by the political division tearing at our own country, over the war, and seemingly every single other issue. And I was weary of the noise and consumer culture of American Christmas. 

All of it felt detached from the stories that shaped our faith—the stories of a weary, wounded people longing for liberation. The courage of a vulnerable young woman, unmarried and unexpectedly pregnant. The power of the name given to her newborn child—Emmanuel—God with us. 

None of this felt like true Advent—those weeks leading up to Christmas when we prepare our hearts, minds, and souls for the arrival, the coming, the “advent” of God-with-us. I ached for an Advent season that was more honest, more courageous, more down-to-earth than the one we're most familiar with. 

This year, despite looking forward to much, this season has to offer—time with family, hot chocolate and caroling, gifts and rest—I still feel that same weariness rises in me again as the festive season draws near. I would guess I am not alone. 

And despite announcements of ceasefire deals and politicians eager to claim credit for peace in the Middle East, the future of Gaza—as well as the rest of Palestine and Israel—remains deeply uncertain.

Agnès Callamard, the Secretary General of Amnesty International, put it bluntly this past week: “The ceasefire risks creating a dangerous illusion that life in Gaza is returning to normal. But while Israeli authorities and forces have reduced the scale of their attacks and allowed limited amounts of humanitarian aid into Gaza, the world must not be fooled.” 

The shadow of violence is not gone. 

That is why, as Advent approached this year, I was drawn toward Kelley Nikondeha’s The First Advent in Palestine. She invites us to wrestle with the story anew, grounding it in the place, the people, and the politics of the world of Jesus’ birth. 

She also challenges us to consider how, as she put it, “when we accept sentimental expressions of Christmas hope, and concede to holiday hurry, we miss the original gravity of Advent."

If we skim over the story's depth and darkness, we risk, as she continues, "miss understanding how God’s arrival—how God with us—shapes our ability to see the breaking in of God into a landscape, a people, a narrative—and what the earthly trajectory of the life of Jesus implied then and implies now.” 

How God enters the world matters.  

And as she writes, “To approach advent in its fullness, we must approach it from an uncommon entry point, the darkness of suffering, the struggle of long waiting.” 

So let us return to the story from a different entry point. 

As Nikondeha narrates, before the light of Advent, generations of Jewish people in Judea suffered under one empire after another. Each new power brought yet another wave of occupation. First the Greeks, then the Egyptians, then the Seleucids — each took their turn. And with every empire came more children lost to war, more towns leveled, more rebels crucified.

Advent would eventually break into this traumatized landscape and among these wounded people — but not yet.

Between the world of the Old Testament and the world of the New stood four hundred years. Many Christians were taught that these were the “silent years.” God’s last recorded word in most of our Bibles was in the book of Malachi, a message about the uprooting of evil in the land and God’s coming justice. 

But what is often left out is the truth of Jewish suffering during those long centuries. And as Nikondeha writes, “that suffering is the honest prologue to the first advent. Those four hundred years of empire and captivity when there wasn’t silence at all.”

If you’ve ever read from a Catholic Bible — or if you’ve paid attention in Book Club — you’ll know about the collection of books called the Apocrypha—a collection of writings from the centuries between the Old and New Testaments, including books the 1–2 Maccabees. While different traditions disagree on whether these books are canonical, they still illuminate important parts of history, including the Maccabean revolt.

Jewish struggle gave rise to Advent among ordinary people living at the bottom of the imperial order. The books of 1 and 2 Maccabees describe the devastation and loss of those years, following one family in particular — Mattathias and his five sons — living under occupation by the Seleucid Empire.

In today’s scripture, we hear the story of King Antiochus Epiphanes entering Jerusalem after a victory in Egypt. He rides his horse straight into the Temple, trampling the holy place. There, a sacred fire—the Everlasting Flame—burned as a sign of God’s continual presence with the Jewish people. In his arrogance, the text says, the king snuffed it out and stole the golden lampstand and other temple relics.

You can imagine how Mattathias — a priest, a father, a keeper of tradition — reacted when news of this violation reached his small town. Everything he had taught his sons about who they were and how to live faithfully in the land began to unravel the day the light went out.

Who are we without God’s presence?

The text shows us just how disorienting the grief of the Judeans truly was. It was as if the whole world stopped. Weddings were postponed. Songs of celebration were replaced with laments, echoing the shame and heartbreak of a people violated. 

Using her sanctified imagination, Nikondeha, wonders whether Mattathias might have searched for a word of comfort—for himself, for his family, for his people—in the book of Lamentations.

That book of poetic laments was written after the Babylonian destruction of the Temple in 586 BCE, another moment in history when the Everlasting Light had been extinguished.

In the poem, the ruined city of Jerusalem is personified as a broken woman, bent beneath her shame. Her lament is loud and insistent: “there is none to comfort!” Perhaps, Mattathias found not only solidarity in the cries of his ancestors, but also the seeds of hope they planted. In chapter three the lament takes a sudden turn towards hope, “The steadfast love of the Lord never ceases; his mercies never come to an end; they are new every morning.”

Even in the depths of despair—even in captivity—the ancestors reached toward hope. 

Even without the physical flame reminding them of God’s presence,  the light of hope shone through. 

Two years after he first violated the Jerusalem Temple, King Antiochus returned to finish the destruction of the city. It felt like the Babylonian invasion all over again. Mattathias cries out in anguish, “Why was I born to see this—the ruin of my people, the ruin of the holy city?”

When I look at our own world today—the endless wars, the global rise of fascism, climate change, pandemics, the grinding weight of injustice—I wonder if any of us have whispered a prayer like Mattathias’: Why me? Why now? Why this? Why?

After destroying the city, the king’s soldiers went from town to town, forcing local priests to sacrifice to foreign gods. But when they reached Mattathias, he refused. He would offer worship to no god but YHWH. Confronted with threats of servitude and ordered to comply, Mattathias could no longer simply wait for hope — he seized hold of hope with his own hands.

The soldiers found another man willing to make the offering in his place, but in a surge of righteous rage, Mattathias killed the man and the soldiers. Then he and his sons fled to the hills.

There, in the hills, they began to plot rebellion.

Mattathias died before he could witness the rebellion his five sons waged against the Seleucid Empire, and before he could see the light return to the Temple.

The “Maccabees,” as they came to be known — a name derived from the third son, the lead warrior — fought the imperial army with guerrilla tactics all the way back to Jerusalem. It was a David-and-Goliath story: a small militia standing against the might of empire. 

Tor the first time in centuries, the Jewish people experienced liberation from foreign rule.

The people rejoiced.

The light of the everlasting flame was rekindled. 

Today, their triumph is remembered in the annual celebration of Hanukkah.

But restoring peace and community life after mass trauma and occupation is far more difficult than rebuilding a structure of stone. The surviving sons did not usher in the peace of God as many had hoped. Their reign was marred by power struggles, internal conflict, and the imposition of religious conformity. The cycle of violence continued.

And as we often say: hurt people hurt people.

Nikondeha reminds us that “grief work is the seedbed for Advent hope.” We cannot grasp the fullness of the Advent story unless we are willing to face the brokenness of our world — the ancient wounds we have carried for generations and the fresh ones we feel right now.

But if God could speak comfort and joy into the trauma of our ancestors, then the Advent of hope awaits us too — even in our own fractured world.

In Luke 1:26–38, the angel arrives in Nazareth with a message for a young woman living under Roman occupation. Before Mary hears anything about the child she will bear, she hears these words: “Do not be afraid… for you God’s favor has come upon you,”

It is the same promise spoken to Mattathias’ ancestors in exile, and to every generation since.

 It is the promise that transforms fear into courage, trauma into resilience, simple waiting into expectant hope.  

And it is the promise that transforms people — and transformed people, in turn, transform the world.

As the poet of Lamentations utters, “Great is your faithfulness.”

And again: “The Lord is my portion; therefore I will hope in God.”

This is the kind of hope Advent calls forth — a hope that does not deny grief but grows from it.

And now, after two solemn years, Christmas cheer is finally returning to Bethlehem. Just this past week, the mayor proclaimed: “From the heart of Bethlehem, the birthplace of Christ, the city of peace — once again, we ignite the flame of hope and raise our prayers for peace.”

It is good to see light kindled again in the city of Jesus’ birth. It brings with it joy and economic relief to a battered people. 

And yet — many in Palestine wonder if it is too soon. Because there is pain left to name. There are stories left to tell. Palestinians remained buried in rubble.

Advent does not ask us to rush past any of that, to get the hope part… Advent gives us permission to hold it all — the heartbreak and the hope, the weariness and the wonder. 

Because the God who came to a weary people then is the God who comes to a weary people now.

The God who spoke to Mary, who broke into a world of empires and exiles, still breaks in today—with courage, with comfort, with calls for justice, with the name—Emmanuel: God with us.

Sermon given by Rev. Delaney Piper on 11.30.25.