This week, we enter the season of Advent, the four weeks leading up to the celebration of Christmas. Our theme for Advent 2023 is the question, “How does a weary world rejoice?” from A Sanctified Art.
That title comes from a line in the familiar Christmas hymn, “O Holy Night,” and over the next few weeks, we will explore through music, art, prayer, and devotions how we receive the joy of Christmas—the joy of Jesus’ birth, the joy of God coming into our world and dwelling with us—in the midst of all the brokenness and hurt in this weary world.
In this season, we will celebrate yet again the good news that no matter how weary we are, no matter how overwhelmed we might feel; even as we experience grief, grow older, and continue to wait, there is hope. Our waiting is not forever. God is at work, even as we wait. Our joy is rooted in the truth that we belong to God. In the midst of weariness, there is also reason to rejoice.
We begin this Sunday with the story of Zechariah, the wife of Elizabeth and father of John the Baptist. May God bless you with joy in this season of waiting and preparing.
Today’s Scripture readings are Isaiah 64:1-9; Psalm 80:1-7, 17-19; and Luke 1:1-23. This sermon has some similarities to my 2017 Advent 1 sermon on the same texts as well as a midweek Advent sermon I did on Zechariah in 2020. Here’s the livestream and sermon audio.
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Did you hear the good news this week? In exchange for Israel releasing 78 Palestinian prisoners—all women and children—Hamas has so far released 41 of the hostages they’d taken in last month’s attacks. And there is at least a temporary cease-fire in Gaza.
It is good news. And yet—there are still children being held as hostages. One is a girl named Avigail, who turned four on Friday, and doesn’t yet know she’s an orphan. There are still over 13,000 people dead in Gaza. There are still 1,200 Israeli’s dead from the initial attacks. There are around 1.7 million people displaced by the war.
There is plenty wrong in this world.
There is still fighting in Ukraine, with no end in sight. I read a heartbreaking story this week with the headline, “He proposed in a bomb shelter. They died together in a Russian strike.” That tells you pretty much everything you need to know. His name was Danylo Kovalenko, age 22, and she was Diana Haidukova, age 19.
Do you get tired of hearing the bad news? Trying to keep up with politics built on outrage and fear is tiring. Living during a global climate crisis makes us all weary. People in our congregation are dealing with long-term medical issues, worrying about making ends meet, grieving family members.
This world is weary. In the reading from Isaiah, the prophet pleads with God, “O that you would tear open the heavens and come down, so that the mountains would quake at your presence.”
As we gather today, we share in that longing. We are weary of waiting. We beg for God to tear open the heavens and come down, to get involved in this world, to fix what is broken.
Welcome to Advent.
This Advent, we ask the question, “How does a weary world rejoice?” How do we reconcile the brokenness in this world with the joy of Christmas? Advent is about preparation, waiting for God to act. And we know what we are waiting for, because we know God has acted.
In light of everything going on, the patriarchs and heads of the Christian churches in Jerusalem have issued a statement calling upon their congregations to stand strong with those facing afflictions by this year foregoing any unnecessarily festive activities in their Christmas celebrations, and instead, to focus on the spiritual meaning of Christmas and to pray for peace. This is a season of joy, but joy is not a standalone emotion; true, authentic joy does not hide from the realities of the world.
Christmas is about the good news that God has entered this weary world in the person of Jesus Christ. God has come to be with us in the brokenness, in the pain and suffering. There is still plenty wrong in this world, and we can wonder why God hasn’t fixed everything yet, but the promise of Christmas, the promise we prepare for in Advent, is that God has entered this world to be with us.
The promise is that God has acted, and God is acting, and God is not done acting.
Each week of this series, we’ll have some pieces of art connected to the theme to consider. The first piece this week is by Lisle Gwynn Garrity, inspired by the Psalm we read together, Psalm 80.
In this image, she illustrates God hearing our plea, “Restore us, O God; let your face shine, that we may be saved.” Rev. Garrity depicts God as a holy parent, weeping over the hurt and brokenness in creation, weeping over the ways we who are made in God’s image turn to violence and destruction.
And I don’t know if you can see it—the pictures are also in the devotional book you’ll get today and they’re taped up outside the sanctuary, so you can look closer—but in this picture, the tears are doves, representing the Holy Spirit sent into the world, released to bring hope and healing, “flapping their wings into every desperate corner.” God is present and acting.
How does a weary world rejoice?
Part of it is by acknowledging our weariness—that’s today’s theme. To authentically experience joy, we need to face the brokenness, and we need to acknowledge some of us have faced the brokenness for a long time.
This Advent, we’re focusing on Luke’s telling of the Christmas story. Our story today—Luke’s orderly account of the Jesus story—starts in the Roman Empire. It’s a time when people were oppressed, a time when it was clear the world was broken. Of course, the story could start anywhere.
There are many times in history when people have suffered, when people have waited for God to act, when people have wondered where God is.
I think we’re all familiar with the story with Mary and Joseph and a stable in Bethlehem, but the Christmas event, according to Luke, is more than just Mary and Joseph’s story. The first person we meet is a man named Zechariah, a Levite, married to a woman named Elizabeth.
What’s a Levite, you ask? Well, hundreds of years earlier God set aside one of the 12 tribes of Israel to be the priests.
But since they’re an entire tribe, they don’t all need to serve at the temple at once. 1st Chronicles divides up the priestly families, including Zechariah’s ancestor Abijah, and they rotate when they go to the temple and serve.
So Zechariah is a priest, but only part time. It’s sort of like being in the army reserves or something. He serves two weeks a year.
This year when he’s on duty, he is chosen by lot to enter the sanctuary and offer incense, and as he goes into the sanctuary, he encounters an angel. The angel says he and his wife are going to have a child, who they are to name John, and who will “make ready a people prepared for the Lord.”
Now, Luke doesn’t tell us if Zechariah and Elizabeth are particularly trying to have children—this is not the Hebrew Bible story of Hannah desperately crying out to God for a child—but in the culture of the day, children are assumed to be sign of God’s blessing, so getting into old age without children is a problem. There’s an implication that maybe they’ve done something wrong, maybe God is displeased with them.
There might be some shame, perhaps some feelings of weariness from trying over and over and not having children. Some of us have lived that journey. Or perhaps there’s weariness just from not meeting the expectations of society.
Maybe you’ve experienced that kind of weariness, where people have certain expectations, and you just don’t quite meet them. Maybe it’s your parents, hopes and dreams they had for you, or wondering after they’re gone if they’d be proud of who you are now. Maybe it’s friends, or coworkers.
Or maybe society in general—there are these cultural expectations out there of what success looks like, and often that picture is both unobtainable and ultimately unfulfilling. Part of growing up is learning you can’t please everyone all the time, but it’s still tiring when you don’t live up to what people expect.
So there’s a lot Zechariah could be feeling as he goes alone into the temple, but I wonder what he’s expecting. Lauren Wright Pittman illustrates this story with a painting of Zechariah. In her artist statement, she writes:
“Zechariah is dressed in a breastpiece, ephod, robe, checkered tunic, turban, and sash, just as the book of Exodus specifies. In my painting, gold, blue, purple, and crimson yarns are woven together and bejeweled with engraved stones which bear the names of the sons of Israel (Exodus 28:4).
Zechariah stands in the Holy Place wearing the most meticulous of garments. Does he expect to encounter the divine? Or is he just going through the motions, lighting the incense as an all-too-familiar scent fills the air?”
I wonder about that for us too. We come to this season of Advent talking about waiting and preparing for Jesus’ birth, but do we expect Jesus to show up? Are we looking for God to act in this broken world, to interrupt our weariness? Or do we merely go through the motions? Sometimes, maybe going through the motions is in itself an act of faith.
But on this occasion, in this moment, God shows up. God is acting in a tangible way, interrupting Zechariah’s story, changing where he thought his life was headed. An angel shows up with a message from God.
Pittman continues, “In this image, I decided to depict the angel as smoke from the altar of incense. Zechariah has one hand over his mouth in fear and disbelief, while his other hand cradles the notion—not yet hope—of his son’s existence.”
The angel has good news for Zechariah. But it’s so unexpected, so impossible, that he can’t believe it, at least not yet. He is weary—perhaps hopeful as well—but certainly weary, pointing out that he is an old man, and his wife, as he so delicately puts it, is “getting on in years.”
He wants to know how the angel’s promise is possible—a perfectly reasonable question, by the way—and because he does not believe, Gabriel strikes him mute, forcing him into silence to consider what God is doing.
I love the detail in verse 21. It says, “Meanwhile the people were waiting for Zechariah and wondering at his delay in the sanctuary.” For Zechariah, this is the most sacred, profound moment of his life, and yet for everyone else, it’s just a normal morning at the temple. The people aren’t expecting God to be up to anything. They’re just weary of waiting, wondering what’s taking so long.
Perhaps as we look around at the world, we wonder the same thing.
Pittman writes:
“Each Advent we practice rejoicing in a hope that is promised but not yet realized in a world that feels like it is breaking apart in every way. How does a weary world rejoice? I don’t know. But, I think I’ll start with acknowledging my weariness, finding joy in connection, allowing myself to be amazed, singing stories of hope, making room, rooting myself in ritual, and trusting in my belovedness.”
In the midst of all that’s wrong in this world, we practice joy. We wait, clinging to hope. We trust the promise that death does not get the last word.
We don’t ignore the brokenness for some sort of superficial happiness; rather, we have the audacity to proclaim in faith that brokenness is not the end of the story. In this weary world, God is at work. God is acting.
Welcome to Advent. Come quickly, Lord Jesus. Amen