We're in the first week of Advent, and Sunday's theme is still spinning around my head. "In the time of Herod, we long for God to break in."
I hope you will peruse this season's devotional booklet (see link below). In the reflection for the first week of Advent it says:
"In the time of Herod... With these words, Luke’s gospel grounds the birth of Jesus in a world shaped by violence, occupation, and fear. This was no golden age of peace or spiritual clarity – it was a time of survival under empire. The Roman appointed ruler of Judea, governed with paranoia and cruelty. His power, secured through imperial alliance, was maintained by coercion, surveillance, and brutality. Luke situates the story of Jesus within these political realities. His gospel is not only spiritual, but political – resistance in the face of empire."
This morning as I sat drinking my tea, the bright snowy world sparkling outside, my dog dozing at my feet after eating his breakfast... the first thing I encountered when I opened the news on my phone was a December 2 video of the President of the United States saying at the end of a Cabinet meeting: "I don't want them in our country. Their country is no good for a reason. Their country stinks... Our country is at a tipping point. We could go bad. We could go one way or the other. And we're going to go the wrong way if we keep taking in garbage into our country." And while not part of the video, the President continued: "Ilhan Omar is garbage. She's garbage. Her friends are garbage..." BC Historian Heather Cox Richardson commented that then "The Cabinet appeared to applaud, although it is not clear whether they were agreeing or hoping to stop him from talking like a Nazi."
I feel uncomfortable just typing those words, but I think it is important that we hear them - so that we do not get used to such speech, and so it can shock and discomfort us. I think it is crucial that as Christians we hold fast to our values of loving our neighbors and welcoming strangers and praying for our enemies. I think it is important to remember that Jesus was born "in the time of Herod", a time of occupation and brutality. Because Advent is more than a countdown to gift-giving and carol-singing. It is awaiting the redemption of the world. It is trusting the in-breaking of God. It is holding onto hope in the midst of cruelty and fear.
