Not the Way We Expect

Welcome to Advent and the beginning of the story that changed the world - and will change your life

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Transcript

Sermons from 

Mission Hills UCC

San Diego, California

Rev. Dr. David Bahr

david.bahr@missionhillsucc.org

November 30, 2025

“Not the Way We Expect”

Luke 1: 5-13 – Common English Bible

During the rule of King Herod of Judea there was a priest named Zechariah who belonged to the priestly division of Abijah. His wife Elizabeth was a descendant of Aaron. 6 They were both righteous before God, blameless in their observance of all the Lord’s commandments and regulations. 7 They had no children because Elizabeth was unable to become pregnant and they both were very old. 8 One day Zechariah was serving as a priest before God because his priestly division was on duty. 9 Following the customs of priestly service, he was chosen by lottery to go into the Lord’s sanctuary and burn incense. 10 All the people who gathered to worship were praying outside during this hour of incense offering. 11 An angel from the Lord appeared to him, standing to the right of the altar of incense. 12 When Zechariah saw the angel, he was startled and overcome with fear. 13 The angel said, “Don’t be afraid, Zechariah. Your prayers have been heard. Your wife Elizabeth will give birth to your son and you must name him John.

“During the rule of King Herod in Judea.” Luke begins with this simple line to place the birth of Jesus inside a real world.  Not a peaceful backdrop, but a time of survival for people living under the repressive Roman empire. Herod was Jewish but was installed by Rome – a reminder that empire sometimes works through insiders who will maintain oppression to secure their own power. 

And as scholar Obery M. Hendricks writes, “The only way he could continue to rule was by continually currying Roman favor by funneling as much wealth to Rome as possible through the callous economic exploitation and homicidal repression of his own people for his own gain.”  This was the world of Jesus’ birth.

“During the rule of King Herod in Judea” is not a random historical detail. Luke is telling us to not romanticize the story. It is a deliberate way to describe the nightmare people were living through – and therefore invites us to enter the world of Jesus. A world loud with threats.  A world where hope felt fragile. A story that begins with two ordinary people living quiet, faithful lives and a prayer they left behind long ago.  

Zechariah and Elizabeth were righteous, scripture says, which simply means the kind of people who did what was right even when no one was watching.

And Luke makes a point of saying they were old. Old enough that the prayers of their youth were distant memories – hopes that had faded not in bitterness, but in quiet acceptance. Old enough to stop expecting God to begin anything new.

And then Zechariah hit the lottery.  Not a wad of cash but a once in a lifetime experience.  Zechariah was a priest, not because he felt a special calling, but because it was the family business. Every son in the line of Levi became a priest. There were thousands of them divided into groups and twice a year each group served at the Temple. But entering the inner holiest of holies to burn incense was something a priest might do only once in a lifetime. They were chosen by lot, like drawing the shortest stick, and that day, finally, Zechariah’s name was called.

You can imagine the mix of joy and reverence he felt the moment he entered. He expected to be alone with his thoughts and his prayers. He expected silence. Instead he was met by an intruder. He expected ritual but received an unexpected visit that upended the life he’d settled into – or settled for. 

He looked up and Gabriel stood beside him.  Zechariah wasn’t just startled. He was afraid. And Luke uses a strong word to describe it: Tarassó – the kind of fear that shakes you to the core.

 The first words Gabriel spoke were “Do not be afraid.” And then added, “Your prayer has been heard.”

He had to think. What prayer? What had he been praying for lately? Peace – yes. An end to Herod’s cruelty – absolutely. Someone to overthrow this repressive regime and let the people breathe again? Yes, although he certainly hadn’t prayed that one out loud. 

But Gabriel named a long-buried prayer left behind.  Something he had forgotten he once prayed. “Your wife Elizabeth will bear a son.”  He asked politely, “How can I be sure of this.” and explained, “My wife and I are obviously very old.”

This is how Luke’s story begins. During the tyrannical rule of the paranoid King Herod, the angel declared, your prayer has been heard. And set in motion all the other prayers he carried.  His prayer for peace. His prayer for an end to all oppression. Just not the way anyone would ever expect.

Scripture is never just ancient history.  People still face Herodian systems that want them silent and afraid.  How we respond to those systems in ways they don’t expect makes me think of the story of Prathia Hall. 

She was born in Philadelphia in 1940. People often imagine the North as more open, more tolerant, more fair. But she grew up knowing that racism was not a Southern problem. It was an American problem.

Her family faced restrictions on where they could live. Her schools were technically integrated, but the opportunities were not equal. Better books and safer buildings were found in other neighborhoods. She learned Philadelphia had a southern accent too.

Her father was a Baptist preacher and her mother was a schoolteacher. Their example shaped her. They taught her that every person has worth – that she has worth. They taught her that faith must be lived, not just believed. And so, barely 20 years old, she joined the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee and went south to become a field secretary. That meant she went into some of the most dangerous rural counties to help register Black voters. She walked roads where people were threatened and sat at kitchen tables listening to the fears of families. She believed their voices mattered.

She was soft-spoken and young in a movement often dominated by assertive men. But she was rooted. She prayed often. She relied on Scripture and understood nonviolence not just as a strategy but as a way of life.

In 1962, in Southwest Georgia where she was stationed, a church that hosted voter registration meetings was burned down by white supremacists. The next day gathering by the ruins, people were afraid which, of course, was the point. Fear is what those who burn churches down want.  But Prathia did what they didn’t expect. 

With the ground still covered in smoldering ash under charred rafters, she stepped forward and in her soft voice prayed, “I have a dream.” A year before the famous speech in Washington. Prathia spoke quietly with defiant words.  She prayed for the world she believed God wanted. Peace, an end to cruelty, and an end to the repression of Herod wanna-bes. Some say Dr. King carried her prayer and her words with him to the Lincoln Memorial.

But what matters most is what she did in that moment. Whatever fear she must have felt, Prathia stepped forward. Her courage helps us see what Advent is really asking of us.  Will fear stop us, or will we stand in the ashes and pray for a world on earth as it is in heaven.

Luke used the word Tarasso – a deep, life-shattering fear. The kind that shakes a person to the core. But Jesus also speaks of another kind of fear in John’s Gospel when he says, “Let not your hearts be troubled, and do not be afraid.” Here he uses the word deiliaó. Deiliaó means a shrinking of the heart, the kind of fear that diminishes courage and keeps us small.

For example:

• The fear that keeps someone from asking for help because they do not want to be a burden.
 • The kind of fear that keeps us from trying again because it is safer not to hope at all.

Advent hope meets us in both kinds of fear – the kind of fear that tries to shrink us and the kind of fear that shakes us to the core.

For example:
 • The fear that hits when the doctor calls and says, “We need to talk.”

This is not abstract. 

• Some of you came in today carrying fear in your chest. 
• Some of you are facing decisions you never sought. 
• Some are waiting for test results, 
• or holding your family together with everything you have, 
• or grieving something you cannot get back.

Advent begins there.

And so, enter Advent hope.  And what is that? In her book Hope: A User’s Manual, MaryAnn McKibben Dana writes that hope is not pretending everything is fine. 

• Hope is not toxic positivity and does not promise success. 
• Hope is a practice, a discipline that grows out of honesty, not denial. 
• Hope is the gift that that arrives when fear tells us to shrink.  
• Hope is what shows up when fear shakes us to the bone. 

We do not live under anything as depraved as Rome, but we do understand the feeling of watching helplessly in the face of leaders who think cruelty is strategy.  We understand what it is to carry hope on a thin string.  And so, be encouraged that the story of Jesus didn’t begin, “Once upon a time in the quaint village of Nazareth, a mom and a dad who very much loved each other had a baby boy who changed the course of human history.”

Advent arrives in the midst of our King Herod sized fears.  Zechariah was afraid.  His whole life had taught him to expect disappointment, to lower his hopes, to pray smaller prayers. Yet his fear was not a failure. It was the doorway. The beginning of a transformation he did not see coming, for him and Elizabeth, for the world, and for us even now.

Because the question is not how we eliminate fear. The question is what God can awaken in us, breaking into the prayers we barely remember praying, the ones we buried in our past, and invites us to name our fear honestly and still leave room for hope that arrives in ways we do not expect.

Through prayers spoken in the ashes, with neighbors standing together, with unexpected courage rising in ordinary people, with a whisper in the dark that says: Do not be afraid. I hear your prayer.

Now watch your world change.