O come, O come, Immanuel 

And ransom your Jerusalem 

Who mourns in lonely exile here,

Until the Son of God appears

Rejoice, rejoice, Immanuel 

Who comfort thee in war-torn land.  

For whom and for what do we hope as this Advent turns to Christmas?

Last Sunday, Rev. Mark guided us to the hem of T.S. Elliot’s lyric in the Four Quartets: “In waiting, we are already being changed by the hope we are waiting for.” The state of waiting is an exercise of prophetic preparedness where we turn in the masks we believe save us and trade them for flesh where the Holy One greets us. To pray as we wait is an act of hope because it articulates belief in something beyond what we see. Advent asks us to return to our bodies as Mary attuned to her body in a war-torn country. In these hours before Christmas, can we wait a little longer? Can we risk remaining in the womb’s darkness and feel the weight of what we have carried to full term this Advent? 

Before Advent draws to a close and we attempt to welcome Christmas in these troubling times, I invite you to remember where you were in Advent’s opening hours on December 3rd. What were you carrying then? At the beginning of this season of expectation, what was the quality of your hope? What were you celebrating? For whom or for what were you praying? Please join me in a few moments of silence now and consider what we have carried this Advent.

As we cast our attention now to this morning in the hushed and heavy hours just before birth, how do we pray now? Can we pray at all? Where do we begin and find meaning as we open our hearts to God incarnate on this hinge of Advent into Christmas?  As Shadia Qubti, a Palestinian theologian raised in Nazareth, published in Cornerstone, a journal featuring Palestinian liberation theology, expressed, “The theological questions crying out this Advent and Christmas are the same as they were in in the Nakba of 1948: “Where are you, God? Why have you forsaken us? For how long, O Lord, will you let the suffering continue?” (Cornerstone, Issue 86, Christmas 2023, 2). 

 Maybe, if we can remember that the circumstances around Jesus’s birth were risky, we can begin to imagine what it might look like to pray from the site of Jesus’s Palestinian body. Advent is apocalyptic because, as the word suggests, it uncovers. Just as we have witnessed the horrors of genocide and colonial violence persist in Gaza and the West Bank, just as we have witnessed violence rending the homeland of the Holy Land to pieces, can we imagine the wonder of Jesus arriving into such circumstances? Because he did. The context in which Jesus arrived at the close of the first Advent is not unlike today’s.  Herod murdered first-born male children out of jealousy and fear for maintaining his power, and today, according to Gaza’s Ministry of Health, more than 20,000 people have been murdered by the Israeli military over the last 10 weeks since the terrors began on Oct. 7th. 70% of those killed have been women and children, and the US, despite the UN’s efforts to sustain an immediate ceasefire and provide substantial aid to Gaza, has vetoed such peace-making humanitarian efforts and continues to pour money and military aid into Israel. We have walked through Advent as witnesses to genocide in Palestine, genocide of a people from whom our Savior, Christ, takes flesh. As icon-maker Kelly Latimore expressed on Thursday, the longest night we know as the Winter Solstice: the prophetic message of Advent and the nativity at Christmas is “Christ in the Rubble. If Jesus were born today, he would be born ‘under the rubble.’” How are we to pray in the wake? How are we to seek holiness and practice justice now? Perhaps we are invited to gaze upon Christ under the rubble this Advent. The one who saves comes as a Jewish Palestinian child from the body of a Jewish-Palestinian woman— the two persons most vulnerable to murder carried out by imperial power today. 

If Jesus were born in Bethlehem today, the manager would have been crushed and covered with rubble. The star of David would have been shrouded with smoke. The ash would have choked out the animals. Mary’s status as an unmarried, pregnant refugee Palestinian Jewish woman would have made this birth dangerous (more dangerous than it already was in antiquity). And in the foreboding hours before birth, the hours in which we find ourselves this morning, the holy family would have been migrating and waiting—wading deep into the tenuous hope that Christ would come, all the while not knowing how or when or what would change, if anything, when Advent ended. The first Christmas was not a given, it was but a prayer on the lips of a diasporic family in the Middle East. 

We are given the reading for 2 Samuel alongside Luke’s account of the nativity to remind us of Christ’s genealogy. As a descendant of David, the promises given to David are fulfilled in Christ and offered to a new to us this Advent. “Therefore, thus you shall say to my servant David: “Thus says the Lord of hosts: I took you from the pasture, from following the sheep to be prince over my people; and I have been with you wherever you went, and have cut off all your enemies from before you…and I will appoint a place for my people…I will plant them..and give them rest from all their enemies.” (2 Samuel 7:1-11, 16). All the people of the Holy Land are God’s own, and God promises to give them a home without affliction or disturbance where they can rest from their enemies. This is the promise we remember in Advent as we anticipate Christmas. We pray by remembering God’s promises.

Of course, it feels vulnerable to pray for a seemingly utopian reality like this while witnessing mass death in Palestine. God does not wait to be with us until we are fearless; rather, God still comes in the rubble—while the war is ongoing, while the world is still aching, and while the oppressed are still longing for freedom. This incarnation of Christ at the manger under the rubble allows us to bring our feeble hope to Christ like a gift. Even if feeble, expressing faith in God-With-Us amid mass death is a revolutionary act. An honest prayer from feeble hope in Christmas Advent is enough. 

Where do we find ourselves in this ancient story, remembered anew this season? I wonder if part of what we are invited to consider is whether there can be an Advent or incarnation in the nativity without vulnerability first. It seems to me that there can be no nativity without risk. Similarly, I wonder if we are invited to remember as we pray that liberation, God-with-us, came in the form of a Palestinian child. How can we ponder this and stay with this revelation this Advent? This Christmas? To come close to Christ this season is to come close to the Palestinian refugee mother without a bed, to come close to the Palestinian child without a hospital room in which to be birthed. 

Of Luke’s Gospel account of the nativity, Shadia Qubti, a Palestinian theologian raised in Nazareth, makes space for our fears to exist as we attempt to put our faith in the power and promise of God-With-Us. She writes, “In the Lukan nativity account, the angels tell the shepherds, go and find a child wrapped in bands of cloth lying in a manger (2:13). As Advent unfolds in the Holy Land this year, Palestinians have found many babies wrapped in bands of cloth pulled from the rubble. Some estimate that 6,000 children have died in Gaza so far.” (Ibid, 4). She intones a crucial question for us to bear now:  “As a Palestinian Christian, I ask: Is it enough to know it will be better?”  In other words, is the promise of the kingdom enough to sustain those forced under the rubble in the Holy Land now? ”Immanuel— God-With-Us— arrived as a Palestinian child. 

It seems a strange and revolutionary act to rejoice in circumstances like this. And yet, Mary teaches us how to worship in the apocalypse.  How can our souls authentically proclaim with Mary the greatness of the Lord? What promise makes our spirits rejoice in Advents like this?  Mary’s first reaction to the possibility of the incarnation is instructive. Her first response was not confidence in God’s promise but confusion. She was “perplexed at pondering what kind of greeting this could be.” We can learn from this that Mary accepted God’s invitation to bear Christ into the world while still afraid. Each actor in the stories of Advent and Christmas–Mary, Joseph, Zechariah, the magi, the shepherds– witnessed Christ as Messiah while they were afraid and perplexed. We too, can take the risk to testify to Christ in our midst while we are afraid and confused by what kind of message it might be. Of course, we have more of the story than the actors in the first nativity. We know Christ’s coming is good news that liberates the oppressed.

Luke’s account of the birth of Jesus in Bethlehem is one of reversals: power structures are inverted, and persons marginalized by their ethnos and social positions speak and profess to Christ’s presence. These actors become the key witnesses who joyfully confess, “Christ has brought down the powerful from their thrones and lifted up the lowly.” (Luke 1:52). 

Mary shows us how to pray sincerely amid bracing uncertainty as we anticipate Christmas. She responds to the mysterious revelation: “Here I am…let it be with me according to your word.” May we send ourselves out as witnesses to God’s word of presence and justice this Christmas. May we remember that Christ comes to us through Mary’s vulnerable body as Christ arrives as a Palestinian child under the rubble. May we remember that we need Christ to come, and Christ chooses to come as a Palestinian. Can we allow this birthing to be a cleaving that reconstitutes our hope? In the womb’s darkness at full term, can we touch God and trust God, knowing as my friend Madeleine said just before her child came like an advent into the world: “It is up to them now. We can only wait and trust they know their way in the dark.”

In Advent, we practice rejoicing as resistance. In our fear and horror, we remember, with the oppressed, God’s promises for liberation and home. Palestinian theologian from Jerusalem, Samuel Munayer, writes, “By dialectically interpreting the nativity story with the reality of Palestine, specifically Gaza, we can understand the true meaning of the nativity and how its revolutionary message manifests today in Palestine.” (Samuel Munayer, Cornerstone, 2). We can grieve the war-torn world as we anticipate a new one. We can long for liberation as we protest oppression. We can rejoice with Mary and hold the fear she must have felt in her body as she readied herself for birth in Bethlehem. We carry all of these testimonies— the birthdays and the death certificates—the births and the burials; the releases of hostages and the bombings of homelands— to a full term in Advent. The nativity was revolutionary because Immanuel came anyway. 

This morning, we pray for courage to embrace mystery because in embracing mystery, we exercise humility and acknowledge our need for God’s mercy.  

We pray for discernment because, with discerning hearts, we resist using our faith to act out our fears. We pray for justice to come speedily because in praying for justice, we position ourselves with the oppressed from whom freedom is still a hope. 

And we pray for rest to come for those whose song of protest is weary in their throats because in praying for rest, we remember our inheritance in David, which arrives in the Palestinian body of the Christ child. 

And we pray for a spirit that can rejoice while we grieve because in rejoicing, we claim the advent of our faith in birth and disarm mass death. 

“In waiting, we are already being changed by the hope we are waiting for.” (T.S. Elliot, Four Quartets) 

May we welcome the shortening darkness and await the light with terror and hope, trusting God is with us till the end.

Amen.