Today is the first of four Sundays of Advent, a liturgical season that dates back to the fourth century, when it was observed as a period of fasting and preparation for new Christians to be baptized at Epiphany. The period was also known as St. Martin’s Lent, a time of prayer, preparation, and penance. By the sixth century, the Roman Church linked Advent to the coming of Christ, and it developed into a season of preparation for Christmas and the anticipation of the Second Coming. Rev. Ann Lantz is the pastor of the Estes Park United Methodist Church.
Luke’s gospel doesn’t start with angels singing or shepherds running to a manger. It begins with a political headline: “In the time of Herod, king of Judea…”
It’s Luke’s way of telling us that the story of Christ begins not in an easy way, but in reality. And Herod’s reality wasn’t pretty. His world was shaped by fear and by power concentrated in the hands of a few, by brutal leadership, by people taxed and exhausted, and by a deep longing for change with no clear path forward.
It was into that world that God chose to speak. Not into peace, but into chaos. Not into safety, but into fear. Hope, Luke insists, doesn’t wait for perfect conditions. It grows where it’s needed most.
That’s where we meet Zechariah and Elizabeth. They were faithful, steady people living through difficult times. They had prayed for a child for years, with seemingly no response. They had done everything right, but life hadn’t worked out the way they hoped.
It’s a familiar story for many of us. We pray. We try. We hope. And sometimes the answers don’t come.
Then one day, in the middle of an ordinary act of worship, an angel appears beside Zechariah and speaks the words that echo through the entire Advent story: “Do not be afraid.”
It is a message that breaks through both disappointment and doubt. The angel assures Zechariah that God has been listening all along. Hope, this story reminds us, isn’t pretending things are fine. Hope is trusting that God is still moving, even when the world feels unsteady.
Zechariah, understandably, struggles with this promise. Years of waiting make it hard for him to believe. And in response, the angel gives him silence. The silence wasn’t punishment, but an invitation. A pause long enough for hope to grow again.
Advent invites us into that same kind of waiting. Not the frantic waiting of holiday lists and calendars full of events, but a deeper, quieter waiting. A waiting that trusts God’s work even when we can’t yet see it.
When Elizabeth finally conceives, she says simply, “This is what the Lord has done for me.” In a fearful and chaotic world, she discovers that God has seen her. God has remembered her.
Hope is not abstract. It is personal. It is the assurance that even now, in the time of Herod, and in the time of everything that weighs on us, God is at work.
We know our own “time of…” all too well. In the time of divisions and violence. In the time of climate worry and political strain. In the time of grief, pressure, or exhaustion.
And yet Advent declares that God enters these very realities. And God does not wait until after the world is fixed, but because it is not.
This first Sunday of Advent, it is the candle of hope we light in a world still full of fear. But it flickers on purpose. It stands as a small, stubborn testimony that love is stronger than fear, and that light still shines in the darkness.
So as this Advent season begins, we join Zechariah in our watching and waiting—maybe uncertain, maybe weary, yet still expectant.
Because even now, the angel’s whisper reaches us: “Do not be afraid. Your prayer has been heard.”
Hope is not wishful thinking. Hope is trust. Trust that God is coming into this world, into this moment, into these lives.
And we dare to say: We will not be afraid. We will be people of hope. We will watch, wait, and walk in the light of the Lord.
Estes Park United Methodist Church, 1509 Fish Hatchery Rd., Estes Park, Colo. Worship is at 9:45 a.m. on Sundays. All are welcome. Inclusive. Open-hearted. Fully affirming because every person is a beloved child of God.