First Sunday of Advent

In the Time of Herod, We Long for God to Break In

📃 Worship Guide

📖 Readings: Lamentations 3: 55-57; Luke 1:5-13

Both Luke and Matthew begin their gospels by orienting us within “the time of King Herod,” and so we begin our What Do You Fear? series by fleshing out what it might have been like to live in the days when Jesus was born—a time not all that different from our own. As an elderly priest, Zechariah had witnessed the fall of Judean independence and the beginning of Roman occupation. He longed for the coming Messiah, and he longed for a son. The author of Lamentations cries out in personal pain while his homeland is under Babylonian rule. Our global and personal heartache are intertwined, and the wait for promised rescue is hard to bear. Whether in exile, under the rule of a puppe…