This first week of Advent we focus on HOPE. 

The season of Advent is a season of reflection, waiting, and meditation as we ponder life and death, salvation and judgment, heaven and hell, light and darkness as well as peace, joy, love, and all of this culminating in hope and expectant waiting. In this context, we hope in the remembrance of the incarnation and birth of Christ and also in waiting for the hope we have in his return.

The Advent season is filled with wonderfully fervent hymns of hope in longing and expectation, such as the hymn we sang last Sunday in worship ‘O Come O Come Emmanuel.’

This week in Advent we reflect and look for hope. We are reminded of the longing for expected births in the lives of Abram and Sarah, Jacob and Rachel, Samson’s parents, and Hannah and Elkanah. In this context, we turn our attention to the angel Gabriel’s revelation to Zechariah as he waits for his savior. It is in Zechariah and Elizabeth’s experience that we are reminded of God’s radical and sometimes unexpected engagement and deliverance of our world.

Below is this weeks video on “Hope: Zechariah” from the album ‘Firstborn,’ a collection of art and music for Advent by Poor Bishop Hooper:

HOPE (ZECHARIAH)
(from ‘Firstborn’ by Poor Bishop Hooper)
Old man hidden in a ritual cavernous Put your head down do your stint Oil and incense
Barren so long that you’ve gotten quite used to it Remember when you used to wish
Still you never quit, still you never quit
Zechariah chosen by lot
All alone in the temple with God
How could he have seen the angel coming with a word brand new To shatter hopelessness forever
Shatter hopelessness forever
Are you hearing things, could it be as it seems
The hopeful voice before you’s been quiet for centuries Truly there will be a very real offspring
For your boy awaits divine appointing
Zechariah you can know this
For I come from the very presence
How could you believe that I was sent by the most high and lifted God To shatter hopelessness forever
Shatter hopelessness forever
Now listen for you must
I’ll take your words but give them to your son Don’t lose hope and don’t lose trust
He is a so very special one
None borne of women like him
None will be greater than him
For the prophets all foretold him
There’s a messenger in him
He’ll make ready for the Lord all the people He’ll make ready for the Lord all his children He’ll make ready for the Lord all who listen He’ll make ready the way ready the way
Zechariah chosen by lot
All alone in the temple with God
How could he have seen the angel coming with a word brand new To shatter hopelessness forever, shatter hopelessness forever