I’ve had a song on repeat this Advent, primarily because I’ve been practicing to play it on the cello tonight at church. So it’s melded in my mind with these unsettling devotionals for this disturbing year.

I read through each devotional multiple times: to check it out when an author submits it, as I load it up and pick out a photo for it after Jeremy Fuzy copyedited it, and then once more before scheduling it for publication. Sometimes in the midst of that each day, I’ve taken a break to practice for tonight. As I’ve pondered through these reflections on Advent in a time of religious nationalism, rising starvation in the U.S. and abroad, and soldiers in the streets, “The Coventry Carol” has hung there in the air.

Since I play the cello, it shouldn’t be a surprise I enjoy minor-key songs. But I’ll admit this one’s much darker than carols like “We Three Kings” and “O Come, O Come, Emmanuel” (both of which I love). I found an interesting and challenging arrangement of “The Coventry Carol,” so I decided to work on it. And then it started working on me.

The 16th-century song tells a story we often leave out of our nativity scenes and church pageants: King Herod’s slaughter of infants and toddlers in Bethlehem. Hauntingly, “The Coventry Carol” takes the form of a lullaby sung by the mother of a doomed baby.

Lully, lullah, thou little tiny child,

Bye bye, lully, lullay.

The song experienced a modern revival because of a powerful service 85 years ago. Germany launched a devastating bombing campaign on Coventry, England, in November 1940, killing 568 people and destroying more than 4,000 homes. The city’s 14th-century Gothic cathedral was also firebombed, leaving roofless outer walls but not much else.

Six weeks later, the BBC aired its Christmas Day special from the cathedral’s ruins. On the sanctuary wall that served as the backdrop, the priest had written, “Father Forgive.” Not a declaration with judgment but a mournful prayer requesting peace and goodwill for everyone. As war spread across the world, the service concluded with a choir in the ruins of the cathedral singing “The Coventry Carol.”

Lully, lullah.

Earlier this month, German President Frank-Walter Steinmeier visited the ruins of the cathedral (and the newer structure built after the war), placing a wreath before an altar made from rubble and a charred cross — with the words “Father Forgive” on the wall behind them. He spoke about peace and reconciliation, which Cathedral leaders have devoted themselves to ever since the priest who wrote “Father Forgive” also preached peace during the 1940 Christmas service and worked to build reconciliation between England and Germany after the war.

In these unsettling times of hatred and violence as rulers rage like Herod, may we stand in the ruins of the empire and lift our voices. For unto us a child is born.

Lully, lullay.

Brian Kaylor is president & editor-in-chief of Word&Way and author of The Bible According to Christian Nationalists.

Share

Every year around this time, I think back to the December day when my brother told me what had happened at Sandy Hook Elementary. Through the years, since I have a son of a similar age, I often would think about what the children who died should be doing. Last year, the survivors of the Sandy Hook tragedy graduated from high school. As the students celebrated their accomplishments, they carried a heavy weight in their hearts for all the empty seats of those who never made it to that day.

Thinking about their story helps me imagine what life was like in Bethlehem in the years after Herod’s slaughter of the innocents. The streets empty of the laughter of small children. The age gaps between older and younger siblings. The burials of all those small bodies. The trauma of witnessing such evil. The recurring nightmares of the soldiers storming in. A town without babies … then without toddlers … then without young children, and so on.

I think about the year that Jesus found himself at the temple in Luke 2:46 and how many families from Bethlehem would have also made the walk to Jerusalem that year, but without a 12-year-old with them. Did they see young Jesus in the temple courts and picture what their own son might have looked like? Did they wonder what happened to the child whose birth precipitated their own child’s death? Was it a silent walk home to Bethlehem with the absence perceived but not discussed? Were they jealous of Mary and Joseph as they came into town from Nazareth with such an engaging teenager? Did Rachel weep for her children once again? Did they have any knowledge or hope that their loss was part of a larger, joyful story of the birth of the Messiah?

In our familiarity with the birth narrative, we often do not consider the long-term consequences for the secondary figures in the story. It was an unsettling time that left long and permanent scars on their lives. Through the previous four years Word&Way has published Unsettling Advent, there have been a host of different conflicts and issues that have left us feeling off-balance and afraid. As one problem seems to resolve and another arises, it is sometimes difficult to remember the long-term impacts of previous seasons of trauma or unrest.

So in this season of quiet reflection, I encourage you to take stock of the ways your life has shifted and changed due to the upheavals of the last few years. Reach out to someone to let them know you are still thinking about their loss, even many years later. Acknowledge your deep wounds and give them air to heal. For it was into the darkness that the great light of Jesus was born, so he could give us hope and assurance once again.

Rev. Dr. Sarah Blackwell is a contributing writer at Word&Way and a graduate of the Gardner-Webb School of Divinity and the McAfee School of Theology. She is an adjunct instructor in the Religion and Philosophy Department at Wingate University in Wingate, North Carolina. Follow her writings at proximitytolove.org.

Share

I don’t usually write about Paul. His letters can feel dense, argumentative, easily conscripted into debates that flatten their urgency. But this Advent, Paul’s opening words to the Romans feel newly poignant. When the political news of the day, every day, makes me want to hide under my furniture, these words roll around in my mind. Set apart rather than elevated, not purified from the world but marked by a different allegiance. In a culture increasingly organized around extraction of data, labor, attention, even creativity, being set apart by allegiance rather than usefulness feels quietly subversive.

That phrase matters right now. In the U.S., Christianity has been used to draw lines: who belongs and who does not, who is “real” and who is suspect, who is protected and who is expendable. Political language has trained us to think in categories of us and them, often baptized with religious vocabulary. We see the same logic at work in our technologies, which sort, rank, and commodify people as inputs and outputs rather than neighbors. Paul’s claim pushes in the opposite direction. The gospel sets him apart not to exclude but to belong differently.

From the opening lines, Paul insists that this gospel is not new, not improvised for political convenience, and not owned by any one people. It is promised long ago, rooted in history, embodied in flesh. And its audience is expansive: all God’s beloved. Paul names the Gentiles explicitly. Those once defined as outsiders are not a footnote; they are central to the story. Belonging here is not something that can be scraped, replicated, or scaled; it is relational, costly, and particular.

This matters in an Advent shaped by fear and fracture. When communities organize to protect neighbors during immigration raids, when mutual aid steps in during government shutdowns, when people share food, information, and care because systems have failed, these are signs. Not signs of divine rescue from above but signs of a gospel that refuses exclusion. Signs of a belonging not controlled by borders, paperwork, or political identity. They resist a world that treats people as resources to be managed rather than lives to be honored.

Paul’s gospel is dangerous precisely because it dissolves the categories we rely on to feel secure. It insists that belonging precedes deserving. That grace is not a reward for correct belief or national loyalty but a gift that creates responsibility toward one another. To be “set apart” by this gospel is not to withdraw from the world but to live in it without surrendering to fear-based divisions.

Advent reminds us that God comes into a world already organized by power and exclusion — and does not accept its terms. Paul names Jesus as descended from David and declared Son of God through resurrection power, not to reinforce hierarchy but to reframe it. Authority here is not used to draw tighter circles but to open them.

If Christianity is used today to justify separation, Romans calls us back to its center. The gospel does not teach us who to keep out. It teaches us who already belongs and asks whether our lives will bear signs of that truth.

Rev. Kristel Clayville, Ph.D., is ordained in the Christian Church (Disciples of Christ) and writes and teaches at the intersection of religion, technology, and ethics.

Share

Like most people these days, I find out what’s happening in the world by staring at a screen, as an endless feed broadcasts the highs and lows of the day — especially the lows. The tricks I’ve developed to balance being informed and being overwhelmed quickly proved no match for 2025’s daily delivery of heartbreak. It wasn’t just the quantity of bad news. There was a difference in kind.

In March, I had an epiphany after coming across an AI-generated image posted by the White House. A cartoon rendered in the style of Studio Ghibli, the artists behind films like “Spirited Away” and “My Neighbor Totoro,” depicted a stern ICE agent arresting a crying immigrant woman. In an instant, I felt joy drain from my body, my chest turn to lead. I sat in silence, my mind groping blankly for a response, until a sudden clarity: this was spiritual poison. It was devised, at least in part, to induce exactly this weariness, this baffled despair.

By now, you’ve probably seen some version of this poison. A 24/7 spectacle of cruelty, performed in grinning internment camp selfies, fascist propaganda clips of humans in chains, snuff films of fishermen blown out of the water, and AI slop defiling beloved art. It is inhumane, inhuman, and feels impossible to escape.

So this year, when I read about the crowds going out to hear John, the wild-eyed, locust-eating prophet castigating the wicked, preparing the way of the Lord, I imagined them trying to escape the spectacle of empire, with its cult of Caesar, its military parades, its rituals of violence — crucifixion chief among them. I imagined them hoping that this voice in the wilderness would supplant one spectacle with another, the glory of the Lord finally arrived for all to see.

All John offered them was a cleansing dip in the River Jordan and a fiery warning to repent. “What should we do?” they asked. His answer was surprisingly mundane. “Whoever has two coats must share with anyone who has none, and whoever has food must do likewise,” he said. He told soldiers to stop extorting people and tax collectors to stop padding their bills. No spectacle, no superhuman feats, just ordinary people living honest, generous lives.

Ordinary people have been the antidote to my despair this year. I’ve seen them do extraordinary things: brave tear gas and rubber bullets, put their bodies between masked kidnappers and their neighbors. And I’ve seen the more mundane: organizing meal trains, handing out whistles, stocking a community fridge, making protest art, making people laugh. The cruel spectacle churns on for now, but there are countless ordinary acts of love happening quietly, out of sight, more than you and I will ever know.

Whatever ultimate glories await, Advent prepares us to see anew that God’s glory has already been born among us, as one of us: “The Word became flesh and lived among us, and we have seen his glory, the glory as of a father’s only son, full of grace and truth.” He was extraordinarily ordinary. He was human the way we’re called to be human. And when our lives become images of his life, the glory of God shines in the darkness, and the darkness does not overcome it.

Rev. Sarah Miller is an Episcopal priest and a doctoral student in theology and education at Boston College’s Clough School of Theology and Ministry.

Share

While kidnapping people from U.S. streets (and kidnapping Bible verses to justify the violence), the Department of Homeland Security would also like to police church Nativity scenes. They have the gall to think they should get to decide what’s appropriate or not as a religious display — as if churches need the approval of Herod or Augustus.

A Catholic church in Massachusetts removed the Holy Family from its outdoor Nativity scene and instead placed a sign between the shepherds and Magi declaring, “ICE Was Here.” The sign added that Jesus, Mary, and Joseph were safe in the sanctuary.

The acting director of ICE denounced that Nativity scene, telling Fox News it was “absolutely abhorrent.” He also criticized the pastor as an “activist reverend” and suggested the Nativity scene created “a dangerous and extremist narrative” that put ICE agents at risk.

A Baptist church in Illinois also erected a Nativity scene acknowledging the news this Advent. Baby Jesus is zip-tied in the manger with ICE Roman soldiers nearby and Joseph and Mary wearing gas masks. After attacks by vandals, the church didn’t repair the destroyed Joseph or the decapitated and smashed Mary figure but instead put up a new sign declaring Joseph was deported and and Mary “was beaten and dragged away in front of her son” and now is in detention where her family has been unable to contact her.

DHS Assistant Secretary Tricia McLaughlin criticized this Nativity scene as “offensive to Christians” and denounced it as “demonization of law enforcement.” She added, apparently to Rev. Michael Woolf who leads the church: “Get a grip and seek help.” (Of course, if he needs help, it’s from the state troopers shooting him with a pepper ball or slamming him to the pavement.)

I applaud these two Nativity scenes — and similar ones at a United Methodist church in Texas and a Disciples of Christ church in North Carolina. But regardless of what one thinks of them, we should all be concerned about government officials anointing themselves as the arbiters of what a Nativity scene should look like or not. What’s next? Complaints about a dark-skinned baby Jesus or the presence of wise immigrants who disobeyed the government?

Sadly, rather than going home by another way, too many Christians today willingly side with Herod. As controversy grew about the “Ice Was Here” sign outside a Catholic church in Massachusetts, a spokesperson for the Boston Archdiocese criticized it for “divisive political messaging.” That’s an odd claim since the original Nativity scene with the actual baby Jesus was “divisive political messaging” to Herod. So divisive, in fact, that he responded with insane murderous rage.

So if our depiction of baby Jesus, his family, shepherds, Magi, and others doesn’t upset modern Herods as they rip apart families, send people to be tortured, attack peaceful clergy, and terrorize communities, is it even a Nativity scene?

Brian Kaylor is president & editor-in-chief of Word&Way and author of The Bible According to Christian Nationalists.

Share

Because we’ve heard it so many times, it can be easy to miss the fact that Jesus enters the world during a time of authoritarianism and political violence — a time of soldiers in the streets. Soldiers don’t gather around the manger, but they lurk on the edges of the story. Herod’s bloodlust is just around the corner, and it is soldiers who will carry out his revenge.

In that way, our present moment in this country is not so different from first-century Palestine. In Chicago, ICE has kidnapped our immigrant neighbors, teargassed those who would resist them, and has generally acted with impunity as a secret police force. Like in the nativity story, national guard soldiers lurk at the edges, held at bay only by a court system that has ruled their deployment unlawful.

With Herod and his foot soldiers skulking about, you would they hold all the power. But that is not the case. It is the infant in a manger who holds the power in this story. Before the manger, bloodlust and cruelty are unmasked as having nothing to do with the vision that God is bringing into the world through Jesus. They are rendered powerless.

God could have come into the world clothed in imperial purple or riding a tank, but Jesus arrives as a defenseless child — pretty much the exact opposite of the images of political power offered by Herod and the White House. In our present moment, this administration seems to value brute force and cruelty, but God imagines a different kind of world.

That is a world worth fighting for with everything we have, including using our most sacred symbols and in physically standing between menacing forces and their intended targets. This Advent, we are invited to prepare ourselves anew for this reversal of power. Are we ready? Doing so means that we must think in new ways about our own power and how to use it.

It must have seemed hopeless in first-century Palestine for plenty of people, but that is where the light of the world chooses to be born. God is still coming into being, even amidst the cruelty of ICE and the terror of state violence. We have the chance to be a part of God’s vision of a new heaven and a new earth. The only question is whether we are ready to say yes to a new kind of power.

Rev. Michael Woolf is the senior minister of Lake Street Church of Evanston in Illinois. His forthcoming coauthored book, Confronting Islamophobia in the Church: Liturgical Tools for Justice, is available for pre-order now.

Share

Earlier this week, we woke up to the news that soldiers had returned to our streets en masse. For a few weeks there it seemed like we might have time to catch a breath before the next attack — go to our old haunts with less fear, take a minute to to hold each other, sleep longer a few mornings without setting the alarm for patrol.

But these thieves of people who never wait for the night, they are back. Only to terrorize. Only to hurt. Once again we and our neighbors are taken, forced into hiding, and called into action, to cry out to all that the kidnappers are here.

Advent is a time of waiting for miracles, and we feel the need of one. I imagine Jesus’s mother walking past soldiers on the street looking for a place to stay, and wonder what she prayed for. I remember the disciples hiding from soldiers in an Upper Room after watching them do their worst, and marvel that they could stand to hear it when Jesus told them, “Peace.”

Peace be with you. Somehow a promise that when every force of power and violence seeks to upend your peace, there is a place inside us that they can’t touch. A peace between us they have no power to break, even as they try to physically separate us from each other and from justice. This peace, I know, I know, I keep telling myself I know, is the true power, that compels us towards one another in times of crisis and is our last refuge when forced to face the principalities that seek to convince us of our own inhumanity.

This morning, it’s hard to trust that peace. The violence arrayed against it seems so much. But then again, it always has. Jesus didn’t say “peace” because the disciples were safe or because the soldiers went away, but precisely because they were waiting outside and yet peace was still possible. A world where Herod attacks babies, and yet a baby can be born and saved from harm by those who cared enough to warn him.

Peace be with you. Peace around you. Peace within you. And when it feels the hardest to find, let us hold it out to one another.

Rev. Hannah Kardon serves as pastor of United Church of Rogers Park, a United Methodist congregation in Chicago. In October, she was violently arrested during a protest outside an ICE facility in the Chicago suburb of Broadview.

Share

“On Jan. 7, 2023, officers in one of MPD’s specialized units kicked, punched, tased, and pepper sprayed Tyre Nichols, a 29-year-old Black man, during a traffic stop,” reported the Department of Justice and the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Western District of Tennessee. “When officers caught up to Mr. Nichols, they beat him as he cried out for help and for his mother, who lived just a block away. Mr. Nichols died three days later.”

The murder of Tyre Nichols was brutal, but not anomalous. The report — released during Advent last year — found that MPD regularly used excessive force and discriminated against Black people and people with behavioral health disabilities, especially during traffic stops. The report offered 18 remedial measures which included a clear directive: “Limit the routine use of pretextual vehicle or pedestrian stops.”

In May, President Trump’s Department of Justice retracted the report’s findings. In September, at the president’s behest and without request from local officials, Gov. Bill Lee formed the “Memphis Safe Task Force” to aggressively police Tennessee’s largest majority-Black city with traffic stops “to bring peace into the community.”

Between September and early December, there have been over 40,000 traffic stops in Memphis. Day-to-day life is incessantly ruptured by police activity. I see camouflaged soldiers in Chrysler Pacificas at my neighborhood Target and my child’s church-run daycare. I can’t drive to work, take my kids to school, or go to the grocery store without seeing flashing blue lights and officers writing citations for minor violations. Each stop is a glaring reminder that state and federal politicians often prefer militarized control over genuine peace. Each stop stubbornly, insistently, recklessly attempts to forget Tyre Nichols.

During this season of Advent in Memphis, it is easy to despair. And yet, there is a persistent call for something else amongst Memphians who know the history of the centuries-old struggle for civil rights in the city: a seemingly counterintuitive insistence on joy.

I first noticed this call to joy following a march organized by the grassroots organization “Free the 901.” Addressing a crowd of demonstrators, a community organizer declared, “We must center joy. Joy is resistance! Joy clarifies our shared purpose!” Her words struck me as peculiar in the moment, but they stayed with me.

This call to joy resurfaced when I reread Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.’s final speech. Speaking to a packed crowd gathered in Memphis’s Mason Temple, King admonished his listeners to keep up the struggle for human rights. He expressed joy that he was part of the collective fight, ending his speech by saying, “And so I’m happy tonight. I’m not worried about anything. I’m not fearing any man! Mine eyes have seen the glory of the coming of the Lord!”

To be clear, this call to joy should not be confused with a call to commercialized holly jolly merriment. This joy is not characterized by ignoring the pain of neighbors terrorized by police violence and the threat of deportation. Instead, this joy is an invitation to embrace a divine gift freely given. A gift that prepares and sustains us as we collectively endeavor to complete the difficult work laid before us.

In the second chapter of Luke’s gospel, angels appear to shepherds proclaiming “good news of a great joy which will come to all the people.” This good news, this great joy often feels just out of reach. Calamity follows crisis like an ever-unspooling tragedy. But the season of Advent urges us to slow down; to dwell in the fullness of God’s good news. God offers us life-affirming joy.

All around Memphis, I see examples of what it means to accept God’s joy. Memphians teach me to find joy in togetherness. To find joy in expressions of care. To find joy in the bonds of community. To find joy in carrying on the work of the saints who walked this path before us.

J. David Maxson is a member of the Justice and History Committees at Grace-St. Luke’s Episcopal Church in Memphis and a new member of the Becoming Beloved Community Commission for the Episcopal Diocese of West Tennessee.

Share

Using Isaiah 41:10, the Department of Homeland Security recently released a video depicting their work — arrests and deportations of migrants — as a righteous endeavor. The video begins with the words “for God and Country,” followed by agents equipped with full tactical gear and, as we are led to believe, the full armor of God. Doing the Lord’s work on domestic soil apparently requires exaggerated military theatrics and expensive equipment.

Yet, recent data on detainees and deportees suggests that the vast majority have no criminal record. College students, pastors, childcare providers, and PTA volunteers have all been cast in the role of scapegoat — the recipients of blame, dehumanizing rhetoric, and the unjust policies that authoritarianism requires to leverage its power.

Closer to my home, masked ICE officers have recently descended upon New Orleans just in time for our annual celebration of the arrival of a brown-skinned, refuge-seeking Christ. The irony isn’t lost on me, and the sorrow I feel is immense.

Schools in New Orleans are trying to reassure parents that their children are safe. However, attendance has waned and workers fearful for themselves and their families are staying home. As a community, we are holding prayer vigils for our immigrant friends and neighbors, hosting information sessions on how to respond legally and faithfully, and distributing whistles for community members to warn others of the presence of ICE.

Code 1: ICE is nearby (short, broken rhythm) TWEET – TWEET – TWEET

Code 2: ICE is detaining someone (three long blasts) TWEEEEET – TWEEEEET – TWEEEEET

At the same time, the White House has felt it necessary to create a task force to root out anti-Christian bias, and extremists, folks like Sean Feucht, are using this holiday season to host a “Crimes Against Christians” emergency summit at the United States Capitol to discuss Christian persecution worldwide. If you are unfamiliar with Feucht, he is a traveling musician who conducts spiritual warfare against demons and demonic strongholds through prayer and worship songs. He’s sort of like the OG K-pop demon hunter. Feucht’s recent social media posts promoted the “Crimes against Christians” event and also praised the actions of ICE, giving thanks for mass deportations. However, if Feucht was truly concerned about persecuted Christians, he just might consider who are choosing to migrate to the U.S.

According to Pew Research Center data, Christians make up the largest share of migrants worldwide and they tend to migrate to countries that have large Christian populations. The U.S. has over a quarter of the world’s Christian migrants and most of these emigrate from Mexico. It seems if we are to have an honest conversation about persecution or crimes against Christians, we should consider, first and foremost, the migrant who is our neighbor, who is made in God’s image, and who needs our collective voice and support right now.

As I and so many others continue to discern how to faithfully respond to this moment, I do believe this to be true: Jesus would not be wearing tactical gear and armed with an assault rifle. Jesus would be carrying a whistle.

Karrie Gaspard-Hogewood is a licensed social worker and Ph.D. candidate studying Christian Nationalism as part of her sociology program at Tulane University.

Share

Since June 6, the Brown and Black residents of Los Angeles, the city I call home, have been the subject of kidnappings and disappearances at the hands of the current administration. My heart breaks on a constant basis as I think of everyone for whom this Advent season will be full of pain and hurt rather than love, peace, and joy.

There have already been at least 28 deaths of people being held in ICE detention this calendar year (compared to 12 all of 2024). At least is in italics because that number is widely considered a gross underestimate, as noted in the invaluable #DetentionKills Substack. The victims are not just the individuals taken, but their families and communities who are left to deal with the trauma and upheaval of being targeted on the daily basis. We may never fully grasp the long-term impacts of this administration’s policies in criminalizing “the foreigner in our midst.”

One incident stays on my mind this Advent season. On Aug. 14, ICE conducted a raid at the Monrovia Home Depot, running a fleeing day laborer named Carlos Roberto Montoya Valdez onto the nearby freeway where he was struck and killed by oncoming traffic. I joined other clergy at a vigil later that day in solidarity with the community as it was experiencing simultaneous emotions of both grief and rage. I was torn by the desire to provide spiritual comfort as well as to cry out to God for justice.

The Sunday after the raid, a pastor at my friend’s church preached on Jonah, comparing Jonah’s view of the Ninevites to how we all viewed the ICE agents who murdered Carlos. What option would we choose if placed in Jonah’s place — to lead ICE agents and our government to repentance, or to run away and be swallowed by a fish? I think all of us would have chosen to be swallowed by a fish.

What are we to do with that?

I think we all know what our answer should be, but “they” don’t deserve God’s love! What they deserve is God’s vengeance and justice. This administration through its policies and through their immigration enforcement arms of ICE and CBP are actively targeting and hurting people we love and care about. They don’t deserve God’s love.

But then, isn’t that why we celebrate Christmas? It’s the context in which Jesus was born. The world was in chaos with political instability and human brokenness. So when the angel told the shepherds “I bring you good news that will cause great joy for all the people” (Luke 2:10), the angel was telling the shepherds (and all of us) that Jesus would somehow, someway, make all things right. And the joy of that promise is what we hold out for during these times.

As Christmas nears, may we continue to not run away from seeing the injustices in our communities, in Washington, D.C., in Gaza and the West Bank, Sudan, Ukraine, or to whomever and wherever else God has forced our gaze. Don’t look away! Continue to show up in support alongside our neighbors and friends. Demand justice and accountability for the crimes being perpetrated.

But hold that in tension with our calling as people of faith, with the joy that we should all be feeling as we anticipate Jesus’s birth and the promise that he is Immanuel (God with us).

This season, may we all continue praying for the time when can proclaim, “Glory to God in the highest heaven, and on earth peace among whom he favors” (Luke 2:14).

It’s a tough time, friends. Hang in there. God is truly with us.

Rev. Nori Ochi is an ordained minister through the American Baptist Churches USA.

Share

King Herod is threatened by the birth of Jesus, a baby.

That threat quickly becomes orders to put terrorizing soldiers in the streets. The birth of Jesus is wrapped up in the movements of an empire: a census that displaces people, kings who cling to power, soldiers who enforce their fear with violence. Mathew 2:3 is a reminder that Advent happens under occupation.

On October 23, I was shot in the face with a pepper round by a U.S. immigration agent while I stood in the line of fire at a peaceful prayer vigil in Oakland, California, alongside other faith leaders. I did not stand there for attention or confrontation. I stood there because my faith compels me to stand against systems that dehumanize people.

When federal agents turn their weapons on protesters, clergy who are praying and singing stand in front of their weapons in peaceful solidarity to expose the violence and fear that undergird these systems. Our presence as pastors, rabbis, imams, and lay leaders is meant to be a moral mirror. It says to the world: “This is not normal.” Communities of faith will not be silent while migrants are treated as disposable, while soldiers are deployed to our residential streets.

For me, being in that line is an act of love and lament. It is a way of saying to migrants and to anyone experiencing injustice, “We see you. We will not abandon you. We will not allow this violence to become a routine.” I believe that as a Christian, I am part of a long tradition of faith-rooted resistance that insists our shared humanity is sacred, even when the state tries to deny it and sends soldiers to the streets.

To me, Advent is not a denial of danger. It is a stubborn, dangerous hope that God is already at work in the places the empire would rather erase. Jesus is born where soldiers patrol. Jesus is born into a neighborhood where parents clutch their children tighter when they hear the boots and engines of soldiers. No amount of militarization can keep God out, because we will continue to resist King Herods of the world.

Rev. Jorge Bautista is a pastor at College Heights Church, a United Church of Christ congregation in San Mateo, California.

Share

The hunger of our neighbors, near and far, is apparent to anyone who is looking. From reports of widespread famine in Sudan and Gaza, to disruptions in food assistance programs in every state of this nation. People are going hungry. But what if I told you there was a group of nearly two million people nationwide who are systemically being denied access to adequate food, and almost no one is talking about it?

The U.S. incarcerates more people per capita than any of our peers. Despite the tough-on-crime adage that prisoners enjoy “three hots and a cot” during their time behind bars, this paints far too rosy a picture of the ultra-processed foods available. Jesse Milo, who is currently housed at San Quentin, said, “The tray reflects how society views us, and when the food looks disgusting and inedible, it sends the message that that’s what we are.”

Aside from the often meager portions, it is not uncommon for prisoners to be served food that has gone bad or is infested with maggots. The vast majority of formerly incarcerated people say they could not eat enough to feel full, and many displayed trauma-induced eating disorders such as binging or hoarding once released. Some estimates suggest that at least half of all folks who are serving time suffer from at least one chronic health condition, many of which can be linked back to poor diet.

I will never forget the day one of my incarcerated clients was diagnosed by the prison medical unit with cardiovascular disease. My client was provided with pamphlets about a healthy diet, which encouraged them to avoid processed foods and eat as much fresh produce as possible. My client never saw fresh food. A prison volunteer I spoke to recently described an opportunity where his group was able to take catered food in for a special event at the prison — and a prisoner who he was eating with told him that he had not seen a grape in over a decade.

Across the U.S., there is no set standard or mandate to govern the food that is served within carceral institutions, so there is little recourse for those inside. This is especially problematic as feeding folks in prisons and jails has become a private industry, and a profitable one. Teri Castle, who is currently incarcerated at Lakin Correctional in West Virginia, said it well: “They are more interested in making and saving money than they are in the health of the people eating that food.”

In her essay “History is a Weapon,” Angela Davis wrote, “Prisons do not disappear problems, they disappear human beings.” The people who we lock away in prisons are not removed from our communities just because we choose not to see them.

In the parable above, Jesus did not give people who hadn’t helped those in prison an out simply because they did not see them. As Christians, we are called not to look away from suffering but to turn towards it and to ease it if we can, even if only by our presence. Is this not why God sent God’s only Son?

Sophie Day, MSW, is a lifelong member of the Episcopal Church and works with legal teams who represent men and women on death row in their final appeals.

Share

You’re right. This is not the stuff we usually hear from Matthew at this time of year. It isn’t the genealogy (Jesus’s family tree), or the annunciation (an angel came to Mary), or Joseph’s dream (marry Mary, it’ll be fine). This ‘feeding the 5000’ — give or take a few thousand, in light of “not counting women and children” — is not among the verses we usually read during the Advent and Christmas seasons. But if we’re considering Advent in a time of starvation, it works its way onto the list for now, among the feel-good moments and greeting card images.

Having learned of the death of his friend John the Baptist (also not a holiday verse!), Jesus tries to take a moment away. But a crowd follows, and the disciples are annoyed. In an effort to give themselves a break, too, they’re eager to send away the gathered crowd. Who has the energy to care for all these people when we have our own things to worry about?

Jesus responds, “YOU give them something to eat.”

“But we only have a couple of fish and this bit of bread,” the disciples say.

But our country cannot possibly support the long-term funding agreements we’ve held for decades, for a reason that’s never really named. (So let the food rot in the fields and the medicine spoil in the loading docks.)

But our leadership has no desire to answer the questions you’re asking. (So we’ll derail the conversation and make sure no one gets anything done.)

But our supporters have spent countless dollars to ensure that your insecurities and panic will keep us snug in our jobs and benefits packages, so it doesn’t really matter whether we tend to yours or not. (So healthcare schmealthcare, let them eat cake.)

When we have created — and allowed — a world where the fearmongering of scarcity is rewarded far and above the possibility of abundance, we are indeed facing Advent in a time of starvation.

When the disciples and those gathered finally show what they have — fish, loaves, a bit here and there — Jesus takes it, blesses it, breaks it, and shares it. And there is enough, and more than enough, to feed the whole gathering and then some. Unsettling what is, and looking to what can be.

For Christians the world over, Advent is a season of unsettled expectation and waiting. And here we are. Waiting indeed.

Waiting for leaders focused less on clinging to power and more on grasping the good news of the gospel. Waiting for plans that involve less gold-plating and furniture and more commitment to human dignity and flourishing. Waiting for systems less consumed by shackling dissent and more insistent on liberating justice. Waiting for greatness to be less about look-at-me and more about who-are-we.

So we are here in Advent, waiting. And likely, Jesus is waiting too. Waiting — on us.

Rev. Courtney Richards is an ordained minister in the Christian Church (Disciples of Christ). A proud graduate of Brite Divinity School at TCU, after 25 years in congregational ministry, she currently serves as the Communications and Development Manager for the Disciples’ Week of Compassion.

Share

In the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America (ELCA), our anti-poverty ministries all begin with a theological foundation we call “accompaniment.” In brief, accompaniment theology demands Christians walk alongside their neighbors, hearing and telling one another’s stories, so that any justice ministry that emerges is indistinguishable from the life of the community they share. Our desire to end hunger at its roots begins and ends with thriving communities. Where people feel true belonging and hold one another mutually accountable, hunger cannot exist.

And yet, Americans increasingly feel isolated from one another. With fewer neighbors to share stories in common, a 2025 American Psychological Association study found that people who experience regular loneliness struggle with their physical and mental well-being much more than those with low loneliness levels. In the midst of this growing isolation, a near-unanimous solution emerged: 92% of adults surveyed see “relationships” as the way out of our social malaise. That is, we all get it: We need connection, we need one another.

When commonality disappears, we tell abstracted stories of those we do not know and often fear, relegating entire communities of real people to spaces of, in Lisa Marie Cacho’s words, “social death.” Our distance from other communities has allowed common social narratives to spread in which nonwhite people and immigrants are flattened into caricatures. These stories morph entire demographics into “the criminal, the illegal alien, and the terrorist” even before they are permitted to live a full life. Unjust housing costs, incarceration, gentrification’s uneven development at the expense of queer and BIPOC communities, and detention without trial are all causes of poverty, but they share a common root: It’s okay to hurt “them” for our safety or comfort, because they never deserved life to begin with.

In this gruesome reality, the good news of Advent is this: Christ entered the violence of human life, the very violence that says some folks are more valuable than others, and allows entire communities to be characterized as criminals. Jesus took on these abstractions, Paul writes, to their inevitable end: death at the hands of the law.

And the unsettling news of Advent is this: Christians are baptized into that same violent life so that they might live with Jesus, who walks into the killing abstractions of racism, xenophobia, gentrification — any force that tells ourselves and our neighbors that we do not belong to one another.

I see this good news lived out in one of our ELCA communities: Tapestry, a multilingual, multicultural, English and Spanish-speaking congregation in a Minneapolis suburb. Growing as an accompaniment-focused congregation has meant encountering the 20% Latin@ population where they are at. Tapestry offers tutoring, English and Spanish classes, and partners with foodbanks, yes, but they first center everything they do around spaces for deep listening, with culturally-relevant meals, celebrations of tradition, and joy. When the world screams “death,” Tapestry responds with homemade food, stories, and community — they respond with life. While the federal government declares immigrants criminals, Tapestry is doing the hard, life-giving work of sharing stories together.

No doubt, the Christian demand to “live with” Christ in a world that increasingly makes it easier to stay “buried with him” is a challenge. But we are baptized into a refrain — a prayer, perhaps — to carry with us through this Advent season: I belong, you belong, we belong.

Peter McLellan is the Program Director for Hunger Education with the ELCA. He holds a Ph.D. in Bible & Cultures from Drew Theological School. He lives in Minnesota with his family, and enjoys cooking, running, miniature painting, and cheering on his (13-time world champion) Green Bay Packers.

Share

I remember holding my son right after his birth. First, there was crying — proof of new life, which seems miraculous even when angels didn’t announce it. After quickly measuring and weighing him while he wailed, a nurse wrapped him snugly in cloth and handed him to me. Walking around the room, I gently rocked him in my arms and whispered. And he stopped crying.

Before long, however, he started making noises again. He was hungry, and the doula was there to help my wife with the process. Soon, we’d come to recognize those cries for feeding time.

The remarkable part of the Christmas story is that God decided to come as one of us. The incarnation means Jesus cried out at birth, announcing the breath of life in the one who breathes life into us. I suspect he calmed down after Mary and a relative or doula wrapped him tightly and fastened a makeshift bed for him in the animal feeding trough. But unlike what the hymn suggests, crying he does make. When he’s hungry or needs a new swaddling cloth. He is fully human, hungry for his mother’s breasts.

I’m sure Mary and Joseph did all they could to care for him. Joseph probably found himself the next morning driving his donkey slower than usual, hyperaware of the new cargo. They both jumped and looked concerned when he sneezed or had diarrhea. They loved him, even when crying shone through the night.

But there were times when Jesus cried that I suspect they felt something I didn’t. They worried about having too little to give him. Perhaps Mary felt herself too malnourished to produce as much as she wanted. Later, perhaps they cut their portions to give him a bit more. In that part of the Roman Empire, many people lived below the subsistence level, even while those in the palaces of Herod and Augustus tossed away excess food as sport.

While I can’t relate to that part of the story, many across the world today can. Right now, a baby in India, a baby in Nigeria, a baby in Venezuela, a baby in Ukraine, a baby in Gaza, a baby in Mississippi is crying out with hunger pains. And a parent is rocking them, whispering to them, trying to soothe them even though there is nothing to feed them.

The number of such moments is increasing this year because of the greed and heartlessness of modern Herods like Elon Musk and Donald Trump. But if we hang out at their lavish Christmas parties, we’ll miss Jesus. For he came as a hungry little baby to a poor family on the margin of the empire.

Brian Kaylor is president & editor-in-chief of Word&Way and author of The Bible According to Christian Nationalists.

Share

I don’t remember if it was with my youth group or Boy Scouts — both met at the United Methodist Church I was a member of at the time — but as an adolescent, I found myself volunteering at a local food pantry. What would have otherwise been a routine day became something that has stuck in my memory because it was the first time I saw poverty face-to-face.

In my rural hometown, it was easy not to know who might be going to bed hungry. You could of course guess whether someone was better or worse off from what part of town they lived in or the clothes they wore, but I always thought of true poverty as an abstract concept that applied outside my world. So it was truly shocking to me when I recognized some of my classmates in line to pick up the food I had just unloaded out of a donation truck.

This is a stark contrast from my life now, where living in the biggest city in my state means I see homelessness on a daily basis. It is routine for my walk to the library or grocery store to include someone asking if I could spare a dollar. Population density has some incredible benefits, such as my wife taking the streetcar to work. But it also means it’s more difficult to sweep systemic problems under the rug.

Neither rural nor urban poverty is necessary. Feeding America estimates it would cost about $32 billion per year to solve food insecurity in the United States. For some recent reference points via our ultra-wealthy, Facebook’s Mark Zuckerberg lost $70 billion through his failed metaverse project, DOGE’s Elon Musk purchased Twitter for $44 billion and devalued it to approximately $9.4 billion, and the Yale Budget Lab estimates that the richest 1% are responsible for $205 billion in unpaid taxes every year.

The bottom line is it’s not really money keeping 47 million people, including at least 7 million children, experiencing food insecurity. It’s the failure of our political system to constrain the greed baked into our economic system.

People in my life who don’t generally fall prey to Trumpian talking points often tell me to watch out for the “dangerous” downtowns of places I love to visit like Seattle, Detroit, or Chicago. I think what they mean is simply that they have seen striking images of a significant unhoused population in those places. I don’t think they mean I would be physically in danger — mostly that I might be made to feel uncomfortable. It’s literally a dangerous feeling just to confront our current reality.

We would certainly prefer not to see difficult things. But obscuring our homeless neighbors obscures our connection to a homeless savior. Advent teaches us that a shiny, gilded facade only serves to cover up the other side of the story. If we keep our focus on the child sleeping in an animal feeding trough, we might be unsettled — but the truth we see will compel us to live differently.

So as we mark this Advent in a time of increasing starvation, let us remember both the burden and the blessedness of being awake.

Jeremy Fuzy is the digital editor at Word&Way and a resident of Kansas City, Missouri.

Share

In times like these, it can seem that ending poverty is impossible. That demands for human rights and human dignity are both politically inconceivable and impossibly expensive. Some even quote the Bible, arguing that since Jesus said, “the poor will be with you always,” or as Paul wrote, “those who do not work, shall not eat,” it can’t be God’s will for everyone to share in the abundance of our world.

But from Genesis on through the New Testament, including Jesus’s most famous of statements and Paul’s mutual solidarity of the poor, is a constant revelation of God’s will that no one should be made hungry, sick, homeless, underpaid, indebted, or bereft by the violence of social injustice. There is an ongoing indictment of those who would take and keep the wealth of our world for themselves and cause others to suffer. The biblical command to “fill the hungry with good things” (Luke 1:53) is not simply about “caring for the poor” as an end result, but advocating for policies and structures that lift the load of poverty — admonishing nations to “do no wrong to the immigrant, the homeless, the children. And do not shed innocent blood” (Jeremiah 22:3). Indeed, passage after passage reminds us that Jesus’s birth signals the beginning of a reign of justice (Psalm 72) and abundance for all, not mass starvation and death by poverty in the streets.

Even the prayer that Jesus teaches his followers speaks to these core beliefs and commandments: “Your will be done, on earth as it is in heaven. Give us today our daily bread. And forgive us our debts, as we also have forgiven our debtors. And lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from the evil one” (Matthew 6:10-13).

The Lord’s Prayer is very clear that the material position of the people is of great interest to God. It exhorts people and nations to release those imprisoned by injustice, to feed everyone, and to resist the temptations and trappings of the unjust. Rather, we are called to bring justice and goodness and truth on earth as it is in heaven. We are called to help bring the empire of God — not of any power or principality — into being, not deporting immigrant children, not funding the police and legions, not giving huge tax cuts to billionaires, not cutting families from life-sustaining food.

No, no one is being left behind this time. God preaches everybody in, nobody out.

Rev. Dr. Liz Theoharis is director of the Kairos Center for Religions, Rights, & Social Justice and co-chair of the Poor People’s Campaign: A National Call for Moral Revival. She is the co-author of the new book You Only Get What You’re Organized to Take: Lessons from the Movement to End Poverty and author of Always With Us? What Jesus Really Said About the Poor.

Share

In the northern hemisphere, Advent is a cold, dark time of year. It is a time of watching and wondering what may come — mimicking fallen autumn seeds now dormant underground, waiting for new life.

We light candles in windows, go to bed earlier, offer guests tea, coffee, and cocoa to warm bodies and spirits, and cook hearty soups and stews. The pace of life slows, our energy wanes alongside nature’s hunkering down for the winter. Spiritually, we draw inwards. We meditate on hope, peace, joy, and love — even if we might not actually fully feel them ourselves just yet.

For those of us who have economic privilege, many Advent practices are possible because of that baseline economic security. We have the safety of the surroundings in which we live and worship, so we can host Advent gatherings and feel safe in places of worship. We have homes, and the electricity to heat them, and lighting for darker days. We turn to stoves and ovens to cook warm foods — and we have the food we need to nourish winter bodies. While these should be basic universal human experiences, they instead exist unjustly as privileges for the few.

What happens to this time of wistful waiting if all people do not have a home, safety, heat, light, or food? How do we observe Advent in a time when so many go hungry?

Hunger is closer for millions of our neighbors than it has been in a long time. In the United States, SNAP benefits were frozen for over a month this fall, and we soon enter a new year that will bring additional, difficult restrictions, leaving many without even the small amount of food relief that SNAP provides.

Around the world, the early 2025 cancellation of USAID has led to 660,000 deaths so far. In Sudan, Congo, and Gaza, extreme hunger exists and even famine is now predicted in some places. The anticipated Christ child is a Savior who told disciples to feed the hungry — yet more than 47 million Americans, including nearly 14 million children, are part of the more than 700 million worldwide who go hungry every day.

In these realities, wistful waiting becomes desperate longing and uncertain hope. When we pray “Come, Lord Jesus” in these circumstances, we mean it with intensity and raw yearning. Stripped down to the bare necessities, our Advent practices must include a gritty resolution to act in the face of injustice, to engage in mutual aid, to fund grassroots community solutions, to call public officials to account, and to challenge any public and corporate policies that keep people locked in poverty and hunger.

So as we sing Advent hymns, gather in community, light candles, and wait hopefully, may we also embody in our actions our coming Savior’s call — to feed the hungry and to provide compassion, love, and justice for all.

Rev. Rebecca Barnes is an ordained minister in the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) and is coordinator of the Presbyterian Hunger Program.

Share

Hope is fragile. It can drift, distort, or quietly lean toward whatever promises to steady our fears. And in every age, God’s people have been tempted to anchor their hope in the kingdoms of this world, the ones that promise safety, belonging, and purpose by means of worldly power … the sword. But Advent reminds us that the Spirit keeps calling us back to a very different kind of power: the self-giving love of Jesus, revealed vividly on the cross.

Advent invites us to discern the difference between the way of the sword and the way of the cross. The Messiah did not arrive with armies or decrees. He arrived in weakness, tucked into the margins. His humble incarnation makes no sense to those who believe the world is transformed by force. The zealots wanted a revolt. Rome demanded allegiance. The religious leaders wanted a messiah who would protect their influence. They all hoped God might finally give them worldly power to use the world’s methods to accomplish God’s mission.

But the child in the manger is the King of Kings who teaches us otherwise. His Kingdom does not advance through coercion, domination, or political power brokers. This is the false hope of religious nationalism, the belief that if we can seize enough worldly power, expel enough outsiders, or impose enough rules, we can generate a righteous people. But coerced conformity is not righteousness. It’s worldly power dressed up in religious garb.

The cross unveils the true hope of Advent. Jesus absorbs the world’s violence into his own body, refusing to use it for personal gain. He breaks the cycle not by swinging the sword of empire but by refusing to let the sword define him at all. And then he rises with the light and life that no nationalist movement can engineer.

So this Advent, we hold a simple question close: Where am I trusting the sword to do what only the cross can accomplish? Where have I expected political power to secure what only Jesus can give?

Advent invites us to loosen our grip, to walk in the humble way of the crucified and risen king.

Come, Lord Jesus. Teach us to hope in you alone.

Caleb Campbell is lead pastor of Desert Springs Bible Church in Phoenix, Arizona, and the author of “Disarming Leviathan: Loving Your Christian Nationalist Neighbor.”

Share

On Christmas Day in 1863, the poet Henry Wadsworth Longfellow wrote “Christmas Bells,” which includes this stanza:

And in despair I bowed my head;
“There is no peace on earth,” I said;
    “For hate is strong,
    And mocks the song 
Of peace on earth, good-will to men!”

The poem, which became the hymn “I Heard the Bells on Christmas Day,” expresses the heartwrenching pain of a family and a country torn apart by the Civil War.

Looking back on that era, historian Mark Noll has written about how the violence reflected a nation in theological turmoil over slavery, biblical interpretation, and the will of God. Providence would be revealed in the outcome of the war. The activity of God was conflated with the machinations of humans and armies.

It’s astonishing to realize Christianity’s complicity in the enslavement of other children of God. It’s frightening to think that followers of Jesus could demean others so fully and be caught up in economic self-interest so completely that they perpetuated such harm. It was a theological-political project whose sins continue to stain our social fabric and religious dynamics today.

What will future American citizens and American Christians say about us 150+ years from now, when Bible verses are being used to cheerlead military action and aggressive immigration enforcement in ways that reveal how our theological imaginations have failed us again? What explanations will be offered in the decades to come to explain the idolatrous nationalism and its derivative sins that literally unfold before our eyes as we watch videos on our social media feeds?

Longfellow’s final verse has become my fervent prayer:

Then pealed the bells more loud and deep:
“God is not dead, nor doth He sleep;
    The Wrong shall fail,
    The Right prevail,
With peace on earth, good-will to men.”

Yes, it’s easy to wish that Longfellow had used more inclusive language. But, in fairness, it was also men wielding the power, committing the violence, and killing for the sake of subjugating others. They were the main obstacles to true peace.

Still, there was plenty of blame to go around then, just as there are many complicit in our challenges now. God is used to justify our flawed agendas. God is mocked by our attempts to make what is holy and universal into something parochial and profane.

In Advent, we wait for God to arrive in this world anew. Christmas is a reminder that God is not dead, nor is God asleep. That means the wrong shall fail, peace will come, and goodwill found by all humans created in the Image of the One revealed to us in Jesus Christ.

Beau Underwood is a contributing editor at Word&Way and a Disciples of Christ pastor in Indianapolis, Indiana.

Share