Romans 8:18-19, 24-25; Luke 2:1-3
It was on a rainy day in April, just weeks after war had broken out in Ukraine, that an aid worker named Olena Shula drove 522 miles across the country to rescue a mother and her baby, who was just seven days old. When the young mother, Galina, found out she was pregnant, she never imagined that she would have her baby under the risk of bombing, surrounded by the dangers of war. Olena reported, “We offered Galina to go to a safe place, but due to severe stress, the doctor said that she was in danger of premature birth. It was a terrible time; she was constantly having to go down to the bomb shelter during air raids. But she is a very strong woman. On April 6, (42 days after the war began), her beautiful daughter, Sofiya, was born.”2 Just one week later, Galina and Olena began the journey back to a relatively safe place. Olena’s husband, like most able-bodied men, had left his civilian job to join the Ukrainian military to defend his country against Russia. So Olena, Galina, and the newborn Sofiya made the long journey to safety alone.
Today we begin a journey—not through a 21st-century war-torn country, but through a different empire, and a world that was no less hostile. Our Advent worship services will take us through the places that are significant in the nativity story. Our journey begins not in Nazareth or Bethlehem, but very unusually in Rome. And this does seem strange to us, since Rome isn’t specifically mentioned in the Advent story. But we begin in Rome, not so much as a location, but as a concept, as a representation of power. At the time of Jesus’s birth, the Roman Empire was a vast and powerful entity that ruled much of the known world, including Judea, where Mary and Joseph lived.
Our journey begins under the Pax Romana, one of the most stable and prosperous eras in Roman history. The Roman navy kept piracy at bay, and hundreds of thousands of Roman soldiers were spread throughout the land, which improved the safety of trade routes. This was a time of massive building projects, like Herod the Great’s palace at Caesarea Maritima, which functioned like a luxury seaside resort and was the home to Roman governors like Pontius Pilate. Buildings like this were designed to convey to the entire world a message of political power, wealth, Roman influence, human glory, and imperial authority. Throughout the ages, we’ve seen leaders commission building projects like this to draw attention to human power and glory.
This term Pax Romana literally means “Roman peace,” but this peace and prosperity wasn’t for everyone. It came at a price. This period of relative stability and order in the land was enforced through military strength, strict governance, and oppression of the people. Living as a Jew under Roman rule wasn’t easy. The empire relied heavily on taxation to fund its military campaigns and extravagant building projects, and the Jews—especially those living in Galilee, where Mary & Joseph came from—were heavily taxed, often to the point of hardship. They were allowed to practice their religion, but there were constant tensions. The Romans gave the Jews puppet kings like Herod the Great and Roman governors like Pontius Pilate, who often disregarded the Jewish laws and customs. Jews had no say in Roman politics and were at the mercy of imperial decrees.
Our journey today begins with such a decree: a census is being taken. All people were recalled to their birthplace to be counted. Now, I don’t know about you, but even as a child, I thought that forcing everyone to travel around the country to be counted was a very odd way to run the government. But Roman censuses weren’t just administrative exercises; they were tools of control and taxation. They disrupted daily life—which was very much a part of their purpose—and we can easily imagine that they were deeply resented by the people who were forced to comply. Mary and Joseph’s journey to Bethlehem was certainly not something of their own choosing. And this journey from Nazareth, which would have been about ninety miles, would have been very arduous, especially for pregnant Mary. The journey was long, roads were very basic, and safety from robbers or wild animals couldn’t be guaranteed. My whole life, I’ve seen images of Mary and Joseph alone on a lonely road to Bethlehem. But imagine the roads crowded with families, grandparents, children, merchants, laborers—everyone making their way to ancestral towns. The journey to Bethlehem wasn’t simply their journey. It was part of a much larger human migration. Thousands of ordinary people were displaced by the decree of an emperor. This underscores the oppression the Jewish people experienced in their own land. And the journey that Joseph and Mary made represents this larger reality for all—then and now—who live under an empire that values power and control over human dignity.
It’s not hard for us to think of places in our world today where people live in fear because of decisions that are made from on high. The years-long war in Ukraine, ongoing ethnic cleansing in Darfur, hostilities in Israel and Palestine today, and the undercurrent of fear that exists among immigrants in our own country are just a few examples. We count ourselves fortunate to live in the United States of America. But even we who enjoy the freedoms our country provides know what it is like when decisions made by people we will never meet have drastic implications on our lives, on our families, and on our communities. Every time our government decides to furlough federal workers, it impacts families across our nation as well as the economy in our local communities. When a city council passes a hardline ordinance requiring homeless encampments to be destroyed, people are left scrambling, without even a tent for shelter. A company’s financially driven decision to relocate upends family life for a young man who is just starting his senior year of high school. The stakes aren’t always life and death, but we’ve all had our lives in some way significantly impacted by decisions that are made by people who have power to influence our lives, whether we welcome it or not.
This season, as I’ve considered this story of Joseph and Mary setting off on their difficult journey out of obedience to a hostile government, I’ve seen clearly how God is able to use even this very unfortunate circumstance as part of a much larger, much more hopeful, story. And we know where this story is going … it’s going somewhere good! We know that, in spite of Mary and Joseph having to do hard things to please an empire, this baby will be born, and he will be Messiah for us all. And we are gathered here in this place today because this baby was born.
The challenge for the preacher is to not dismiss the reality of the hard thing—the hard things that we have to do, the hard things that people around the globe have to bear—and simply say, “You know, there’s hard stuff out there; but God can use even the hard things for God’s purposes!” Now, don’t get me wrong: I believe God can do this. God can use even the evil plans of oppressors for good. But I’m not sure how helpful it is for me to stand here and say, “We should all rejoice in hardship, because God’s going to make something good out of that.” Because of course it’s true that we would rather not have the hardship. We would rather not see headlines that make our hearts ache and our stomachs hurt. We would rather not hear stories of children starving. We would rather not live under rules and laws that seem harmful, if not for us, than for others in our society. We would rather skip the bad stuff and move straight to the Kingdom of God.
Our theme today is Rome: a place of longing. This is the place where we realize things aren’t as they should be, and we long for things to be ordered as God would have them. But here and now, we’re in this time of imbalance. We’re also right here at the beginning of Advent. Today is the first Sunday in the church calendar. This is the time that we reset and start over, and we remember again why it is that we need this baby. And every year, the Advent season is a period of waiting for Christ to be born, and it’s a reminder that we live both in the already and the not yet. Paul used this birth imagery when he wrote of present sufferings and future glory. He said: “For the creation waits with eager longing for the revealing of the children of God.”3 And he spoke of hope, the kind of hope that you can only have if you believe that this world isn’t yet where God wants us to be.
God wants better for us than this, and we have a role to play in this hope that I speak of, this hope that Paul speaks of, this hope that surely Mary and Joseph had, that life for their child would be better than this very inauspicious beginning. We light this first candle of Advent as a reminder that we carry this hope out into the world. And we know that the darkness of this world is sometimes very bleak, but we recognize that this hope exists, even in the darkness, and God is in it all.
And we know that this hope doesn’t make the bad stuff go away. But here’s something I want you to know—something that I believe hope can do: Hope can provide an antidote to the fear that oppression creates. Because I believe that people who are in power and are wielding power to stay in power and are hurting others and oppressing others … they do this so that their own glory may grow. Ironically, in spite of their power, I also believe that they do this from a place of fear and anxiety. Because they fear that they will lose this power, that they won’t have it anymore. So they wield this power to keep others in their place, so they can hold on to the power they have.
But here’s what hope says: Hope says, “It won’t always be like this.” Hope says, “There’s something bigger than you, tyrant!” Our God is greater than you. Our God has not abandoned us. Our God is with us in the hard times and in the times that are to come, and we are the bearers of that message. This is the story of hope that is told over and over again in scripture. This is the hope of the Israelites when they are slaves in Egypt. This is the hope of the exiles when they are driven from their land to Babylon. This is the hope of the Jews who were oppressed during Roman times. And this is the hope of our world today.
From its earliest days, the Christian church has been called to offer radical hope in the face of darkness, and across the centuries, Christians have sought to embody that hope in different ways. I shared with you earlier some thoughts about the Pax Romana, the “Roman peace” that brought stability and prosperity to the wealthy and powerful, often at the expense of the lowly and oppressed. In the history of the church, there is also the concept of the Pax Dei, the “Peace of God.” This is the name given to a movement that began in tenth-century medieval Europe, several centuries after the fall of the Roman Empire. In this era, much of Western Europe was politically decentralized, leaving local nobility to fight private wars. This is the age of the medieval knights, when land was seized for wealth and power; slights to one’s honor demanded retaliation; and justice was mostly local. Unfortunately, just as under the Pax Romana, it was often ordinary people who bore the cost of peace maintained by the powerful.
Imagine: It is the year 1000. You’re not a king or a knight—you’re a farmer. You’ve spent months planting and tending wheat. Your children are helping gather the harvest. Suddenly, horsemen appear—not foreign invaders, but the soldiers of the neighboring lord. They burn your fields because your lord is feuding with theirs. They take your oxen, loot your grain, and ride away. By winter, your family may starve—not because of drought, but because powerful men settled their dispute on your land.
Into that world, the Christian church said, “Enough.” Against the values of power and greed, the church encouraged peace through restraint and justice. Claiming the moral and spiritual authority of God, the church sought to place limits on violence. It declared that priests, monks, nuns, pilgrims, farmers, merchants, women, children, and the poor were not legitimate targets of warfare. Those who violated these protections could be excommunicated from the church.
The Pax Dei did not end war, but it did do something remarkable: it insisted that even the powerful are accountable to God. Drawing on centuries of Scripture and the Church’s witness, Christian leaders spoke hope into the darkness by proclaiming that the vulnerable matter to God and are worthy of protection. In contrast to the Pax Romana, which maintained peace through imperial power, the Pax Dei sought to protect the lowly and the vulnerable by placing moral limits on the powerful. The questions we ask ourselves matter. Where the Pax Romana asked, “How do we preserve the empire?” The Pax Dei asked, “How do we protect the vulnerable?”
I shared a story at the beginning of my sermon about this young mother, Galina. Her husband, a civilian recruit in this unwelcome war, was injured early in the war. He went into a coma, and it was a terrifying time. Galina was able to go and be with him, and that journey itself would have been very difficult. Happily, her husband recovered, and the family was able to be together in a place of relative safety. Galina then started a child-care center in the town where she lives. Even as her country continues to be at war, she is working to create a safe space for women like herself, who come to this place having been displaced from their hometown because of the war. In the midst of chaos, she provides an opportunity for the children to receive loving care.“[These women] do not know what will happen next. They do not live in real time,” Galina says. “They either stay in the past or hope for some distant future after the war. It’s a postponed life.” She speaks of the time that she was separated from her husband as a particularly painful time, and she says, “This is why I treasure this community that we can create because we are together and we can support each other and we can watch our children grow up together. Above all, love helps me continue living.” Despite everything that she has been through, Galina has a bright outlook for her daughter’s future. “Sofiya’s children will live in a happy country,” she insists. “They will not know of the suffering we are going through right now.”4
I pray it may be so. This spark of hope that Galina carries is something that she is using to fuel a community where they can dream of a better life to come and improve their present reality as best they can. Her story reminds us that we, too, live in the already and the not yet. This Advent, as we share again the story of the coming of the longed-for Messiah, I pray we will all consider not just our present reality, but the life that is ahead of us. It’s not hard to encounter a litany of all of the things that are wrong in our world right now. But hope shines a light in the darkness. We are the bearers of this hope. This Advent season, I pray that we will look for and celebrate the ways where God’s dreams for us and our dreams for our world unite. I pray that we will ask the question of the Pax Dei: “How can we protect the vulnerable?” And I pray that we will consider how God is calling us to be bearers of hope for a world in need. In the name of the One who never fails us. Amen.
Notes
