Another Year of Unsettling Advent for Our Unsettling Time

A few months ago, Miguel Maruyama lost his job and got evicted along with his 19-year-old special needs son. A GoFundMe to help them notes he was exploited by his former employer/landlord. So the father and son duo found a spot to sleep near a freeway in San Jose, California. They picked up trash and planted flowers to beautify the area. More recently, they built a nativity set to start getting into the holiday spirit. But on Friday (Nov. 8), the Grinch arrived.

Caltrans (the California Department of Transportation) confiscated the nativity scene and other possessions. The father and son will get their stuff back after 60 days — which will be after Christmas. While Maruyama seeks backpay from his former employer and takes care of his son, he continues looking for a safe place for them to live. But in a state where the governor seems more focused on driving out unhoused people than connecting them with services, the system isn’t working fast enough.

Just a couple years ago, Caltrans expressed its excitement to participate in the transportation of the U.S. Capitol’s Christmas tree. But the nativity scene of a homeless family was demolished. The removal of the symbolic holy family seems quite apropos. The treatment of Miguel and his son is probably how Caltrans would react to the actual holy family if Joseph was today trying to protect his family from Gov. Herod while fleeing to Mexico.

If the story of Christmas remains just about some people who lived a long time ago in a land far away, it can seem like a sweet story perfect for a social media post about a big tree. But what if we see the story in our world today? How might that unsettle our readings of the Bible and help us live out our faith in these unsettling times?

At Word&Way, we’ve tried to engage in such questions with our Unsettling Advent devotionals. The daily emails throughout Advent offer reflections on current issues plaguing our world that connect with the realities of when Jesus arrived that first Christmas. Each year, more than 20 writers craft the reflections considering both our current world and the old Christmas stories.

Riot police pass by Christmas decor in a mall during a protest rally in Hong Kong on Dec. 24, 2019. (Kin Cheung/Associated Press)

For Unsettling Advent in 2021, we considered Advent in a time of death/COVID, racial injustices, and insurrection. In 2022, we explored Advent in a time of war (in Ukraine), refugees, and (gun) violence. Last year, we reflected on Advent in a time of state executions, political anxieties, and bloodshed in Israel. All three years the devotionals have won top awards from the Associated Church Press and Religion Communicators Council. And they led to a Lenten devotional book in 2023.

We’re excited to announce that Unsettling Advent is returning with new themes. Once again, we’ve assembled a fantastic group of more than 20 writers to help us all consider Advent in light of issues from the news this year: rulers clinging to power, dangerous pregnancies, and violence in Lebanon.

Advent in a time of rulers clinging to power. The guiding drama in Matthew’s birth narrative is King Herod’s quest to hold the throne. Paranoid about losing control, he ordered the slaughter of infants and toddlers in Bethlehem. That wasn’t the extent of his lust for power. Herod even killed his favorite wife and three of his own sons he thought were plotting against him. It led Caesar Augustus to supposedly quip, “It’s better to be Herod’s pig than his son.”

Two thousand years later, we see many rulers desperately trying to hold onto power. This year has often been called “the year of democracy” since it’ll see more than half of the world’s population pick leaders at the ballot box. But perhaps it should really be called “the year of elections.” Just because a vote was held doesn’t mean it was actually an exercise in democracy. Like in Russia, where the strongman ruler Vladimir Putin “won” his fifth presidential term in March with 88% of the vote after barring key candidates from running. He even imprisoned his main rival Alexei Navalny, who died in prison in February. Or like in Venezuela, where President Nicolás Maduro waved a Bible and cracked down on protesters as he claimed he “won” a third term even as independent analyses of the vote show he lost. And then there’s the U.S., where President Joe Biden dismissed concerns about his age and adopted strongman-like rhetoric as he vainly tried to silence calls for him to retire. His refusal to step aside sooner likely helped bring back to the White House a man who last time inspired an insurrection in a failed quest to cling to power. Herod wasn’t the only ruler willing to use violence to stay in office.

Advent in a time of dangerous pregnancies. Getting pregnant in the ancient world was dangerous, especially for teenage girls (like Mary) or older women (like Elizabeth). Lacking today’s medical advancements and sanitation improvements, being with child could be a death sentence. Estimates of maternal death rates in the ancient Roman world range between 5 and 20 per 1,000 live births. Several nations today fall in the lower half of that range (with South Sudan the worst at 12.2), but half of the nations in the world now have rates of less than 0.5 per 1,000 (and several are less than 0.1).

Yet, the story of progress also sees disruptions. The COVID-19 pandemic brought a spike in maternal death rates, but even without that the U.S. has the highest rate among high-income countries (with a rate of about 0.22). For Black women in the U.S., who generally receive worse-quality care, the rate is more than twice the national average. Additionally, some states have passed laws making pregnancy even more dangerous for women. Like for 28-year-old Josseli Barnica, a Honduran immigrant who died in Texas after doctors didn’t properly treat her during a miscarriage because of the state’s strict abortion ban. As a health law and policy professor explained, “Pregnant women have become essentially untouchables.” Unlike our Christmas hymns about a “silent night” and “heavenly peace,” giving birth was dangerous then and is still more dangerous today than it should be.

Advent in a time of violence in Lebanon. The land, cities, and trees of Lebanon show up a lot in the Bible. There’s even an allusion in the birth narratives as the Gospel of Luke refers to a census under Quirinius of Syria. The Roman state of Syria overlapped with parts of what today are the nations of Syria, Turkey, and Lebanon (and eventually part of today’s Israel). The Romans had militarily captured the land of modern-day Lebanon a few decades earlier, and Quirinius even sent soldiers to Mount Lebanon to defeat imperial opponents.

Two millennia later, the land and people of Lebanon again live with violence from a stronger military. Israel’s ongoing war in Gaza (which was an Unsettling Advent theme last year) is also spreading into Lebanon. The most Christian nation in the Middle East other than Cyprus, Lebanon has a vibrant Christian community that’s long been ministering to Syrian refugees and other vulnerable people in their nation. But now they are caught in the crossfire, especially since many live in southern Lebanon where Israeli artillery shells and missiles are exploding. In a land scarred by past invasions and civil wars, the Christian community is opening the doors of its churches and schools to serve as a shelter and provide food, water, and other necessities to their neighbors. They do so with no guarantee they’ll finish the countdown to Christmas. Eight people were killed last month in an Israeli missile strike that destroyed a Catholic church. No “peace on earth” it seems, just like when the babe wrapped in swaddling clothes showed up.

We invite you to journey through Advent with writers who will prepare your heart and spirit for the miracle of Christmas. Instead of distracting you from the world, they will encourage you to live more faithfully within it. In these unsettling times, our devotions will unsettle the commercialistic, sappy takes on this season that skirt past the hard places where God is still with us.

You can sign up for the free daily devotionals — which will land in your inbox beginning on Sunday, Dec. 1 — by visiting advent.wordandway.org and entering your email address. (If you signed up previously, you should still be on the list.) We don’t promise the daily devotions will be cheery, but we are sure they will challenge and inspire you during this holy season.

As a public witness,

Brian Kaylor