So, this year, I want to talk about Advent, which is a season on a lot of liturgical calendars but is often misunderstood as being another name for Christmas–which it isn’t. Advent is a word meaning “the arrival of an important person or event” and because Advent almost always (but not this year) overlaps with Hannukah and many scholars believe Jesus was conceived in the winter and born during the Fall Festivals, I would like to think that the Light of the World was indeed conceived during Hannukah, beginning a nine-month season of waiting with anticipation for His birth for Mary and ourselves looking even more forward to His second coming. Let’s tell a “what if” story based on the Gospel of Luke to see what the beginning of Mary’s wait might have looked like.
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Hi! I’m Miss Tyler! Welcome to this week’s episode of Context for Kids, where I teach you guys stuff most adults don’t even know. If this is your first time hearing or if you have missed anything, you can find all the episodes archived at contextforkids.podbean.com, which has them downloadable, or at contextforkids.com, where I have transcripts for readers or on my Context for Kids YouTube channel, where I usually post slightly longer versions. All Scripture this week comes from the MTV, the Miss Tyler Version, which is the CSB (Christian Standard Bible) tweaked a little or a lot to make the context and the content more understandable for kids.
We’re doing something a bit different this week because many people are celebrating Advent and there is some confusion over what Advent is and isn’t. First of all, Advent isn’t Christmas. It doesn’t even have that much to do with Christmas, in a lot of ways, but teaches us a lot about God sending His Son Jesus to save us and how people had to wait for it. In fact, it all started out as a month of looking forward to Jesus coming back, which is an awesome thing to be thinking about. We’ve already started to learn about the wait for the Messiah, the King of kings who would crush the head of the serpent and put an end to sin and death so that we could live our lives for God without being terrified of what people might do to us. People who believe that death is the end should be worried about dying I suppose, but when we understand that there is a lot more in the future that is good and perfect and should give us hope. All that is wrong will be made right. And we are waiting for that right now just like the people were waiting for Jesus for so long. It’s just that they were waiting for Him to show up and we are waiting for Him to show up again and stay for good this time.
That’s what Advent means. It’s a very old word that means something very exciting—the coming of an important person or an important event. With Jesus, we get both. People were waiting for Him, waiting for Him to be born, waiting for Him to save His people, and waiting for Him to be King. So, beginning at the end of November and going to the end of December, Christians celebrate the wait in churches with four weeks of teachings about the coming of the Messiah—Jesus. Scholars tell us that this time probably overlaps with when the archangel Gabriel visited Mary to tell her that she was going to be the mother of Jesus, which probably happened during Hannukah. Hannukah is very late this year—it actually doesn’t start until the same day that Christmas is celebrated in the western world (in the eastern world, it is celebrated in January)—but usually it happens closer to the beginning of December. That’s why I celebrate Jesus’s birthday in the Fall, during the festivals, but we don’t know for sure when He was born. In the ancient world, people didn’t pay much attention to when someone was born—maybe because so many babies died—but they were very interested in when people died. So, today I am going to tell a “what if” story about Advent and also about Hannukah—about the wait for the Savior of the whole world.
Ever since Mary was a little girl, she’d heard the stories about the Messiah who was coming to save them from the Romans and to make the Jewish people great again like they were in the days of David and Solomon. Of course, some of the scribes (the people who knew the Bible the best) believed he would be a king, and others believed he would be a priest but most people believed that God would send someone to save them like He did in the time of the judges so that they could have a real kingdom like the one in the Bible. And every little girl wondered if she would be the mom of the Messiah while a lot of little boys hoped that they would be the Messiah—especially if they were descended from King David or Aaron the first High Priest. Mary was a descendant of both—her dad came from the family of David and her mom came from the family of Aaron. Mary had cousins who were priests and the wives of priests, like old Elizabeth and her husband Zechariah. If she wasn’t from such a poor family, she might have thought that she had twice as much of a chance as most girls but she was from the little town of Nazareth and nothing in her Bible said anything about the Messiah coming from her tiny town or even about her tiny town. More like Bethlehem near Jerusalem, because that’s where King David’s family came from and the prophets seemed to be saying that the Messiah should come from there. But she hadn’t even ever been there, much less come from there. No, Mary loved God and would be happy to be chosen but she knew that her story made it very unlikely that she was going to be anything other than the wife of a poor craftsman—one of the woodworkers or stone masons who worked rebuilding Sepphoris, a fancy Roman city to the north.
So, young Mary (who was a teenager) wasn’t surprised when she was matched with a young man about five years older who did exactly that sort of work. He was a good man and a hard worker and he loved God a lot. His family went to Passover in Jerusalem every year and he said his prayers three times a day like Daniel and tried his hardest to make God happy—even when it was difficult. She knew that she could be happy married to him, even though she barely knew him apart from his reputation, which was excellent. Nobody married for romance in those days, and there was no dating. Parents put their heads together to come up with a match for their kids which would be good for both families. Of course, Mary knew that she wouldn’t be living with her own family but with Joseph’s and her mother-in-law would rule over the way the house was run and everything there would have to be done her way. Fortunately, Joseph’s mother was very kind so she wasn’t worried about the sort of treatment some of her childhood friends were having to deal with.
It was cold outside, which it always was during the winter month of Kislev, and Mary was about to go to the well to fetch some water for her mother. She went to get the empty water jar and suddenly before her was a man whom she had never met and she was startled. In fact, she almost dropped her jug. And things didn’t become any less alarming when the man said to her, “Greetings! Hello! You are favored by God and He is with you!” You can just imagine how shocked she was. Her jaw dropped and she just stared at the man, not quite sure exactly what she should say. It wasn’t normal to see a strange man and especially one who says things like that. For a moment, Mary thought back to the scriptures and the stories of Abraham, Jacob, and Joshua who all saw angels but they were all important men and what was she but a young teenager from a tiny village in Galilee? I mean, she wasn’t even from Jerusalem or somewhere important! Her family wasn’t important and her village wasn’t important either. Mary wondered if she might be dreaming when he spoke again and she became even more confused.
“Don’t be afraid, Mary, because God has His eye on you and He has chosen you for something very important. Now listen: You are going to have a baby boy, and you will name him Jesus. He will be great and will be called the Son of the Most High, and the Lord God will make Him a King like your ancestor David. He will reign over the house of Jacob forever, and his kingdom will never ever end.” (Luke 1:30-33)
Wow, that was a mouthful but what did it mean? Mary knew, or at least she thought she knew. This man, who must be an angel, was talking about the Messiah they had all been waiting for. They had been waiting for the advent of the Messiah, the coming of the King whom God had promised long ago when He told David that there wouldn’t be any kings over the Jewish people unless they came from his family—at least not ones God approved of. There had been a problem about a hundred years earlier when the descendants of the Maccabean priests who had saved the Jewish people from the Greeks, well—they decided that they should be kings even though their father and grandfather had just been rulers. Bad mistake. They were the worst sort of people imaginable. Very scary and evil and violent and they killed anyone who got in their way and even their own family! One of them even starved their own mom in jail. They weren’t from the family of David at all and shouldn’t have ever called themselves kings. They were the reason why the Romans had been able to come in and take over their country so easily. In fact, the people had begged the Romans to come. It wasn’t the first time in history that the Jews had really bad kings and unfortunately, it wasn’t the last time either because the king the Romans gave them was just as bad, only in different ways.
In fact, this was the very first day of Hannukah, which is the celebration of all that the Maccabean priests had accomplished in getting rid of the cruel Greeks who had made it illegal for them to worship God! On Hannukah, people wondered a bit more loudly than usual about when God would rescue them by sending another deliverer. The Romans weren’t as horrible as the Greeks but they were way more powerful. And this angel was telling Mary that her son would be the next King of the Jews—the one they had all been waiting for. Mary’s mom was from a priestly family and her father was from David’s family, and so Mary wondered what kind of king Jesus would be. But then she stopped and frowned as she was thinking about all of this and asked, “But I am not married yet, so how on earth am I going to have this baby?”
Gabriel smiled, this was a much better answer than the one he had gotten from old Zechariah when he had been told that his wife Elizabeth was finally going to have a baby. Zechariah, the faithful old priest who had served God all his life, didn’t believe him but Mary, a poor young teenager, did. Mary was just confused about how such a thing was going to happen—she didn’t doubt it would happen. She had been waiting for the Messiah her whole life and so had all of her family. Now on Hannukah when they celebrated God restoring the Temple in Jerusalem and the defeat of enemy armies, the Messiah was in sight and she was very excited—but also more than a bit confused. The Bible was full or miracle babies—five of them! But their moms were all married women who hadn’t been able to have a baby for a long time. Mary wasn’t anything like that and there was no reason to believe that she wouldn’t have a lot of babies with Joseph once they finally got married and were living together. Maybe Joseph would be Jesus’s dad and the angel was talking about what would happen after they got married. She definitely wanted to know.
But the angel was saying no to Joseph. He explained patiently, “The Holy Spirit will come upon you, and the power of the Most High will overshadow you. So, your baby will be special, set apart, holy, chosen and called the Son of God. And just think about your cousin, Elizabeth—she is very old but she is pregnant too. She has been childless all these many years but now she is six months pregnant. Absolutely nothing will ever be impossible with God.”
Mary was so surprised. Her cousin Elizabeth was actually going to have a baby! She’d heard the family members whispering about there having to be some secret and terrible sin in her or Zechariah’s lives for them to still not have any babies after all of these years. But when they had seen Elizabeth at the festivals in Jerusalem, she was always so kind and good—just a bit sad when she saw all the new babies and pregnant tummies among her family members. That kind and sweet Elizabeth was finally going to be a mom was the best news ever. Mary was surprised that she hadn’t heard the news yet—maybe Elizabeth was hiding because it would be impossible to keep something like that secret—by now she would be really big. All of this made her feel very close to Elizabeth even though they lived far apart and didn’t know each other very well. In fact, there wasn’t anyone in the world she wanted to talk to about all of this more than Elizabeth. Mary didn’t understand everything because the angel wasn’t entirely clear on exactly what would happen or how, but she felt as though she had a friend in all of this who would at least understand something—even if it wasn’t quite the same.
Mary wondered later about how complicated all of this might get. If Elizabeth was hiding when she was an old married woman, what would it be like for her when she was so young and wasn’t even married yet? If people saw that she was having a baby, they could do terrible things to her. Joseph wouldn’t marry her and his family sure wouldn’t want her around because they would be angry and embarrassed. No one else would marry her either. Everyone would be looking at her and whispering about her all of the time. Joseph or her father might even take her to the Temple to force her to drink the cursed water trying to prove that she had done something wrong. Would they believe her story about the angel? Would they call her crazy? Or maybe a liar? Things like this just didn’t happen to people like her and something exactly like this hadn’t ever happened before. I bet Mary was scared more than a little bit later on, but right now she was just shocked and excited so she answered, “I want God to do everything just like you said—I am His servant.” And the angel left her.
We don’t know how long Mary waited before God kept His promise, but we do know that she left to see her cousin Elizabeth almost right away. Maybe Mary knew that Elizabeth and Zechariah’s home was the safest place for her to be right now because they were the only people she was sure would accept her crazy story. After all, they had a crazy story to tell too! We do know that by the time she got to their home, she was already expecting Jesus. Remember that advent means the arrival of an important person or event or thing. Everyone had been waiting for a long time for the Messiah to come but now one young lady was waiting in an entirely new way—because she was pregnant. Everyone else was just in the hoping stage where they thought he would come, maybe tomorrow but maybe in a thousand years, who knows? But Mary knew she had to wait about nine months and then the Messiah, the King of the Jews, would be there. Wow, that’s something amazing to wait for. I remember waiting for our twins to be born before we got to adopt them. It was the only thing I could hardly think about. I wanted to be a mom so bad but I wasn’t going to be the mom of a king! I actually wouldn’t want to be the mom of a king, not at all. Mary was told that her baby would sit on David’s throne and so that made Him the King of the Jews—although she definitely had no clue as to how that was going to happen. Maybe He would be a mighty warrior! Who knows? Well, we know but that’s because we know the rest of the story of Jesus, right? She just knew that the Messiah was coming and that he would be her very own miracle baby. She was going to be just like Sarah, Rebekah, Rachel, Hannah, and now Elizabeth too! She probably spent a lot of nights going back and forth between being worried about what everyone would say when she couldn’t hide her baby bump anymore and being excited that her son Jesus would be king. How do you think you would feel if you were her and you just had the promise without knowing the rest of the story?
So, during the season of Advent, we take part in the rehearsal of the waiting for Jesus to come back by learning about how the world was waiting for Him to be born the first time. He’s the most important thing that ever happened in the history of the whole world—not just Jesus but also everything about Him. Everything He did and taught and suffered and how God made Him king over all the world and not just the king of the Jews. He is King of the Jews because He was born to have David’s own throne but He became King of the entire world when He rose from the dead. And that’s wonderful and amazing and the very best thing that ever happened but it still isn’t as amazing as what we are all waiting for—the day that Jesus comes back to this world and rules as our King. That’s right, the Bible says that He is coming here and not that we are going to where He is now. This wonderful creation, He made it, and He will be King over it and everything in it. Isn’t that amazing? No wonder the Bible says that every tear will be wiped from our eyes. Imagine a world where no one suffers and no one is poor and every kid has more than enough to eat. Just think about a world without war because when everyone has the same king, no one can start a war! There will be no sickness and people won’t be dying all the time and you won’t have to lock your door at night because it is safe.
We can eat the fruit that Adam and Eve stole from God’s special tree. And best of all, we will see Jesus face to face. What will He look like? Will He glow? Will He look like a normal person with brown skin and brown eyes and brown hair like His mom probably had? Or will He look so amazing that we won’t even be able to see any colors at all? We don’t really know for sure and a lot of people have written a lot of “what if” stories about it. For me, what I want most is to just feel His love for you and for me. We’ll all have perfect jobs that we love and that we are good at because God knows us inside and out and knows our talents even if we never figured them out in this life. I will not be painting and making pottery, I can tell you that for sure. I love what I do now but who will need to be taught about Jesus and the Bible when He is right here??? I mean, duh, I will be out of a job and I will be happy about it.
Waiting is hard but thinking about it helps us when times are hard. When we are sad, we can look forward to a time when all of our tears will be wiped away. When someone hurts us and no one does anything to help us, we can think about God’s Kingdom where no one will hurt us anymore. When things are unfair and we get angry, we can know that nothing will be unfair when Jesus is King. But you know what? Most people don’t really think about things like that—they think in their heads that if they aren’t happy right now or aren’t being treated fairly right now and don’t get revenge right now that there is no hope. But there will always be unfair and wrong and sad things happening until Jesus is King because of sin. Jesus fought against sin and death and won the fight but we are still dying and we still have a lot of challenges when we try to stop sinning but the good news is that because Jesus came to life again in a perfect body, so can we. And we don’t have to sin forever because as we get to know and love God better, He changes us into people who don’t want to do bad things anymore. I just wish that it happened overnight because I have loved God for twenty-six years and I still do some stupid, messed up stuff. But the important thing is that I don’t do most of the stuff I used to do because He has just helped me to not even want to do it anymore. You guys are lucky that you know Jesus now. I didn’t even like Him until I was twenty-nine years old, so I had a lot of bad stuff to unlearn and stop doing.
And so for me, and I hope for you, advent is a time when I think a lot about Jesus coming back and ruling the whole world and making everything good again. But I also think about the things I can and should do right now to make the world look more like Jesus wants it to look. After all, Jesus was how God created the universe and everything in it. Jesus is always going to want things to be perfect and so we always just try to do better day after day. After all, there is more than one way for Jesus to come back. The way we know best is when He actually comes here and we can see Him and hear Him and talk to Him, but when we do what He wants us to do for other people and we love our neighbors as we want to be loved, then it’s like we are bringing a little bit more of Jesus to the world. That’s our job. It isn’t enough to tell people about Jesus. We should do that but what is even more important is that we are loving them while we are telling them. A lot of sad people need to know Jesus so that He can help them—that’s why He wants to be our King. Not to boss us around but to make everything work the way it is supposed to work.
What are you most excited about? What advent are you waiting for? Whatever it is, if it is your favorite sport starting its season or a concert or a movie or whatever, it won’t really make your life any different or better. It might be exciting and feel good for a while, but what everyone in the world needs are the changes that Jesus will bring when His advent happens—when He comes back and changes everything. Will there still be sports and concerts and movies? I don’t know. I sure hope that people will be able to be creative in those ways but maybe life will be so much different and so much better that we won’t even care. We won’t be sitting on clouds playing harps, that’s for sure. Whatever we will be doing will be exactly what we most need to do and it will be a wonderful life. Jesus’s advent will mean no more sickness, death, disability, crime, drugs, lies or anything else that hurts people.
I love you. I am praying for you. I want you to spend some time every single day thinking about what life might be like when Jesus comes back as King. Think about the things that won’t happen anymore and the things that will happen.