The Neighborhood Podcast

"In the Time of King Herod, We Long for God to Break In" (November 30, 2025 Sermon)

• Rev. Dr. Stephen M. Fearing

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Preaching: Rev. Dr. Stephen M. Fearing

Text: Luke 1:5-13

The season opens in a world humming with anxiety, and we refuse to look away. We begin with a prayerful grounding, then move into the charged space of Luke 1—Zechariah at the altar, an angel at his side, and a heart seized by tarasso, that deep inner shaking that follows surprise and uncertainty. Alongside the sacred text, we tell the truth about life under Herod’s shadow: economic pressure, public fear, and the slow grind of disparity. We also honor the micro aches that live at home—Elizabeth and Zechariah’s longing for a child, stigma, aging, and the fear of a future that won’t hold.

From there, we get practical about fear’s many disguises. Borrowing the Enneagram’s nine lenses, we map how perfectionism, people-pleasing, success, intensity, knowledge, security, plans, control, and peacemaking can all be strategies to cope with fear. None of them make us bad; they make us human. The invitation is to notice the pattern, name the wound it tries to guard, and choose a truer response. That’s where curiosity enters. When fear insists on a brick wall, curiosity asks if there might be a door. We explore how curiosity opens conversation, disrupts echo chambers, and invites courage without bravado.

Advent’s promise meets both scales of fear at once. The angel’s “do not be afraid” speaks to personal grief and public oppression, announcing a child who prepares the way for a Messiah whose kingdom unsettles empires and heals households. We reflect on how scarcity narratives shrink our imagination, while hope trains us to act with generosity, accountability, and connection. By the end, we extend a warm invitation to rest and sing Come, Thou Long-Expected Jesus—choosing to live alert, tender, and brave in a world that needs exactly that kind of presence.

If this conversation sparked something in you, share it with a friend, subscribe for more Advent reflections, and leave a review to help others find the show. What door might curiosity be opening for you today?

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SPEAKER_01:

Our prayer for illumination. With us, God, in the time of Moses, you spoke through water in the desert and a pillar of smoke. In the time of the judges, you spoke through the prophets. In the time of Herod, you spoke through angel choruses and unlikely miracles. And every time you have been speaking. So today, in our time, we ask that you would speak again. Break through the chatter and distraction of our weary minds, and speak to us once more. With hope we pray. Amen. Our first reading today is from Lamentations, chapter 3, verses 55 through 57. I called on your name, O Lord, from the depths of the pit. You heard my plea. Do not close your ear to my cry for help, but give me relief. You came near when I called on you. You said, Do not fear. Holy wisdom, holy word. Thanks be to God.

SPEAKER_00:

Friends, let's listen for what God is saying to God's church as we begin the season of Advent from Luke's Gospel, chapter 1, verses 5 through 13. In the days of King Herod of Judea, there was a priest named Zechariah who belonged to the priestly order of Abijah. His wife was descended from the daughters of Aaron, and her name was Elizabeth. Both of them were righteous before God, living blamelessly according to all the commandments and regulations of the Lord, but they had no children, because Elizabeth was barren, and both were getting on in years. Once, when he was serving as priest before God during his section's turn of duty, he was chosen by Lot, according to the custom of the priesthood, to enter the sanctuary of the Lord to offer incense. Now, at the time of the incense offering, the whole assembly of the people was praying outside. Then there appeared to him an angel of the Lord standing at the right side of the altar of incense. When Zechariah saw him, he was terrified and overwhelmed with fear. But the angel said to him, Do not be afraid, Zechariah, for your prayer has been heard. Your wife Elizabeth will bear you a son, and you will name him John. Friends, holy wisdom, a holy word. Thanks be to God. Let us pray. O Lord, may the words of my mouth and the meditations of all of our hearts be acceptable and pleasing in your sight, O Lord. Our rock and our redeemer. Amen. Fear is a friend that's misunderstood. John Mayer sang this in a song that he wrote in 2006 called The Heart of Life. Fifty years earlier, Martin Luther King Jr. would put it this way: Normal fear protects us. Abnormal fear paralyzes us. Normal fear is a friend that motivates us to improve our individual and collective warfare, or excuse me, collective welfare. Abnormal fear is an enemy that constantly poisons and distorts our inner lives. So our problem is not to get rid of fear, but to harness and master it. Most of us, I suppose, consider fear not friend but foe. We all try in our own ways, whether we realize it or not, to escape fear at every turn in the road. Many of you may recall a year or two that we did a series on the Enneagram, which gives us, among other things, a really helpful framework for exploring how all of us in different ways try to cope our fears. Type 1s fear being wronged. So that leads them to overcompensate by constantly striving for perfection. If you're a type 2, you probably fear rejection, and it causes you to seek validation through helping others, which isn't a bad thing. Type 3s can be really fearful of failure, which drives them to pursue success and recognition. Type 4s, such as myself, fear above all insignificance, and it pushes us to pursue, to escape into our creativity and emotional depth. Type 5s, fear above all incompetence, and it seeks forms them to seek knowledge as a form of security. Type 6s fear uncertainty and abandonment, and it leads them to seek stability through their relationships and systems. Type 7s fear pain and it causes them to escape into the world of possibilities and plans and distractions. Type 8s, they fear vulnerability and prompts them to assert control and take charge of everything. And finally, type 9s are the peacemakers and they hate conflicts and makes them engage in social gymnastics to avoid any kind of confrontation. So you may be one of those, you may be a combination of those. But I list it because I think that understanding our fears and how they motivate us is a vital spiritual practice. Without acknowledging our relationship with fear, growth becomes impossible. Whether our growth as disciples, parents, lovers, friends, ignoring our fears, which may be tempting, only results in denial and the slow burn of repressed anxiety and stress, which will eventually surface in other ways, and often causes no small amount of collateral damage along the way. But the good news is that if you're looking for a powerful remedy for fear, there is one: curiosity. That's the foundation of this sermon series that we begin today called What Do You Fear, insisting on hope, this advent. So as we bring to God the hopes and fears of all the years, as we sing in anybody know what hymn that is? It's old little town of Bethlehem. So as we bring to God the hopes and fears of all the years, we look forward to Christ's birth, who was who which happened dabsmack in the middle of a very fearful world, not that unlike the one that you and I inhabit. If you appreciate meticulous details, then Luke's gospel is the gospel for you. Luke based his account of Jesus' life on the gospel of Mark, but like many of us, he was likely frustrated with Mark's lack of detail in describing Jesus' life. So as a result, he adds many details that Mark didn't consider important. So today's passage from Luke features an often overlooked but crucial detail in its opening words. In the days of King Herod of Judea. King Herod was a controversial figure. Some people loved him, and other people despised him. He was Jewish, he was the Roman-appointed king of Judea, and his only job was to funnel as much money and power as possible into the empire. And that money and power came at a steep price in the form of heavy taxes and brutal oppression of those who suffered the most to feed the empire's greed. Herod branded himself as a master builder. He loved to build things. He had many costly projects, such as the Hippodome, which Herod built in honor of Emperor Augustus, about 10 years before Jesus was born. These projects boosted Herod's ego, and of course it pleased the Romans to no end, but they came at a cost. Economic disparity was increasing, and many had hoped that Herod would spend less time on these building projects and more time on serving his fellow Jewish constituents. Now, historians differ on Herod's reputation as a brutal tyrant. You may remember the Bible says that Herod had all the infants murdered in attempts to kill the baby Jesus, but some historians dispute that fact. What we do know, what is widely accepted amongst historians, is that Herod executed one of his wives and at least three of his own children. Some believe that Herod may have started off as a somewhat well-meaning ruler, but as the saying goes, absolute power corrupts absolutely. So at some point, Herod's slide into tyranny became undeniable, and the people of Judah lived in constant fear of where his lust for power would lead them. And amid this climate of social unrest was a man named Zechariah. Zechariah was a priest who, like all of us, faced both macro and micro fears. Macro fears involved the socio, political, and economic situations that we've just discussed, but he also, like all of us, experienced micro fears, which were more personal to him and his spouse Elizabeth. Like some, undoubtedly among us, they longed for a child that had so far eluded them. Luke's mention of their righteousness adds to the fears surrounding them in this situation, mainly because of the common belief that infertility was a sign of divine disapproval. Zechariah and Elizabeth must have been affected by the sociopolitical unrest in their society, but their fears were also deeply personal because of their struggles with infertility. They likely feared social ostracism in a world that valued women only to the extent that they could bear children. They likely had a fear of losing the legacy of their family name in a world where lineage was an important marker of social status. And they also likely had a fear of growing old in a world where children were the primary caregivers of elderly parents. And so they were fearful. And so, like each of us, Zechariah and Elizabeth were hungry for God to break in and disrupt the painful reality of their fears. Where do you long for God to break into your life? What fears do you have that call out to God for intervention? Maybe you know the acute pain of longing for a child. Maybe you know the ache of some other unfulfilled dream. Maybe, like Zechariah, you know what it's like to come here to sit in the house of God and giving thanks in one breath and voicing lament in the next. In that messy, fearful space, God breaks in in today's story. Zechariah was alone with his thoughts. All the people were outside praying in the courtyard. He was inside lighting incense. Zechariah's response to this abrupt angelic encounter is familiar to those of us who know the stories of the Bible. Never, ever, ever in the Bible does someone greet an angel casually with, like, hey dude, what's up? Yeah, that story is not in the Bible. Instead, the response is predictable, probably including a four-letter curse word that some scribe at some point in history thought best to scratch out of the gospel. The text says that Zechariah is terrified and overwhelmed with fear. The Greek word for fear here or overwhelmed is tarasso. And this isn't just a temporary jump scare where he clutches his heart and laughs it off. No. Taraso means disturbed, agitated, unsettled. Reverend Dr. Bo Young Lee describes the word in the following way. She says, this is no fleeting startle. It evokes deep inner shaking, a disruption of body and spirit. Taraso is the soul's recoil from the unexpected, the mind's clamor in the face of uncertainty, the body's trembling at the threshold of something it cannot control. She goes on to say that like Zechariah, we may grow so used to disappointment that when hope finally arrives, it startles us. When God interrupts, we flinch. But the good news of this passage is that fear doesn't have to be the final word. In fact, it never is, though our anxiety tries to convince us otherwise. Fear sees itself as a brick wall, but sometimes it's a doorway to new possibilities if we respond with curiosity. And so the angel opens the door and beckons Zechariah to take a stroll on a path that God has meticulously curated for him and Elizabeth. The dead end you've decided for yourself is your narrative and not mine, God says to Zechariah through this divine messenger. And here I want us to remember that Elizabeth and Zechariah's lack of a child is a symbol for a larger story of scarcity that Advent challenges with its message of hope. The child who is to come, whose name will be John, will of course point to another whose name will be Jesus. This child, this Messiah, presents an existential threat to the Herods of the world whose brands are built on selfishness, greed, and an insatiable appetite for domination. God's promise to this unsettled priest speaks to both his macro and his micro fears, and you and I, too, this day are recipients of that message. And so the question is, what will you and I do with it? We can choose to let our fears turn us inward. If we do, our echo chambers will only grow louder. The Herods of history, past and present, delight when that happens, because when the people below Herod focus more on using their fears as weapons against each other instead of working together to hold leaders like him accountable, he gets an endlessly renewable get out of jail free pass. It's one of the best kept secrets in the handbook of oppression. But you and I, we can choose to process our fears differently. You and I can choose a different response. We can let it push us outward to connect with one another. That's what curiosity does. It opens up doors that the Herods of the world claim are forever closed. Every advent we walk through the door opened by Zechariah and Elizabeth's angel. Each new liturgical year we pass through the door that the Herods among us, driven by paranoia, have locked and double bolted and triple bolted multiple times to keep us from breaking through. But friends, God specializes in smashing the doors that you and I build to keep us from one another. And the one who does that chaotic good is named Jesus, and there's a reason that Herod wanted him dead. So, friends, as we begin Advent, rest in this good news. God's beloved thief is breaking into this messy, fearful world. And this thief, we need not fear, unless, of course, her name is Herod. The rest of us should welcome him. Come, we will sing in just a minute. Come, thou long-expected Jesus, born to set thy people free from our fears and sins. Release us, let us find our rest in thee. Friends, our fears may have a firm grip, but they're no match for God's embrace. There is a rest to be found in the one who is born a child and yet a king. And so, friends, let us see fear as a misunderstood friend. As we continue this sermon series, we will open ourselves to God's curiosity. A God who sits with us in our fear and guides us towards new possibilities. Yes, yes, fear can be paralyzing if we allow it. But fear is also an important biological response that signals when something significant is at stake. This means that God's beloved thief arrives when his message of hope is most needed. And so, with our fears in one hand and curiosity in the other, let us sing to the one who is born to set us his people free. Together, let us finish this sermon together by singing, Come, thou long expected Jesus. Please rise in body or in spirit.