November 30, 2025
• Rev. Mindie Moore
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Advent 2025 Week 1
November 30: O Come All Ye Faithful
Isaiah 9:2-3, 6-7
Today begins the season of Advent, the four weeks before Christmas where we both remember the anticipation of the birth of Jesus AND we get to anticipate what Christ is doing in our world and our hearts, even today. Advent is one of the most important seasons in the Church. It helps us, in the middle of what can be a very hectic time of year, to slow down, to notice how God is working, and to let ourselves live in a space of waiting as we get ready to celebrate and enjoy everything that Christmas brings.
And one of the most significant parts of the Advent and Christmas season is MUSIC. On Halloween, I was driving my daughter to her friend’s house and she got really excited and goes, “Mom, come midnight tonight...” and then she just belts out a Kelly Clarkson Christmas song! (Kelly Clarkson happens to be responsible for many of our favorite Christmas pop songs) Now, some of you might be of her mindset, you had your lights up and music on by November 1...while others of you are just slowly tiptoeing into the Christmas playlist, but either way, Christmas music will be everywhere for the next month. And not only are these songs familiar and tied to memories and traditions, but there are some really cool stories behind some of these songs too. 2
Stories that might change the way we hear them...and stories that might have a lot to teach us too.
So let’s pray as we get ready to look at our first one.
Pray
I want you to think about a memorable invitation you’ve received. Think about how the invitation presented itself; think about how you received it; think about how it made you feel. This past spring, I received an invitation to my friend Angela’s wedding that would happen in the summer. (SLIDE) And this invitation...just stunned me. It was so beautiful and thoughtful and it had a way of telling her and her fiancées' story. It was so gorgeous that I showed it off to several people like it was MY wedding invitation, even though I had absolutely nothing to do with it.
Which sounds kind of weird now that I tell you about it today, but that invitation was just so meaningful to me! We were already excited about the event itself—and we would have been excited to go to that wedding if the invite had been scribbled on a piece of notebook paper. BUT. There was something about the invitation itself that really drew us in and really felt special. And it created a moment that I still remember six months later. 3
Because invitations have the power to do so much—obviously, they get us to whatever activity is happening, yes. But it’s more than that. Invitations include. They offer hope. They remind us that we aren’t alone and we are part of something bigger than ourselves. They remind us that someone sees us and wants to gather us into whatever important thing is going on.
Our song this week is a classic hymn—O Come All Ye Faithful. And it’s a hymn that has an element of invitation to it. An invitation to come and see, to experience what God is up to. This is a hymn that has carried that invitation from its origin many years ago, right into our lives today.
Now, there's a good deal of lore around this song and with that lore comes a lot of debate around its exact backstory. And so as I tell you about this, this is going to be less of an accurate history lesson and more of a chance to understand the bigger picture of what was going on in the world that shaped the stories told about this hymn and the different ways it was able to have an impact.
The general consensus is that this hymn was first associated with 18th Century Catholic layman John Francis Wade. Wade was a man whose life experienced a great deal of turmoil when his Catholic community in England found itself exiled to France. There had been what was essentially a civil war, 4
the Jacobite uprising, where the Jacobites rebelled in order to try and restore the deposed Stuart Monarchy. The Stuarts had been Catholic, they were replaced by Protestants, and you can imagine how messy things got when religion and political systems go to war.
So all of this is going on, people are being forced away from their homes and their communities, and as this is happening, a legend starts to develop around this song. That THIS song is a sort of anthem or message that could be used to represent what these Catholics have gone through. Not only that, but there was the idea that this song could be used as an invitation to establish connection FOR these exiles.
In a time of fear and turmoil and grief, these words found in, “O Come All Ye Faithful” provided something that felt like safety. Something that felt like belonging. Something that felt like hope.
Those three things (SLIDE):
Safety
Belonging
Hope 5
Those were three things that were desperately needed during that time...and I would say that those are three things that are desperately needed now too.
And what’s so fascinating to me, as we talk about a hymn written hundreds of years ago, and then we turn to exploring our Scripture for the day, a Scripture from the book of Isaiah that was written thousands of years ago, and we do these things while we gather together at the end of 2025...what’s so fascinating to me...is that those three needs...they hold up. These needs are a core part of our human experience, and they’re a core longing that we all hold.
The book of Isaiah seems to capture that feeling of longing in a way that, for me, no other book of the Bible quite does. There’s just something about the way the story is told in this MASSIVE book that really gets at the heart of what it’s like for God to long for people and for people to long for God and how difficult it can be to hold on to the promises of God especially when the wait feels so very long.
And at this point in the book of Isaiah, we’re witnessing darkness and chaos beginning to descend on God’s people. Isaiah has been trying to get his message across—if the people in power don’t do what is right, if the people don’t turn back to God, destruction WILL come for them. If don’t 6
change their ways, they’re in danger of losing...basically everything. It’s a bleak time that Isaiah is speaking into.
But even though it’s bleak...Isaiah still has an invitation. He still has an invitation to see what God can do and to hold on to that hope.
We hear that invitation to hope in the passage that we read today. Our reading started with one of my very favorite verses in all of Scripture and I want to read it to you again because it’s worth hearing two times in one morning. (SLIDE):
[b]The people who walked in darkness have seen a great light; those who lived in a land of deep darkness— on them light has shined. (Isaiah 9:2)
Isaiah can imagine what God can do, and he doesn’t want to keep what he can see to himself. Now, it’s true--there will be suffering and loss. There will be a long time where things like safety and belonging and hope feel impossible. Isaiah doesn’t try to downplay any of that.
But because Isaiah knows God’s story...Isaiah knows that darkness cannot be where God’s story ends. And it’s because he knows who God is and how God works that he 7
can be so honest about the state of the world that he’s in and he live in that tension of darkness and light.
And I think this is one of the most powerful ways that we ourselves can experience hope. To let the truth be the truth, to see reality exactly as it is. And even as we do THAT to know that God is still working and to believe that there is still something worth anticipating and working towards. To know that there’s still something good worth inviting others into.
The new Wicked movie came out last week (SLIDE), and I have to make a confession: I have seen it twice already. I cried even harder at the second viewing. And I promise I won’t spoil anything if you haven’t seen it, but I did think as I watched it that we see this tension of how we experience hope on display during this movie. Glinda, the “good” witch has a very specific version of hope. And for her this means remaining naive to what’s actually going on around her. She passively hopes it all work out if she can just STAY POSITIVE and BE ENCOURAGING! (That’s an actual quote from the movie)
And in total contrast, Elphaba, the “wicked” witch, takes a much more honest view of the world. She sees things the way they are, even when it’s hard, and sometimes plays the role of a prophet, trying to speak truth to those with influence and power and it makes people INCREDIBLY 8
uncomfortable. But even with such a starkly honest view of the world...she still believes that hope and change are possible. She believes there’s a reason to keep going and that there’s no limit to who can be part of that goodness.
You know, we don’t just need a fictional story to remind us of this...because we are part of God’s story that reminds us of it every day if we let it. We’ve got the example of the Israelites, waiting and finding light in the darkness, believing that God will fulfill God’s promises. We have songs like “O Come All Ye Faithful” that speak to generations of Christians who are looking for a way to find each other and the comfort of God. We have our own stories that we could tell of how God showed up to do what only God could do. We have this whole season of Advent that says—yes, we CAN wait, we CAN hope because we know a God who is faithfully doing things that are worth waiting and hoping for.
And because we have that kind of hope...we get to be people who invite others to have that kind of hope too. We get to be a church, a community of believers, that does whatever we can to make the hope of Jesus real and accessible to anyone and everyone. To make the church, maybe for the first time for some people, a place where safety, belonging, and hope are possible. And we get to do that for (SLIDE) ALL people. 9
When we sing “O Come ALL Ye Faithful,” we get to say that word ALL with our whole hearts.
This is a season in the Church where we get what I really believe is the best opportunity ever. These next few weeks are so special. Because over the next few weeks, we get to encounter all kinds of people who don’t usually come here. Maybe it’s an event, maybe a special service, maybe they’re coming because Mom really wanted them too. But there are so many stories that walk through these doors and as you see faces you don’t recognize or find yourself in the midst of people you don’t yet know, I want you to remember this hymn, and I want you to remember these longings, and I want you to remember what invitation can do. I want you to remember what YOU have experienced...and think about what it could look like to extend that experience to someone else.
And Church, we get to live this kind of invitation, any day, any time, but ESPECIALLY during Advent and Christmas. We get to live out what we receive at the Communion table. Because when we come to THIS table...safety? Belonging? Hope? It’s ALL here. And it’s for ALL people.
So as you receive these things today, I invite you to receive them with an open and grateful heart. And then, to take a moment, and just pray that the Spirit might make you aware 10
of how you might share these things to someone else in the coming weeks.
Let’s move into a time of holy communion together now.
Transition to Communion.
Benediction:
Dictionary of North American Hymnology says that “O Come All Ye Faithful” has repetitions enforce a “sense of urgency”: “Imagine a child, tugging at your hand, saying insistently, ‘Let’s go, let’s go, let’s go!’”
Take that spirit of invitation with you as you go into the rest of Advent.