Earlier this summer I sat down to plan out my preaching series for the next school year. It’s one of my favorite things to do. My process is simple. I take out a legal pad (I’m a pen-and-paper kind of guy) and I vertically divide the page in half. On the left side, I write down each Sunday of the year in number form (9/8, 9/15, 9/22, etc. …). On the right side of the page, I write down sermon series ideas.

Ideas include things like Kingdom Manifesto, a study exploring Jesus’ teaching in the Sermon on the Mount; or Dear God, a series on the challenges of prayer; or A Life in Exile, a series exploring the life of Daniel and how to have influence in while living as an outsider. It’s fun to dream about different ways to make the Bible come alive for people and connect it to their everyday lives.

After about ninety minutes I had the whole year mapped out. It doesn’t always come together that quickly, but on this day it did, well almost. While it was encouraging to get most of the year planned out, in the middle of the year there was a four-week stretch that was blank. Those empty weeks brought a burden that was all too familiar.

They were the four weeks of Advent.

From a cultural vantage point, I love everything about the Christmas season. I love the decorations, the lights, the Christmas cards from family and friends, and the endless Christmas treats.

From a spiritual vantage point, I deeply appreciate the intentionality of Advent in a community of faith. I love the countercultural call to embrace waiting rather than rush through it. The example of how a first-time mother and father prepare for the arrival of their new little one, serves as a model for us to prepare ourselves for the second coming of Christ. There’s comfort in the songs that we sing during this season as they simultaneously look back on the birth of Jesus and fix our gaze forward to give us hope for the day he will return to make all things new.

I love this season. But as a pastor, preaching my way through it can be daunting.

The Lowly Manger … Again?

A sermon is most effective when the preacher is the first one moved by the message during his or her preparation. When the insights from the text awaken a pastor’s desire and imagination, he or she can paint an oral masterpiece that inspires divine awe and wonder in their listeners. When the minister can find themselves in God’s story and demonstrate to their congregation that this is their story as well, God’s power is unleashed in their lives.

The challenge of Advent is that most pastors have preached on the lowly manger, the shepherds tending their flocks at night, and the wise men from afar so many times that one of the most exciting stories ever has become routine and stale.

So, the question is, “How do we get excited about preaching this story … yet again?”

What if the answer is, “We don’t?” What if we give ourselves permission to not preach the same story during December? What if we think differently about preaching during Advent and approach it from a new perspective?

A few years ago, I did just that.

I started by spending some time reflecting on the weekly themes of Advent: hope, peace, love, and joy, along with the image of light. I took out my legal pad and wrote those themes in the middle of a page and circled them.

With my Bible open in front of me I started thumbing through its delicate pages pondering where these four themes emerged in different stories and texts. When an idea surfaced, I wrote it on the page. After a while, I had a few ideas. But the one that excited me the most was the Book of Ruth.

Yep, Ruth.

When All Hope Is Lost

If the Book of Ruth was a movie, the opening scene would be of a farmer trying to turn over soil that is bone dry. His face would be wrapped with a protective cloth to block the swirl of dust from blowing into his eyes. His cattle would be sickly and gaunt while trying to feed on fields full of brittle sun-scorched weeds. His posture would be one of exhaustion and defeat. Famine has invaded Israel.

As the story begins, it zeros in on one man, Elimelek, his wife Naomi, and their two sons. And if famine isn’t bad enough, the hits keep coming. The conditions are so bad that just like Jacob’s family had to go to Egypt at the end of Genesis, Elimelek and his family must leave Israel to find food elsewhere. So, they move to enemy territory, Moab.

In the very next verses, we’re told that Elimelek dies. Two verses after that, we read that Namoi’s two sons also die. We're only six verses into the story and we see famine, displacement, and death upon death upon death.

It goes without saying, but Naomi is devastated and heartbroken. Before chapter one is over, she weeps twice (vs. 9, 14), says she’s lost all hope (v. 12), accuses God for making her life miserable, and contemplates changing her name to Mara, which means bitter (vs. 20-21).

But in the midst of all the despair, God is present and at work. We read in verse six, “the Lord has come to the aid of his people.”

One of the beautiful reminders of Advent is that God is present with us in our pain and suffering. In the same way that Ruth begins with pain and heartache, so does the story of Jesus' birth.

In Luke 1 we read that Herod, who’s not a nice man, is King of Judea. In Luke 2, Roman occupation is front and center, “In those days Caesar Augustus issued a decree” (v. 1, italics mine). God’s people were overtaxed, living in fear, and led by an insecure hothead who, at the drop of a hat, had no problem committing mass infanticide.

While the lives of the people in our congregation may not be the same, many have also lost hope. Their lives haven’t turned out the way they planned. Their marriage is a bust. They’ve been unemployed for over a year. They’ve adopted addictive habits to cope with their disappointments. And their kids are struggling with major anxiety and depression. The holidays also have the tendency to exacerbate people’s sorrows. The images, commercials, and Christmas cards that portray the perfect family accentuate how theirs isn’t.

The point of Advent is that when it feels like all hope is lost, God is present and doing a new thing to bring hope to our hopelessness. The story of Ruth captures that beautifully.

There Is One Who Can Redeem

One of the main narrative threads that runs through the Bible is redemption. Right after sin enters the world in Genesis 3, God is quick to launch a plan to restore what has been broken. From that moment on God continually orchestrates his plan to provide for and rescue his people. The story of Ruth is no exception. It’s evident in three specific ways.

Food

Even though the opening verses of Ruth are bleak, the context of the story is that the Lord had come to the aid of his people by providing food (1:6), as the barley harvest had just begun (1:22).

Two women living alone in the ancient world was a risky situation. The larger your family the greater your social and financial security. But upon arrival in Bethlehem, Naomi and Ruth have nothing, only each other.

Chapter two opens with Ruth strategizing on how to meet their basic needs. She comes up with the idea of going out into the harvest fields to pick up the leftover grain behind those working the field.

This is known in the Torah as gleaning. Landowners would intentionally leave the edges of their fields untouched during the harvest for the poor and foreigners (Lev. 19:9). Naomi agrees that this is a good idea and sends her out. Not knowing where to go, she wanders into the field of a man named Boaz.

When Boaz learns who Ruth is and how she left her home and family to care for her grieving mother-in-law, he treats her with extraordinary kindness and generosity. He invites her back to keep working in his field and ensure she goes home with more grain than she expected. But little did Ruth know that food was not the only way God would redeem.

Family

When Ruth gets home and Naomi learns that she was in Boaz’s field and sees all that he did for her, hope begins to rise. She also tells Ruth that Boaz is a relative of her deceased husband, Elimelek, which makes him a guardian-redeemer.

In a situation where a husband dies without a son, the dead husband’s brother has the responsibility to take his wife and bear her a son (Deut. 25:5). Or if an individual becomes poor and has property they need to sell, the closest relative to that individual has the first right to purchase the land (Lev. 25). While Ruth and Namoi’s situation isn’t identical to what’s written in these two passages, it does qualify for the help of a guardian-redeemed.

Chapter three tells the story of Ruth petitioning Boaz to redeem her and Elimelek’s land. While he is open to the idea, he tells her that there is someone else more closely related to Elimelek than himself. He tells her that if this individual won’t do it, he will.

The next morning, they go to settle the matter. When this closer relative learns about Elimelek and his property needing to be redeemed, he’s quick to say yes. However, when he learns Ruth comes with it, he changes his mind. Boaz redeems Elimelek’s land, takes Ruth as his wife, and bears her a son. A new family is born.

But that’s not all.

Future

After Ruth’s baby is born, in Old Testament fashion, the story ends with a lineage. It’s easy to skip over a lineage as they are just a list of names, many of which are hard to pronounce. But this lineage brings the story of Advent front and center as it shows that Boaz wasn’t just a relative of Elimelek but was also an ancestor to King David.

As we know from prophecies in the Old Testament, the Messiah was to be born from the house and line of David. This means this baby isn’t just a baby, but this baby points to the birth of Jesus.

When we open the Book of Matthew, the first thing we see is a lineage, and as with most lineages, it’s dominated by men. But in Matthew 1 we see four women, Mary the mother of Jesus, Tamar, Rahab, and Ruth, who’s a foreigner and outsider who God uses in extraordinary ways.

Advent is a season of hope, not at the expense of being honest about our suffering, but as a reminder that God is in the midst of it with us. Christmas isn’t a nostalgic story about a cute baby who’s born amongst cuddly farm animals. It’s a story about God meeting the hopeless and broken in their pain and using them to bring about redemption and restoration for all humankind. It’s a story that’s not located in only one part of the Bible or to be preached during one time of the year. It’s the story of who God is and it’s on every page of Scripture.

When we see Advent in that light and feel the freedom to break the mold of tradition and expectations, we might find that we get excited about preaching during this season again.

Bryan Marvel is the Senior Pastor of Meadowbrook Church in Milwaukee, WI.