Preaching on prophetic texts during the Advent season provides an opportunity to proclaim the gospel with some of the Bible’s most evocative poetry and audacious prose. While Isaiah may win the prizes in Advent for the most well-known and even the most beautiful prophetic texts, the lesser-known Year C readings nonetheless put in a strong showing. The Micah and the Malachi texts are particularly stirring—as evidenced by the inclusion of their key verses in the libretto of Handel’s Messiah, that iconic musical accompaniment to the Advent and Christmas seasons.
Nevertheless, preaching prophetic texts in Advent is not without difficulty. The Revised Common Lectionary lays a bit of a trap—quite unintentionally, I’m sure—for preachers who want to focus on Old Testament texts leading up to the Christmas season. Each of the suggested readings focuses so closely on elements that “sound like” Jesus that their original context may be too quickly overlooked. References to David, Bethlehem, the coming of a messenger, and even “she who is in labor” (Micah 5:3) might condition us to treat Old Testament Advent texts like a set of codes that, when successfully cracked, always yield the answer “Jesus.” But such readings fail to attend to the fact that each of these prophetic passages made meaning to its ancient audience on its own—and continues to make meaning for Jewish faith communities today.
Advent preachers, then, must remind their audiences that the prophets were not crassly predictive. Biblical prophecy is not fortune-telling; biblical prophecy is about receiving a word from God and communicating that word on God’s behalf. That word most often involved an analysis of the present age relevant to the prophet’s immediate situation. Sometimes it also communicated something that would happen in the near future, or occasionally in the distant future or even at the end of all things.
At the same time, one of the reasons interest in biblical prophecy has so long endured is because of its perennial relevance in every age. The prophets testify to the salvific power of God that Christians affirm is quite literally embodied in the incarnation of Jesus Christ. They name societal ills that can be diagnosed in any era, and they provide a word of hope—and/or a word of judgment—in the face of such difficulties. Thus, to preach the prophets in Advent is to see continuities between the Old and New Testaments, and particularly to give voice to the ongoing power of God.
Rather than presenting the prophetic texts as a foretelling of the life of Jesus, preachers might instead look for the ways that all the passages share key theological insights with each other and with the incarnation of Jesus. Some of those key theological convictions may include:
- God’s saving activity in the world is ongoing: God has been active in the past, is active now, and will continue to act into the future.
- God makes and keeps promises.
- The world longs for God to disrupt the injustices and suffering that hold it captive.
- God desires God’s people to live in safety and peace.
- God will raise up a savior for God’s people.
Week 1: Jeremiah 33:14-6
Prophesying from the era of the fall of Jerusalem and the Babylonian exile, Jeremiah provides a word of hope for the restoration of Judah. “The days are surely coming…”: this opening phrase of the oracle emphasizes God’s activity in history. God’s promises are neither metaphors nor abstractions; God’s action in the world impacts human bodies and human societies. God has made promises for the flourishing of Judah, and God will fulfill those promises by raising up a new ruler—a “sprout” or “branch” from the Davidic family tree. This is a prophecy that is very place-specific: “Jerusalem will live in safety” and will be known by the name “YHWH is our righteousness” (33:16). The coming “branch” will re-center the city on the transformative justice of God. Reading through the lens of the incarnation helps us to see the way that the coming of Jesus is also a re-centering event through which we reject the promises of our corrupt world and embrace the liberating promises of God.
Week 2: Malachi 3:1-4
The opening phrase of this prophecy is invoked in Matthew 11:10, Mark 1:2, and Luke 1:76 to refer to John the Baptist, the “messenger” who will “prepare the way of the Lord.” Clearly the Gospel writers saw specific echoes of Malachi’s words in the life of John. In its ambiguous placement between references to Jesus and then to John, Mark also leaves room for the possibility that this messenger is Jesus himself. For Malachi—or at least, for an editor of Malachi who added an epilogue to the prophetic book at Malachi 4:4-6—the messenger seems to be the prophet Elijah. Even the name “Malachi” means “my messenger,” adding the possibility that the prophet refers to himself—though more likely the book’s name is simply a shorthand way of referring to the book’s anonymous author. These multivalent possibilities for the identity of the “messenger” illustrate how the highly symbolic nature of prophecy allows ancient words to be taken up time and time again for new contexts.
The harshness of the “refiner’s fire” imagery seems particularly well suited for the “vibe” of John the Baptist, which is wild and untamed and warns of the need for repentance. The messenger of Malachi 3:2-3, just like John the Baptist in the Gospels, brings a foreboding edge to the Advent season. Along with Mary’s Magnificat, which portends the casting down of the mighty from their thrones, these texts help prevent us from being swept up in any sentimentality surrounding the newborn in the manger. The coming of the savior will turn the world upside down.
Week 3: Zephaniah 3:14-20
Zephaniah’s oracle injects a big dose of joy into our readings. God is depicted as a warrior who will deliver a weary and defeated people. Deliverance does not come person by person, or for the sake of the individual, but rather for the community as a whole. The salvation in this passage is depicted as something present for Zion—“the LORD is in your midst” (Zephaniah 3:15, 17)—but also something hoped for in the future—“on that day” (3:16) or “at that time” (3:19, 20). The presence of God among the people signals a guarantee that Zion’s days of disaster will come to an end; restoration is both imminent and ongoing, promised and accomplished. This dynamic is reminiscent of the “already / not yet” sense of the kerygma of Jesus, whose coming is a “first installment” (2 Corinthians 1:22) of God’s promises and not the terminus of them.
Week 4: Micah 5:2-5a
Like the Jeremiah passage, this oracle from Micah emphasizes the Davidic lineage of the coming savior, this time by referring to Bethlehem, David’s hometown (see also 1 Samuel 17:12). That this “little clan” (verse 2) would birth a great ruler recalls the way David himself thwarted expectations about what a king should look like. In 1 Samuel 16, when the prophet Samuel came to anoint one of the sons of Jesse as ruler over Israel, David was left in the field to watch the sheep while all seven of his brothers were presented to Samuel. As the youngest and smallest of the sons of Jesse, David was not expected to be called to greatness, yet Samuel anointed him. David would go on to slay Goliath with merely a sling, since the sword and armor offered by Saul were too big for David to carry (1 Samuel 17:38-40). Like his ancestor David, the coming savior will thwart the world’s expectations, rising from an insignificant beginning to lead God’s people to peace.
Prophecy in the New Testament texts
Finally, we should note that preaching prophetic texts in Advent Year C need not be limited to the Old Testament selections. The two songs from Luke 1—Mary’s Magnificat and the song of Zechariah—are both prophetic: bringing a word from the Lord that testifies to the ongoing and future action of God by reflecting on present circumstances. Zechariah’s song (Luke 1:68-79), which is specifically named as a prophecy (1:67), is suggested as the Psalm for Week 2, while the Magnificat (Luke 1:39-55) is appointed as the Gospel lesson for Week 4. Preaching on those texts, either on their own or in tandem with the Old Testament readings, can be another fruitful way to show continuities between the Old Testament prophets and Luke’s presentation of the incarnation.