November 30, 2025 - First Sunday of Advent: The Harmony of Hymns

November 30, 2025 First Sunday of Advent
Ladue Chapel Presbyterian Church
Luke 1:5-23Luke 1:67-79
“The Harmony of Hymns”
Melissa K. Smith

What is your favorite hymn? I am sure many melodies and lyrics are coming to mind. Growing up, whenever we would sing “Holy, Holy, Holy” or “Praise to the Lord the Almighty” my dad would lean over to me and say, “This is one of my favorites.” I’m biased but I think he has excellent taste. What is your favorite hymn? Maybe it’s a big, glorious Easter hymn, maybe it’s a meditative Advent hymn.

I grew up singing the same ten or fifteen hymns, so my knowledge and breadth of hymns have grown thanks to David and the choir. And it has made me think long and hard about what my favorite hymn is. And even though I love hymns with music that I can’t help but sing all week long, my favorite hymns are not ones we typically sing.

I love the hymns in scripture – hymns sung by Deborah, Hannah, Mary, and Zechariah – hymns that are nestled into the narrative of scripture but take a moment to praise God for who God is and all that God is doing.

I love having the opportunity to harmonize with our foremothers and forefathers of faith and join with them in their praise. And I love thinking about what my hymn might be.

Is it a hymn of praise? Of lament? Of greeting? Is it a hymn of adoration?

Hymns give us the opportunity to bring the song of our heart before God.

If I were to guess what Zechariah’s initial hymn is as he walks into the temple, I would guess it is one of lament. He has struggled to maintain his faith after the devastation of broken dreams: he and his wife cannot conceive a child. He has struggled to maintain his faith as the God he knows can answer prayers has been silent. Yet he chooses to continue to serve God even when he is engulfed by disappointment.

Zechariah’s story begins with surprise, disbelief, and silence. When he walked into the temple, he was doing what so many of us do best: he was going through the motions. But even going through the motions when you’re frustrated with God’s apparent silence can be so difficult. Zechariah did not expect to experience God that day – and I would imagine that many of us in this sanctuary or at home do not come into worship with the expectation that God might break through the doubt in our hearts.

After his doubt and the resulting silence, the next words we hear from Zechariah are a brilliant hymn from his lips that show his repentance – turning from disbelief and doubting God’s power to prophesying and declaring God’s salvific acts.

There’s a beautiful poem by a man named Craig Joseph called “Zechariah.” It helps show that Zechariah’s disbelief isn’t arbitrary. He is genuinely struggling. He and his wife, according to scripture, are upright and live according to the scriptures. They come from good Jewish households and Zechariah serves as a priest. There is nothing they have done wrong, they are not being punished, their unanswered prayer is not a result of any wrongdoing.

Zechariah’s lot was chosen and it was his turn to go into the temple. What Zechariah did not expect was that not only would he encounter God, but God would tell him that the very thing he longed for, prayed for, and desired was happening. His wife, Elizabeth, was going to bear him a son. Infertility is not something to take lightly, it is not something to joke about, and false promises lead to real devastation – this is not what Zechariah was expecting.

In the advent season we sing hymns of joy, of expectation, and of anticipation. Zechariah’s hymn that day was shock, was resounding disappointment, and was fear that his deepest desire would break him again if Elizabeth wasn’t pregnant. His hymn turned to silence when Gabriel declared that God fulfills God’s promises. Hear the words of this poem.

My silence speaks volumes:
Speaks of hollow reverberations in an empty womb,
Of my beloved’s muffled cries, hopeless, late at night,
Of unbroached topics between man and wife,
Isolated in their grief.

Speaks of a mute God
Who would not stoop to answer
The cacophony of impotent noise made by the righteous,
Striving to keep his commandments.
All this – echoes of despair, lost faith, abandonment.

My silence is God’s silence.
The lack of sound then resounds:
With the rustle of angels’ wings,
The gentle roar of a majestic announcement,
The metallic ring of a sword drawn in anger
Upon a fearful gasp
(An inrush of air
That cloaked a more resounding unbelief:
Faith as barren as a womb).

My silence is God’s answer, disbelieved.

But now I, mute and wildly motioning,
Fill the air with your laughter and endless queries,
Hearing what you cannot be aware of –
That to which divinely-imposed silence has bent my ear:
A distant cry from the beginning of time – from Creation –
Declaring that God will make the hearts of his people fertile again.
Yelled through the prophets (though most were deaf to this meaning),
Hollering through my son (hear that, and do not scoff,
Lest you be considered, Like I,
the town clown),
To announce itself shortly in a Bethlehem stable,
Calling to God’s people in stereo-surround sound.

My silence, alas, is God’s provision
That will not be silent for long.

This poem brings together the two pieces of Zechariah’s story we have in scripture: his initial encounter with God where his disbelief turned to silent contemplation for 9 months, and his exuberant praise that God is the promise maker and promise keeper, that his son is the forerunner and Jesus is the fulfiller, that what was true for Abraham and Sarah could be true for Zechariah and Elizabeth.

Could God be making the hearts of his people fertile again?

Zechariah regained his voice after the birth of his son, at his brit milah, the Jewish ceremony marking a baby boy’s entrance into a covenant with God through circumcision. People were asking Elizabeth what her son’s name would be and asked if he would be named after his father.

But Zechariah wrote down, “His name is John.” And with that, his lips opened, breath filled his lungs, and he sang his hymn of blessing.

This hymn, our text for today, is an invitation for us to step into Zechariah’s joy and join him in the harmony of hymns for all God is doing to make the hearts of his people fertile again.

God provides, God keeps his promises, and God fulfils his covenants.

My favorite hymns are hymns we find in the Bible. Each hymn is an invitation for us to join the singer in their joy. It isn’t simply a narrative where we can read about what God has done. It’s a declaration that invites us to harmonize with our own stories of faith, of joy, and of gratitude. It’s an example that when God intercedes in our lives our response isn’t to think of how we are affected, but our response is to glorify God for who God is. It is always all about God.

Zechariah knew that. His hymn is not a praise for what God has done for him. God fulfilled his deepest desire and that is not what he is focused on at all. Because it isn’t about him. It’s about God.

When we read scripture, we are not simply reading a history textbook. Yes, we need to know and teach these stories. Yes, we need to share the Bible and its good news. But we also need to step into the living Word and join in the harmony of hymns.

The stories throughout scripture – including the advent stories of the annunciation, of John leaping in his mother’s womb when he encounters Christ in Mary’s womb – and the stories of Christmas of being born in a stable, of kings coming to pay homage, of shepherds running from their sheep after angels appeared to them…these stories, while each sharing experiences we will not experience, invite us into the universal reality that we should be ready to encounter God, that we should trust that the God of scripture who keeps his promises is our God, and that we should seriously consider how we respond to God.

What does our hymn sound like?

Perhaps this advent season your hymn is in harmony with Zechariah’s first hymn, his hymn of silence. Perhaps you find yourself surrounded by disappointment, you’re struggling with the cacophony of other people’s joys while life seems to be on pause for you, or you’re unsure of where God went and why God seems silent in a season where God should be on full display.

If this is your hymn this season, know that it is not a solo left bare on a stage alone. Rather, it’s in harmony with others, for when one member of the body suffers, we all suffer with it.

Perhaps your hymn is one of adoration and praise. Perhaps your hymn is one of confession and repentance. Perhaps your hymn is one of hope and longing.

This advent season, let us listen for the ways that the hymns on our hearts are in harmony with one another and with our foremothers and forefathers in scripture. And let us enter worship with the expectation that God is here and we have the opportunity to encounter God.

Thanks be to God, all praise be to God.
Amen.