Sermon: First Sunday of Advent
By the Rev. Alanna Sullivan
Associate Minister and Director of Administration
The Memorial Church of Harvard University
(The following is a transcript of the service audio, Nov. 30, 2025)
Will you pray with me? May the words of my mouth and the meditations of our hearts and minds be acceptable in your sight, oh God, my rock and my redeemer. Amen.
About 10 years ago, I found myself standing outside a railway station on the outskirts of Berlin. We had arrived at the station after driving down a long road. Lining that road were wide sidewalks and ancient trees.
I remember the trees with outstretched branches creating a canopy over the street. We passed large stately homes with meticulous lawns; no unpruned bush or overgrown grass was in sight, and the train depot was at the end of a cul-de-sac.
Matching the houses around it, the depot was built in a Tudor Revival style, complete with a stucco and half-timbering facade and complemented by intricate brickwork. There was a large gold-plated clock perched on the top, and there was not a cloud in sight that morning. And the scene was silent as if someone pressed the pause button.
It reminded me of the calming quiet after a freshly fallen snow. And what particularly struck me was how familiar this place felt. It reminded me of the commuter rail station where my family would drop off and pick up my mom each day during childhood.
On October 18th, 1941, it was from that place, a place that felt all too familiar, that the Reich Main Security Office, in conjunction with the Reich Ministry of Transport, organized a massive deportation of Jews from Berlin to the Lodz Ghetto in Poland.
It would be the first of 186 deportations that would happen from that train station from 1941 to 1945. And on that day, in 1941, local police and SS officers rounded up over 1,200 Jews from a collection camp—the site, which not too long beforehand had been a synagogue.
They then marched the men, women, and children five miles by foot to that train station. And that train station was chosen because the Reich Main Security Office believed that the long lines of Jews waiting on the ramp towards the platforms would not be so publicly visible. It was also deemed that the well-to-do Berliners living in this posh district were less likely to protest.
At first, the trains consisted of passenger cars and were headed to the ghettos in Eastern Europe. Yet by 1942, the Nazis increasingly began to use cattle cars for the deportations, and those trains went directly to Auschwitz-Birkenau and other death camps.
Track 17. Number 17 was the track specifically designated for the deportation trains. And by the end, in 1945, 50,000 Jews from Berlin had stood on Track 17's platform for deportation. Today, there's a memorial built on the site of Track 17. It's a reconstruction of the loading bay and train platform as it was during that time.
And this train station is still in operation. But after World War II, alternative rail lines were built alongside. Now the end of Track 17 is broken, overrun by trees. Trees that almost seem to say, "We don't want to see trains here again, ever."
And along the edge of the platform are iron grates—186 in total. And on the edge of each, you will find short inscriptions, a date, a number, and a location. Each indicating the date of the transport, the number of people on board, and the route of the train.
October 18th, 1941: 1,251 Jews from Berlin to Lodz. July 27th, 1942, 100 Jews, Berlin to Theresienstadt. September 12th, 1942, 1,000 Jews, Berlin to Auschwitz. Standing on that platform, reading those inscriptions, I began to take in my surroundings differently.
The road leading up to the train station felt farther away from downtown Berlin, thinking of those who had to march five miles to get there. It's hard to admire the stately homes with their manicured lawns when you realize how much attention was paid to the length of grass and the heights of bushes, but so little attention paid to the happenings right beyond property lines.
And I can only imagine what it was like for those Jews to look at the gilded clock on the train depot, looking at the time, waiting for something, not knowing what the future would hold. And then there was the silence. No longer did it feel calming, but haunting. That day has stayed with me.
It's one of those moments in life that I can recall in detail and with vividness. And I'm sure you have moments like that yourself when you not only remember what it looked like, but how it sounded and how it tasted, and how it smelled, how it felt. It isn't a consuming and enrapturing experience when recalled. And this memory often catches me off guard when I do remember it.
And this week, I was intrigued that it was this memory that kept resurfacing for me upon reading these words from the prophet Isaiah. "The Lord shall judge between the nations and shall arbitrate for many peoples. They shall beat their swords into plowshares and their spears into pruning hooks. Nation shall not lift up sword against nation, neither shall they learn war no more."
Isaiah casts a grand vision for a time when people of all nations, cultures, and races will be drawn to God, and God's justice will reign. And Isaiah's vision could stop there, but it doesn't. The prophecy is about hope for the future. And I believe this prophecy also contains a hope for how we shape our lives today.
A sword can become a plowshare, a spear can become a pruning hook, an implement of destruction can become a tool for cultivation. A device of conflict can become an instrument of community. And it's not always in one direction. A train can become a vehicle for death and return to being a train.
These transformations may be what is yet to come, but they are also about where we have been and what we are doing today. There is a calling for us in Isaiah's vision. We play a part in transforming Isaiah's dream into a reality. And in these transformations, what matters most is not so much the object itself, but how it is used and towards what end.
In fact, a spear, a sword, a train, does not alter in substance or shape. The transformation comes from our relation with it. For it takes the same ingenuity and skill and creativity to create a machinery of warfare as it does to create the technology whose purpose is to generate and sustain life.
Humans have the capacity for great evil and the capacity for abundant creation. The hoped-for future may belong to God, but God invites us into that formation of that future. It is not a coincidence that Advent starts at the darkest time of the year. A time when it is so easy for us to feel discouraged.
And as I've been speaking with folks in our community, it feels like this might be a particularly dark time when the light of hope seems dim, when the days are short and the challenges are long. It is precisely now when we most need the promise that is given. The prophecy that holds out for the hope for something better, but also challenges us to be agents in the creation of that future. May it be so.