Luke 1:5-25
The Birth of John the Baptist Foretold
In the days of King Herod of Judea, there was a priest named Zechariah, who belonged to the priestly order of Abijah. His wife was a descendant of Aaron, and her name was Elizabeth. Both of them were righteous before God, living blamelessly according to all the commandments and regulations of the Lord. But they had no children, because Elizabeth was barren, and both were getting on in years.
Once when he was serving as priest before God and his section was on duty, he was chosen by lot, according to the custom of the priesthood, to enter the sanctuary of the Lord and offer incense. Now at the time of the incense-offering, the whole assembly of the people was praying outside. Then there appeared to him an angel of the Lord, standing at the right side of the altar of incense. When Zechariah saw him, he was terrified; and fear overwhelmed him. But the angel said to him, ‘Do not be afraid, Zechariah, for your prayer has been heard. Your wife Elizabeth will bear you a son, and you will name him John. You will have joy and gladness, and many will rejoice at his birth, for he will be great in the sight of the Lord. He must never drink wine or strong drink; even before his birth he will be filled with the Holy Spirit. He will turn many of the people of Israel to the Lord their God. With the spirit and power of Elijah he will go before him, to turn the hearts of parents to their children, and the disobedient to the wisdom of the righteous, to make ready a people prepared for the Lord.’ Zechariah said to the angel, ‘How will I know that this is so? For I am an old man, and my wife is getting on in years.’ The angel replied, ‘I am Gabriel. I stand in the presence of God, and I have been sent to speak to you and to bring you this good news. But now, because you did not believe my words, which will be fulfilled in their time, you will become mute, unable to speak, until the day these things occur.’
Meanwhile, the people were waiting for Zechariah, and wondered at his delay in the sanctuary. When he did come out, he could not speak to them, and they realized that he had seen a vision in the sanctuary. He kept motioning to them and remained unable to speak. When his time of service was ended, he went to his home.
After those days his wife Elizabeth conceived, and for five months she remained in seclusion. She said, ‘This is what the Lord has done for me when he looked favourably on me and took away the disgrace I have endured among my people.’
Zechariah is one of those biblical characters I can really relate to. Maybe it's the nagging fear many preachers have that when its time to proclaim the good news, we could be as speechless as Zechariah. But all nightmares about being mute in the pulpit aside, celebrating the annunciation of John the Baptist's birth is a wonderful way to enter the season of Advent. This is a story of rational doubt and irrational hope. In good gospel form, no matter how irrational the blessing may seem, the God of Israel is at work silencing doubt and fulfilling hope.
Zechariah was a righteous and faithful priest, yet he certainly blundered his way through his encounter with the angel Gabriel. It's hard not to compare Zechariah to Mary, the other recipient of an angelic visit. Luke describes Mary as "perplexed" by the unexpected guest. There's an old painting of the Annunciation of Christ in which Mary is reading a book when Gabriel shows up; she appears to be holding up her hand as if to say, "wait, let me finish this chapter first…. Now what was it you had to tell me?" But Zechariah was miles away from perplexity. He was terrified. The overwhelming fear that charged his body wasn't the reverent fear-of-the-Lord the prophets of wisdom counseled. He was frozen with anxiety, dreading the message of this heavenly herald. To understand Zechariah's alarm we have to understand the social and spiritual impact of childlessness. Infertility, in New Testament times, was seen as a sign of divine disfavor. To be barren, in that culture, was to be cursed. Even though Zechariah was loyal to his vocation as a priest, and faithfully fulfilled the vows of his ordination, he and Elizabeth were heavy-laden with shame. If you believed yourself to be cursed by God, and you suddenly encountered one of his angels, you probably wouldn't be too enthused, either.
Even as Zechariah's heart was still pounding, Gabriel revealed the new work that God would do through the old priest and his wife. No more would Zechariah and Elizabeth live outside of the good graces of their neighbors. They would conceive the child anointed to prepare the children of God for the Messiah. They would be conscripted into the story of how our very determined God reconciles and redeems Creation. Their son would traverse a difficult path—no prophet escapes the consequences of delivering God's Word to a defiant people —but his birth would be greeted with joy and gladness.
To borrow a phrase, Zechariah was bewitched, bothered, and bewildered. No matter that he was in the presence of an angel. His response was certain: No way. He simply could not believe that this revelation was true. Even when confronted with a greater reality, Zechariah trusted that barren shame was the ultimate truth of his life. He couldn't imagine that God's love could deliver a miracle. It wasn't any lack of faithfulness on his part. He was in the middle of making an offering to the Lord when Gabriel arrived. Yet no amount of prayers and offerings prepared Zechariah for God's startling answer to his intercessions. He did not expect his prayers to be answered. His hope was tarnished by despair so persistent that he greeted an angel with suspicion. You wouldn't know it by looking at him, but Zechariah was a man bereft of hope.
Zechariah makes sense to me in the same way that doubting Thomas makes sense to me: they were faithful men who struggled with doubt. Their belief in God's goodness was all well and good until it was tested by God's goodness. Gabriel locked Zechariah's lips with a celestial zipper, enveloping him in a veil of silence until his tongue could be untied by the cries of his newborn son. When that day came, Zechariah's faith was as full as Mary's womb, and he was ready to bless the boy with a song of divine prophecy: "And you, child, will be called the prophet of the Most High; for you will go before the Lord to prepare his ways, to give knowledge of salvation to his people by the forgiveness of their sins. By the tender mercy of our God, the dawn from on high will break upon us, to give light to those who sit in darkness and in the shadow of death, to guide our feet into the way of peace."
Is Zechariah's story our story? If we peel away the top layer of our faith, will we find a wellspring of hope and trust in God? Or will we discover that skepticism has seeped into our relationship to the Holy?
This is a season of hope, of expectation, of waiting for God to do what God has proclaimed God will do. We rehearse the hope that has already been accomplished through the birth of Jesus so many years ago. We stand in solidarity with folks like Zechariah and Elizabeth, pondering if and when God will send the promised new life. But we also stand in solidarity with all every follower of Christ throughout the centuries who has waited for the
The deepest hope of Advent, the hope that will empower us to dance to Zechariah's joyful song, is the hope that is informed by the past, fearless of the future, and rooted in the here and now. Scott Colglazier, a Disciple pastor, proclaims that "It's not what God will do that is the basis of hope; it's what God is doing that gives rise to hope, and, even more radically, what God is always wanting to do. I don't know what God will do tomorrow, but I know that today God is calling me to open my heart, live life with integrity, move toward my neighbor with compassion and justice, heal the most important relationships within the web of my life. The whole point of the spiritual journey is that God calls people to move forward with trust and courage into the future because God is taking the raw stuff of everyday living and trying to turn it, shape it, create from it something beautiful and good."
Like Zechariah, our hope and trust can easily be misplaced. We can get caught up in fear, in numbness, in doubt. All of that leaves us completely unprepared to welcome the Christchild on Christmas Day. The story of Zechariah is as good a metaphor for the Advent season as any. Today we take our first step into the season of joyous preparation for the Nativity of our Lord. And while we don't do this with Zechariah's silence, our quiet hymns of praise are easily drowned out by the nonstop Christmas extravaganza that surrounds us. We take four weeks, starting today, to steep our hearts in hope and peace and joy and love so that when the angels' song breaks forth, we are ready to join in with profound praise. In this time, we receive a gracious invitation to see and to trust– again or for the first time —how God is transforming this beloved Creation into the
Nine months of silence was long enough for ecstatic worship to grow within a man who had given up on hope. Gabriel's promise to Zechariah is just as true for us: new life is on the way. God is doing something new, even here, even now. May we learn from his silence and his song, his doubt and his hope, and believe in the good news of Emmanuel, Christ with us. Amen.
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