Scripture Luke 1:1-23 (NRSVUE)
Since many have undertaken to compile a narrative about the events that have been fulfilled among us, just as they were handed on to us by those who from the beginning were eyewitnesses and servants of the word, I, too, decided, as one having a grasp of everything from the start, to write a well-ordered account for you, most excellent Theophilus, so that you may have a firm grasp of the words in which you have been instructed.
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 descended from the daughters 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 during his section’s turn of duty, he was chosen by lot, according to the custom of the priesthood, to enter the sanctuary of the Lord to 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 can I know that this will happen? 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 wondering at his delay in the sanctuary. When he did come out, he was unable to 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 returned to his home.
Sermon
Welcome to the first Sunday in Advent. Advent means coming. It is a season that is oriented towards both past and future, as we are awaiting the great festival celebrating Christ’s birth a little over 2000 years ago, and also looking ahead to Christ’s return in power and justice, and the fulfillment of all things.
The lectionary readings for today would normally have us focused on that expectation of the future. But this year we are focused on the details of the first coming of Christ, according to the gospel of Luke, and we begin at the beginning. The introduction to the gospel is addressed to someone named Theophilus, which is a Greek name meaning “Friend of God” or “Lover of God.” Because Luke seems to have a diverse audience of both Gentiles and Jews, he may be referring to the Gentile “God-fearers” who were known to go to the Temple and who learned and loved the Torah and the other scriptures we know as the Old Testament. Or it may be that this is addressed to a particular person of that name. But my favorite possibility is that we are Theophilus—anyone who wants to know and to love God. It may well be that Luke has addressed his book to us.
We begin, not with Joseph and Mary, but with an older couple, Elizabeth and Zechariah. Both have priestly lineages, with Zechariah himself an active priest in the Temple. Other than their priestly pedigrees, the only other things we are told about this couple is that they are older, and they have no children. As always, scripture presumes this to be the woman’s problem.
To understand why, we have to understand how conception was understood in those days. The woman was believed to be the “garden” into which the man planted the fully formed but extremely tiny baby—there was no idea of shared genetics, with a child gaining traits from each parent. So, if there was no conception, the assumption was that the woman just didn’t have good “soil,” so to speak. As we know, the desire to have a baby and the sorrow of disappointed hopes can affect both men and women, and it is always painful when anyone is pointed out to be at “fault” (big quotation marks here). However, in every case in which this happens in scripture, we are being shown the power of God overriding humanity’s limitations. That’s what happens here.
We meet Zechariah when, by chance, he is going into the inner sanctum of the Temple, the Holy of Holies, the place where the Ark of the Covenant was kept. He is performing an annual ritual of offering incense there. For Jews, this was a place where God’s real presence resided, God’s literal home on earth. This ritual is a big deal, even to the point of crowds of people gathering outside the Temple praying during the priest’s time in the sanctuary.
It does not exactly go as planned.
The angel Gabriel appears to Zechariah, and tells him, “Your prayers have been answered: you will have a son.” This is such a bittersweet phrase. Imagine, Elizabeth and Zechariah, praying for years to have a child, and now—when they both are fairly confident it will never happen—presto. Everything changes in an instant. Not only will they have a child—their child will be the herald of the Messiah. He will conduct himself in the manner of a Nazirite—a Jewish man who is specially devoted to God and gives up both alcohol and cutting his hair as a sign of this devotion. It all sounds too good to be true, and Zechariah makes the mistake of pretty much saying so. How can this be? Zechariah wonders aloud. We are old, he clarifies for the angel who stands before him, all glory and light. His insinuation is that, even God can’t manage this.
It can be hard to take good news when you have already resigned yourself to the disappointment of a lost dream. Hope over a long period of time can be exhausting, wearying. For the woman who could not conceive in that time and place, there was a powerful sense of shame, even public disgrace, because there was the assumption that God’s hand was in all these things. The lack of a child was considered a punishment. Imagine living in that weariness and shame for years, and then having it reversed. As great as the joy might be, it’s hard to hope again after years and years of your hopes being unfulfilled.
Have you ever lost hope? Was that loss of hope ever reversed? Did that hope, perhaps, turn into another kind of hope at some point? It can be so hard to hope when we’ve felt a deep disappointment. It can be hard to do what feels like opening ourselves up to even more pain, more disappointment. Our instinct is to protect ourselves—we don’t want to feel that kind of pain again. But sometimes God does ask us to hope again—to hope against hope—because God has something planned that we can’t see just yet. Sometimes we are left in the situation of needing to trust in what feels like the most ephemeral of dreams.
Still, in Zechariah’s case, this is no Western Union telegram. This is an angel of God. I am Gabriel, the angel reminds him. I stand in the presence of God. I come bearing good news. But… because you have doubted, you will pay a price.
Zechariah is struck speechless, and it’s not a temporary thing. It will be so until the child—whose name is to be John—is born. As our passage ends, Zechariah makes his way out of the sanctuary, entirely mute. The people praying outside realize that something has happened—something big. They somehow know he has had a vision of something marvelous—if only he could tell them what it was. He tries to communicate through gestures and signs, but eventually, goes home.
I wonder what happened to Zechariah, job-wise. Was he able to function as a priest without speaking? Or did this mean he was forced into a kind of Sabbatical? Maybe that’s just what he and Elizabeth needed, after his many years of work and her many years of whatever work occupied her at home. What if we sought time in this Advent season for rest, even in the midst of the chaos of preparing for Christmas? What if we lit an Advent candle and let it burn for the length of a nap or an hour reading a book or praying or listening to music? What might rest do for our weary souls?
I wonder what that time of silence was for this couple? I have heard a lot of jokes about how lucky Elizabeth was to have her husband silenced for nine months. But what if the silence was holy? What if, together, they could hear God speaking to them, more clearly than ever? What if we found quiet time for God throughout this Advent season? What if this quiet, too was holy, and we could hear God as never before?
I wonder how Elizabeth and Zechariah made the journey from resignation to hopefulness? From grieving what never was to joyfully anticipating what could and would be? Our prayer for Wholeness and Peace reminded us that grief and joy can co-exist. The grief of their childless years was long and painful. Now, the joy they felt was fresh and something they could never have anticipated. And yet here it was. God was doing a new thing. What if we learned that joy could break through our old grief, not to diminish the loss of someone or something we loved, but to say, this too is possible. We are, none of us, just one thing. Joy and grief can co-exist. We can traverse this weary world and know that God is still, yet, here and now, doing a new thing.
Thanks be to God. Amen.