Sermon for second mid-week Advent service - Lk 1:5-25

 

Mid-Advent 2

Lk 1:5-25

12/7/22

 

          Our text tonight is filled with the most awkward of circumstances.  Zechariah learns amazing news about the child that his wife his going to have, but he is unable to tell anyone about it.  Elizabeth, aged and barren, suddenly becomes pregnant but her husband has returned from his service in the temple and is unable to speak.

          Now in the case of Zechariah, he had nine months to ponder what he had been told – the remarkable truth that he was unable to share in any meaningful way.  But at least he knew that his silence would come to an end.  Elizabeth experienced the very thing for which she had prayed and hoped.  When it seemed certain that she would never have a child, she suddenly became pregnant!  Yet at the very same time her husband returned from Jerusalem with a disability, and she had no way of knowing whether he would ever be able to speak again.

          Our text begins tonight with a description of a couple that is both wonderful and sad.  We learn that Zechariah was a priest, and that his wife Elizabeth also descended from Aaron.  Luke tells us, “And they were both righteous before God, walking blamelessly in all the commandments and statutes of the Lord.” This was a pious and faithful Jewish couple.

          Yet even as they lived as the faithful people of God, there was a great tragedy in their lives.  Luke says, “But they had no child, because Elizabeth was barren, and both were advanced in years.” The modern world treats children as something to be avoided.  It goes out of its way not to have them.  Yet this is not the way Scripture teaches us to view things. The Psalmist writes, “Behold, children are a heritage from the LORD, the fruit of the womb a reward. Like arrows in the hand of a warrior are the children of one's youth. Blessed is the man who fills his quiver with them!”

          A life filled with children is described as a blessing from God. Psalm 128 says, “Your wife will be like a fruitful vine within your house; your children will be like olive shoots around your table. Behold, thus shall the man be blessed who fears the LORD.”  In the first century Jewish world, to be a wife without children was a source of sorrow and shame.  To the outside observer, it called into question whether a person really was walking in the ways of the Lord.  Childlessness placed a woman in a category from which she needed rescue.  Pslam 113 says that although God is seated on high, “He raises the poor from the dust and lifts the needy from the ash heap, to make them sit with princes, with the princes of his people. He gives the barren woman a home, making her the joyous mother of children. Praise the LORD!”

          At the time of Jesus, the priesthood was divided into groups of people.  Each group would serve in Jerusalem for a period of time before returning home.  While there, the honor of burning the incense in the Holy Place at the hour of prayer was chosen by lot.  On this particular day, Zechariah was chosen.  This is not something that would happen very often in a priest’s life, and so it was a great occasion for him.

          Yet his great day took an unexpected turn, because an angel appeared at the right side of the incense altar. Zechariah was frightened.  But the angel said to him, “Do not be afraid, Zechariah, for your prayer has been heard, and your wife Elizabeth will bear you a son, and you shall call his name John.  And you will have joy and gladness, and many will rejoice at his birth, for he will be great before the Lord.”

          Zechariah had prayed for a child.  It is a prayer that surely he had spoken again and again during the years. The angel announced to him that this prayer had been heard and that Elizabeth would give birth to a son, whom they would call John. Now the birth of a child to the aged and barren Elizabeth was a miraculous event. But the angel’s description went beyond this simple fact as he stated that “he will be great before the Lord.”

          The angel went on to tell Zechariah: “he will be filled with the Holy Spirit, even from his mother's womb. And he will turn many of the children of Israel to the Lord their God, and he will go before him in the spirit and power of Elijah, to turn the hearts of the fathers to the children, and the disobedient to the wisdom of the just, to make ready for the Lord a people prepared.” After hearing this past Sunday’s Old Testament lesson from Malachi, we immediately recognize that John is going to be the Elijah figure who prepares the people for the coming Day of the Lord.

          This was an announcement that should have prompted joy.  Yet Zechariah responded: “How shall I know this? For I am an old man, and my wife is advanced in years.”  Now these are basically the exact same words that Abraham spoke to God in Genesis chapter fifteen when God told him that his very own son would be his heir.  Yet there, God brought Abraham outside and promised him that his offspring would be numerous like the stars of heaven. As we heard last week, then Genesis tells us: “And he believed the LORD, and he counted it to him as righteousness.”

          Zechariah says almost the same words, but gets a completely different reaction.  Why is this so? The answer appears to be that he asked the question in a very different spirit, and that he was not open to believing God’s word. He answered the angel sent by God with a question that was based on the assumption that what he was told was impossible.

          And so the angel answered him, “I am Gabriel. I stand in the presence of God, and I was sent to speak to you and to bring you this good news. And behold, you will be silent and unable to speak until the day that these things take place, because you did not believe my words, which will be fulfilled in their time.”  Gabriel has been sent from God’s presence to announce good news – good news that Elizabeth would have a son; and even better news that God was sending the end times prophet that he had promised in Malachi. But Zechariah had not believed it, and so now he would not be able to share this good news until it was fulfilled in the birth of John.

          When Zechariah emerged, he was unable to speak.  He could only motion with his hands, and the people finally understood that he had seen some kind of vision in the temple.  He remained unable to speak when he returned home. Yet God kept his word. Elizabeth conceived, and for five months she kept herself hidden, saying, “Thus the Lord has done for me in the days when he looked on me, to take away my reproach among people.”

          In Zechariah we see the challenge of believing God’s word when it contradicts our normal experience.  This is true about the event we are preparing to celebrate – the incarnation of Jesus Christ.  In our experience, virgins don’t have children.  This is true about the Sacrament of the Altar.  What we receive in the Sacrament looks like bread and wine, and tastes like bread and wine.  This is true when God says that he loves and cares for us, and yet we or a loved one have cancer, or chronic pain, or suffer from mental illness.

          Yet nothing is impossible for God, and so we need to trust in him and his power, rather than be limited by our perceptions.  Zechariah learned this. Elizabeth became pregnant.  Indeed, John was filled with the Holy Spirit from his mother’s womb.  When the pregnant Elizabeth met Mary, pregnant with Jesus Chrit, Luke tells us that Elizabeth was filled with the Holy Spirit, and she exclaimed with a loud cry, “Blessed are you among women, and blessed is the fruit of your womb! And why is this granted to me that the mother of my Lord should come to me? For behold, when the sound of your greeting came to my ears, the baby in my womb leaped for joy.”

          Zechariah saw God’s word fulfilled in Elizabeth, yet he was unable to share this good news with others.  However, when John was born, and Zechariah obeyed Gabriel by indicating in writing that his name would be John, his tongue was loosed.  Then filled with the Holy Spirit he prophesied, “Blessed be the Lord God of Israel, for he has visited and redeemed his people and has raised up a horn of salvation for us in the house of his servant David, as he spoke by the mouth of his holy prophets from of old.”

Zechariah spoke about how God was fulfilling his promise to send the Christ. And next he said of John, “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 in the forgiveness of their sins.”

          As we will hear the next two Sundays, John did prepare the way for the Lord, Jesus Christ.  Nothing is impossible for God, and for that reason we have forgiveness for our every sin.  Jesus Christ was conceived by the Holy Spirit and born of the virgin Mary.  He died on the cross as he received God’s judgment and damnation against our sins. Dead and buried in a tomb, God showed yet again that nothing is impossible for him.  On the third day he raised Jesus from the dead.  Jesus lives!  And because he does, we know that we have eternal life with God. We know that Christ will raise us up on the Last Day. He will, because nothing is impossible for God.