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The problem was there were
just too many priests. All the male descendents of Aaron
formed the royal priesthood, and as the years rolled on they
multiplied. There were just too many to handle the daily
religious routine and ritual of the temple, so they were
organized in divisions—Zechariah was in the Division of Abijah—then
they were assigned on a rotating schedule, maybe only serving
a few weeks every year. Then within that band of servants,
they cast lots, like the roll of the dice, to see who would
actually get to offer the incense, lifting the people’s
prayers to God.
Can you imagine the joy, the
pride, the humbling experience when the day came and the lot
fell to him? Maybe only once in a lifetime, maybe never, but
now it happens.
So begins Luke’s version of
the Gospel.
It begins with Zechariah…let’s
call him Zechariah II, since we heard from the first Zechariah
last week. Zechariah of the Old Testament, Prophet of the
sixth century BC, Prophet of the rebuilding of the city,
Prophet and Prisoner of Hope. Now 600 years later, another
Zechariah, this one a priest serving in the temple in
Jerusalem. And the lot fell to him to enter the Holy Place on
behalf of the people to offer the incense, to step into the
midst of God’s majesty and the center of the people’s praise
and worship. What an overwhelming moment, with all the people
waiting outside, praying at the hour of incense.
I have no idea what Zechariah
was thinking or what he was expecting that day, but if he is
anything like most of the priests and preachers I
know—including the one I know best—it was with a mix of
emotions:
-anticipation, a
touch of stage fright, and yes, a bit of ego thrown in;
-weighted with the
concerns of the temple—budgets, staffing, differences of
opinion
divorces, deaths;
-maybe worried
more about whether his stole was right than he was about
whether his
soul was right;
-full of faith and full of
doubt, all at the same time, there to carry out this ancient
ritual,
repeated daily, but for him perhaps, the only time in his
ministry.
And if the crowd was like most
of the congregations I have known, their prayers and presence
were filled with just about as much of a mix of faith and
fear, confidence and cowardice, hope and hunger, dedication
and despair, holiness and hollowness, sinfulness and
saintliness…because when we are really honest, that’s how we
all come to worship, isn’t it?
And that’s how we all come to
this season—with all of our petty and pious reasons for it,
all the emotions of joy and sorrow mingled in a moment.
In my favorite Frederick
Buechner book, A Room Called Remember, he
asks why people come to church anyway? He responds:
“My guess is they come
because there isn’t much else to do on Sunday morning. They
come to see their friends and be seen. They come out of habit
and tradition. They come to be entertained, maybe even
edified. They come…even the ones who in their secret hearts
believe very little, with the idea that just maybe there is a
God who keeps track of who comes and who doesn’t, and it’s
just as well to keep on his good side.”
Sort of “makin’ a list and
checking it twice, finding out who’s naughty and nice” I
guess.
“They come year after year,
and who is to say how, if at all, their lives were changed as
the result? Yet they keep coming anyway; and beneath all the
lesser reasons they have for doing so, I think there is a
deeper reason, and if I could give it only one word to
characterize it, the word I would give it is hope.
They come here to christen
their babies and bury their dead and make hallowed their vows,
offering up the most precious moments of their lives in the
hope that there is a God to hallow them—a God to hear and seal
their vows, to receive their children and to raise up and
cherish their dead.
Farther down than their
daydreams and boredom, there is the hope that somewhere out of
all the words and music and silences of this place, and out of
a mystery even greater than the mystery of the cosmos itself,
they will hear a voice that they will know from all other
voices which will speak their names and bless them.”
--A Room Called Remember
(pages 31 and 32)
So Zechariah comes to this
high and holy moment,
with all the mix of emotions,
not the least of which is the tragedy of his life, the desire
for a son.
And lo and behold, right there
in the midst of them all, right there to the right of the
altar of incense, right in the midst of the ministrations and
ritual, an angel of the Lord appears. The encounter took him
completely by surprise. (Interesting isn’t it, that clergy are
sometimes the most surprised when God actually shows up in
worship!) Note Luke’s incredible understatement: “Zechariah
was troubled and fear fell upon him.” The Eugene Peterson
translation is probably closer to the mark when it says, “He
was paralyzed with fear!”
And who wouldn’t be? Those
moments of holiness which come infrequently at best; those
times when God breaks into our lives in unexpected ways; those
high holy experiences of God’s spirit carry with them an
awesome sense of the awesome presence—awe-filled and awful,
all at once.
Some years ago Lily Tomlin
received a Tony award for a one-woman show called “The
Search for Signs of Intelligent Life in the
Universe.” Her character is a bag lady named Trudy
on the streets of New York City accompanied by her “space
chums,” those extraterrestrial visitors who are of course
invisible to everyone except her. She is trying to explain the
mystery of life and to help the space chums experience goose
bumps. She decides to take them to a play and she says,
“On the way to the play, we
stopped to look at the stars. And as usual, I felt in awe. And
then I felt even deeper in awe at this capacity we have to be
in awe about something. Then I became even more awestruck at
the thought that I was, in some small way, a part of that
which I was in awe about. And this feeling went on and on and
on…my space chums had a word for it: ‘Awe infinitum.’
Suddenly I burst into song:
“Awe…sweet mystery of life at last I’ve found thee,” and I
felt so good inside and my heart felt so full, I decided I
would set time aside each day to do awe-robics.
Because the moment you are
most in awe of all there is about life you don’t understand,
you are closer to understanding it all than at any other
time.”
--Jane Wagner,
Search for Signs of Intelligent Life in the Universe (
Page 205)
Awe…mystery…wonder.
Call it the experience of conversion. Call it the filling of
the Holy Spirit. Call it the new birth or new life or
renewal or redemption. Call it whatever you like, but
in those moments, I am certain we are close to what Zechariah
felt that day, and when we experience those moments, as rare
as they may be, we are closer to experiencing the rush of
angels, the Advent of the Christ, than at any other time.
How silently, how silently the
wondrous gift is given
So God imparts to human
hearts the blessings of his heaven
No ear may hear his coming,
but in this world of sin
Where meek souls will
receive him,
Still the dear Christ
enters in.
--UM Hymnal ( page 230)
And what was the word
Zechariah received from the angel? “Do not be afraid. Thy
prayer is heard.”
That is all, for the moment.
But that is enough. Thy prayer is heard.
Here is the basic affirmation,
the reason, as Buechner says, that we come to worship in the
first place. It is the basis for the message of the season,
the foundation of our faith. It is the hope that there is, in
fact, a God who is there, a God who is here, a God who
listens, a God who hears. The Gospel begins with a word about
the very nature of God…God is faithful. It is not a word about
Zechariah’s faith at this point. The fact is he might not have
been all that faithful. In fact, his doubting leaves him
literally speechless. The focus of the story is not on
Zechariah’s faith, but on God’s faithfulness.
In the days of Noah, when the
world was corrupt and filled with sin, God acts to judge and
save his creation. In the days of Moses, when the people were
in bondage in Egypt, God calls, God delivers. In the days of
the prophets, when the voice of God had been silenced and the
people were wandering without wisdom, God speaks, God sends.
And now, even in the days of Herod, God comes in the promise
of a Savior, in the birth of a child and hope of salvation.
God is there. God is here. God is faithful. God listens and
God hears. The Gospel begins with the affirmation:
Great is thy faithfulness, O God my
father
There is no shadow of turning with
thee
Thou changest not, thy compassions,
they fail not
As thou has been, thou forever wilt
be.
Great is thy faithfulness, great is
thy faithfulness
Morning by morning new mercies I see
All I have needed, thy hand hath
provided
Great is thy faithfulness, Lord unto
me.
Well, you know the rest of the
story.
To everyone’s surprise, when
Zechariah reappears he is speechless, tongue-tied, dumb with
the news that Elizabeth would bear a son, and they would call
his name John. You know the rest of the story--how God
fulfills the promise and answers their deepest longings. You
know the rest of the story--how John prepares the way for the
coming of the Christ and how the Savior is born.
You know the rest of the
story, but for today I would like to leave Zechariah right
there in the temple, at the altar, confronted by the angel
with this simple promise which, I believe, is the promise we
need for this day. You know the rest of the story, but just
for today, in a day when we are often paralyzed by our fears,
in this day hear the word of the angels once again and know
them as the word for us, the word of assurance, the word of
confidence, the word of God’s faithfulness, the word of Advent
hope. It is the word which undergirds all the other words
which are to come:
Do not be afraid
Thy prayer is heard.
Amen.
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