2 Samuel 7.1-5,8-11,16, Acts 13.16-26, Luke 1.67-79
Bratton Clovelly, Bridestowe, Christmas Eve 2011
One of the joys and the challenges of Christmas is that it throws together people who don’t usually spend any time with each other - and when that happens the chemistry is fascinating. So at the family gathering the grandson’s new girlfriend unexpectedly hits it off with the matriarchal grandmother, for they find they share the same sense of humour; and so at the works party the executive manager finds himself in a long and fascinating conversation with a temporary security guy over a subject they unexpectedly have in common. And in the naming ceremony in the place of worship, a very old man holds a tiny eight-day-old baby in his wrinkled hands, and over the child’s head the elder speaks like he’s never spoken before, a hymn of praise to his God for the child and the significance of that child’s coming into the world.
Our gospel reading tonight is not about the central characters in the Christmas story; we are nowhere near the stable in Bethlehem; the shepherds, the angels, the holy family and their kingly visitors are nowhere to be found. This is not the material of nativity plays. We are introduced instead to one who we might consider peripheral to the story of God which is told at Christmas, but who is there in the story, and whose presence there invites us to consider why - and how his story might connect to our own life story... this Christmas.
Zechariah’s story in four headlines:
FIRST - A LIFETIME OF SERVICE IN THE TEMPLE - each week of his long life Zechariah had performed priestly duties in the local place of worship; obedient to his family’s calling, their role in their community.
SECOND - IN A CHILDLESS MARRIAGE - Zechariah and Elizabeth had long given up any hope of children, and at the time of the story were way too old to even consider it any more.
THIRD - VISITED BY AN ANGEL - who told Zechariah to expect Elizabeth to bear him a son, who they should name John, and who would be ‘great in the sight of the Lord ... filled with the Holy Spirit ... [who would] turn many of the people of Israel to the Lord their God, [who would] 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.’
FOURTH - STRUCK DUMB FOR THE TERM OF THE PREGNANCY - when Zechariah expressed unbelief about this turn of events the angel responded by saying, ‘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.’ And so it was, for Zechariah, who couldn’t tell anyone what the angel had told him, who became a passive observer of the unfolding events of his wife’s pregnancy, until the moment at which we met him in his story - the day he took the new-born child to the temple for the ceremony of circumcision, and as a debate raged among his relatives and friends about the name of the child, Zechariah took a writing-tablet in his hands and wrote, ‘His name is John.’ At which point Zechariah’s voice returned, and from his lips came a great song of praise, for God’s great doings in his own life and across the sweep of his people’s history.
Zechariah is a peripheral character in the Christmas story, and he did things differently than the sainted Mary and the faithful Joseph. Life had let him down until these events, and his doubts about the possibility of the power of God making any difference to him is in stark contrast to the faith of Mary and Joseph and their pure acceptance of God’s expressed purposes for them.
But maybe Zechariah is in the story because he seems more like me and you than those characters on whom holiness has been heaped so high that we’ve now lost sight of their humanness. Zechariah’s demonstration of doubt that God could do something new in his life, is perhaps more the sort of response that you or I would make in that situation. Zechariah’s disbelief that God could intervene to do something new in the life of the world is very like the instinct that we and most of our contemporaries have about the power of the divine acting here, in our world, these days.
Maybe Zechariah is in the story because, then struck dumb, he was given time to think about what God was doing in his life and in the world: and that is something which the story invites us to do too. To take time to think about what God is doing in our life and in the life of the world today. To consider the possibility that the words of the angels are to be trusted and embraced.
For God responded to Zechariah’s doubt by giving him the gift of contemplation. And out of that time of contemplation came a moment of wonderful clarity. The very old man held a tiny eight-day-old baby in his wrinkled hands, and over the child’s head the elder spoke like he’d never spoken before, a hymn of praise to his God for the child and the significance of that child’s coming into the world. John, the son of Zechariah, would become in adulthood the herald of the coming Jesus, announcing the arrival of the one whose Kingdom of Heaven is a virus of self-giving love, a virus, eating away at the hatred and pain of the world until the time comes when the hatred and pain of the world will be no more. Zechariah’s eyes had been opened to the good news of this coming Kingdom, and so he said:
“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.”
If Zechariah was singing his hymn of praise today he could accompany it with the words of Nina Simone / Michael Buble: “It's a new dawn. It's a new day. It's a new life. For me. And I'm feeling good.”
Is there anything in Zechariah’s story which connects with yours?
Perhaps a sense that your story is peripheral to the story of Christmas with its great heavenly characters and interstellar significance? Then you might be surprised to learn that one of the great messages of the Christmas gospels is that God draws the peripheral ones right into the heart of history; you are significant, your story and God’s story intertwine.
Is there anything in Zechariah’s story which connects with yours?
Maybe you can identify with the doubt he had that God has any power to intervene in world affairs, in our affairs. Maybe like him, God is challenging you to contemplate this theme, to silence the doubts within, to see if your perspective can change as you look back and consider those events in your life where perhaps God was present, and consider the possibility of inviting God to be present in more of your life events in the future.
Perhaps for all of us the global financial crisis - which hits us here in terms of fuel bills, housing costs, employment prospects, pension futures, inequality and poverty - is an opportunity to reassess our values and our way of seeing the world; perhaps working away beneath this crisis is that viral Kingdom of Heaven, quietly eating away at the hatred and pain, the fear and the anger of the world; that viral Kingdom of Heaven, gently creating new dawns, new days, new lives, through people who are embracing new ways of living together, learning how to trade in transactions of self-giving love.
One of the joys of Christmas is that it creates unexpected comings-together, which create new, evocative relationships, which open our eyes to new possibilities. This holiday, may we permit God to open our eyes and our hearts to these things happening in our lives.
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