Scripture can be found here…
It’s just a family story. A regular normal family story that begins with an angel of the Lord appearing to the husband while he’s in the holy of holies of the Temple in Jerusalem. A story that, along the way, has that same husband being struck silent for 9 months because he dares to ask the angel exactly how God is going to perform the particular miracle (the miracle being that he and his wife, at their advanced age, will have a child). (The angel is not having it. “I am Gabriel,” he thunders. “Now you shush.”) And meanwhile, a postmenopausal woman who long her childless state was permanent, is given a very big surprise.
Welcome to the family of John the Baptist. We come in on the story at the time of the miraculous birth to the post-menopausal woman, wife to the silent-for-nine-months husband. She is Elizabeth, and she is both a descendant of the family of Aaron, Moses-brother, and kin to Mary, who will be mother to Jesus. The bible goes along with the ancient cultural assumptions about women needing to give birth in order to have worth, while slyly undermining them by giving Elizabeth a more impressive pedigree than her husband, as if to say, she is impressive in her own right.
The angel had also decreed that the baby’s name should be John, a name meaning “God is gracious.” There’s some pushback from the gathered community—it would be more usual to name the child Zechariah, his father, or maybe a name that began with the same letter—say, Zebediah. But the silent father writes on a tablet that his wife is right. And once he does that… daddy can talk again, in fact, daddy can sing! And what a beautiful song comes flowing out of him.
Blessed are you, O Lord, the God of Israel:
you have come to your people and set them free. ~ Luke 1:68
Zechariah believes, thanks to these two miracles, the losing and gaining of his voice AND the birth of his son. And at the core of the miracles coming to this little family, is another, even more extraordinary miracle, the coming of the Messiah in Jesus. And John will be his Elijah—the forerunner, the prophet, whose voice will cry out in the wilderness: Prepare the way of the Lord!
The coming of the Messiah means freedom, and not just any freedom. Zechariah’s song is about religious freedom. Though he is a high priest at the famous Temple in Jerusalem, Zechariah serves in the midst of people who are oppressed by the mighty, merciless Roman Empire. He mentions, three time in the song, “enemies,” and “those who hate us.” For those of us living in a post-Holocaust world, these words should set our spines tingling. Last month a college student who was a member of the Texas State Guard set fire to a synagogue in Austin. All over the world there is a rise in anti-Semitic, specifically anti-Jewish, vandalism and violence. If like me you’re on social media, you can see words of hate online. To Zechariah, the coming of the Messiah means protection from hate; yet, over the past two thousand years, followers of Jesus have killed millions of Jews. Zechariah lifts up this vision that Jews
…might worship the Lord without fear, in holiness and righteousness
before God all our days. ~Luke 1:74b-75
Zechariah wants his people to worship God in peace. It is a vision still to be realized.
Then, Zechariah turns to his child. I imagine his earlier singing to be a full forte, singing out, for all to hear. But then, I imagine someone handing him the infant John, now in his arms. And now, I see him singing, pianissimo, most softly, as he gazes at his newborn:
And you, child, will be called the prophet of the Most High;
for you will go before the Lord to prepare God’s ways,
to give God’s people knowledge of salvation
by the forgiveness of their sins. ~Luke 1:76-77
John will give the people the greatest peace they could know: that God loves them unconditionally. I have a kind of weird playlist I put together last year for the first week in Advent—actually, I have playlists for every week in Advent. I say it’s weird, because it has versions of ancient hymns, including “O Come O Come Emmanuel,” side by side with music from the Rolling Stones and Melissa Etheridge.
There’s a Tori Amos song on the Advent 1 playlist. It’s called “Winter.” The singer is remembering her childhood, walking in the snow with her father, putting her hand in his gloved hand. And she recalls or imagines him saying,
When you gonna make up your mind?
When you gonna love you as much as I do?
When you gonna make up your mind?
I hear that as God’s piercing call to God’s people. Zechariah gets it. He wants to ensure, with his words of love, that John will get it—that the love of God is eternal, unconditional, fresh every morning.
As the song comes to an end, Zechariah completes his vision: There will be safety; there will be his son the prophet preparing the way; and there will be this:
By the tender compassion 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. ~Luke 1:78-79
On Christ the King Sunday we talked about how a good king is a light. Here comes that image again: the dawn breaking, those who were sitting in shadow bathed in sunrise. It is the Messiah. The one who will bring safety, who will see that all are free to worship as they are called. The one who Zechariah’s unlikely newborn son will herald, and baptize, and hand off his ministry to when his witness is brought to a rough end. The one whose foundation is being prepared by this not-really-very-ordinary family and their highly not-ordinary, brand new and beloved baby boy.
So many images of God: the one who holds us close, the one who whispers words of love in our ear. The one who loves us unconditionally, and helps us to go about loving others. The one whom we call, Prince of Peace.
Thanks be to God. Amen.