If you were asked to tell the Christmas story to someone
who had never heard it before, where would you start?
As a teenager of the 90s, I am partial to the Dave
Matthews Band and their song appropriately titled
“Christmas Song.” I was moved the first time I heard the
lyrics. Matthews launches the narrative this way:
She was his girl
He was her boyfriend
Soon to be his wife
Take him as her husband
A surprise on the way, any day, any day
One healthy little giggling dribbling baby boy
That’s a good way to begin. And then there’s the gospel
writer Luke, perhaps the most gifted storyteller in the
whole New Testament. His lens points us in a decidedly
different direction. The first faces we see belong not to
a healthy little giggling, dribbling baby boy, but to an
elderly couple from the Judean hill country. Zechariah.
Elizabeth. Luke starts his story not in Bethlehem, but in
Jerusalem where Zechariah, a rural priest, has gone to
perform his annual duties at the Temple.
You would agree it’s an odd way to open the record of
the Messiah’s birth. These two minor characters. They
appear nowhere else in scripture. Elderly folk who fade
from sight after this opening scene. And yet, what if I
told you that Luke’s prologue provides precisely what
you need this Advent season?
Luke says that Zechariah and Elizabeth have no children
in their advanced age, and it is a story that readers
of scripture will recognize. We have heard it before,
repeated throughout the journey of God’s people.
Abraham and Sarah. Isaac and Rebekah. Rachel and
Jacob. Hannah and Elkanah. Yes, we have met this couple
before in the pages of scripture. We know their faces.
Weary and worn. Drained and downhearted.
But Luke, it’s December! The season of Advent. A time
of expectant waiting for joyful celebration. Why start
here? Because Luke knows something about us. Not all
of us start the season filled with anticipation. And so,
Luke gives us this story of faithful believers who, like
their ancestors, have almost stopped waiting, who no
longer wake each day with expectation or hope. They
represent us, any of us who have felt dispirited, downcast,
demoralized. Any of us who have stopped believing for
what we hoped would come. And I would guess that
means all of us at some point. There is a chance that you
find yourself in that place this morning.
Here’s the thing. If we read these ancient stories,
we know that God’s blessing often surprises, often
shows up when it is least expected. But knowing that
in the abstract and trusting it in our lives are two
very different matters. Consider Zechariah. The man
is a priest. His entire vocational life revolves around
rituals of remembrance and blessing. His profession
is proclaiming the promise of God. And yet, when
that promise is presented to him in the Temple in an
unmistakable way, he is unable to see it. I get that. I
think most of us can relate.
The preacher Barbara Brown Taylor suggests that
Zechariah’s weakness is not the sin of disbelief, but the
“habit of hopelessness.” That description rings true to
me. It describes one way we can approach these four
weeks, this Advent season. How we can go through the
motions and attend the services and sing the carols and
read the verses and go to the gatherings, and through it
all fail to imagine a future different from the present.
Call it emptiness. That feeling that God is a distant,
lifeless concept rather than a force for our redemption.
Call it emptiness. What so many feel this time of year.
Our inability to see fresh possibilities. The fear of taking
one step toward something new. Call it emptiness.
The pain of strained relationships. The unwillingness
to reach out and ask for help or forgiveness. Call it
emptiness. The loss of vocational dreams discarded. The
vacant space of personal hope abandoned. Emptiness.
The sense that all this planning, all this preparing, all this
striving, all this showing up will leave us no more fulfilled
in four weeks when we are packing up the decorations
we just took down for next year.
But that emptiness, the emptiness of our time, is about
more than our personal lives. It describes leaders who
cannot muster the courage to craft a vision beyond
self-serving sound bites and short-term victories. It
describes the hateful rhetoric and jeering taunts in
place of constructive dialogue for the common good.
Emptiness. It is the assumption of the worst in others
that justifies the worst of us.
And, in this season, there is also the risk of theological
emptiness: our failure to expect the arrival of God in
our world and in our lives. After all, that is the promise
of Advent—that God will show up. That God will bring
hope to your life, wherever you are. That God will shine
light into whatever darkness you are battling. And there,
bathed in light… There, spoken to by a messenger
of hope, Zechariah could not believe it. And maybe
you can’t either. Not yet. And so, the priest is given
the spiritual gift of silent reflection. The first Advent
season: nine months to quietly watch God do what God
does. I can already tell you love the idea that God tells
the preacher to stop speaking for a while. Picture his
face. Zechariah needs a break. But he is not the only
character in this story, not the only path through Advent.
Thank God there is Elizabeth. Her first words in the
story come only after her husband has been silenced.
Elizabeth is given no angelic messenger, no dramatic
vision. She is not visited in the Temple. She just knows.
She just trusts. She just hopes. And so, when she
speaks, her words are praise. “This is what the Lord has
done for me.” Elizabeth expects God’s blessing, already
on its way. Elizabeth trusts that hope is coming. God
help us in the Church if we lose the will to welcome
hope when it comes.
Elizabeth gives us what we need today. There is
something about this season, about this Incarnation,
the Word becoming flesh and living among us in that
newborn baby. There is something here that suggests
that hope might actually have the last word—that joy
will come when the darkness has faded and all is light.
And in the meantime, these ancient stories, these elderly
people, they keep us on tip toe to perceive the possibility.
As a kid, my favorite Christmas tradition took place
in mid-December. A group of us would gather in the
parking lot at Vandalia Presbyterian Church, and we’d
be handed song sheets and Santa hats. Together, we
made our way to the Village Green retirement home
just a few miles away, and for about an hour we would
walk the halls singing familiar carols. Some residents
opened their doors; others closed theirs. Before
leaving, we would always gather around that artificial
tree in the center of the lobby, and some residents—
maybe a dozen or so—would be brought into that
space. Some would sing along; some were sleeping.
Some were aware of what was happening; others had
vacant stares. An unusual place to sing of new life
and joy on the way. Perhaps. Except for this: the souls
gathered in that space knew more about the tenacity
of hope than any of the carolers. As a child, I remember
watching their eyes with wonder. Their faces displayed
the wisdom that only waiting can produce.
And so, nine months after the angelic encounter in the
Temple, into a world overcome by despair, almost deaf
to the voice of hope, a child was born. Despite family
tradition, his parents named him John. Zechariah, who
finally found his voice, was insistent on that. And then,
the old priest speaks words of blessing for his firstborn
son, words of blessing for a waiting world: “And you,
my child, will be called the prophet of the Most High;
by the tender mercy of our God the dawn will break
upon us to give light to those who sit in darkness and
in the shadow of death, to guide our feet in the way of
peace.” The old man knew what he had been waiting
for. He came to wake us up. To renew our expectation.
To prepare us for what…or who...was coming. Mary’s
child. God’s own son. Friends, it is Advent. For now, let
all mortal flesh keep silence. Let every heart make room.
Hope is on the way. Amen.