From Priesthood to Prophecy

Bloomsbury Central Baptist Church

22 December 2019

Luke 1.5-25, 57-80

Listen to this sermon here:
https://soundcloud.com/bloomsbury-1/priesthood-to-prophecy

“What’s in a name?

            That which we call a rose, by any other name would smell as sweet”.

So said the Bard in Romeo and Juliet.

But here’s my question:

            Why all this fuss about whether John the Baptist

            should be called ‘John’, or ‘Zechariah’ like his father?

As the star-crossed lovers of Shakespeare’s play

            eventually discovered, to their tragic cost,

            quite a lot, in fact, hangs on a name.

This is true for us, today, of course.

For example, I find it hard to think of myself as anything other than a ‘Simon’;

            and my middle name, ‘Patrick’ is important to me

                        because it reminds me of my grandfather;

            while my surname roots me within the tradition of my family

            - I am a Woodman, for better or for worse.

We also have a tradition of people changing their name

            to reflect some change in their circumstances or identity.

Most common is when two people get married

            and one of them takes the other’s surname

            as a symbol of their new unity as a couple.

It’s usually the wife taking the husband’s name, but not always;

            at the marriage of one of our members recently

            he took his new wife’s surname.

And of course when my colleague Dawn married her husband

            they decided to combine their surnames and go double-barrelled.

And whilst surname changing is fairly common,

            sometimes we meet people who have changed their first name.

These days, the only people allowed to call my wife

            by the long version of her name are her Dad and her aunt.

To the rest of us, she is very definitely a Liz.

Some people change their first name not so much out of preference,

            but as a marker of a change of identity.

We had one friend do this a few years back when she got divorced,

            and she asked people to start using her middle name

            rather than the name her ex-husband had used for her.

It took a bit of getting used to if I’m honest,

            but we all got there eventually.

And here at Bloomsbury we’ve had a couple of name-change services

            for people who want to mark their transition of gender identity before God.

In these last couple of examples,

            we’re getting closer to the long biblical tradition

            of name changing as a marker of identity.

Abram became Abraham; Sarai became Sarah;

            Jacob became Israel; Simon became Peter;

                        Saul became Paul;

            and Zak Jr. became John, a.k.a. ‘The Baptist’.

So what’s going on here?

            After all, Luke’s gospel devotes some considerable wordage

                        to telling us the drama surrounding the naming

                        of Zechariah and Elizabeth’s untimely-born son.

It’s quite clear that there is a strong expectation in the community

            and extended family around them

            that the boy will be named after his father;

and the inference is that he will follow in the family firm, so to speak,

            becoming a priest and taking his turn in the temple in due course,

            offering incense on the alter like the generations before him.

And the name ‘Zechariah’ would have suited this career path well.

            It means, in Hebrew, ‘God remembered’;

and the task of the priests was precisely this,

            to keep the memory of God alive,

            and to keep the people of Israel within God’s memory.

They were the guardians of the rituals,

            the maintainers of the faith,

and they had kept the faith, faithfully, through centuries of difficulty.

From invasion to exile, occupation to subjection,

            through the times of the Assyrians, Babylonians,

            Persians, Greeks and Romans,

the priests had reminded the people

            that God had not forgotten them.

From father to son, through generation after generation,

            the priests had kept the rumour of God alive.

Both Zechariah and Elizabeth had impeccable credentials.

            Both were from priestly families:

                        Elizabeth’s even more prestigious than Zechariah’s.

            He was a descendant of Abijah,

                        one of the priestly families instituted by King David;

            whereas Elizabeth could trace her ancestry back to the time of Moses,

                        as a descendant of his brother Aaron, the original priest!

            She even had the same name as Aaron’s wife, for goodness’ sake.

You can just imagine that when Zechariah and Elizabeth were first married,

            they would have seemed the perfect priestly couple.

Any son of theirs would have been on the fast-track to priestly superstardom.

So you can also imagine the pain,

            as the years ticked by with no children and no son,

            how they would have felt.

The inability to have children when you long for them is always painful,

            and even in our time there are many people

                        who have to live with the sadness of unfulfilled hopes

                        for children and grandchildren.

But for Zechariah and Elizabeth there was another layer to their disappointment.

            It wasn’t just their personal hopes and dreams

                        that were vested in their hope for a child,

            it was the hopes and dreams of their whole family, their whole community.

And then Zechariah had his miraculous moment in the temple with the Angel Gabriel;

            who, let’s face it, was kind of working overtime that year,

                        what with appearances to Mary (once), Joseph (three times),

                        plus the Wise Men, and the Shepherds.

So when the supernaturally dumbstruck Zechariah and Elizabeth finally conceived,

            it must have seemed as if God, truly, had remembered this couple,

            just as Zechariah’s name said that God would.

So the pressure was on to name the child after his father, ‘God remembered’,

            and the expectation was that he would fulfil the priestly calling of his ancestry

            by taking his place in administering the rituals and practices of the Jewish religion,

                        keeping the faith alive for another generation.

If ever there was a child born to be a priest,

            it was Zechariah and Elizabeth’s son.

As the angel said, he was a child born to give them joy and gladness,

            and to bring rejoicing to many (1.14).

But, it begins to emerge, God has other plans about how this would happen,

            a different vocation for their son,

            and the argument over his name is at the heart of this.

The angel had already told Zechariah that the baby was to be named ‘John’,

            and he’s clearly already told Elizabeth,

because when the neighbours and relatives turn up

            to name the baby Zechariah she intervenes,

but the nature of patriarchy is such

            that it’s only when Zechariah himself confirms her words with a writing tablet

            that they finally relent.

And so, instead of a priest, we have a baby born to be a prophet.

John means, in Hebrew, ‘God is gracious’,

            and giving this name to their child

was a symbol that this baby’s life was destined

            to mark the turning point between a God who remembers,

            and a God whose grace takes shape in human history.

It is the move from priesthood to prophecy;

            from ritual to action.

Faith will no longer be based upon the remembrance

            of what God has done in times gone by,

but upon what God is doing by his grace in the present.

Of course, this isn’t the first time God has intervened

            within the story of salvation history.

The author of Luke’s gospel is very well aware

            that he is structuring the Zechariah-Elizabeth-baby-John story

            on the story of Abraham and Sarah in the Hebrew Torah.

The similarities are striking.

            There’s an emphasis on name-changing,

                        there’s an elderly couple past childbearing age promised a baby;

            there’s an encounter with an angel,

                        and disbelief at the angel’s words.

Clearly, our story for this morning

            is echoing the story of Abraham and Sarah,

and this is because Luke wants his readers to realise

            that what takes place in the birth of John

                        needs to be understood within the larger and longer story

                        of God’s faithfulness to his faithful people.

Yes, John will be the prophet of the new relationship between God and humanity

            that is coming into being in Jesus.

But he does so in continuity with, and in fulfilment of,

            the ancient covenant between God and Abraham,

                        that God would be his God,

                        and that his descendants would be God’s people.

There is no mandate here for any kind of supercessionist theology

            where Christianity replaces Judaism within God’s promises.

Rather, God’s promise to Abraham,

            that through his descendants

            all the nations of the earth would be blessed (Gen. 22.18),

is fulfilled in God’s gracious action in sending Jesus.

And Zechariah and Elizabeth’s child

            is to be the prophetic herald of these glad tidings of comfort and joy.

And so the baby is named John,

            and he doesn’t grow up to be a priest.

And here Luke leaves his destiny hanging,

            after all, Jesus hasn’t been born yet,

and instead he just tells us t

            hat ‘all who heard [this news] said

            “what then will this child become?” (1.66)

And the answer to that question is for another chapter…

            so we too will leave the rest of the story of John the Baptist for another time.

But something interesting happens

            in the story of Zechariah and Elizabeth at this point.

Luke tells us that Zechariah the priest is ‘filled with the Holy Spirit’

            and ‘spoke this prophecy’.

And then we get the song of Zechariah, as it is known.

            Zechariah himself moves from priest to prophet.

He changes from being one who keeps the rumour of God alive

            through ritual and observance,

to one who proclaims what God is doing

            in the here-and-now.

God is active again,

            and Zechariah’s restored voice lifts up in song

                        to sing of how God has not forgotten his people,

            of how God has remembered them through the years of difficulty,

                        and of how God is now acting in the present

                        to bring new life and light to a world of darkness.

It is no coincidence that we have this reading today, on the 22^nd of December,

            which this year is the autumnal equinox.

You may not notice it,

            but tomorrow will be a slightly brighter day than today.

The light is coming back into the world,

            the winter is ending, slowly, imperceptibly,

                        and with many cold days still to come

            before we get to spring and summer,

but the season is changing.

So this is what Zechariah proclaims:

            ‘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.’ (1.78-79).

And there are a few key things that I think we can take from this story.

Firstly, there is an assurance here that God has not finished with humanity.

However bleak it may seem, God is still at work by the power of the Spirit,

            stirring faithful hearts to generosity,

                        Godly minds to renewal, and devout souls to love.

There is plenty in this world to feel bleak about,

            and sometimes it can seem as if the nights just get longer and longer,

                        as the light goes out of the world,

                        and sometimes even from our lives.

From those who live with depression,

            to those who feel betrayed by society,

            to those who long for peace and security but find none,

the darkness can seem overwhelming.

And yet… God has not finished with humanity,

            God has not finished with you,

            God has not finished with me.

Sometimes it may be that all we can do is go through the motions,

            as Zechariah did in the temple,

year after year, hoping desperately that God remembers,

            and trying along the way to keep the rumour of God alive

            for ourselves and those we love.

But Zechariah discovered that God has not yet finished what has been started,

            and so he proclaimed hope of new light

            into the heart of the darkness of his world.

And this brings me to the second thing I think we can take from this story today,

            which is that God calls us to move from priesthood to prophecy.

One of the tendencies before those of us who hang around churches

            is that we can end up confusing

                        the shape our faith takes,

                        from the beating heart of divine love

            that called our faith into being in the first place.

There’s nothing wrong with religious observance,

            with patterns of prayer and rituals of worship.

They are important, they may even be necessary.

            But they are not God.

This is what Zechariah had to discover from the mouth of the angel Gabriel,

            that God comes to the world

                        not in response to what we do for God,

            but as an act of grace breaking in upon us from beyond ourselves.

If God is merely an extension of our acts of faith,

            then God is a product of human hands,

and frankly there are enough idols in the world already vying for our attention

            without us making another one.

Rather, God calls those of us who worship faithfully

            to take a step of faith and to become prophets

who proclaim in our time

            what God is doing in our world.

Because God is always doing something new.

From the intentional welcoming of those

            who have been historically marginalised,

to works of justice and mercy,

            to peacemaking and reconciliation,

to forgiveness and the restoration of broken relationships…

            in all these and in so much more,

            God is at work in lives and hearts bringing transformation to the world.

And so, thirdly, maybe our job is to call that out,

            to name the presence of God,

to join our efforts and lives with what God is doing.

This was John’s calling,

            just as it was Zechariah and Elizabeth’s calling,

each playing their faithful part,

            in preparing the way for God who comes to the earth by the Holy Spirit,

embodied in the life of his son Jesus,

            speaking words of salvation and forgiveness of sins.

So if, today, the world feels like a dark wilderness,

            there is a voice crying in the wilderness,

to prepare the way of the Lord,

            who comes to us again, and again, and again.