Christmas Day Talk – Finding the unexpected Jesus

Preparation

• Four Christmas Crackers with the Bible texts inserted.
• Hide the baby Jesus somewhere unexpected

Treasure hunt –

         Have you noticed – the manger is empty!?

         The baby Jesus is hiding somewhere unexpected.

         When find him, put him back where he ‘belongs’ in the manger.

Except, when we stop and think about it,

            it is so incredibly unexpected to find Jesus in a manger.

I mean, we all know he belongs there,

            but this is only because we’ve been told,

                        since we were children ourselves,

            that the baby Jesus belongs in the manger.

There is a carol we sing sometimes which begins

            ‘Come, Thou long expected Jesus’

But I sometimes wonder if it would have been better as,

            ‘Come, thou unexpected Jesus’

Because although the people of Israel

            had been longing for their Messiah for centuries;

they certainly didn’t expect that he would arrive,

            as a baby born in a stable and laid in a manger.

So Liz and I were wondering, as we were preparing for today,

            about whether there were other places

            in the story of the birth of Jesus,

where people encountered him in unexpected ways.

And here I’m going to need some help

            as I have some crackers to pull

            which might just have some clues in them to help us.

Cracker 1

In that region there were shepherds living in the fields, keeping watch over their flock by night. ⁹ Then an angel of the Lord stood before them, and the glory of the Lord shone around them, and they were terrified.  ¹⁰ But the angel said to them, "Do not be afraid; for see-- I am bringing you good news of great joy for all the people: ¹¹ to you is born this day in the city of David a Savior, who is the Messiah, the Lord. (Lk. 2:8-11)

It certainly all came as a bit of a shock to the poor shepherds, didn’t it?

            There they were, peacefully passing their time

                        on the hillside overlooking Bethlehem,

            washing their socks by night,

                        or whatever it is shepherds do.

And then, suddenly – angels everywhere!!!

            And unexpected news of a baby in Bethlehem.

The fact that they were so terrified when the angelic host appeared

            speaks volumes of the level of unexpectedness they experienced

And then, Luke tells us,

            even after they had paid their flying visit to the new parents,

            everyone they told was amazed too!

But it probably shouldn’t surprise us

            that the shepherds were so surprised.

After all, this had been an unexpected story from the beginning.

Cracker 2

The angel came to Mary and said, "Greetings, favoured one! The Lord is with you." ²⁹ But she was much perplexed by his words and pondered what sort of greeting this might be. ³⁰ The angel said to her, "Do not be afraid, Mary, for you have found favor with God.  ³¹ And now, you will conceive in your womb and bear a son, and you will name him Jesus. (Lk. 1:28-31 )

Poor Mary certainly didn’t expect,

            as a teenager engaged to be married to a nice man called Joseph,

that she would end up being visited by an angel,

            and then unexpectedly find herself pregnant

            with a child who came to her as a gift from God.

And it wasn’t just the shepherds and Mary

            for whom the arrival of Jesus was unexpected.

Cracker 3

An angel of the Lord appeared to Joseph in a dream and said, "Joseph, son of David, do not be afraid to take Mary as your wife, for the child conceived in her is from the Holy Spirit. (Matt. 1:20)

Poor Joseph had a couple of big and unexpected shocks:

            firstly the news that Mary was pregnant,

and then secondly the night-time visit of an angel,

            telling him that God was involved,

and that he should take Mary as his wife

            and love the child as his own,

            because the baby was a gift from God.

But it wasn’t just the shepherds, and Mary, and Joseph

            who were caught out

            by the unexpected arrival of God’s son.

Cracker 4

In the time of King Herod, after Jesus was born in Bethlehem of Judea, wise men from the East came to Jerusalem, asking, "Where is the child who has been born king of the Jews? For we observed his star at its rising, and have come to pay him homage." (Matt. 2:1-2)

The wise men weren’t so wise after all,

            because they expected the baby born to be king

            would be found in the palace in Jerusalem,

and so they nearly gave the whole game away

            by stopping off there to look for him,

rather than following the star beyond Jerusalem to Bethlehem,

            to find the baby not lying a palace at all,

but living in poverty with his parents,

            in a troubled and overcrowded rural town.

And here’s the thing.

            God is often not found where we expect.

Jesus comes to us,

            as he came to Mary, Joseph, Shepherds and Wise Men,

which is that he comes unexpectedly,

            in ways that we can’t predict,

            in places we can’t foresee.

Sometimes God is not revealed in the powerful and the successful,

            but in the weak and the vulnerable and the damaged.

Sometimes God is not found in happiness and joy,

            but in sorrow and suffering.

For some people, Christmas isn’t a time of family and sharing,

            but of loneliness and difficulty,

and maybe Jesus is just as present there,

            as he is with those who gather round a roast turkey.

Maybe God can be found in caring for someone else,

            or in a walk through the countryside or the city,

just as much as God can be found in carol services and nativity scenes.

So today, as we celebrate those who found God

            in unexpected places two thousand years ago,

maybe the challenge for us,

            particularly as we look ahead to a new year,

is to seek Godin the unexpected places,

            in the unexpected people,

            and in the unexpected situations.

Come, thou unexpected Jesus

Advent Prayers inspired by Zechariah and Elizabeth

PRAYER 1 - for use at Communion

Advent-urous God, we marvel at the ways in which you come to us,

            through the courage of the prophets,

                        through the faithfulness of the priests,

            through the openness of women and men to new life,

                        through vulnerability and fragility,

            through water, bread, and wine.

And so we pray for a world

            that is ever needful of your coming.

We pray for those who have no voice,

            for those who pass silently through our world,

            ignored and side-lined, marginalised and dispossessed.

We think of those in our society who are homeless,

            of those who live with disability,

            of those who are refugees and cannot speak English;

and we give thanks for those who can speak out,

            for those who advocate,

            and for those who seek to empower others.

  

We pray for those who have no voice.

We pray also for those who struggle with faith,

            for whom doubt is crippling,

            who long to see you, but just can’t find you.

We offer our thanks for the rituals of faith

            that keep the rumour of your coming alive.

May those who seek, find,

            and may those who are lost, be found.

We pray for those who struggle with faith.

We pray also for all new parents,

            as through each fragile new life, made in your image,

            you commit yourself once again to this world.

We thank you for the examples of Zechariah and Elizabeth,

            and Mary and Joseph, and Abraham and Sarah.

Be with those who long for children but cannot conceive,

            and with those whose children are unplanned,

            and with those children who are fighting for life.

In the midst of the complexities of our lives,

            come to us afresh to spark hope, joy, and life.

We pray for all new parents.

We pray for ourselves,

            and we open our own lives to your coming,

                        as you re-shape us, and re-make us,

                        and forgive us, and renew us.

May we know you deeply,

            and have the courage to speak,

            the faith to persevere,

            the vulnerability to risk,

            and the hope to seek after your coming.

All these prayers we offer through our saviour Jesus Christ,

            God made flesh.

Amen.

PRAYER 2

Great God of unexpected endings, there are times when we find ourselves left speechless in wonder at the mystery of your presence. We pray today for and with all who wish to offer prayers of grateful thanksgiving but do not know how or to whom they should pray.

We lift up our hearts with expectant mothers and proud new fathers, and we rejoice with those who see in the miracle of new life the hope of the future of the world.

We proclaim in your name the innate equality of each child born, whatever their gender, nationality, ethnicity, social standing, or sexuality. And we commit ourselves to seeing the image of God reflected in all, as we offer prayers of wonder at the miracle of life.

Great God of unexpected endings, there are times when we find ourselves left speechless in anticipation at the hope of your coming. We pray today for and with all those who are desperately longing for a different future, but who do not know how or to whom they should pray.

We offer our voices in solidarity with the refugees and would-be asylum seekers who are stranded at the border posts of Europe, a new future before them but trapped in the silence of waiting for the new world to come to them and their families. We pray especially for those who are working to alleviate suffering and hasten a humane solution to the crisis.

We proclaim in your name the innate equality of each human being who has been created in your image, and we commit ourselves to the radical gospel vision of peace and reconciliation between peoples.

Great God of unexpected endings, there are times when we find ourselves left speechless in powerlessness at the futility of our lives and actions. We acknowledge before you that even after all our efforts the world is still not as the world should be, and in the quiet darkness of our hearts we confess the fear that all our strivings have simply made things worse.

We are powerless to prevent war, we are powerless to stop our friends and loved ones from becoming ill and dying, we are powerless in the face of systems and institutions of great power that control far more than they have any right to.

And in the midst of the silencing of powerlessness, we still our hearts from panic and we pray to hear the cry of a baby cutting through the babble of the world as Christ comes to us, your words made flesh, salvation spoken in time and space..

Great God of unexpected endings, come once again to this wondering, anticipating, and powerless world. 

Come to us in our silence. Come, Lord Jesus. Come, O come, Immanuel. 

Amen.

The Unveiling of God

Bloomsbury Central Baptist Church

29 December 2019

Mark 1.9-13

Psalm 91.9-12

So that was Christmas…

            I hope you had fun,

            to paraphrase John Lennon.

But now, it’s all over for another year.

            Have you taken your tree down yet?

                        Or does it get to stay up until twelfth night?

            Are your thoughts already starting to turn to the coming year,

                        maybe going back to work,

                        or planning holidays,

                        or new year’s resolutions…?

For the next few months here at Bloomsbury in our preaching,

            we’re going to be looking at the story of Jesus

            that we find in Mark’s gospel,

and with the carols of Christmas still ringing in our ears,

            it’s interesting to note that Mark

            is definitely the least-Christmassy of all the gospels.

Neither Mark nor John have shepherds, wise men, a stable, a star,

            a virgin, a doubting husband, or the archangel Gabriel.

If you want those, and indeed most of the things

            we think of as essential to the Christmas story,

you have to go to Matthew and Luke’s versions of the Jesus story.

John’s gospel has the wonderful prologue,

            which I so much enjoy reading each year at the Bloomsbury Carol Celebration;

and Mark’s gospel has… well… not much.

It starts with John the Baptist preaching in the wilderness,

            and then jumps straight to the baptism and temptation of Jesus.

There’s no nativity story at all in Mark,

            which is, of course, the earliest of the four gospels to be written.

And we could engage in all sorts of interesting speculation

            about why it was that when, firstly Matthew, and then Luke,

                        decided to expand Mark’s gospel with extra material,

            they decided to add the stories that we now know as the Christmas.

Did they feel, perhaps, that Mark wasn’t quite clear enough

            on the subject of the incarnation?

Maybe they thought it needed spelling out a bit more clearly

            what it meant to say that Jesus was the Son of God?

Maybe they wanted to give Jesus a birth story

            that would rival the origin stories of the Greek and Roman gods?

Maybe they wanted to show how Jesus

            was the Jewish Messiah in fulfilment of the prophecies of the Hebrew Bible?

But the thing is, Mark addresses these issues too,

            just much more succinctly.

So, in our reading this morning,

            we hear a voice from heaven

                        proclaiming that Jesus is the son of God,

            we have a moment of divine anointing

                        as powerful as any mythological initiation,

            and we have a clear parallel between Israel’s years of wandering in the wilderness,

                        and Jesus being sent to the wilderness to be tempted.

So, whilst I’m not suggesting that we don’t need Matthew and Luke,

            I am suggesting that if you’ve had enough

                        of choirs of angels and singing shepherds,

            you might find all you need to know about Jesus

                        in the rather briefer, and less seasonally festive, gospel of Mark.

These five verses that we’re looking at today

            are immensely rich in symbolism, imagery, and theology.

The first eight verses have covered John the Baptist preaching in the wilderness,

            which, for those of you who were here last Sunday,

            ties in with the story of his birth to Zechariah and Elizabeth.

And then Jesus comes from Nazareth in Galilee

            to be baptised by John in the Jordan.

So far, so good.

            John has clearly been baptising for a while,

                        calling people to repent of their sins,

            and prepare themselves for the arrival of someone

                        who would baptise with the Holy Spirit rather than with water.

And so Jesus is baptised, but as he is coming up out of the water,

            he has what can only be described as an ‘apocalyptic’ moment.

If you remember our sermon series last year

            on the book of Revelation,

you may remember that the world ‘apocalyptic’

            actually comes from the Greek word for ‘unveiling’ or ‘revealing’.

And within the first century Jewish tradition,

            stories of heavenly visions, or divine voices,

            were always stories of revelation, of unveiling otherwise hidden realities.

So, here at the baptism of Jesus,

            we suddenly find the baptism is invaded

by this dramatic, apocalyptic, imagery,

            with the heavens being torn apart,

            and things otherwise unseen being made known.

There’s a reference here to the Hebrew Scriptures,

            but you have to be slightly alert to spot it.

We’ve seen in our sermons during Advent,

            that the Old Testament prophets longed for a day

            when God would intervene in human history.

And they often expressed this longing most strongly,

            when things were not going so well for the people of Israel.

So the times of exile or warfare or political uncertainty

            are the points where the prophets speak most longingly

            of their hope that God will be revealed in power.

The book of Isaiah captures this longing beautifully

            in chapter 64 v.1

‘O that you would tear open the heavens and come down,

so that the mountains would quake at your presence.’

And of course this is precisely what we are told happened at the baptism of Jesus.

            Mark is trying to signal something important here.

He’s saying that Jesus is the fulfilment of the longing of Isaiah,

            and the tearing open of the heavens,

                        the apocalyptic unveiling of otherwise hidden truths,

            speaks of the removal of the barrier between humans and their God,

                        and of a new relationship between God and humanity.

The revelations continue,

            with the Spirit of God descending on Jesus like a dove.

There’s another allusion here to the Hebrew Bible,

            this time to the story of Noah in the early chapters of Genesis (ch.8).

Dove with an olive branch, Catacombs of Domitilla, Rome

We all know the story of the great flood,

            of how the waters of chaos overwhelmed the earth,

            bringing destruction to all except the faithful few on the ark.

And how after forty days and forty nights of rain,

            the waters started to subside,

and so Noah sent out a dove three times,

            to see if the waters were subsiding.

The first time the dove simply flew around and came back to him,

            the second time it came back with an olive leaf in its beak,

            and the third time it didn’t come back at all,

and so Noah knew that the chaos was ending

            and soon the new world could begin.

But also, perhaps less well known, within the Jewish rabbinic tradition,

            the spirit of God which swept over the waters of creation (Genesis 1.2)

            was said to resemble a Dove hovering over her young.

And then there’s another reference to the prophecy of Isaiah,

            where the suffering servant, who bears the sins of the world,

            is described as:

My servant, whom I uphold, my chosen, in whom my soul delights;

I have put my spirit upon him;

he will bring forth justice to the nations.

Isa. 42.1

And in the descent of the Spirit on Jesus at his baptism,

            these images combine,

to signify that God is coming to the chaos of the world

            to bring new hope, new life, a new start,

and to bring forth justice to all peoples.

But the revelations continue…

Not only are the heavens torn apart in fulfilment of Isaiah’s prophecy,

            not only does the Spirit descend on Jesus as the primal dove of peace and justice,

but a voice is heard coming from heaven,

            declaring Jesus to be the son of God,

            and speaking words of approval over him.

And, yes, of course,

            there is a reference to the Hebrew Bible here too…

This time it’s Psalm 2.7, where the king in Jerusalem

            is declared to be the anointed one of God, and says:

I will tell of the decree of the LORD:

He said to me, "You are my son; today I have begotten you.

This was a text which directly fed into the Jewish messianic hope,

            and the reference to it at Jesus’ baptism,

            firmly positions Jesus not just as God’s son,

                        but as the long awaited messiah of Israel.

And so you can see that in just these five short verses,

            Mark piles layer upon layer of symbolism,

            with reference after reference to the Hebrew tradition,

all the while building his case

            that Jesus is the son of God

            in a way that worthy of attention by those reading his gospel.

I want to return for a moment now

            to what I described as the ‘apocalyptic’ nature of Jesus’ baptism,

and I’ve already suggested that we have here an event

            that is apocalyptic or revelatory

                        in the sense that it reveals something profound

                        about how heaven views the life, ministry, and person of Jesus.

But there’s another layer to this:

            In Mark’’s time, apocalyptic was the popular language of political dissent.

Apocalyptic imagery envisioned the “end of the world”,

            that is, the world ruled by the powers of sin and death.

Just as you or I might say that the death of a loved one is ‘the end of the world’,

            so apocalyptic literature proclaimed that the old world was passing

            and a new one was coming into being.

Books from the Hebrew Bible that used apocalyptic imagery,

            such as Daniel or Ezekiel,

were always written in times of political turmoil,

            and they expressed the hope of the oppressed but faithful people of God

            that the world dominated by wicket powers would come to an end.

So whenever you get apocalyptic imagery in the New Testament,

            it’s worth paying attention to what it’s saying politically,

            as well as spiritually.

And there are some clues here…

Following his baptism, with its apocalyptic rending of the heavens,

            Jesus is driven by the Spirit further out into the wilderness,

            where he engages in a struggle with a figure called ‘Satan’ (1:12f).

I don’t have the time this morning to give a detailed exploration of Satan in the Bible,

            but just to note that what we’ve got here is not some kind of bad-version-of-God;

                        this is not a satanic Magneto to a divine Professor Xavier,

                        or a Satanic Joker to a divine Batman,

                        or a Satanic Lex Luther to a divine Superman…

                                    you get the idea…

Rather, the name ‘satan’ in this context simply means ‘accuser’, or ‘adversary’.

            The Satan who confronts Jesus in the wilderness

                        is that seductive voice which whispers doubt or temptation

                        to our deepest needs and desires.

The wilderness is the place where Jesus goes to gain self-knowledge,

            to face his demons and his temptations, and to overcome them.

Which of us can truly say that we know ourselves,

            if we haven’t faced up to our demons.

And before Jesus could begin his public ministry

            of casting evil out of the world,

he needed to be very sure that evil didn’t have a hold on his own heart.

There have been enough cases down the years,

            of religious leaders falling prey to their base desires,

for Jesus to need to make sure

            that he had faced his humanity squarely

            and confronted his demons.

But this isn’t just a forty day wilderness journey of self-knowledge,

            because Mark tells us that there is a deep spiritual battle going on.

Jesus is waited on by angels, and the Satan is in league with the wild beasts.

To understand this properly, we have to again delve into the Old Testament,

            this time into that deeply apocalyptic book of Daniel,

which was written about two hundred years before the time of Jesus,

            to inspire the Jews of that time to resistance against the Greek invasion of Israel,

            by telling them stories about the hero Daniel during their time in exile in Babylon.

In Daniel, the oppressive rulers are described as ‘beasts’ (Dan 7.1-7)

            and the angels of heaven do battle against them. (7.10; 12.1)

So the mention in Mark’s gospel

            of the wild beasts and angels in the wilderness with Jesus and Satan

give us an insight into the nature of Jesus’ ministry as it will unfold over the coming years,

            as an apocalyptic battle between good and evil,

with him coming to the world to cast out evil,

            and to bring release from those powers that oppress and distort humanity.

And in many ways this, surely, is still the mission of the church,

            to bring release to those who are captive,

            to bring healing to those who are sick,

            to bring new light to those living in darkness,

to cast out evil and announce that a new and better way of being human

            has been made real in the coming of Jesus.

But we’re not done with the imagery yet…

            I told you Mark packs a lot into a few verses…

The forty days of Jesus temptation is no accidental number.

            We’ve already seen in it an echo of the rain that fell in the story of Noah,

                        for forty days and forty nights.

            But there is also here an invocation of Israel’s forty years

                        of “testing” in the wilderness.

You remember the story,

            they people of Israel had been suffering in Egypt,

                        and Moses led them through the waters of the Red Sea

                        into forty years of wilderness wandering

                        before they eventually entered the promised land.

It’s as if Jesus in the wilderness is somehow reliving the experience of Israel

            as he prepares to lead humanity itself on a journey from slavery to freedom.

Just as Israel discovered its identity as a nation when it escaped from Pharaoh,

            so Jesus has his identity confirmed at his baptism.

Israel is God’s people, and Jesus is God’s son,

            and both must struggle in the wilderness

            to discover what this vocation means.

It’s as if Jesus has to go back to where it all started,

            to revisit the wilderness of the Exodus,

in order to begin the new exodus

            of leading people from all nations

from their enslavement to the powers of sin and death

            into new life and forgiveness.

But Mark tells us that he is not alone in this struggle,

            as he is ministered to by angels.

And here we find our final reference to the Hebrew Bible,

            and it takes us to our first reading.

In Psalm 91 we read:

            he will command his angels concerning you to guard you in all your ways.

            On their hands they will bear you up,

            so that you will not dash your foot against a stone.

Mark doesn’t give us the specific details of Jesus’ temptations,

            we would have to turn to Matthew and Luke for that,

and if we did, we would discover that this verse from Psalm 91 is used

            as part of the temptation for Jesus to put God to the test.

But it’s firmly there in the background to Mark’s much briefer temptation story,

            and the message is clear,

which is that Jesus is not actually alone in the wilderness,

            because God’s angels are there with him.

He doesn’t need to test their presence,

            by throwing himself from a high place;

they just are there, waiting on him,

            surrounding him with love and care.

And so to us,

            and our experiences of wilderness testing and temptation.

Each of us, at different times, and in different ways,

            knows what it is to be driven into the wilderness.

Each of us knows what it is to hear the deceptive, seductive voice in our minds,

            whispering words that will take us away from God’s love.

And in those moments, there is great comfort to be had here,

            because we, too, are children of God.

We, too, are dearly loved,

            and we, too, are held within that love

            even through the darkest times.

This is how Christ comes to us,

            by his Spirit, when we need him most.

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.