Ad te Levavi -- The First Sunday in Advent, 2008
Now his father Zacharias was filled with the Holy Spirit, and prophesied, saying, ”Blessed is the Lord God of Israel, for He has visited and redeemed His people, and has raised up a horn of salvation for us in the house of His servant David, as He spoke by the mouth of His holy prophets, who have been since the world began, that we should be saved from our enemies and from the hand of all who hate us, to perform the mercy promised to our fathers and to remember His holy covenant, the oath which He swore to our father Abraham: to grant us that we, being delivered from the hand of our enemies, might serve Him without fear, in holiness and righteousness before Him all the days of our life. And you, child, will be called the prophet of the Highest; for you will go before the face of the Lord to prepare His ways, to give knowledge of salvation to His people by the remission of their sins, through the tender mercy of our God, with which the Dayspring from on high has visited us; to give light to those who sit in darkness and the shadow of death, to guide our feet into the way of peace.” Luke 1:67-79
The prayer service being held at the Jerusalem Temple was left unfinished because the priest had lost his voice. Nine months later these are the priest’s first words after his son is born. What does it all mean? Why the talk of signs and prophecy?
God is about to loose Himself once more on the world, and it all begins with a geriatric mother named Elizabeth, a talking priest named Zacharias, and an infant boy called John.
John will grow up to baptize all of Jerusalem in an ongoing service of repentance and prayer. Who knows how many months or weeks it took to baptize all those people? It needed to be done. God’s people must be prepared to meet Him face to face. There was no holding back the Messiah, who was running His race to Jerusalem. The people must be ready to serve the Christ in righteousness and holiness, without terror and fear. They must be taught to know God by the forgiveness of their sins, or they would not know Him as Savior. Whoever meets Jesus only as His judge does not know the God of mercy. In this life we meet Christ at the foot of the cross, or we do not meet him at all.
Where Zacharias was unable to bless God’s people months before, he now blesses the God who visits His people. He praises God for the rescue from slavery in Egypt, the genocide of the Moabites and Amalekites under David and Saul*, the return after two generations of exile in Babylon to the promised country of their fathers. Countless other images of war and famine come to mind in this song, each time with God’s faithful remnant preserved under hopeless and adverse conditions, coming out on top over their enemies because of God the promise keeper. “If I go down to the pit, you are with me,” we pray, and we sing, “It is not night if you are here.”
What is new is how God will be with His people. He will go out with His people. He will visit His people. Look them up, see about their needs, look after them in their problems. He will go out into the world under the same conditions we come into the world. He will go out in flesh and blood.
If we have found Jesus in the places where He has promised to be, in our Baptism, His Holy Supper, the words of holy prophecy and forgiveness, then we know also that He will go out with us in the places where we have our lives and being. He will be there with us, walking along our busy streets, finding us in our work places, going out to wherever we, His people, rejoice or mourn. Zacharias’ God is our Christ, whose Advent means that He seeks us and binds Himself to us, meeting us face to face even when we do not recognize He is there. The God of Advent arises and hurries to His people.
At Advent we give thanks to God for this obscure preacher named John. John was a man whose life was poured out to prepare the way for the Dayspring on high, a divine constellation, Christ Jesus. There was even a divine constellation at the time of Christ’s birth. Years later, the appearance of Jesus to John at the river Jordan was the appearance of a different type of morning star, one that signaled the end of the night of death and the abolition of the long apparent anger of God. How does John do this? He begins the great wave of baptism that now covers God’s people, and prepares them for Christ’s return on the final day. Because of John’s work, we are ready to meet Christ in joy on the day of His return in glory. In baptism, John prepares us to live and die at peace with God.
At Advent, we give thanks to God for an obscure priest and an unlikely prophet named Zacharias. The name Zacharias means "God remembers." Zacharias will not let God forget his covenant to us. Perhaps even more so, because there was a time when Zacharias did not think God would keep his covenant to His people. How could God raise up a prophet from an old woman and an old priest who had been childless all their lives? But biology and mortality could not withstand God’s furious assault on death and despair. The impossible is not insurmountable: Elizabeth, a woman whose name means "God swears," can conceive by a man named "God remembers," so that the prophet of the most High God can be born. The plan to kill death and bleed away the sin of Zachariah’s unbelief cannot be resisted. The cross will happen in spite of an old clergyman’s doubts. This baby John is born for everyone who has ever doubted God’s existence. He is born for everyone who has ever thought that God has given up on him or her. Baby John points to Jesus and says to us, “Look, the Lamb of God, who takes away the sin of the world. He is real. He is here in the Church. He is returning soon. He is here for you."
The blessing that Zacharias could not speak that day in the temple is picked up again by Jesus in Luke’s Gospel. The crucified, risen, and ascended Jesus brings Zacharias' broken worship service to its completion by blessing His disciples as He ascends. He continues to bless His people at the end of each and every worship service. Today, a blessing for you in this church from Christ, the Lord of the Church. One day soon, we shall see Him face to face in glory and He shall bless us as we enter into His kingdom in glory forever. Look for His return, for He is coming soon. Zacharias and John, the prophet for the Most High, have told us so. Amen.
The Reverend Sean M. Smallwood
cruxprobatomnia -- the cross tests everything
* See II Samuel 8:2, I Samuel 15 |