During the rule of Herod, King of Judea, there was a priest assigned service in the regiment of Abijah. His name was Zechariah. His wife was descended from the daughters of Aaron. Her name was Elizabeth. Together they lived honourably before God, careful in keeping to the ways of the commandments and enjoying a clear conscience before God. But they were childless because Elizabeth could never conceive, and now they were quite old.
It so happened that as Zechariah was carrying out his priestly duties before God, working the shift assigned to his regiment, it came to his one turn in life to enter the sanctuary of God and burn incense. The congregation was gathered and praying outside the Temple at the our of he incense offering. Unannounced, an angel of God appeared just to the right of the altar of incense. Zechariah was paralysed with fear.
But the angel reassured him,
"Don't fear, Zechariah. Your prayer has been heard. Elizabeth, your wife, will bear a son by you. You are to name him John. You're going to leap like a gazelle for joy, and not only you -many will delight in his birth. He'll achieve great stature with God.
"He'll drink neither wine nor beer. He'll be filled with the Holy Spirit from the moment he leaves his mother's womb. He will turn many sons and daughters of Israel back to their God. He will herald God's arrival in the style and strength of Elijah, soften the hearts of parents to children and kindle devout understanding among hardened sceptics. He'll get the people ready for God"
Zechariah said to the angel, "Do you expect me to believe this? How will I know what you say is true? I'm an old man, and my wife is an old woman."
But the angel said,
"I am Gabriel, the sentinel of God, sent especially to bring you this glad news. But because you won't believe me, you'll be unable to say a word until the day of your son's birth. Every word I've spoken to you will come true on time - God's time."
Meanwhile the congregation waiting for Zechariah was getting restless, wondering what was keeping him so long in the sanctuary. When he came out and couldn't speak, they knew he had seen a vision. He continued speechless and had to use sign language with the people.
When the course of his priestly assignment was completed, he went back home. It wasn't long before his wife, Elizabeth, conceived. She went off by herself for five months, relishing her pregnancy.
"So this is how God acts to remedy my unfortunate condition" she said.
In the sixth month of Elizabeth's pregnancy, God sent the angel Gabriel to the Galilean village of Nazareth to a virgin engaged to be married to a man descended from David. His name was Joseph, and the virgin's name was Mary. Upon entering Gabriel greeted her:
"Good morning!
You're beautiful with God's beauty,
Beautiful inside and out!
God be with you."She was thoroughly shaken, wondering what was behind a greeting like that. But the angel assured her:
"Mary, you have nothing to fear. God has a surprise for you. You will become pregnant and give birth to a son and call him Jesus. He will be great, be called the Son of the Highest. The Lord God will give him the throne of his father David; He will rule Jacob's House forever - no end, ever to his Kingdom."
Mary said to the angel, "But how? I've never slept with a man."
The angel said to her,
"The Holy Spirit will come upon you, the power of the Highest will hover over you; therefore the child you will bring to birth will be called Holy, the Son of God. And did you know that you cousin Elizabeth conceived a son, old as she is? Everyone called her barren, and here she is six months pregnant! Nothing, you see, is impossible with God."
And Mary said: Yes, I see it all now; I'm the Lord's maid, ready to serve. Let it be with me just as you say."
And the angel left her.
(Start the sermon
with the song "I believe in Jesus")
Marc Nelson. © 1987 Mercy/Vineyard
Publishing/Adm. by CopyCare.
I believe in
Jesus
I believe He is the Son of God.
I believe He died and rose
again,
I believe He paid for us all.
And I believe He’s here
now,
Standing in our midst.
Here with the power to heal now,
And the
grace to forgive.
I believe in You,
Lord;
I believe You are the Son of God.
I believe You died and rose
again,
I believe You paid for us all.
And I believe You’re here
now,
Standing in our midst.
Here with the power to heal now,
And the
grace to forgive.
Introduction
I always feel a bit sorry for Zechariah. He has a vision of an angel, is told something remarkable and is made mute for daring to ask how he will know if what he has been told is true or not. He didn't realise that he would know only through his experience.
Setting Zechariah's Scene
St Luke tells us that he was a good man, in a stable, loving marriage. Both he and his wife Elizabeth lived good lives and were "honourable". He was a priest which meant that he could be called upon to offer the evening and morning prayers in the Temple. However, by this time in the life of the Jewish people there were many more priests than were needed and so those who worked in the Temple were chosen by lot. It was a great honour and would only happen once in a priest's life. Once chosen they were responsible for leading morning and evening prayer at the Temple.
In the New Testament time most Jewish people worshipped each Saturday in their local Synagogue. However, the centre of Jewish worship was not the Synagogue - which was seen as a place of instruction, but at the Temple - a place of sacrifice. The Temple had first been built by King Solomon but this was destroyed when the Jewish people were defeated in battle and taken as captives to Babylon. A second temple was built but this was destroyed by Alexander the Great and the final Temple - the one Jesus would have known was built in 19 BC by King Herod. Jews from around the world would go to the Temple for major festivals but those who were devout and lived in Jerusalem would go most days to pray and worship there.
Every morning and evening incense was burned as an offering to the Lord. Psalm 141 says "Let my prayer be set forth as incense before you". The incense symbolised the prayers of the faithful worshippers rising to God like smoke.
So there is Zechariah, off to officiate at the Evening service. He probably wasn't expecting much to happen. There would be the tourists mixing with the regular congregation. He would be required to lead in the singing of some Psalms and then he would go the altar and light the incense. This was a great honour of course, but hardly exciting. After burning the incense he would be required to offer the closing blessing. It was a routine act in a routine service, but then his world is turned upside down.
The Visit of the Angel
Of course Zechariah would have believed in angels. Everyone in the Jewish world believed that there were angels of light and angels of evil. It was just that you didn't expect to bump into one. And then the angel told him that he and his wife would have a son.
Poor Zechariah it was too much for him. Once he got over the shock of seeing an angel in his way behind the altar, he stops to question. For a priest, a devoted and honourable priest, he does have a lack of faith. Like Sarah, the wife of the patriarch Abraham, he can't quite believe what the angel is telling him. Eventually he asks "How will I know what you say is true?"
Gabriel goes on to tell Zechariah about his son and the ministry he will have, but makes him unable to speak as a punishment for his lack of faith.
Knowledge and Experience
Zechariah was an old man who had devoted his life to serving God. He would have known the scriptures, understood the Jewish Law and known intellectually about his faith, what was required of him and his lifestyle. He was rational, he believed, he could recite the Jewish creeds and Laws. Yet he found it difficult to believe when God's angel told him what was going to happen.
Many Christians know their faith. We may have been instructed in the faith as children. We may have learned all about the questions and answers people can think of, we may have recited creeds or statements of faith since we were children. We may have an intellectual grasp of the faith but still find it difficult to believe what God tell us.
Many people think that being a Christian is like having a philosophy. They think we have to obey a set of intellectual propositions. Yet whilst our faith does involve our intellect, it doesn't start there. Most people become Christians because of an experience, not because they have been convinced by a set of intellectual arguments.
Zechariah was told by the angel
"You don't know. You experience. So shut up and experience."
And for the next nine months or so Gabriel made sure that Zechariah did, literally, shut up and experience the joy of his wife being pregnant. Elizabeth's reaction to her husband being made mute is not recorded. However, she is determined to enjoy her pregnancy and takes herself off on holiday for five months to make sure she is well and enjoys the experience of being blessed by God.
Mary's Experience
St Luke asks us to contrast Zechariah's reaction to Gabriel with Mary's.
Who Are We Like?
In our faith we have a choice of whether to respond like Zechariah - and want all the answers - or like Mary who simply got on with the experience in her trust of God.
Learning to Swim
Many of us want to have all the answers in life before we can let go and fully trust God. We want to know all the answers to why there is suffering, what our faith is really about, and seek to understand all mysteries. Yet the Christian faith is not like that. It is like learning to swim. You can understand fully about how the water will support you, how to move your legs and arms to ensure you move forward, or indeed backward, in the water, but at some point you have to experience the power of the water taking your weight. You have to trust as you let go of the side and take your feet off the bottom that the water will support you. It is an experience, not a grasp of physics that helps us learn to swim.
Similarly, in faith we have to experience
God's Promises
God promised to answer the prayers of Zechariah and Elizabeth and give them a son. In the ancient world to be infertile was seen as a sign of God's displeasure. Jewish people were meant to be fruitful, to bear children. The more children one had the more status one had. Zechariah and his wife Elizabeth longed for a child to love and nurture. Not only did God promise to give them a child but God made wonderful promises about that child. God promises that the child will be special, dedicated to God, filled with the Holy Spirit who will turn many people of Israel back to God. This child will be a herald for God, getting people ready for all that God had for them.
God made promises too to Mary. God promised that Mary's child would be called great the "Son of the Highest", he would be a king whose kingdom would never end. And it seems that throughout Jesus' life Mary had more understanding than many of his disciples about what he had to do and what would happen to him.
God made promises to Zechariah and to Mary, but God also makes promises to us. God promises
Sing first, then believe
Recently I met with someone who wanted to talk about faith. This person had come to a major crossroads in her life. She had studied theology as a student but due to a series of crises in her life had come to a place where she desperately wanted to believe in the promises of God, but she wanted to understand it all first. Like Zechariah she wanted to know. We are called, however, to be like Mary - to sing first and then believe.
St Anselm famously described theology as faith seeking understanding. Faith comes first not understanding. We will never understand fully all the tenets of the Creed. We will never understand fully all that the Gospels tell us about Jesus. We will never completely understand all the aspects of the Christian faith - but we don't need to do that in order to experience God. Instead, we need to jump into the water and enjoy feeling the water hold us up, allow us to be buoyant, to support us and wash over us long before we can ever begin to understand what is happening to us.
We want to be like Zechariah, to have it all neatly explained, but we have to be more like Mary - to sing first and then believe. Will you pray with me?
Prayer
Loving
God,
Help me to experience your love,
Help me to experience your power in
my life,
Help me to open myself up to your surprising loving
kindness.
Help me to understand only after I have experienced the depth and
breadth and width of your love.
Help me to have faith which will go on to
seek understanding.
Amen.
You may find it helpful to follow the sermon along with these notes, completing the blanks and using the notes in your own prayer times with God this week.
Introduction
Zechariah has a vision of an _______, is told something remarkable and is made mute for daring to ask how he will know if what he has been told is true or not. He didn't realise that he would know only through his __________.
Zechariah's Context
Zechariah was a priest who was entitled to offer evening and morning _______ in the Temple. Because there were more priests than were needed one only got to do this once in a lifetime. The priest, led the prayers and offered ________ to God and then said the closing blessing. When Zechariah went to do this he encountered the Archangel _________ who told him his wife was going to have son. Zechariah found this impossible to believe because of his wife's great age. The Angel made him mute because of his lack of faith.
Mary's Context
Mary, on the other hand, accepts what Gabriel tells her and gets on with the experience without seeking to fully understand it.
Who Are We Like?
In our Christian faith we can be like Zechariah wanting proof and knowledge or like Mary, simply trusting and getting on with the experience. The Christian faith is like learning to swim. You can understand fully about how the water will support you, how to move your legs and arms to ensure you move forward, or indeed backward, in the water, but at some point you have to experience the power of the water taking your weight. You have to trust as you let go of the side and take your feet off the bottom that the water will support you. It is an experience, not a grasp of physics that helps us learn to swim.
God's Promises
God made promises to Zechariah, to Mary and to us. To us God has promised to: give our lives ______, to free us from our ________, to forgive our ____, to surround us with ___ and ____, to never allow us to bear any ____ which is too much for us and that nothing will ever separate us from God's own love. However, we have to simply trust and experience them before we can understand them.
Prayer
Loving God, help me to experience your love, help me to experience your power in my life, help me to open myself up to your surprising loving kindness. Help me to understand only after I have experienced the depth and breadth and width of your love. Help me to have faith which will go on to seek understanding. Amen.
Monday 2nd December - Compare and Contrast
Scripture Reading:
Zechariah said, "How can I be sure of this? I am an old man and my wife is getting on in years."……Mary said: I am the handmaid of the Lord, let what you have aid be done to me"
St Luke Chapter 1 verse 18 and 38
Thought for the Day:
The sermon yesterday tried to compare and contrast the reactions of Zechariah and Mary when they were visited by the Archangel Gabriel. Zechariah asks for a sign, as if he were laughing at the angel. There is good precedence for this. Thousands of years earlier an angel tells Abraham's aged wife Sarah that she will have children and she laughs as she was well past the menopause. Zechariah is logical, he knows that what the angel says cannot be true and so he asks for proof.
In our lives we find we want proof for many things. We find it difficult to believe that God is really a nice person. We find it difficult to believe that God can love us. We find it difficult to believe that the Church is for everyone - not just holy people. We find it difficult to believe that we can become mature Christians and so we always want proof.
Mary, on the other hand, is told that she will become pregnant. Not surprisingly she is puzzled - she is not yet in a sexual relationship after all, but she trusts the angel and says "yes" to God's will. Mary trusts the experience knowing that through the experience will come understanding. Zechariah is unable to trust the experience without first understanding it.
Faith is like learning to swim - we have to trust the water to hold us and support us without fully understanding why or how this happens. Learning to swim is about trust, not physics. Learning to have faith is about experience not knowledge.
Action:
Tuesday 3rd December - Sing First, then Believe!
Scripture Reading:
Then the disciples came privately to Jesus. "Why were we unable to cast out that demon?" they asked. He answered, "Because you have no faith. I tell you solemnly, if your faith were the size of a mustard seed you could say to this mountain, "move from here to there", and it would move; nothing would be impossible for you."
St Matthew Chapter 17 verses 19 - 20
Thought for the Day:
The disciples came to Jesus feeling rather embarrassed. Jesus had given them power and authority to heal in His name and to cast out demons. They must have felt rather stupid when they tried to do this but failed, and so they came to Jesus to ask what they had done wrong. As usual Jesus is disarmingly frank - their problem was they did not have faith. With faith, he says, we can do anything.
Sometimes we can't throw out our own demons and we have trouble believing in the promises that God has made to us - just like Zechariah had a problem in believing in the promise God made to him through the Archangel Gabriel.
God has promised
All we need to do is to trust God to do these things and, at the same time, pledge to allow Jesus to take charge of our lives so that we live in his ways and with his power. It takes time to develop this faith, it takes time to really trust that God wants the best for us - but as we read yesterday, we have to take that first step of faith and really trust.
Action:
Wednesday 4th December - Trusting God
Scripture Reading:
But now, thus says the Lord, who created you….Do not be afraid, for I have redeemed you; I have called you by your name, you are mine. Should you pass through the sea, I will be with you; or through rivers they will not swallow you up. Should you walk through fire, you will not be scorched, and the flames will not burn you. For I am the Lord, your God, the Holy One of Israel, your Saviour.
Isaiah Chapter 43 verses 1-3
Thought for the Day:
Sometimes we find ourselves so weighed down with the stresses and strains of our life that we forget to trust God. Sometimes we think that we have too much to bear. I was recently thinking about two members of the last MCC I served who found that the pain of life was too difficult to bear. Both of them, for very different reasons, killed themselves because they felt the pain was too much. They both had had horrific lives and both were, in different ways, mentally unbalanced.
Sometimes we all go through phases in our lives when we think that we cannot take anymore. We feel it is all too much. Sometimes as a minister, I contemplate doing something else which would pay more money and be much less stressful. However, in these times I am reminded that God does hold me and guide me. I am reminded me that I have been called by my name and am God's.
Today's reading from Isaiah gives us an assurance that we are loved totally and guided by God, our saviour. Tough times never last, but tough people do.
Action:
Remember, when things are tough, that God is there giving you the strength to last, to laugh and to thrive.
Thursday 5th December - Pointing to Jesus
Scripture Reading:
In the fifteenth year of Tiberius Caesar's reign…..the Word of God came to John, son of Zechariah in the wilderness. He went through the whole Jordan district proclaiming a baptism of repentance for the forgiveness of sins. A feeling of expectancy had grown among the people, who were beginning to think that John might be the Christ so John declared before them all, "I baptise you with water, but someone is coming, someone who is more powerful than I am, and I am not fit to undo the strap of his sandals; he will baptise you with the Holy Spirit and fire."
St Luke Chapter 3 verses 1, 2 3, 15 & 16
Thought for the Day:
Israel in the time of Jesus was not a happy place. The Romans had occupied the land and set up puppet kings and governors to rule the land. The people had to pay heavy taxes to finance the Roman rule and were subject to quite brutal political oppression. This was a far cry from the glorious history of the Jewish people who had been led by God out of Egypt and who had established a powerful state in their Promised Land. The Jews in the New Testament time looked to God to send them a powerful liberator, one who was anointed by God's own self, a Messiah, who would liberate them from the Romans.
At first many of the people began to think that John the Baptist might be the promised liberator. John is at pains to say that his purpose is to point to the one who would come after him. He calls people to turn away from their sins and to be baptised as a sign of this conversion. But John recognises that Jesus, who would follow him, would be more powerful and would fill his followers with the Holy Spirit. This would give them power like a strong fire burning within them.
In our world we are not oppressed by the Romans but we are ensnared by our love of material things, we are damaged by habits which harm us, by lifestyles which drag us down. Repentance is more than saying "sorry". When the Bible talks about repentance it means that we have to turn right around, to change direction. John called the people of his day to do this and pointed to Jesus. In our day we too are called to change direction, to leave behind behaviour patterns, ways of life and habits which point away from Jesus. In order for us to experience true liberation, we need to ensure that our lives are pointing towards Jesus so that we can feel the Holy Spirit rushing through us with the power of a great fire.
Action:
Friday 6th December - Daily Prayer
Scripture Reading:
Now it was the turn of Zechariah's section to serve, and he was exercising his priestly office before God when it feel to him by lot, as the ritual custom was, to enter the Lord's sanctuary and burn incense there. And at the hour of incense the whole congregation was outside, praying.
St Luke Chapter 1 verses 5-7
Thought for the Day:
Since the time of the Exodus from Egypt the Jewish people had been taught to pray to God every morning and evening. Even when wandering through the desert, the people gathered each morning and evening at the tent of the Presence of God where an altar was set up. At this altar the priests burned incense as a symbol of the prayers of the people, who were gathered outside the tent, rising to heaven. By the time of Jesus these prayers were still offered each day and faithful Jewish folks would gather at the Temple to pray.
This tradition of daily prayer to God has continued into the life of the Church. Everyday throughout the world women and men offer prayers to God. Some of these live in monastic communities where set times of the day are set aside for worship. Some of these are clergy who pray in their churches every morning and evening for the people they serve, but most are "ordinary" women and men who have been touched by God and who recognise the need to make time to pray.
We pray in order to give thanks to God for the good things in life. I asked someone recently what we could pray for her about, and she said that she wanted us to give thanks for the care she had received recently in hospital. Prayer is, first and foremost, about giving thanks. We pray to ask God for specific things - in our own lives and in the lives of those we love. We pray to ask God for justice and peace in our world and, most of all, we pray to align ourselves with God's will. After a time we run out of words in prayer and we are simply still in God's presence and seek to bring our will, our minds, our intellect, our instincts and emotions, into line with God's.
Action:
In your prayers today
Saturday 7th December - Giving Thanks
Scripture Reading:
With so many witnesses in a great cloud on every side of us, we too, then should throw off everything that hinders us, especially the sin that clings so easily, and keep running steadily in the race we have started. Let us not loose sight of Jesus, who leads us in our faith and brings it to perfection; for the sake of the joy which was still in the future, he endured the cross, disregarding the shamefulness of it and from how on has taken his place at the side of God's throne.
Hebrews Chapter 12 verses 1 -2
Thought for the Day:
The writer to the Hebrews is inspiring his readers with the tales of the great heroes of the Jewish faith, assuring people that these heroes are now with God in Heaven and surround us as a "great cloud" of witnesses. As Christians we realise that this great cloud of witnesses includes the characters we have met in our readings this week.
Zechariah initially doubted but as soon as his son was circumcised he got his voice back and sang God's praises showing that he eventually "got it". Mary didn't need to wait to understand, her faith allowed her to experience the loving kindness of God and she burst into song.
Over the 2000 years or so of the history of the Church millions of believers have understood God's will for them - though some have taken longer than others - and have experienced the joy that only found in following God. These also surround us as a mighty cloud cheering us on as we respond to the call of God on our lives.
God calls us to follow the example of Jesus, to seek justice, to tell others about Jesus, to find our God-given purpose in life and to use our gifts and skills in service of others. We are called to serve God in this life and be happy with God forever in the next. We are inspired to do this by those who have gone before "marked with the sign of faith".
Action:
This sermon was first preached in the Metropolitan Community Church of Manchester. Click here for further information.