This sermon was preached at Good Shepherd Lutheran Church, Traralgon (7pm).
Grace, mercy and peace be to you from God our Father, and from our Lord Jesus Christ.
Text: (Luke 1:5-25)
And there appeared to Zechariah an angel of the Lord standing on the right side of the altar of incense.
Prayer: Let the words of my mouth, and the meditations of our hearts be acceptable in your sight, O Lord, our Rock and our Redeemer. Amen.
Tonight’s sermon is number 2 in a series of 4 as we prepare for Christmas: and each of our readings has to do with a thing that happened before Christmas. So last week, we read the genealogy of Jesus, this week the conception of John the Baptist, next week the conception of Jesus and then the last week will be the text about Mary visiting Elizabeth. And each of these sermons will be more like a bible study than a regular Sunday sermon. So here we are – let’s read this passage about the conception of John the Baptist.
In the gospel of St Luke we read:
In the days of Herod, king of Judea, there was a priest named Zechariah, of the division of Abijah. And he had a wife from the daughters of Aaron, and her name was Elizabeth.
In the beginning of Luke’s gospel, only a couple of verses before this, St Luke writes: it seemed good to me also, having followed all things closely for some time past, to write an orderly account for you, most excellent Theophilus.
Luke wants to make sure all the details are well researched and everything is put in an orderly way. And now, Luke begins to tell us about the life of Jesus and the circumstances surrounding it. So we begin the history of John the Baptist’s birth. And Luke tells us all the details – he tells us that Herod was the king of Judea at this time. This is extremely important, because last week we read that Jesus was descended from the lineage of King David, and God promised to King David that his throne would be established forever. King Herod, however, was a fake. He’s an Edomite – he’s from the wrong family, he’s not the king that God has promised. And so, in the days when there is a false king reigning over the Jewish people, the true “King of the Jews”, Jesus Christ, emerges.
So we are told of the current politics of the day – King Herod was on the throne. But also Luke begins right in the heart of the Jewish religion, right into the temple in Jerusalem, and we are introduced to a certain priest called Zechariah. And his wife, Elizabeth, was from the tribe of Aaron. Aaron was the first priest. So whereas Jesus is from a long line of kings, John the Baptist is from a long line of priests.
We always say that John is the last – and also the greatest – of the Old Testament prophets – Jesus calls him “more than a prophet” -- but also he is descended from the Jewish priesthood.
Next we read:
And they were both righteous before God, walking blamelessly in all the commandments and statues of the Lord. But they had no child, because Elizabeth was barren, and both were advanced in years.
Luke mentions something very significant: they had no child. Now Luke gives two reasons why they had no child: the first reason is that Elizabeth was barren. Throughout her whole life she was unable to have children. And the second reason is that both were advanced in years. They were old. Elizabeth was no longer of “child bearing age”. It is not as if she had only just completed her child-bearing years, but she was much older than that again.
This is not the first time that this had happened. Sarah was also an old woman when she gave birth to Isaac. But also we see that God transforms Elizabeth’s infertility into something special – it shows that there would be something very special about the child she was to give birth to. Infertility often brings about an increase in prayer in the face of such apparent hopelessness and frustration. God wants to transform the sorrow into joy, but also he wants to increase Zechariah and Elizabeth in prayer so that the child John is received through prayer.
Now while [Zechariah] was serving as priest before God when his division was on duty, according to the custom of the priesthood, he was chosen by lot to enter to temple of the Lord and burn incense. And the whole multitude of the people were praying outside at the hour of incense.
And so, funnily enough, Luke describes an event that happens in the temple, not just at any time, but at the hour of prayer. Here in this passage it is called the hour of “incense”. Each day, in the temple, there was a set time when the priest would go and burn incense in the temple – and here in this passage, we see that the hour of incense and the hour of prayer are the same thing.
In Psalm 141:2 which we will sing together later in our service, it says: “Let my prayer be counted as incense before you, and the lifting up of my hands as the evening sacrifice.” Even from early times in the church, incense was often used at the hour of prayer. It’s very much like the way we light candles. Vespers, which is the evening prayer service which we have come together to pray tonight, was considered the evening lighting of the candles, the evening lighting of incense, the evening prayers. All these things went together. And incense acknowledged that the prayers were rising up to God, and also acknowledged that you were in God’s holy presence. Singing and chanting was also a way to acknowledge that we are standing in the presence of God. And so, Zechariah was in the temple, very much like we are tonight, at the hour of prayer, performing his duty in the temple, to come and light the incense, and lead the congregation in prayer to God.
We also read that we was chosen by lot. When it says this, it doesn’t mean that they left the choice up to chance, but that God chose him to be the priest for that time. This was a very special occasion for Zechariah – it was probably the first and only time he ever performed this very special duty.
We read: the whole multitude of people were praying outside at the hour of incense. In the temple, there was the Holy of Holies, or the Most Holy Place, where the Ark of the Covenant was. The High Priest would only go in there one day a year on the Day of Atonement, and sprinkle blood on the Ark of the Covenant. But outside of that area was the Holy Place, the sanctuary, which was where there was the Altar of Incense – this is the place where Zechariah was. And the people would not have been able to see him, because the area was all closed off. The people were only aloud to be in the outer court, or maybe some were outside the temple area altogether.
And so it’s at this time and in these circumstances that there appeared to Zechariah an angel of the Lord standing on the right side of the altar of incense.
Notice all the detail here. St Luke writes the exact place where the angel came and stood: at the right side of the altar. It’s as if Luke had spoken to Zechariah himself, or a relative of Zechariah who had spoken to him to make sure every detail was mentioned. It’s a bit like when Jesus rose from the dead, and there are so many details described, like that the cloths were folded up in such and such a way and placed there just so. All these things show us that the text has come from eyewitness accounts. Also, the angel did not come to Zechariah in his head, or in his mind, but he was standing outside of him at a particular place. This wasn’t a delusion. Zechariah hadn’t just woken up in hospital from being under anaesthetic! But he saw a revelation that was outside of him.
Now this is one of the first times that a special revelation from God like this happened for a very long time, maybe even 500 years. Think how much the world has changed in that sort of length of time! This hadn’t happened since time of Daniel and Ezekiel and the prophet Zechariah. And the priest Zechariah here reacts with fear. He was troubled when he saw him, and fear fell upon him.
And then we read: But the angel said to him, “Do not be afraid, Zechariah, for your prayer has been heard, and your wife Elizabeth will bear you a son, and you shall call his name John.”
The angel puts Zechariah’s fears at rest with the words “do not fear”. And we also read that his “prayer has been heard”. What prayer? Well, this was the hour of prayer, the hour of incense, so Zechariah was offering prayer to God. But also, this is the prayer for a child. God had listened to the prayer than Zechariah had brought to God for so many years, maybe he had even given up all hope by that stage, and that it had been years since he had asked God for a child. But nevertheless, the angel says: Your prayer has been heard, and your wife Elizabeth will bear you a son, and you shall call his name John. And you will have joy and gladness, and many will rejoice at his birth, for he will be great before the Lord. And he must not drink wine or strong drink, and he will be filled with the Holy Spirit, even from his mother’s womb. And he will turn many of the children of Israel to the Lord their God, and he will go before him in the spirit and power of Elijah, to turn the hearts of the fathers to the children, and the disobedient to the wisdom of the just, to make ready for the Lord a people prepared.”
There are so many different things here. And so many of the things the angel says to Zechariah are all quotes from the Old Testament. Especially, take notice of the words: “he will go before him in the spirit and power of Elijah, to turn the hearts of the fathers to the children”. Let me read to you the last words of the Old Testament in Malachi 4: “Behold, I will send you Elijah the prophet before the great and awesome day of the Lord comes. And he will turn the hearts of the fathers to their children and the hearts of children to their fathers, lest I come and strike the land with a decree of utter destruction.” Those are the very last words of the Old Testament. And so you can see, that the last prophecy of the Old Testament is directly connected with the first prophecy of the New Testament.
Also, there are a few other things that are said about John the Baptist.
The angel says: You will have joy and gladness, and many will rejoice at his birth, for he will be great before the Lord.
Then we read that he is a man who is dedicated in a special way to God: He must not drink wine or strong drink, and he will be filled with the Holy Spirit, even from his mother’s womb.
We can see here that it is possible to be filled with the Holy Spirit even from the womb. “Consciousness” is not a prerequisite for receiving the Holy Spirit. A baby in the womb is not conscious of things around it. But it is possible for a child like John to be filled with the Holy Spirit in his mother’s womb. This is a great comfort for people who lose a child in pregnancy, or have a still birth, even though they did not receive Holy Baptism. There is no promise that every child in the womb is filled with the Holy Spirit, and we know that we are all conceived and born in sin. But when a child is commended to God in prayer, we know that it is possible for the child to receive God’s gifts. It’s not beyond the realms of possibility – God is not a “system”, he’s a person, remember. He listens to prayers, and he promises that our prayers will be heard. But then, you can see that if it is possible for this to happen inside the womb, it is certainly even more the case outside the womb, and babies should be brought to the church for holy baptism. Jesus commands that people of “all nations should be baptised”, not just when people are conscious. Also, this gives us comfort when faced with a dying person who is also not conscious, that they too are not outside the limits of God’s grace. And thank God for that!
Now after all this, we read that Zechariah says to the angel, “How shall I know this? For I am old man, and my wife is advanced in years.”
Zechariah is not like Mary here, who asks “How can this be, since I am a virgin?” Mary wants to know how this will happen. Zechariah wants another sign: but there are already two things that Zechariah can hang his hat on: Elizabeth was barren her whole life, and now she is old. Give her a few months, and you’ll be able to feel the baby kick! What more proof do you want? We read later when Mary and Elizabeth meet, John does a loop-the-loop in Elizabeth’s womb when he is the presence of Jesus!
Zechariah was living in a time when people probably didn’t expect things like this to happen. As I said, it was probably about 500 years since the last appearance like this. And King Herod was on the throne, and the Romans were in charge – most Jewish people probably thought that God wasn’t doing enough. And so Zechariah also shows this: Come on, show me something else. I want a further proof.
Now instead of being given a sign of grace, a comforting miracle, a nice miracle, like a healing or something, Zechariah is given a miracle of wrath. His mouth is shut up and ears are shut up. He can’t hear anything and he can’t speak anything. That would teach him to listen to the complaining of people towards God around him, and to always be wanting God to show off, and then for speaking these grumblings in the presence of the angel. It’s one thing to despair, to despair about the world, about politics, about yourself, your flesh, but it is another thing – a sin – to despair in God. Because the Lord is gracious and merciful, slow to anger and abounding in steadfast love.
And so as the priest Zechariah goes out to bless the people, he can’t speak. He can only make signs at them. When he came out, he was unable to speak to them, and they realised that he had seen a vision in the temple.
God had chosen Zechariah to serve that day by lot, and God also had chosen to silence him.
Then at the end of the reading, we read:
After these days his wife Elizabeth conceived, and for five months she kept herself hidden, saying, “Thus the Lord has done for me in the days when he looked on me, to take away my reproach among people.”
There was a special Old Testament “reproach” here, since the Jewish religion was all about the family. If you wanted to become a Jew, you had to become a part of the family, marry into it, and take the covenant in the flesh (particularly as a man). But also in the New Testament, people don’t become Christians through birth, but through baptism. We are born again by water and the Spirit. But in the church, we really have to renew the teaching of the bible that children are a blessing, not a “curse”. In our context with talk about population control, climate change, and also our desire to lead luxurious, comfortable lives, often people say that children are a burden to society, an environmental burden and a financial burden. But Psalm 127 says: Children are a heritage from the Lord, the fruit of the womb a reward. And so as Christians, we have to recognise that the family is the school of the church, it’s the place where new Christians are formed and taught in the faith. And children are a blessing, so that whether or not we have children of our own, we have to make sure that we as disciples of Christ love children, and join Jesus as he receives children into his arms, lays his hands on them and blesses them. Mother Teresa once said: How can we say there are too many children in the world? It’s like saying that there are too many flowers. We are incredibly blessed by God in this congregation to have such a blossoming garden full of children in our church, and in our Sunday School.
In our reading today, we read about a distinctive miracle and a distinctive vision of Zechariah in the temple. We shouldn’t expect that an angel would appear to us in the same way. But there are some realities that we need to realise. Firstly, is it a miracle that the angel was there with Zechariah, or was it the miracle that Zechariah saw the angel? We should never forget that we are surrounded by angels all the time, and especially in the divine service where we join in with angels and archangels and all the company of heaven.
As people we are also a kingdom of priests, we are baptised into a royal priesthood, where we come before God’s throne in heaven day after day and bring to him our needs, the needs of our families, our community, our nation, our world. This is what it means to be part of the “priesthood of the baptised”, the royal priesthood of Jesus. We don’t stand outside God’s sanctuary, but we look right into it by faith, we stand inside of it as a citizen of heaven, believing that Jesus is enthroned there at the right hand of God, who has redeemed us, lost and condemned people, purchased and won us from all sins, from death and from the power of the devil; not with gold or silver, but with His holy, precious blood and with His innocent suffering and death.
And Jesus says: Truly, I say to you, you will see angels ascending and descending on the Son of Man.
So even though our text tonight describes a certain event in history, we are also part of that history. In fact, we are baptised into that history, and made citizens of heaven and heirs of eternal life. Amen.
Lord God, heavenly Father, thank you for sending John the Baptist as your messenger to prepare the way for your Son, Jesus Christ. Fill us with your Holy Spirit, your spirit of prayer, and lead us into your sanctuary. Let our prayers be counted as incense before you, and the lifting up of our hands as the evening sacrifice, through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.
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