TEXT: Luke 1: 5-24
The Priesthood
Twenty-four orders of priests took their turns through the year serving the temple and fulfilling priestly duties. The Order of Abijah, of which Zechariah was a member, stood eighth among the twenty-four. His team served the temple in late spring and late autumn, one week each term.
Their role was to offer incense in the sanctuary of the Temple. This was a room within the temple where the menorah, incense altar, table for the show bread, etc. The sanctuary is not the Holy of Holies, which was up a set of steps behind a large curtain. Inside the Holy of Holies was the Ark of the Covenant.
The priest’s role in offering incense involved taking coals from the morning animal sacrifice, which took place outside in the court of the priests, and carrying them into the sanctuary with some incense, that was offered there in accordance to the Law.
Everything had to be just so. The way things were carried, the way they were applied, who, when, how—every aspect was prescribed by Torah and priestly code. There was no room for variation and no tolerance for error. The priest among the team who would serve the incense was chosen by lot.
This year the job fell to Zechariah. It was a high, high honor, for this was no arbitrary choice, this was God’s selection through the lot. The Jews did not believe in chance, they believed in God’s Providence. God’s choice was made through the casting of the lots. For a moment, Zechariah will be among the highest, holiest men in all of Judaism. It’s his big year.
In your life and my life, what is it you work toward? Is there a pinnacle for your profession or a personal goal? A brass ring worth going for? Maybe it’s something in your family—something you aspire to with your children or for them. In our very nature God has planted drive. We have motivations and intentions of which we may not even be aware. And for that thing we’ve always wanted or worked toward we defend ourselves—or we have built up defense mechanisms: Denial, humor, anger—any of these can guard our hearts while thwarting our true drive.
I expect Zechariah had been looking forward to this most of his life—the chance to be one of the inside insiders of the Temple for two weeks. To him, this was arriving and the pinnacle of his life as a Levite. For Zechariah, this was winning the lottery, but only in part.
Barrenness
Zechariah had another dream. Zechariah’s wife Elizabeth—a Godly woman from a priestly family—was unable to have children. This was not only an inconvenience in those days, but a blight. The birth of children is seen scripturally as one of this life’s greatest blessings, and barrenness associated with the withholding of God’s favor. To be childless was to be pitied, and for women it was a source of personal shame, because back then they pretty much believed it was the woman’s fault, not the man’s, for infertility. Furthermore, the text says they were “getting on in years” which means that whatever hopes they had been holding out for a miracle were slipping away.
When we’re young, don’t we all look forward into life and imagine those future chapters to be jam-packed with fulfillment and glory? When find ourselves in the late chapters of life, do we begin to wonder at how differently Chapter 18 looks and feels than you imagined it would when you were twenty?
All of us, like Elizabeth and Zechariah, wrestle with variations on barrenness. The longing to be fulfilled and fruitful is universal, even if that fruit is something other than literal children.
Glory
Back to the temple. Everything had to be just so; the ritual was well-prescribed and the priests were perfectly on top of it all. Zechariah, perhaps an old hand at this incense work, makes his way in while the priests and the people pray.
But as he goes into the sanctuary, he sees an angel beside the incense altar, and he is, like all who see angels, terrified and overwhelmed. It’s a very holy place, but that doesn’t mean you would actually expect to see something holy happen. Bit of an irony, don’t you think?
What would be our response if an angel suddenly appeared here? Imagine a large, winged creature suddenly blasting into place floating here in the air, shining in indescribable light and color. I think the most pious and calmest among us would still be shaking in our boots.
Fear
For all our service of glory, when glory comes, it’s more than we count on. What is truly good may be every bit as terrifying to us small humans as something tremendously evil.
So the angel says what angels always say: Easy! Don’t be scared! It’s alright!
“Good news, Zechariah, you’re going to have son and you must name him John. He will be a great prophet in the spirit of Elijah, and the Holy Spirit will work through him even in his mother’s womb.”
Translation: You’ve won the Powerball.
Irony
verse 18 :
Zechariah said to the angel, "How will I know that this is so? For I am an old man, and my wife is getting on in years."
How amazing, this Zechariah, who can go from fear and trembling one second to face-to-face doubt?
Most of us are willing to believe that God will do what He says He’ll do only because it’s written in scripture, but here, the highest holiest man of Israel gets his promises straight from the mouth of an angel in the sanctuary of the temple and says, But can I really believe you? After all, we’re both too old to have children.
Now it’s bad enough that he doesn’t take the word of an angel and just say something like “Praise God, thank you, God is good, etc.” but worse because he should’ve known better.
How many times had Zechariah heard the story of Abraham and Sarah, who in old age received God’s promise for children? Certainly he remembered that Isaac means laughter because Sarah laughed when she heard she would bear a son in old age.
Surely Zechariah grieved at the story of Israel—how The Lord helped them and appeared to them again and again to rescue them from themselves and provide hope in hopeless situations—he must have wondered how the Israelites could remain faithless when God had done so much for them again and again.
And yet here he is, like the picture of Abraham himself, promised a son, only Zechariah questioning the authority of the message! Zechariah, for the moment the holiest man in Israel face to face with an angel but not believing, not trusting. He is the very picture of 2nd Temple Judaism in a single man! Content and secure in his own practices and the traditions that had been handed down. Everything was just so, and God’s own messenger was simply getting in the way, messing up the good thing they had so well-organized.
Are people of faith any different today? We get things “just so” and come to trust in our own routines such that even an angel couldn’t put us off course.
Well Zechariah gets his answer:
19 The angel replied, "I am Gabriel. I stand in the presence of God, and I have been sent to speak to you and to bring you this good news. 20 But now, because you did not believe my words, which will be fulfilled in their time, you will become mute, unable to speak, until the day these things occur."
It’s better than he deserves, isn’t it?
Because the ritual of incense is just so, the priests in the court outside the sanctuary know exactly how long it takes a man—even an old man—the light the incense and get back out of there. Zechariah is slow in returning. The priests, while still singing, start looking at each other: making eye contact, raising their eyebrows, shrugging, pointing at their watches.
Then out comes Zechariah with his eyes wide open, a face like he has seen an angel, and perhaps still a bit frightened over the angel’s curse. The other priests immediately rush up to him, crowd around him and demand “What happened?” and he surely looks like he has a story to tell.
They get quiet to hear him, he takes a deep breath and opens his mouth, and out comes nothing but a pathetic little squeak. What!? the priests say as they crowd around to hear, but no luck.
I imagine Zechariah pointing to his throat and then making big wings pantomime, turning the court of the priests into an anxious fruitless game of charades.
DUMBSTRUCK
The high and mighty high priest is dumbstruck once he encounters the holiness of God. We too should be dumbstuck. What makes us think that if an angel were to appear to you or me, that we would feel comforted? Wouldn’t we too feel dumbstruck and fearful for our lives and souls?
“Oh, but I walk so closely with the Lord! I wouldn’t be frightened!” So fails our imagination. We so underestimate God and so overestimate our own favored status that a real encounter in the flesh would likely unmake any of us.
Annie Dillard, in Holy the Firm, states the matter clearly:
“On the whole, I do not find Christians, outside of the catacombs, sufficiently sensible of conditions. Does anyone have the foggiest idea what sort of power we so blithely invoke? Or, as I suspect, does no one believe a word of it? The churches are children playing on the floor with their chemistry sets, mixing up a batch of TNT to kill a Sunday morning. It is madness to wear ladies’ straw hats and velvet hats to church; we should all be wearing crash helmets. Ushers should issue life preservers and signal flares; they should lash us to our pews. For the sleeping god may wake someday and take offense, or the waking god may draw us out to where we can never return. ”
God is not tame. God may not be nice in the way we think of things. In the old Christian literature he is called “terrible” in the sense of “terribly good.” We may think of ourselves as good, justified, sanctified brothers and sisters in Christ, but we are birthed, grown, and raised in sin. When that which is truly holy appears, I believe we too will be utterly
As Holy, high and mighty as Zechariah was, he found his encounter with the Lord a terrifying ordeal, and although his name means “God has remembered,” Zechariah seems to have completely forgotten the purpose of this holy service.
Until he obeys, his mouth remains shut.
God has indeed remembered—specifically, he has remembered his promises. As the first Zechariah, the prophet, proclaimed the coming Messiah, so the second Zechariah receives the good news of that promise’s fulfillment.
AT THE TABLE
Coming to the table is our remembering. What we remember is that God always remembers his promises. Every promise will be fulfilled, without exception.
We live by those promises and we remember them all as Christ has given himself for us—and gives himself for us—in this sacrament.
Beneath all of our other drives is the drive for fulfillment. We are wise if we learn, as early as possible, that nothing in us or in this world can fulfill us other than the Holy Spirit of God.
No matter what you accomplish, mow much you acquire, and/or how perfect your kids are, there is ultimately no fulfillment outside of a life-giving relationship with God through Jesus Christ.
Beware. We may know the ritual, we may have it well-rehearsed, but we may at any moment be dumbstruck, because God who is not tame may at any moment appear. †