Presencing, and those in it with us

 Mother Mary and baby Jesus together with Zechariah and baby John the Baptist, in 15th century painting by Lorenzo Lotto titled "The Virgin and child with Saint Zacharias and John the Baptist"

Luke 1:57-80

Yesterday a few of us gathered for brunch and before we knew it, 2 ½ hours had gone by. I had a moment in the middle of it of recognizing, while it was happening, the beauty of the timeless gift of simple presence.

 

We’re three weeks into our Advent experience with Mary, and our own practice of presencing. Last week Mike told us “presencing is is the ability to notice miracles and wonders, and the will to make an appropriate response,” like “Thank you” or silence or blessing. He called presence “The ability to feel awe, respect, and gratitude to God’s coming near, and to make some kind of answer.”

 

When the Angel Gabriel invited Mary to carry Jesus, to bear God as God comes in to love the world, she was invited have her life commandeered by love. With awe, respect and gratitude, Mary answered, Yes.

She wasn’t prepared for this and didn’t actually have what it took. That didn’t matter. God came into Mary’s impossibility with grace, and claimed her for the embodiment of love. And now, from that point onward, she must now see the world as loved by God. She can’t not see all other people as those to whom, for whom, God comes in, because it is through her own body that God is coming to them; it is by her hands, and words, and actions, and tears, and laughter that God’s love would reach into the world.  

 

And she would not be in it alone. From the moment Mary arrived at Elizabeth and Zechariah’s doorstep, she was welcomed into this truth. This small, unlikely trio became the first human beings to bear among them the coming of God into the world. They bore it song and blessing, awe and gratitude, silence and presence.  These three people were redefined as recipients of God’s grace, insiders in God’s scheme to redeem the world, and God formed them into the community of the cosmic promise to which we too now belong. 

 

Their lives were invaded by transcendence, and now right inside their human weaknesses and mundane realities, their aches and pains, their muteness or pregnancy cravings, their regular, daily existence, they were sharing together the secret of the universe’s redemption. Right up against their own impossibility and the world’s, they began learning together how to live from the “nothing is impossible for God” reality that undergirds everything, always. 

 

When the time came for John to be born, Mary was there, assisting with the birth. She was there to hear the astonishing trust and confident hope in Zechariach’s voice when his silence ended, and to witness the shock when he proclaimed the truth that God had incubated inside him for nine months, the vision of God’s future breaking in. 

 

She watched Zechariah hold that impossible little baby in his old and wrinkled hands, and she was listening the moment his mouth was opened and he announced with conviction, His name is John - his name is “God is gracious.  God is merciful, God gives us more than we could ever even know to long for”- that is his name.  

 

Look at this child! he sang out to his neighbors and friends. Look at how God’s promise to our ancestors is coming to fruition, we are part of it! I am holding it.  Oh yes, it is coming! There is no doubt that God’s salvation of us all is coming.  

 

Mary watched as Zechariah turned and gazed into the brand new, blurry eyes of this utterly impossible child in his first minutes on this earth and he said,

 And you, child, will be called the prophet of the Most High; for you will go before the Lord to prepare his ways, to give knowledge of salvation to his people by the forgiveness of their sins.

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.’

 

And so, God was preparing Mary for what was to come. And all the while, only she, Elizabeth and Zechariah knew this savior was already among them in that room, quietly, patiently waiting to be born.

 

Soon Mary would make the long, slow, journey back home, back to a Joseph—whom we will see next week, was even at this moment being brought into this community of promise, welcomed by an angel of God into his own place and part in God’s salvation of the world, so that by the time Mary will arrive, Joseph will be ready to welcome her and the impossible child she is carrying.

 

When, a few months later, Mary and Joseph will set out for Bethlehem, they will follow again the same route Mary took back and forth, and eventually arrive at their destination, about four miles past Elizabeth and Zechariah’s town. 

Then, while they are there, the time will come for the baby to be born. 

 

And just to correct our modern, individualistic, Western winter barn myth—where Joseph and Mary are all on their own, knocking on hotel doors, and being turned away by strangers while she’s ready to give birth any second—imagine instead the communal, first century, hospitality-committed, middle Eastern reality that archeologists and scholars describe. Here they will stay, for days or weeks, with countless relatives and neighbors, in the typical, modest, one room house, with a guest room on the roof, and a manger carved into the floor next to the lowered portion of the home that served as a kitchen in the daytime and a safe place to bed the animals at night. When God comes into the world and into their arms, they will not be alone; they will be surrounded by those to whom they belong, supported in community.

 

And so, undoubtedly, Elizabeth, Zechariah and baby John will be present. Elizabeth will attend to Mary as Mary did with her, and Zechariah will attend to Joseph, with the deep wisdom and presence formed in silence and contemplation, and the trust formed in watching the promise begin in the world through the birth of his own impossible son. 

 

The world is broken, and we live with impossibility every day. You and I can’t fix what’s broken. We can’t bring redemption. But we can be here for it. We can be with each other, ready, waiting, present to the God whose presence who comes to us as gift.

 

And tonight, we can simply acknowledge that we’ve been brought in too. Our lives, too have been commandeered by love. We too are recipients of God’s grace. We too are becoming insiders in God’s scheme to redeem the world, those who can’t not see all other people as those to whom, for whom, God comes in. 

 

We too are invited to recognize that it is by our bodies and prayers, our words and silence, our actions and stillness, our tears and laughter, that God comes into the world. In our own living and presencing, Christ is born among us.

And we too are not expected to have anything to offer to the project except our own willing selves – because, as we’ve seen over and over in the lives and stories of those gone before, this happens in impossibility and vulnerability.

 

And we’re not in it alone. We too are welcomed into the community of the cosmic promise, drawn into the now vast and timeless group of that includes people, right now, all throughout God’s beloved world, and these ancestors, and Mother Mary. And inside this small expression who gathers here, just like God gave Mary Zechariah and Elizabeth, God has given us each other, so that together we too might navigate the deep toll it takes to live in such stark awareness of being so very beloved, among and alongside all these other deeply loved humans on this planet for whom God comes in. 

 

So, tonight, as we practice presencing, and consider the appropriate responses that arise in such willingness to notice miracles and wonders, we’ll add to Mary’s “yes” and Mike’s list of thank you, silence and blessing, joy, which is perhaps the most instinctive and uninhibited response to noticing of God's presence.  

In other words, as we’re learning to live from the “nothing is impossible for God” reality that undergirds everything always, we will embrace the same readiness to deep delight and nearness to giddy awe with which angels will soon deliver to unsuspecting shepherds the good news of God’s coming near.

 

Let's move into our time of prayer with this poem by Madeline L’Engle:

"First Coming" 

 

God did not wait till the world was ready,

Till ...nations were at peace.

God came when the heavens were unsteady,

and prisoners cried out for release.

 

God did not wait for the perfect time. 

God came when the need was deep and great.

God dined with sinners in all their grime, turned water into wine.

 

God did not wait till hearts were pure.

In joy God came to a tarnished world of sin and doubt.

To a world like ours, of anguished shame

God came, the Light that would not go out.

 

God came to a world which did not mesh,

to heal its tangles, shield its scorn.

In the mystery of the Word made Flesh

the Maker of the stars was born.

 

We cannot wait till the world is sane

to raise our songs with joyful voice,

for to share our grief, to touch our pain,

God came with Love: Rejoice! Rejoice!

 

 Amen.

 

The holy work of Advent

Luke 1:26-56

 This past week has been a hard week for hope, for me, and I anticipate this coming week, peace will feel like a challenge.  Which is why Advent is such a gift.  If I had to look at the circumstances in the world, in the lives around me, and feel hopeful, or say they speak of peace, I feel hard-pressed to do this.  

My kids’ school has been torn apart by incidents of racist and homophobic hate speech, with two students suspended and whole grades rising up in student-led protests decrying hate and demanding further action.  But through the week, the rhetoric and tone of the students began to change and escalate into a mob mentality of punishing, vigilante justice. It’s become a tangled mess of sin, which is to say, of people forgetting that we belong to each other – at every level –hate being met with hate, fear amping up fear. Revved up teens and exhausted, tense adults are facing off with no clear way forward, certainly not one provided by our culture, which offers nothing resembling mercy, practices vengeance in the name of justice, and persists until lives are destroyed, or until our attention gets grabbed by the next commotion.  

Our kids are doing what we’ve taught them to do, and they’re doing it to a couple of their own.  And that has been breaking my heart this week. Then the drama culminated with the announcement early Friday morning that restroom graffiti was discovered warning of a school shooting on Monday, which means hardly anybody showed up to school on Friday and school will be closed tomorrow, and now we are all suspended, in this state of tension and division. 

 

This, in the shadow of the school shooting in Michigan – the 28^th school shooting in America this year. We are averaging more than two a month, you guys, so all the administrators closing schools in an abundance of caution are not wrong to do so.  And yet another community is suffering unimaginable loss and grief. 

 

 Meanwhile, this morning’s headline read “Omnicron plunges the world into collective uncertainty.” As if we haven’t already been living in collective uncertainty for coming up on two years.  And so far we have no idea what this variant means or doesn’t mean, but that doesn't stop us from dooms-guessing.  So we let our already weary and tense selves get worked up and worried about what might be coming. And I don’t know about you, but once I get started, the apprehensions start to flow, and they’re hard to stop. Andy pointed out yesterday that I have a tell, a catch phrase that once he hears it, he knows I’ve handed over the reigns and anxiety is running the show.  It is when I start to say, with urgency and strain in my voice, how badly the dog needs her nails trimmed. 

 

So thank God for Advent. Thank God.

I welcome Advent’s demand that I wait in darkness for the light of God. Because there is darkness - around us, within us.  I believe this, I feel this, I struggle against this and often I succumb to it.  And I need to be told it’s ok to notice it and let myself feel how heavy and terrible it can be.  And yet, I also need to hear there is no darkness into which the Light does not shine; there is no darkness that can overcome the Light, and one day there will be no more darkness at all.  And that does give me hope. I am told to wait for peace, to expect it, to seek it and join it, and work for it, because I can trust that it is coming, that it comes. Into the darkest places, the most hopeless situations, God comes in.  This is what God does.

 

This story before us today pulls us back to the big picture: God comes into this life. 

It’s the continuation of my favorite story in scripture – last week we left silent Zechariah and pregnant Elizabeth, keeping mum about her pregnancy for the first five months too, because who could begin to explain? And who could she tell that would believe or understand?  Last week we jumped ahead to finish their part of the story. But that’s not how it happened – this part is what came in the middle, what shaped the next part, ultimately bringing them to tiny baby John the Baptist’s birth, and the end of Zechariah’s silence with his great proclamation to his startled neighbors, that culminates with exactly the words my soul needs to hear today:

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.’

 

So while Elizabeth and Zechariah are suspended in a state of uncertainty, Gabriel appears to Mary and invites her to share in the redemption of God, to let go of all that she though her life would be and step into this new role, God-bearer.  And when she is just as confused and questioning as Zechariah was about how the impossible could happen, Gabriel has a little more patience for her, and says, Even now your relative Elizabeth, who was barren, is in her sixth month, for nothing is impossible with God.  

 

And it doesn’t say that the angel tells her to go to Elizabeth but what else would Mary do? She immediately sets out on the 100-mile journey to visit the person she can share this with completely. And when she arrives, tired and hesitant, at her word of greeting, fetus John flip flops inside Elizabeth and kicks her out of her own silence to welcome Mary with joy and wonder, like a personal gift from God, Who am I that the mother of my Lord would come to me? She blesses Mary and her experience and trust, and Mary declares back to Elizabeth God’s greatness and what God is about to do. And right there the community of mystery-keepers and hope-bearers is formed: these two women, proclaiming the fulfillment of God’s promises with words and by their very bodies, and silent Zechariah taking it all in in wonder and witness.  Being together in this is what makes them able to trust that it is real. Bearing it together is what vanquishes fear and stirs possibility, what breeds hope and helps them anticipate the fullness of God for us all.  

 

We’ve said before that these three were church before there was a church. Even as Christ’s body was being formed, they are the nascent Body of Christ, helping each other remember the real reality breaking into this world, to see it unfolding right here in their very own lives, even. Together they are able to imagine the future God is bringing, can literally see in each other what God is doing for the future of the world, and proclaim it with confidence and trust. Together they move from suspended tension to hope-filled waiting.

 

No matter what unfolds in the world around us, in our own lives and bodies, in our communities and country, in the midst of whatever impossibility we are facing, or anticipating, or fearing, God is always breaking in. There is no life, no moment, no violence or horror, no despair or stuckness, no division, tension or uncertainty that God is not breaking into, not right alongside, not underneath and within. 

 

And we are given to one another- community to bear this reality together for the whole world, to remind each other of hope, to practice belonging and trust, to help each other watch God breaking in, and help each other live into the future that is coming. 

So we wait together in darkness for the light of God, and remind each that it’s ok to notice it and feel how heavy and terrible it can be.  At the same time we watch for the light and we seek peace, because the light shines in the darkness, and we trust that God comes in to bring redemption and life. That’s what God does. That’s who Jesus is: Emmanuel, God-with-us.  

The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness cannot overcome it.

 

Amen.

 

Peace, Impossibility, and the space we hold

Luke 1:(5-25), 57-80

A few weeks ago I accidentally went on a silent retreat.  The retreat part was on purpose. The silent part was the surprise.  If I had known it would be silent, I would not have gone. And I wasn’t really ready for it.

I mean, if I had known it would be silent, (and had not canceled) I would have prepared. I would have finished up the emails I had to send and the phone calls I had to return, and the last minute reminders to my husband and kids back home. I would have told my sister, who I talk to every single day, that she shouldn’t expect to hear from me from three days, instead of getting a text the third day that said, “Are you still alive?” 

I would have done all sorts of things to feel ready. But I didn’t know. 
Instead I drove onto the property in the middle of nowhere Kentucky and my phone suddenly stopped working. T-mobile. No phone. No internet. No talking allowed except in designated “visiting” rooms and the benches on the far side of the lawn, past the parking lot.

Welcome. Settle in.  It’s going to be a quiet ride.

The monks that live in this monastery are silent all the time, except when they pray. Nearly every day of their adult lives.  Not accomplishing anything that the outside world would deem terribly valuable or clearly marketable, they devote their lives to silence and prayer, out there in the hills of Kentucky.

And now here I was, with them.

Putting down all my productivity, and getting down to silent business.

Mine was just three days.

And it turned out I even got to speak at dinner with my friends- in the “talking dining room” for an hour each night.

Zechariah’s was nine months.

And there was no talking dining room with friends for him.

If he had known, would he have bowed out?

If he had known, how might he have prepared?

But by the grace of God, Zechariah didn’t know.

He went into the holy of holies to do his priestly duty, to light the incense and get out, but instead, when he brought the prayer and longing of all the people to God, “Oh Lord! Hear these prayers!” An angel showed up and said, “Hey Zechariah! God has heard your prayer!” And then announced – and of all things he was praying, this was most certainly did not make the list – that his elderly wife was going to have a baby. 

God, you’re about 65 years too late on that prayer…maybe you didn’t hear me right?  I was praying for the salvation of Israel. I was praying that all our brokenness would be healed. I was praying that you would restore us to right relationship with you and each other. I wasn’t praying for myself, I was praying for my people. Your people.

But it turned out, that his own long dead prayer, the one put to rest when it became impossible to fulfill - the prayer to be a father, to have a child - this prayer was resurrected in God’s answer to the longing of the people, and the angel said,

 You will have joy and gladness, and many will rejoice at his birth, for he will be great in the sight of the Lord… He will turn many of the people of Israel to the Lord their God...to make ready a people prepared for the Lord.”

But then the little ego tussle with the angel and Zechariah came out of that place with his mouth zipped shut, no chance to explain what had happened, what was going to happen.  Just a sea of faces, waiting, ready for a blessing he was unable to deliver. Instead he brought them his befuddled silence, and, I imagine, was escorted out amidst confusion and disarray.

His last words to his wife when he left the house – what were they? They would be his last words he spoke to her for ¾ of a year.  Hope they were good ones. What errands were left hanging? What commerce came to an abrupt halt when he was sidelined by silence? Sorry, I can’t bring the lawnmower in for a tune up or run those checks to the bank. Someone else is going to have to deal with the cable guy.  Someone else is going to have to do the priest things for a while too.

God has a thing about impossibility. It’s God’s jam. Barren wombs, inappropriate people and dead dreams are God’s medium.  Hopelessness, pointlessness, things just not making sense – God loves that stuff.  Death? For God, that’s often just the beginning.

How can this be, since we are both old and my wife is barren? 

How can this be, since I am a virgin?

How can this be, since things are so broken?

How can this be, when it all looks hopeless?

How can this be? This cannot be.  It is not possible. 

This is the week in Advent where we hold up the thing that sometimes doesn’t feel possible, the thing that - though we wildly differ in strategy to seek after it - if we are honest, most of us most wish for, all of us, deep inside, PEACE. 

Peace is not just an end to conflict. Not a blank space where violence used to be – but something more powerful, more tangible, more real even than division, hatred, strife.

Peace is things as they were meant to be.
Fullness, wholeness, connected to God and others, the whole earth and all its inhabitants living out their authentic purpose alongside all else doing the same. A sense of well-being, and safety, and harmony, and enough, for all creation.

Peace is the substance, the stuff, of the Kingdom of God, which is to say, it’s the sound, and taste, and feel, of belonging to God and belong to each other, uncompromisingly and completely.

“Blessed are the peace-makers”, the grown up Jesus later said, “for they will be called children of God." (Mt. 5:9) In other words, Blessed are those who contribute to wholeness and fullness in others and the world; they are living in the real reality.

These days it’s easy to feel afraid, it takes almost nothing to get there. When we’re afraid, we put ourselves right alongside all of these people in these ancient stories, who found themselves in circumstances they didn’t choose or understand, and who, in the midst of whatever that looked like for them, all heard, every last one of them, the repeated refrain, Do not be afraid! Mary, Zechariah, Joseph, Shepherds, Magi –each of you, all of you, Do not be afraid!

Lift your eyes from what you see right here in front of you, from the things that seem to threaten security and safety, that bring distress and sorrow, that harm and destroy and whisper that this is the whole story, the end, the final word.  Lift your eyes to a farther horizon, and see beyond, future and past colliding, right now, God is breaking in. 

And we know that because God is ALWAYS breaking in, right now, in the midst of whatever impossibility we are facing, or anticipating, or fearing. There is no life, no moment, no violence or horror, no despair or disappointment, no stuckness or impossibility that God is not breaking into, not right alongside, not underneath and within.  
That’s what Jesus is, what Jesus does. 
Emmanuel is God-with-us.

When we say we are a congregation that practices Sabbath, we are saying we worship a God who deals in impossibility, and who is always, already breaking in.  And by stopping and taking ourselves out of the drivers’ seat, or the worry seat, off the device and away from the screen and out of the noise and away from the argument, on purpose and regularly, we look up to a further horizon, we’re drawn back for the bigger picture, we notice our fear instead of being swallowed by it. We feel the aching longing for wholeness, the hunger for the end of division, for peace, and that yearning puts us back in tune with the utter beauty of the peace we were made for and the One from whom it comes.

Sometimes we choose it, and that’s wonderful.

But sometimes we get there by accident or by default, or by design that is not our own.

On my accidentally silent retreat, when I had I rattled around my own brain until finally my inner voice calmed down, when I had spent hours tromping through the woods with stick in hand under shifting clouds and held by soft wind, with scurrying squirrels and singing birds around me, and more than one deer stopping and staring before bounding gracefully away, and a flock of wild turkeys yelling at me that I had gotten too close, when I had slept enough and read a little, and thought a lot, and prayed some, and watched some more, and settled a bit, and just barely begun to make friends with silence, I glimpsed that peace.

That place of openness, where God can meet you. 
This place where you get out of the way, your job and your ego, your duties and your worries, your roles and your responsibilities, gone.  Like silent Zechariah, you’re helpless. It’s impossible to contribute a thing, direct a thing, coordinate or oversee or explain or meddle. You are simply to take it all in. To absorb the wonder and never ever to forget that it came from God.

During his nine months of compulsory silence, as he watched is old wife’s belly swell, every day, Zechariah woke up and when he was unable, yet again today, to speak a word, it came back to him God is here. And God is coming, and I get to be part of it.   

And in the involuntary hush that drew him into this new and extraordinary role as watchful accomplice, wonder absorber, mystery sharer, Zechariah returned to the deepest part of him, his home in God, soaking in that place where trust is born and hope grows and peace is practiced.

Our theme this Advent is Still… as in, Be still and know that I am God.

And the words of trust, Even if, But still…

Still, God is God. There’s still more to the story.

And as in the stillness in the dark before the first light of dawn.

Most of us hardly ever choose stillness, let alone to be thrust into a position of waiting or silence, vulnerability, or trust.  We can never be prepared and ready to go looking for it. We will always find something else that needs to be done first.  We will always find something productive, important, urgent, and we’ll avoid the deep stillness.  But when it happens, it is a gift. Because it draws us back to the real reality. 

Don’t be afraid. God is here. God is coming. And you are going to be part of it.

Zechariah should be the patron saint of surprise vulnerability. Or of prayers answered not how you meant.  Of watching God breaking in right in front of you and bearing witness to it all. 

And when that little baby arrived, that impossible baby, and he held that impossible little baby in his old and wrinkled hands, his silence ended and his mouth was opened and he said, His name is John – which means his name is “God is gracious.  God is merciful, God gives us more than we could ever even know to long for”- that is his name. 

And then he sang.

Look at this child! he sang, sang out, to his neighbors and friends, Look at how God’s promise to our ancestors is coming to fruition! we are part of it! I am holding it. Oh yes, it is coming! There is no doubt that God’s salvation of us all is coming!  And for a moment, not a person in the room could doubt it either.

And then he turned and looked into the brand new blurry eyes of this utterly impossible child in his first minutes on this earth and continued his song,

 And you, child, will be called the prophet of the Most High; for you will go before the Lord to prepare his ways, to give knowledge of salvation to his people
  

 by the forgiveness of their sins.

This song, Zechariah’s words, are the words the monks who are otherwise silent sing every morning at six am. Thousands of years later, Zechariah’s words begin for them the light of day, every day.

His song ends,

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.’

The monks spend their whole lives in silence, except for one day a year, and except for the 5 times a day they pray through chant and song and spoken word and psalms.  And on the one hand, one could say that this is a complete waste of life.  These perfectly able-bodied men locked away here, away from society, day after day, praying and working and being quiet alongside each other. 
Until they die.

But a Franciscan mother superior once told me, “We in the monastic life hold onto things on behalf of the rest of culture that the rest of culture has forgotten…” And these monks, these men, hold silence for the rest of us. They hold trust and turning to God on behalf of the world that has lost its mind, and will lose it again tomorrow.

They know something we forget – about God and peace and the future and our lives.  

And for Zechariah, his little nine month monastic stint allowed him to hold onto reality in a different way, on behalf of the world.

This thing that is about to happen – God entering in, sending out a prophet to prepare the way, the world turned upside down – it requires reverence, and someone, even one person, who can hold, for the rest of us, the magnitude of what is transpiring. It requires even one person who will watch it and bear it and hold it up to God, who will, in silence and stillness, trust that God is here, that God is doing something right here.

When we stop, when we step out of the chaos and noise, we take up the ministry of Zechariah, the carrying it all alongside others ministry, the quiet yourself and get out of the way ministry. The listen well and don’t interrupt with your own opinions or interpretation ministry. We hold space for others, for God, and we learn to trust that God is here, and God is coming, and we get to be part of it.

Amen.

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Today we baptize Laurel Anne, coming alongside her, holding space for her, for God. And we will tell her that a mystery holds her that, for a while, wont make any sense to her, but it holds her nonetheless. We will do this strange thing that seems not to produce a darn thing, not to contribute to society in any way - we will do this powerful, impossible thing, where we give her over to death and new life, and mark her with the promise of the presence of God in all things, and we will say, Don’t be afraid! Little one, you will be a watchful accomplice, a wonder absorber, a mystery sharer, a peace-maker.  In Jesus Christ, God is here, and God is coming, and you, Laurel Anne, get to be part of it.

 That is holy work. It lifts our eyes to a farther horizon, and see beyond, and practice trusting in the real reality. And we will go from here held in God’s promise of wholeness, God’s peace, and holding onto it into a world that forgets, as we wait for God’s fullness to come.

Witness of Wonder

These videos taken together make up Luke 1:5-25, 57-80.   From Alt Advent, by Jon Birch.

Luke 1:1-4 says,

"Since many people have already applied themselves to the task of compiling an account of the events that have been fulfilled among us, using what the original eyewitnesses and servants of the word handed down to us, I too, after having investigated everything carefully from the beginning, have decided to write a carefully ordered account for you, most honorable Theophilus, so that you may have confidence in the soundness of the instruction you have received."

In other words, Here is where the story of God coming to be with us begins, lover of God.

There once was this old priest in the hill country…

Zechariah.  He doesn’t show up on Christmas eve.  He barely makes an appearance every three years or so in our Advent texts.  You and I would most likely agree that he’s not really central to the story.

But Luke begins with him. Luke starts the whole story of Jesus, and salvation, and what it is that God is doing in the world, of God coming in, with an old priest in the hill country.

Even having seen his story today, we might still say, that’s nice and all, but clearly it could happen without him, he’s not really that important. He doesn’t even say or do anything through most of it, for crying out loud.

And yet, in his rounds of delivering messages from God, the angel Gabriel came to Zechariah first.

He seems marginal – but then we see they’re all marginal, really, a random Galilean carpenter, a young girl not yet married, rural shepherds in a field, foreign scholars far away.  This story is loaded with bit characters. Not a box office draw leading lady or man among them.

So why begin with him?  Zechariah’s life was humming along on a trajectory, fulfilling what purpose he understood and contributing in all the ways a life does, there was no indication of, or even great desire for, change.  He was a fairly unremarkable, decent human being and that was that.  Until God decided to invade the ordinary.  And Luke tells us: here is where it begins.

That’s not where everyone else starts the story of God coming in.

In fact, nobody else does. But neither do they start it the same way as each other.

Matthew begins with Jesus’ genealogy –all those so and so was the father of so and so, a lineage, a long line of people whose lives led to this moment, a heritage and pedigree and journey. Here is where it begins, says Matthew.

Mark begins with grown up John the Baptist crying out in the wilderness- Prepare the way of the Lord! For Mark the whole story starts with this invitation, this proclamation, Jesus is here, Jesus is coming, God is bringing something new! And he’s off and running, not even bothering to circle back at all to anything that happened in Jesus’ early years.

John begins a little farther back - at the very beginning of time and space itself. The vast cosmos and the spoken word that brings life into being. In the beginning was the word. And the word was with God and the word was God.

And Luke begins with Zechariah.  Many have endeavored to put together an orderly account, most excellent lover of God, so here is my attempt. And here is where it all begins.

There once was this old priest...

The strange stirrings, the opening of heaven and earth, the moment God started in motion the irreversible plan to come and be not just God but God with us, was when this priest of the hill country went to do his duty in the most holy sanctuary, and an angel intruded.

This week we spent some time at my preacher’s round up talking about the contrast between Zechariah’s response to the angel Gabriel’s pronouncement and Mary’s response a few months later – as in, he missed the mark and got shushed for it, but she got it right. But really, it’s not they who differ in these interactions but Gabriel the angel.  

Zechariah says, “How can this be, since I am old and my wife is barren?” Mary says, “How can this be, since I am a virgin?”

And Gabriel explains to her how it will happen, and she responds with her, let it be to me according to your word. 

But Zechariah doesn’t get a chance to come around. He doesn’t get an explanation, or even a pause. Instead, he gets a grumpy angel retort, Excuse me! I am Gabriel! I stand at the foot of the throne of God and you question me?

You’re going to be unable to speak now, until the time of his birth.

And unlike Mary, or Joseph, even, Zechariah’s response to the whole thing becomes irrelevant.

God is doing this, and that is that.

This story leaves so much to wonder. It doesn’t explain much, doesn’t give whys or wherefores, It just tells a story: it all began this way…

What if Zechariah’s encounter with Gabriel prepares Gabriel for Mary’s own how can this be?  What if the angel is more ready to handle human questions with human understandings of the limitations of things, like time, and space, and age, and barrenness, and virginity, and impossibility.  Maybe it’s a little cherubic wake-up call to how differently human beings perceive what can or can’t happen than those beings who live in the presence and awareness of God at all times, who are used to the ways of God instead of the limits of human reality.

But my favorite part of this whole thing, the thing that keeps it most fascinating, and curious for me, is Zechariah’s long silence.

Why the silence?

  

Maybe silence was really what Zechariah needed throughout this experience, to come to some sort of trust.

Or what if, in fact, what the moment itself needed most was silence - a silent, observant witness to watch, and listen, and take in the enormity of this reality, when, for all those living in it normally, it might begin to feel normal.

Five months into his silence, five months of waking up each morning unable to talk and remembering immediately that something spectacular is afoot, and rolling over to see his elderly wife’s gradually swelling belly,

five months of going about town unable to answer the questioning glances, and the whispered rumors, the rumblings about what happened when God met him in the temple,

five months along in his quiet seclusion of prenatal privacy, alongside his pregnant, secluded wife, out of the blue Elizabeth’s young relative Mary blows into their lives.

And her arrival brings Elizabeth out of hiding, and brings Mary the solidarity and strength she needs to embrace this reality unfolding in her own body and through her own upended story.

And Zechariah the Silent opens his home to these astonishing things, and watches these women help each other into this reality with love and grace. He bears all these things inside himself, unable to speak of them, to contribute his opinion or observations, his conclusions or his questions.

Just watching and listening and holding it all with honor and awe.

This is how God being with us begins, Luke says.

This old priest from the hill country.

This blessed old man whose was given holy task of watching what God was doing. Shut up and pay attention. That’s your whole job.

God comes. It begins right here.

The beauty of Luke’s choice, and Matthew’s and John’s and Mark’s, to tell the story as they do, begin it where they do, is that we now know you could say that just about anywhere: Here is where it begins. 

A friend noted this week all the many people for whom it began:

“He is Risen!”

Who is risen?

Jesus of Nazareth!

Who is that?

Oh! Let me tell you about Jesus…

Or, those for whom God with us begins when he lays his hands on you and heals you, or looks up and meets you gaze and you feel seen, or you hear in the crowd his words of freedom and forgiveness for the first time and they penetrate your soul.

Or, it begins when you happen to glimpse your grandfather praying on his knees by his bedside. Or you gasp your first sight of the Grand Canyon at sunrise and the artist who designed them suddenly seems electrically nearby.  Or, you weep at the bedside of your departed mother and feel the presence of peace itself. Or it begins with the question your son asks that stops you in your tracks, or the kindness someone extends that softens your defiance. The story of God being with us begins wherever it is entered. 

It can be entered anywhere.

One word of observation, however, most often it does not begin in the strong center of town, the seat of power, the fortress of flawless success, most often it doesn’t start where a story is typically meant to be set.  God’s story is always on the outskirts working inward, on the margins, in the desert and the wilderness, the barren wombs, the youngest, overlooked sons, the slaves and the dreamers. In God’s infinite creativity and wisdom, God begins with children and old people, and people with speech impediments and murder raps, and strangers from a strange land wandering in unexpectedly. 

So it is not about being perfect and prepared, pre-certified saintly, or impressive in any way, it’s more often about being powerless or awkward, messy and a little confused but deeply human.

God does it how God does it.

This fourth Sunday of Advent is the week of love. 

It’s love that comes to us when we least expect it. Love that chooses us for no good reason. When we’re unprepared, humming along a trajectory, love inserts itself and invites us to wake up and see this person, these people around us, to give ourselves to them, and receive them into our own hearts making us wide open and new.

It’s love that binds us to God and to one another, that defines us, beautiful, precious, delight of my heart, and gives us that maddening view of others as well that keeps us from selfish isolation and forces us to engage the world, Precious, that one! Child of God, person alongside my person, worthy of honor and attention.

And that story begins all over the place.

You can enter it at any moment.

After nine months Elizabeth gives birth to John, and Zechariah is still standing by, witnessing the wonder, when the attention shifts to him, (and the neighbors and friends ridiculously motion to the man who can’t talk but can hear just fine), What do you say, Zechariah?

And when he answers on a tablet the same words Elizabeth had just spoken to them, “His name is John,” his gestation is complete and his silence breaks open. 

And all that has simmered inside him these nine months – seasoned with the faithfulness of God in his own long life and the history of God’s relationship with his people from the very beginning – gets stirred up by the Holy Spirit, and spills out of him.

And with utter joy and complete confidence he opens his mouth and proclaims,

‘Blessed be the Lord God of Israel,

   for he has looked favorably on his people and redeemed them.

He has raised up a mighty savior for us

   in the house of his servant David,

as he spoke through the mouth of his holy prophets from of old,

that we would be saved from our enemies and from the hand of all who hate us.

Thus he has shown the mercy promised to our ancestors,

   and has remembered his holy covenant,

the oath that he swore to our ancestor Abraham,

   to grant us that we, being rescued from the hands of our enemies,

might serve him without fear, in holiness and righteousness

   before him all our days.

And you, child, will be called the prophet of the Most High;

   for you will go before the Lord to prepare his ways,

to give knowledge of salvation to his people

   by the forgiveness of their sins.

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.’

And now Zechariah the Silent becomes Zechariah, Parent to the Prophet of the Most High. Here is where it begins.

Depending on where you come from, and what you carry, and who’s doing the telling, the story of Jesus the Messiah, God with us, love alive and alongside, begins all over the place. 

It can be entered anywhere.

Today I kind of like beginning with dear Zechariah. With his silent witness, his holy task, his righteous Shut up and Pay attention.

That seems to me today like a pretty good place to begin.

Amen.