iWitness: Zechariah and Elizabeth
Luke 1: 5-17, 39-45
Wayne Styles tells of sitting on the tollways headed into work and realizing how much he spent on tolls. That led to trying to go to work on the access roads but he discovered that just took more time. So he was going to pay with either time or money. The worst was having to stop at the stoplights and then no one comes the other way. It was almost as if the lights had been programmed against him as he hit almost every one. Here it was: 5 am, pitch black outside, no cross traffic, and the light turns red. So he stops even though no one is around. “But there has to be a reason…Because I trust God, I have to believe that waiting at the light in the dark with no other traffic serves a purpose. I can see no other reason to wait, except for this light. So I wait.” As he sits at stoplights morning after morning, he begins to note all the reasons we wait in life: stoplights, waiting rooms, suppertime, difficult meetings, grocery store lines and on and on and he begins to realize we do a lot of waiting. And then he writes, “But the most difficult kind of waiting? Waiting on God. Waiting on God usually means hanging on until he changes our circumstances- be they relational, financial, physical or even spiritual. The trouble is God seldom seems in a hurry….at all….what so ever…”
And that’s where Israel is. For 700 years, they have been occupied by foreign rulers and never knowing the freedom of living in their own land under their own rule. When the exiles returned in 535 BC, hopes were high but the Persian Empire gave way to the Greek Empire which gave way to the Roman Empire, and with each, the suffering of the Israelites only increased as did their hopes, cries and aspirations for the Messiah. This was a time of waiting and earnest yearning but God remained silent for 400 hundred years: no judges or prophets, no kings or military leaders raised up, no books of the Bible written and no answered prayers for a Messiah. One would have to begin to wonder whether God heard or a Messiah would come at all. We know what’s that like don’t we, waiting on God in so many situations: for employment, for a spouse, for retirement, for a doctor’s appointment, or results on biopsies. MRIs, a diagnosis or prognosis, for a child to come back to the faith. And through it all, your waiting has turned into more and more anxious prayers. Waiting is hard work, perhaps the hardest work you’ve ever done. And that is what the season of Advent is all about: waiting for the coming of the Messiah and as we look into the future, waiting for Christ’s return here on earth.
Doug Greenwold shared with us last Advent that if there was one lesson to describe Zechariah’s and Elizabeth’s experience of the coming of the Messiah, it’s waiting. So the first thing we learn is the waiting of Christmas. Waiting on the Lord requires patient trust. It means giving God the benefit of the doubt, trusting that God will come through and fulfill His promises. What make matters worse is that Zechariah’s name means, “Whom Jehovah remembers.” But after years of waiting for a child which hadn't come and Zechariah waiting to be picked to perform the incense offering in the Temple, you can understand Zechariah’s and Elizabeth’s questions and doubts towards God. They were faithful in every way and still they were waiting for the blessings of God promised in Zechariah’s name and the hope of every couple that they would have a child. You can imagine that they began to ask the inevitable question, “When which gave way to “Why?” even as they continued to pray for these blessings. As the years rolled by, they must have had a growing sense that God had “passed them over” or even forgotten them. How long can a soul ache for something seemingly so right before it begins to lose its grip on hope? This is not just a question for Zechariah and Elizabeth but for Israel and us. That is the pain contained in waiting.
Frederick Beuchner writes, “I think we are waiting. That is what is at the heart of it. Even when we don't know that we are waiting, I think we are waiting. Even when we can't find words for what we are waiting, I think we are waiting. An ancient Advent prayer supplies us with the words. "Give us grace that we may cast off the works of darkness and put upon us the armor of light." We who live much of the time in the darkness are waiting, not just at Advent, but at all times for the advent of light, of that ultimate light that is redemptive and terrifying at the same time. It is redemptive because it puts an end to the darkness, and that is also why it is terrifying, because for so long, for all our lives, the darkness has been home, and because to leave home is always cause for terror.” But it’s through that which the light of Christ enters and breaks through. The message for Zechariah and Elizabeth is the message for Israel and for us today: hang on, God has heard your prayers and in the coming of the Messiah has answered them. The light of the world is coming and will break through the darkness.
The second thing we learn is the faithful promises of God. At the foretelling of birth of Jesus, the angel says to Mary, “Even Elizabeth your relative is going to have a child in her old age, and she who was said to be unable to conceive is in her sixth month. For no word from God will ever fail.” In other words, you can trust God. His promises are trustworthy and true and will always come to pass. Zechariah and Elizabeth learned that you can stand on the promises of God, no matter how much time passes by. Russell Kelso Carter (1849-1928) was a star athlete of a military academy and an excellent student academically, who went on to be a successful teacher and coach. Although Carter was a professed Christian most of his life, it wasn't until a crisis with his natural heart that he began to understand the reality and power of Bible promises. At age 30, his heart was in critical condition and the physicians could do no more for him. Carter turned to God for help and healing. He knelt and made a promise that healing or no, his life was finally and forever, fully consecrated to the service of the Lord. It was from that moment that the written Word of God became alive to him. He began to stand upon the promises of healing, determining to believe, no matter what his physical condition and no matter how he felt. Over the course of the next several months his strength returned, and his heart was completely healed! Carter lived another healthy 49 years and became a Methodist minister, a doctor and a composer as he wrote from his own experience the great hymn, “Standing on the Promises of God.”
Third, we see that that waiting gives way to the joy of Christmas. Upon hearing the news from the angel, Mary immediately packs her things and travels 3-4 days to the hills of Judah and the home of Zechariah and Elizabeth. Most priests lived outside of Jerusalem and travelled into town for their month’s service. In this encounter, we see the first meeting of Jesus and John the Baptist but there is much more going on. Elizabeth’s child leaps in her womb and she is filled with the Holy Spirit revealing God’s plan salvation in the birth of God’s only Son and leading her to proclaim: “Blessed are you among women, and blessed is the child you will bear! But why am I so favored, that the mother of my Lord should come to me? As soon as the sound of your greeting reached my ears, the baby in my womb leaped for joy. Blessed is she who has believed that the Lord would fulfill his promises to her!” In this moment, the Spirit reveals to Elizabeth that she is blessed. She is blessed with child when she thought that she was barren and God had turned her back on her. “The Lord has done this for me. In these days he has shown his favor and taken away my disgrace among the people.” She was blessed that the mother of the Messiah would come to visit her. She was blessed because in her presence stands a great testimony of trust and faith. “May your word to me be fulfilled.” But she was blessed because the promise made to Zechariah by the angel confirmed to Elizabeth: “He will be a joy and delight to you, and many will rejoice because of his birth, for he will be great in the sight of the Lord. He is never to take wine or other fermented drink, and he will be filled with the Holy Spirit even before he is born. He will bring back many of the people of Israel to the Lord their God. And he will go on before the Lord, in the spirit and power of Elijah, to turn the hearts of the parents to their children and the disobedient to the wisdom of the righteous—to make ready a people prepared for the Lord.”
Fourth is the love of Christmas. Elizabeth has been filled with the Holy Spirit and now Zechariah is as well. He too is moved to speak or to sing God’s priases about the impact of the Messiah which speaks profoundly of the love of God for His children. God comes to his people. He draws near. He resues and brings salvation to His children. He enables us to serve him without fear. He shows us mercy and forgives our sins. He will bring light into the darkness of our lives and to guide our feet into the path of peace. And then All of this speaks of the love of God for his children through the gift of His son Jesus Christ. But it goes further. Because Zecharish and Elizabeth in the birth of their child and the Messsiah experience the love of God and the love of Christ for them as well.
Ravi Zacharias tells this story of spending Christmas in the home of his wife’s parents. It was not a happy day in the household. Much had gone wrong during the preceding weeks, and a weight of sadness hung over the home. Yet, in the midst of all that, his mother-in-law kept her routine habit of asking people who would likely have no place to go at Christmas to share Christmas dinner with us. She invited a man who was, by everyone’s estimate, somewhat of an odd person, quite eccentric in his demeanor. Not much was known about him at the church except that he came regularly, sat alone, and left without much conversation.
Because of other happenings in the house, not the least of which was that one daughter was taken to the hospital for the birth of her first child, everything was in confusion. All of our emotions were on edge. It fell upon me, in turn, to entertain this gentleman. I must confess that I did not appreciate it. Owing to a heavy life of travel year-round, I have jealously guarded my Christmases as time to be with my family. This was not going to be such a privilege, and I was not happy. As I sat in the living room, entertaining him while others were busy, I thought to myself, "This is going to go down as one of the most miserable Christmases of my life."
But somehow we got through the evening. He evidently loved the meal, the fire crackling in the background, the snow outside, the Christmas carols playing, and a rather weighty theological discussion in which he and I were engaged which he instigated. He was a very well-read man and, as I found out, loved to grapple with heavy theological themes. I do too, but frankly, not during an evening that has been set aside to enjoy life’s quiet moments.
At the end of the night when he bade us all good-bye, he reached out and took the hand of each of us, one by one, and said, "Thank you for the best Christmas of my life. I will never forget it." He walked out into the dark, snowy night, back into his solitary existence. My heart sank in self-indictment at those tender words of his. I had to draw on every nerve in my being to keep from breaking down with tears. That year the Lord taught me a lesson. The primary purpose of a Christmas is to receive, to reflect and to distribute the love of Christ.
