ALL SAINTS MARGARET STREET
Sermon preached by Fr. Gerald Beauchamp at Solemn Evensong and Benediction on the Second Sunday of Advent, 6th December 2009
Readings: Isaiah 40. 1-11; Luke 1. 1-25
If you throw a stone into a pond the ripples move out from the centre and then back again inter-lapping as they go. For me this image describes something of the way in which the scriptures work. No one sat down and wrote Genesis 1. 1 onwards ending up with the book of Revelation. Instead the bible has a complex history. There are resonances casting back and forth catching echoes of each other and spilling over into the next generation sometimes rewriting the past. It's this movement that I think we need to have in mind as we explore the forthcoming Christmas story and it's this movement that we need to have in mind as we contemplate the origins of John the Baptist.
This evening's reading from Luke's Gospel is about John's parents, Elizabeth and Zechariah. Behind them are some notable couples and parents from the Old Testament: Abram and Sarah, Jacob and Rachel, the parents of Samson, and Hannah and Elkanah. The narrative also points forward. It's Gabriel who makes the announcement to Zechariah, the same messenger who makes the announcement to Mary later. We first hear of Gabriel in the Book of Daniel, the latest and most apocalyptic of the prophets. Daniel is a book full of strange dreams and visions, a book that's full of miraculous escapes: Daniel from his lions' den, and Shadrach, Meshach and Abednego from their burning, fiery furnace. So we're in the world of the unexpected, God's radical otherness, the God who makes something out of nothing, the God who snatches victory from the jaws of defeat.
Elizabeth was a descendant of Aaron. She was from a priestly family. Her name is similar to that of Aaron's wife, Elisheba (Ex 6:23). But Elizabeth had no future because she had no child. Today, although some people regret not having children there's no stigma attached to being childless. But then, especially for priestly families childlessness was ignominious. It called their piety into question. Sons were a sign of God's favour and it was the woman's fault if there were no children. The text makes this clear. They had no children because Elizabeth was barren. Elizabeth had 'disgraced' her husband. But here's a paradox. Elizabeth and Zechariah weren't bad people. They were righteous before God and lived blamelessly according to the commandments and regulations of God. They were moral but not blessed.
As they grew older Elizabeth and Zechariah's humiliation would have been palpable but also mixed. They were people of their time. Being from a privileged class they would have been aware of current affairs. They lived in an unquiet age. Of course they wanted children but they would have been concerned about the sort of world they would be brought into. Desire would have been darkened by anxiety. So Elizabeth and Zechariah were disappointed.
Disappointment: it can be a curse. Disappointment can be like salt on a snail, eating its way; it can belike a canker or a worm that burrows down turning all in its path rotten. We can imagine Elizabeth as a young woman confidently expecting one month 'to be late' and then each month discovering to her increasing dismay that she wasn't. We can imagine her at the well with the neighbours and their children feeling ever more like an outsider. We can imagine her increasing reluctance to go to family gatherings: always the aunt, never a mother or a grandmother. There could have been a withering, a drying-up, a 'barrenness' not just of the womb but of the spirit.
No doubt Elizabeth prayed, perhaps something like: 'Take this cup from me and fill my chalice.' Apparently, to no avail. No doubt Zechariah prayed to. It was his duty to pray: he was a priest. But unlike priests here who enter the sanctuary again and again with incense (indeed, here it's the more, the merrier) members of the Jewish priestly class only entered the sanctuary to offer incense once in a lifetime. They were chosen by lot. So the day came when Zechariah's number came up. He entered the sanctuary on behalf of God's chosen people to offer their chosen prayer. He offered their yearnings for freedom.
Then something extraordinary happened: a strange message from a strange messenger. Elizabeth and Zechariah's ancient prayer is to be fulfilled late in the day. The personal and the political are joined in one. There is to be a son for them. There is to be one more Israelite for the nation; one more warrior for the people; someone marked out, great ... filled with the Holy Spirit ... the spirit of Elijah ... turning hearts ... making (things) ready for the Lord: in short, a bearer of hope.
Zechariah wavers. Had he given up his inner faith despite his professional status? Had disappointment hollowed out his soul? Was there vesture but no vitality? Perhaps. And what sucks out the dynamic of faith? What dries out the soul? What does disappointment do to us? It loosens our grip on eternity. It takes away perspective. It corrodes our sense of the transcendent. It undermines the belief that in the words of Mother Julian of Norwich (c 1342 - c 1416) 'all will be well and will be well and all manner of thing shall be well'.
God from eternity is different to man bound in time. In the sanctuary God's messenger jogs the memory of God's priest. God calls Zechariah to remember who he is and who his wife is. In ancient times names were much more than designations they were detonations. Names had meanings. They were powerful. Zechariah means 'God remembers': Elizabeth means 'God has sworn.' God has sworn and God has remembered. God's people however, are prone to forget, to be lost. There is amnesia, dumbness.
This deafening silence will be broken only by birth, a birth that presages a new creation. Out of the 'nothingness' of those past child-bearing age comes a child who sets the world alight: John. John means 'God is gracious'. By the grace of God new things are to come to be. A mother now names a son, not the father as in hallowed tradition. When Elizabeth meets the younger Mary, John leaps in her womb signalling heaven's battering on earth's door to herald the dawn of a new era. As a man John will take the world by storm with his preaching roaring like a lion out of the desert. He will baptize his cousin and the heavens will be torn open. There will be birth and there will be being 'born again'.
Like the ripples on a pond the creativity of God reverberates back and forth. Into this mystery we are invited. Like Zechariah we are drawn into the sanctuary, a dark and holy place full of mystical encounter and awe-inspiring potential. This is more than a place of prayer. It's the place to which we are summoned as adults in the Christian life. Much of our praying can be childish: 'Give me this; give me that'.
Adult spirituality takes us beyond treating God like a rich uncle who comes up with the goods on demand. We are also called to enter the darkness of seemingly unanswered prayer where the bedrock of our hope is pure, unalloyed and selfless faithfulness. It is only when we stand before God naked and exhausted that he can truly work his miracles in us: weaving us into his creative power and motion; inviting us into his sacred space and binding us to his mission of shaping and reshaping history. That history is not something full of impersonal forces but is made up of countless numbers of very real and very personal stories: stories of people who have names like Elizabeth, Zechariah and John, not to mention mysterious messengers like Gabriel.