Christ has come and Christ will come again - Day 1 (Sun., Dec. 19)
Luke 1:5-18
In the week leading up to Christmas we will look at some of the characters in the Christmas story through the ideas we have been thinking about for the last three weeks: Hope past hope’s conceiving; Living by God’s pattern in the world; and God’s disruption of human plans.
5 In the time of Herod king of Judea there was a priest named Zechariah, who belonged to the priestly division of Abijah; his wife Elizabeth was also a descendant of Aaron. 6 Both of them were righteous in the sight of God, observing all the Lord’s commands and decrees blamelessly. 7 But they were childless because Elizabeth was not able to conceive, and they were both very old.
8 Once when Zechariah’s division was on duty and he was serving as priest before God, 9 he was chosen by lot, according to the custom of the priesthood, to go into the temple of the Lord and burn incense. 10 And when the time for the burning of incense came, all the assembled worshipers were praying outside.
11 Then an angel of the Lord appeared to him, standing at the right side of the altar of incense. 12 When Zechariah saw him, he was startled and was gripped with fear. 13 But the angel said to him: “Do not be afraid, Zechariah; your prayer has been heard. Your wife Elizabeth will bear you a son, and you are to call him John. 14 He will be a joy and delight to you, and many will rejoice because of his birth, 15 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. 16 He will bring back many of the people of Israel to the Lord their God. 17 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.”
18 Zechariah asked the angel, “How can I be sure of this? I am an old man and my wife is well along in years.”
The hopelessness comes screaming off the page. Zechariah and Elizabeth have no children because Elizabeth was unable to conceive and now, they were old. (vs. 7) Zechariah has given up hope, he is old and his wife is “well along in years.” (vs. 18) There is no reason to hope. Zechariah’s question “How can I be sure of this?” is telling. He does not want to get his hopes up, does not want to raise Elizabeth’s hopes up, without certainty that this time will be different. Hoping has become too painful, the two of them have been through disappointment after disappointment.
The angel’s words are almost unwelcome. The two of them have fallen into a pattern of living their lives as a childless couple, they may not be happy, there may be disappointments, but the life they have is okay. They have learned to live this pattern, the comfort of having a long habit. And the angel’s message, the message from God, disrupts the pattern Elizabeth and Zechariah have fallen into. They are being told to believe in something that they thought was impossible, to believe past their best imagining of what would be possible for them as “old” people.
When God invites us to hope in the unimaginable, to hope past what the rational mind can hope for, we have a choice to make. To take the risk of hoping against the logical, to choose to hope even though we can not be sure. Or we can play safe and not risk hoping for the unimaginable and the beyond believable.
PRAYER:
Lord God, we are often full of despair, tired of having our hopes dashed one more time, we have given up hoping. Break through our discouragement to believe in your hope. Help us glimpse the hope past hope’s conceiving, past our best hopes to hope in your certain revealed to us in Jesus Christ, in his name we pray. Amen.