The Zechariah Syndrome

Luke 1

When Luke sat down to tell the story of Jesus he did not begin with a baby in Bethlehem. He did not begin with angels and shepherds. He did not even begin with the angel Gabriel and Mary. He began with John.
Or, more precisely, he began with the announcement of John’s birth. An angel was involved, as was John’s father Zechariah. He was a temple priest and he was doing his job when the angel appeared to him.
Zechariah and his wife, Elizabeth, are described by Luke as being righteous and blameless before the Lord. They were also barren. To Luke’s readers, steeped in the stories of the Old Testament, this circumstance would conjure up many names. There was Abraham’s wife, Sarah, who was barren until the day an angel announced she would bear a son, Isaac. Rachel, Jacob’s wife, was barren until the Lord opened her womb. Hannah, the mother of Samuel, was barren until her womb was opened. Hannah’s song of praise for this miraculous birth, which is found in 1 Samuel 1, is the basis for Mary’s similar song in Luke’s story.
In any event, here we are at the beginning of Luke’s story with an old story: an old childless couple going through the motions. But wait! Things are not as they should be! For as Zechariah is performing his priestly functions—not doubt while thinking about sports, or fishing, or that the garage needs to be cleaned—an angel of the Lord appears before him. There, in the church of all places, Zechariah gets a message from God. And Zechariah’s response is one of fear.
Now that might seem surprising to us. What could be more natural than angels in the temple? Where else would we expect to hear from God? And yet a quick survey of biblical stories suggests that Zechariah’s response is not all that unusual.
We have already heard about Abraham and Sarah—about how Sarah laughed out loud when the angel said she would have a baby. Luke ends his gospel with two disciples walking the dusty road to Emmaus and Jesus joins them and hears all about the ridiculousness of the empty tomb and the disciples do not recognize until later that they are walking with Jesus. Or in the book of Acts, how Peter is released from prison by an angel. When Peter arrives at the home of those praying for his release, the maid answers the door. “It’s Peter,” she says. And what is the response of those praying for Peter? “You must be crazy!”
What do all of these circumstances have in common? Each of these episodes takes place in the absence of great expectations. Zechariah, Sarah, the disciples, the prayer group—each of them has good intentions and no expectations. In addition to being people of low expectation, the folks in our example are also religious people. Abraham, the great patriarch, was called out of his homeland to be the chosen father of many nations. The disciples were followers of Jesus in his lifetime, just not in his new lifetime. Many were praying for Peter’s release, they just didn’t actually expect him to get out. But not everyone in Scripture is a religious unbeliever. And, interestingly, many whose witness is lifted up by Scripture are those not part of the “in” crowd. For example, there is a Roman Centurion who expects Jesus to heal his daughter without Jesus even going to his house. A Gentile woman asks Jesus to heal her child and is so insistent that she will not let Jesus go until he does. Another woman, an outsider and social reject with a twelve year health crisis, is so expectant that Jesus will heal her that she just touches his cloak without even speaking to Jesus at all. It is an interesting contrast: deeply religious people who have no expectation of God acting in their lives and fringe individuals who do not doubt for a minute that God will act in their lives.
Maybe one reason faith comes harder to the faithful is that we lived longer with the promises of the Gospel and the reality of the world. We hear the promises of God—the love of Jesus, the certainty of eternal life—but we also know that horrible things happen in the world. Greedy people seem to be rewarded. Despotic rulers make life miserable for their citizens. Disease strikes our loved ones. Lies and half-truths dominate our public discourse. So we, who spend our time worshipping, and reading the bible, and praying are forced from time to time to step back and ask, “is any of this worth it? Does any good come from this?”
I cannot help but wonder if Zechariah felt this way. After all, like many faithful Jews of his day, he was living under foreign occupation. This second Sunday in Advent is coincidental with Hanukkah, the Jewish festival of lights. Hanukkah commemorates the time of the Maccabean revolt against foreign rule and foreign religious practice. The Maccabees contested with the Greeks, The New Testament church with Rome. But the struggles were the same. Rome may have brought peace but little justice. Some faithful people were, understandably, defeated in spirit. They were left to go through the motions, to sing the old songs and say the old rote sayings, but their hearts had gone out of worship.
Last year at this time I had just returned from a conference sponsored by the Presbyterian Church Board of Pensions. The conference, known as CREDO, is designed for clergy in mid-career. There were 26 Presbyterian pastors in attendance of roughly the same age and from many different ministry contexts from around the nation. And I was struck by how many of the pastors identified one of their primary needs as recovering for themselves the belief that they were children of God. These pastors, who spent their time assuring others of the grace of God, had lost touch with grace themselves. They were like Zechariah, going through the motions, doing their duty, but without the grace, without the joy, coming to the point when an actual good word from the Lord would be more scary than comforting.
But the Zechariah Syndrome impacts more than pastors. It impacts all thoughtful Christians. We swim in the sea of tension between the good news and the real news and from time to time we all get worn down. So we need to revisit the story of Zechariah and make sure we derive from it the good news.
The angel of the Lord came and stood in the presence of Zechariah, having first stood in the presence of God. The angel told Zechariah that his prayer had been answered and that he and Elizabeth would have a child. Which prayer was answered? Zechariah’s personal prayer or the prayer Zechariah offered for the people? In the end it doesn’t matter, as both prayers are answered with this one gracious response. There will be a child and that child will be great. This great child will be the forerunner of an even greater child. Zechariah’s child will make a people prepared for the Lord. And this child will also be a real child of flesh and blood, one for Elizabeth to cradle and Zechariah to bounce on his knee. The personal prayer and the corporate prayer are brought together in the gracious act of God.
That Zechariah finds this hard to believe doesn’t matter to God’s purposes. God’s gracious activity, in the end, does not depend on our moods or our expectations. That the disciples did not believe Jesus was raised from the dead did not change the fact that he was. That those praying for Peter’s release did not believe he had been released did not change the fact that he had. You and I struggle with our faith from time to time but that doesn’t change the fact that God is at work in our lives and in our world for good.
Christmas is another reminder of this truth. Jesus was born into a dangerous world. Jesus was crucified by the dark forces of his day. But God raised Jesus from the dead as an eternal witness to the truth that God’s power for good is greater than the powers of sin and death. God’s purposes for us and for all of creation are sure and certain in spite of any evidence to the contrary. And our faith, which ebbs and flows like the tide, sustains us at high tide and at low tide we rely on the community of faith to carry us and do our believing for us. As James reminds the church in the other reading of this morning, we may have to wait upon the Lord. Be patient, James reminds the church, for as the seed germinates and grows according to nature’s schedule, so also must we be patient, patient and expectant. James offers the prophets as examples of patience in doubt, patience in expectation, and patience in suffering. Listen to one of those prophets, the prophet Jeremiah, as he speaks to God’s people in exile. “For surely I know the plans I have for you, says the Lord, plans for your welfare and not for harm, to give you a future with hope.” In all times God’s will is certain, God’s grace is sufficient, and the child born in Bethlehem came, not to condemn the world, but so for the world’s salvation.
After John is born and named, Zechariah breaks into song. We will sing a version of his song in a moment, but we should take note now of how Zechariah’s song begins and how it ends. The one who was afraid, who had low expectations, who found it hard to believe, he is the one who finds not only his voice but his faith and he is thus able to affirm “Blessed be the Lord God of Israel, for he has looked favorably on his people and redeemed them…to give light to those who sit in darkness and in the shadow of death, to guide our feet into the way of peace.”

Let us pray:
Gracious God we believe we are called to grow in our expectation of how you are acting in our lives. Help us to look, not only in this season, but daily for your presence in our lives. And help us to remember that we are called to be in relationship with each other, worshipping not just for ourselves, but for others. Grant that we always remember that we are a community, based on faith and love, and we need you and each other. Amen.