I had the privilege this morning to start our Advent sermon series at Gospel Haus with Luke 1:5-20. I’ve translated my sermon below (and probably taken some liberties to make myself sound more articulate than I was, and thrown some things back in that I had to cut to keep the thing from being unreasonably long), hoping that it will be a help to others this Advent season.

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In the days of Herod, king of Judea, there was a priest named Zechariah, of the division of Abijah. And he had a wife from the daughters of Aaron, and her name was Elizabeth…

Jeanne Calment was 14 years old when she met Vincent van Gogh; she was working as a sales girl in a store run by relatives of hers in Arles, in the south of France, when the famous painter came in to buy some supplies. Calment herself became an international celebrity when she told the story of the 1889 encounter (she was singularly unimpressed with the art legend, describing him as “dirty, badly dressed, and rude”) in a TV interview – 99 years later.

Following the interview, she was certified by the Guinness Book of World Records as the oldest person on Earth, a title she held until her death in 1997 at the age of 122 years, five months, 14 days.

I have always remembered a quote from a later interview, when, asked to explain her longevity, she joked, “God forgot about me.”

Surely she didn’t mean a great deal by it, but it’s hard not to imagine that she did sometimes feel that way; Mme Calment lived through both World Wars, the invention of the telephone, the construction of the Eiffel Tower, the beginning and end of the Soviet Union. She outlived her husband, her daughter, and her grandson. Would she ever die? Didn’t it seem as though God really had overlooked her?

That’s how I imagine the feeling of the Jewish people of Zechariah’s time: after 500 years of disappointment, can it be that God simply doesn’t remember us anymore? And then, one day, an answer came.

At the Hour of Incense

Without question, it was already the greatest day of Zechariah’s life. The division of Abijah was just one of 24, each of which was on duty in the temple only twice a year for a week at a time. Offering incense was a particular privilege, thought to reflect God’s favor on the chosen priest; only priests who had never offered the incense were eligible for the lottery to carry out the service, and some never did get their chance to do what Zechariah was doing now.

That day, following the regular evening burnt offering, Zechariah would have washed hands and feet at the bronze basin that stood in the temple court between the altar and the sanctuary, then been handed the holy incense in a golden bowl. He would have proceeded up the 12 steps to the roughly 25-meter-high gate of the temple, then inward, between the golden lampstand on his left and the golden table with the Bread of the Presence on his right, until he reached the small golden incense altar before the gigantic veil that blocked the way into the Holy of Holies. There he set the incense alight, creating a cloud of sweet smoke.

At that moment, no human being on earth was closer to God. Zechariah stood at the boundary between heaven and earth.

And at that very moment, a holy angel appeared – Gabriel, who had come to the great Daniel in Babylon, who appeared like a man but with an indescribably terrifying aspect. It’s hard to imagine the strangeness for Zechariah at that moment – imagine a young man who has just made a marriage proposal and is enduring that little eternity before his beloved makes her answer. Then, suddenly, up rushes a dignified-looking man in a general’s uniform and announces, “There you are, Mr. Smith! I have some unbelievable news for you!” What? Who? Me? stutters the man. This certainly wasn’t in the script.

In the face of Zechariah’s astonishment and terror, Gabriel says, “Do not be afraid, for your prayer has been heard, and your wife Elizabeth will bear you a son!”

And Zechariah thinks, perhaps, My prayer? I haven’t prayed that prayer in years – God said no, didn’t he? How likely is it that this priest, the chosen delegate of his entire nation before God, was using the opportunity to pray for his own business anyway? That was the moment to pray for Israel, that God would deliver them from the oppression of foreigners, that God would make good on His age-old promise to set an heir of David on the throne and inaugurate a kingdom of peace, liberty, and righteousness that would last for ever. Surely those were the requests on Zechariah’s lips, though they must have seemed futile after 400 years of silence on God’s part.

And now, here stands Gabriel, telling Zechariah – whose name means “The Lord remembers” – that no, God has not forgotten the prayers that this priest in the division of Abijah has given up on, nor has He forgotten His promises to His people. He is going to answer all of these prayers, and He will begin with a child.

John, Great Before the Lord

The child’s name will be John, “God is gracious,” a promise of a flood of grace that will wash away Israel’s (not to mention Zechariah’s and Elizabeth’s) disappointment and shame forever.

That’s Gabriel’s message: John will bring his parents “joy and gladness” (v. 14); he will be born as a sign that God has neither forgotten their faithfulness nor despised their obedience. This joy, though, will be not just for them, but for the whole people, because this boy will be someone “great before the Lord” (v. 15) – someone filled with God’s Spirit, like Bezalel, architect of Israel’s very first sanctuary, like Saul and David, saviors of their people; someone called as a prophet from the womb, like Isaiah and Jeremiah before him; someone who will be a lifelong teetotaler, like a priest who never goes off duty, like a Nazirite who has devoted himself to a great undertaking for his God, like Samson the mighty hero, like Samuel, anointer of Israel’s first kings.

But he won’t be just another holy prophet (as though there could be such a thing). He will come to fulfill the last promise from the mouth of God, spoken by the prophet Malachi:

Behold, I will send you Elijah the prophet before the great and awesome day of the Lord comes. And he will turn the hearts of fathers to their children and the hearts of children to their fathers, lest I come and strike the land with a decree of utter destruction. (Mal 4:5-6)

Gabriel is saying to Zechariah: your son will be the sign that God has heard His people’s prayers, the sign that He is coming, He Himself. But be careful what you pray for, because the answer will be a “great and awesome day,” a day of fear, when the Lord comes to judge His people.

This is why you will have this man for your son, so that this coming, this Advent of God, can actually be good news. He will turn many to their God (v. 16), with some very real and visible effects: the healing of families, a renewal of fatherhood in which fathers love and teach their children to fear their God; a renewal of sonship, in which the disobedient youth will learn to listen to their fathers’ instruction (Prov 4:1) – the inevitable downward spiral of Israel’s generations will come to a halt at last.

John will “make ready for the Lord a people prepared” (v. 17), as a house is set in order to welcome its master home, as a kingdom is secured for the heir to its throne.

Zechariah’s Doubt

Zechariah answers – appropriately enough, one is tempted to say! – with a Bible quotation, from Genesis 15:8: “How shall I know this?”

One could hardly quote a more exemplary personage than Abraham, who asked this of the God Who was promising him an heir from his own loins. Nor was Abraham above questioning God’s familiarity with human reproductive biology in Genesis 17:17, as Zechariah does (v. 18). So it hardly seems entirely fair, does it, that he should be rebuked as he is?

Of course, as far as we know, Abraham was the first person in the history of the world to receive a promise like this. He had no covenant yet to go on, and no miracle to confirm the promise. Zechariah, though, has known Abraham’s story backwards and forwards from childhood on – he ought to know better than Abraham whether anything is too hard for God (Gen 18:14)! More than that, he knows just how often God has given children to barren women – Rebekah, Rachel, Hannah – in order to advance His plan of salvation.

Here, then, is Zechariah, representing all Israel, asking for a sign, because at that moment he has forgotten the power and grace of the God he is there to worship.

Beautifully, his punishment is given in order to make him into a sign himself. Don’t forget: Zechariah is still there in the temple, still carrying out the worship service, which does not end until he stands outside with the other four officiating priests and speaks the Aaronic blessing: The Lord bless you and keep you; the Lord make His face to shine upon you and be gracious to you; the Lord lift up His countenance upon you and give you peace. Zechariah won’t be able to do this on his exit from the sanctuary; he won’t be able to do it for the next nine months at least, not until God has followed through on this promise and Zechariah opens his mouth in the words we now know as the Benedictus, blessing his God, then his son, and through him, his people. The forgottenness, the silence and shame of Zechariah, and of Israel, will be broken by joyous song and a blessing for all peoples.

Repent, for the Kingdom is at Hand

Today is the first day of Advent, a season in which Christians the world over are mindful of the promised coming of their Lord. In Germany, it is a really rather magical season of Christmas markets, mulled wine, and chocolate-laden calendars, with not much connection to the Christ whose coming we are gearing up to celebrate.

Yet it’s not much easier for Christians to know how to keep the season well either. Are we meant to try to get into the head space of first-century B.C. Jews in order to work up a hearty dose of anticipatory Christmas feeling in advance of December 25th?

If Advent is anything to us, it is a time to hear a message that brings good news to anyone who does now or has ever felt forgotten by God.

That is precisely the message given to John to proclaim: God has not forgotten you! He is coming back! Make ready for him! He was to prepare his people by “turning them” back to God and to one another (vv. 16-17), to proclaim, in the traditional language of the Church, “repentance” (3:3). It is the same message Jesus himself and his apostles preached everywhere: Repent, for the kingdom of heaven is at hand! (Matt 4:17). It is a message for Jew and Gentile, unbeliever and believer alike; “The whole life of the believer,” as Martin Luther’s first of his 95 Theses has it, “is to be repentance.”

It is repentance that prepares us for God’s nearness, for the experience of His power and grace. If we feel forgotten, is it perhaps because we have first forgotten Him? Do you consider your situation too difficult complicated to allow for any solution, by man or by God? Do you believe it’s simply too late to get what you really need from God? Perhaps you have forgotten His power. Or do you believe that God has simply had it with you and your endless failures? Do you imagine that He has finally given up on you? Does He seem to be repaying evil for your good efforts? Perhaps you have forgotten His grace.

If any of those questions hit close to home, then the message of John the Baptist is for you: repent! Turn away from the things that have made you forget your Lord; turn back to Him.

First, confess your unbelief. Mostly, people to whom the word “repentance” means anything at all would associate it with quitting the kinds of behaviors easily recognized as sins: adultery, violence, deceit, slander, theft, and so forth. But all of these things, bad though they are, grow out of a root thought process that can be summarized like this: I know what I really need in life; I am not getting what I really need from God; therefore I will look for it elsewhere.

The looking elsewhere is what the Bible means by “idolatry”; the thinking we know what we need and that God cannot or will not provide it is what is meant by “unbelief,” and even exemplary believers like Zechariah are not immune to it. Confessing your unbelief, then, means on the one hand recognizing that what you really need is to know God and to glorify Him, and that you have elevated things to the level of “needs” that you could do without for the sake of your true needs; and on the other hand it means admitting that you have given up asking for what you want – “You do not have, because you do not ask” (James 4:2) – because you doubt that God can or will give them to you.

To be made ready for God, we have to realize that we are not so faithful to Him as we like to think: we live as though His power, mercy, and goodness are somehow limited, as though they fall short of what they ought to be. We have to realize this, and we have to confess it.

Second, renew your prayers. Repentance is a turning; confession is a way to name and consciously reject our unbelief, and prayer is perhaps the chief way in which we can consciously turn to God, expressing our desire to trust Him. Countless sermons and books have been devoted to the subject of prayer; I want to give two very basic exhortations for us as we seek to be turned back to God this Advent season.

To begin with, pray for the things you have stopped praying for. Gabriel came to meet Zechariah with good news he had likely given up hoping for; let us take that as an encouragement to revisit the prayers we consider unanswered or rejected. If what you used to pray for isn’t logically impossible to see fulfilled, perhaps it’s time to renew your request that God give it to you. Regardless, pray for the wisdom to glorify Him and see His power and grace and work even if the answer to your original request is a definitive No.

In the second place, make sure you are praying particularly for the things God has actually promised to give. It took centuries to see the fulfillment, but Israel’s prayers for God to send the promised King were answered as they had to be, in Zechariah’s own time. Pray for God to keep His promises – and that means, of course, that you had better make sure you know what He has actually promised. Your dream job, a trophy spouse, model children, rock-solid friendships, and so forth, are not in fact on the list; justification, sanctification, communion with the saints, an imperishable inheritance, the redemption of our bodies, an eternal vision of Jesus Christ as he really is – these are. If the items on that list aren’t familiar, dig into your Bible and look for them; it’s a good idea to find someone you know who can help you do that.

Third, finally, and if all else fails: be like Zechariah. Ask for a sign (v. 18).

This may seem like strange advice. After all, he’s cursed with muteness as a result of unbelief! But take good note of what actually happens: Zechariah gets his sign. It’s not as though Gabriel says, “You don’t believe me? Well, then, you can just forget about it.” No, it’s more like: “Actually, I thought you might consider the appearance of an angel to constitute a pretty good sign, but since you ask so nicely…”

Especially if you are sitting there unsure whether God is there at all – or you are sure that He isn’t – and the whole notion of repentance doesn’t mean much to you, then I encourage you to take a risk. Try praying, just to see if it works, using Zechariah’s words: God, how shall I know that You’re there?

This may need to be your prayer even if you do believe, yet you’re feeling so forgotten that all of this talk of confession and prayer feels somehow unreal to you. Try praying the same way: God, how shall I know that You can keep Your promises? How shall I know that You will? 

A warning is in order, maybe an obvious one: the sign you get might not be the sort of sign you’re expecting, and it certainly may not be anything very pleasant. For Zechariah, it was at best a pretty serious inconvenience. I have known one or two people who told me that they became Christians because they prayed something along the lines of, “God, if You’re there, then show me that you are,” and they got an answer. But I’ve found people with this experience to be very hesitant to say just what it is God did to show Himself to them; perhaps it was just something too intimate to share, or maybe it’s too hard to put into words what they experienced – or it could be that it’s too embarrassing or painful to talk about.

Your sign, if you ask for one, may well be something you’re never able or willing to talk about, but I do not believe God will leave that prayer unanswered, and I believe that it will result in you coming to a place where, like Zechariah nine months after this story, your tongue is set free to testify to the Lord’s power and grace toward you (Luke 1:68-79).

All of this – confession, prayer, seeking a sign – is meant to prepare you for something, or rather someone: the promised King, the coming Incarnate God, Jesus Christ himself. Confess your unbelief so that you might be ready, with Paul, to exclaim: He who did not spare his own Son but gave him up for us all, how will he not also with him graciously give us all things? (Rom 8:32). Renew your prayers so that you might be ready to receive the one in whom all the promises of God find their Yes (2 Cor 1:20). Ask how you shall know, in order that you might be ready to receive with joy the good news of God’s holy angel: this will be a sign for you: you will find a baby wrapped in swaddling cloths and lying in a manger (Luke 2:12).

This Advent season, and all through the year to come, by the tender mercies of God, may the sunrise visit you from on high to give light to those who sit in darkness and in the shadow of death, to guide your feet into the way of peace. In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit, amen.