Silent hope

  15th December 2023

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Once when Zechariah was serving as priest before God, he was chosen to go into the temple of the Lord and burn incense… Then an angel of the Lord appeared to him. 

When Zechariah saw him, he was startled and was gripped with fear. 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. 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 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.”

Zechariah asked the angel, “How can I be sure of this? I am an old man and my wife is well on in years.”

The angel said to him, “I am Gabriel. I stand in the presence of God, and I have been sent to speak to you and to tell you this good news. And now you will be silent and not able to speak until the day this happens, because you did not believe my words, which will come true at their appointed time.”

When his time of service was completed, he returned home. After this his wife Elizabeth became pregnant and for five months remained in seclusion. “The Lord has done this for me,” she said. “In these days he has shown his favour and taken away my disgrace among the people.”

Luke 1

We’re making plans for the Crib Service at church. Big figures will be brought up – Mary, Joseph, shepherds, and angels, the baby. But some of the characters in the story don’t get a part.

Our reading is about one of those characters – Zechariah. He’s actually the first person in the story mentioned by Luke in his gospel. He will be the father of John the Baptist. As we heard, Zechariah was a priest, and one day, in the temple, he had a vision of an angel who tells him that he and his wife Elizabeth are going to have a child.

Zechariah can’t believe it. They are both ‘well on in years’. They think that their chance has gone. He asks the angel – Gabriel – for proof, and in response his power of speech is taken away until this will happen.

That might seem a hard thing for him, but I’ve been wondering if actually it was a gift. Having to be there, silently, watching this miracle happen – watching his wife Elizabeth – seeing the visit of Mary – preparing for this new beginning. Here’s a poem which reflects on this:

Luke tells us that when John received again the gift of speech, all that he had been holding and pondering is born in an amazing song of praise. It ends with this promise:

You, child, will be called the prophet of the Most High,
    for you will go before the Lord to prepare his way,
to give his people knowledge of salvation
    by the forgiveness of their sins.
In the tender mercy of our God,
    the dawn from on high will break upon us,
to shine upon those who sit in darkness and in the shadow of death,
   and to guide our feet into the way of peace.

It’s a great vision of all that God will do through Jesus, the one that John will go before.

Maybe there is an invitation here for us. It might be good for us to learn to be quieter, if we are going to really see what God is doing – if we are to catch the vision of all that he longs to bring to the world, and the ways in which this is already growing in small secret ways.

That was my aim at the beginning of Advent – but I’m not very good at it. Maybe we need to ask God to help us to close our mouths, and to teach us to look in wonder.

Spend a few moments sitting quietly and breathing slowly, and being open to the presence of God in this moment.

God of wonder and joy, teach us to quieten our minds and our tongues, so that we can see all that you are doing and growing – in our lives and in the lives of those around us, and in us.

We pray for those who sit in darkness – those that we know…    Lord of love, you know our longings for them – may your light break upon them.

We pray for our world, and especially those parts overshadowed by conflict and suffering…. Peace-bringer, we pray that even when the road ahead seems impossible, you would somehow guide the feet of humanity into the way of peace.