First Sunday in Advent
Luke 1:5-25
"Forgotten Prayers"
Today is a day of beginnings. It is the beginning of the Christian year. It is the beginning of the season known as Advent, the four Sundays prior to Christmas. And, it is a beginning for St. Athanasius Anglican Church, because this is the first time we, as a parish, have celebrated a Church New Year’s day and the First Sunday in Advent together. It is, therefore, providential that the gospel lesson for today is about a beginning – the beginning of John the Baptist, when his imminent conception is announced to John’s father, a priest named Zacharias.
John the Baptist figures prominently in many of the gospel lessons assigned in the lectionaries for the Advent season. This is no surprise, for John was preparing the people to receive their Messiah. So, when we are preparing ourselves to celebrate the first advent of Jesus into the world, it is no surprise that we find ourselves reading about the prophet who prepared the way of the Lord.
But today, I am going to focus our attention on the primary character of the gospel lesson, and that person is not John the Baptist but his father, Zacarias. The episode Luke records here is chock full of beginnings, and it is ironic that poor Zacarias probably thought it was full of endings.
Zacharias was only one of about 18,000 priests who were organized into 24 courses or divisions, to perform priestly duties at the Temple in Jerusalem. When it was the time for a priestly division to perform certain duties, there were still too many priests for the work that was to be done. So, for certain tasks, such as the one Luke mentions – burning incense before the veil covering the Holy of Holies – the priest who was to perform this task was chosen by lot. Luke tells us that in the days of Herod, the lot fell upon Zacharias to burn incense in the Temple.
Now this was a singular honor. With the number priests available, it was possible a priest might never be chosen, and even when he was chosen, it was a once-in-a-lifetime service of ministry. We don’t know how old Zacharias was when he was chosen, but it is likely he was well into his sixties or even older. No doubt, Zacharias had been waiting and hoping for this honor for a very long time. And, when it finally came to him, I wonder if he didn’t think to himself that now, finally, one of his fondest hopes and dreams had been fulfilled.
But, when Zacharias finally came into the Temple and approached the altar of incense, he got a shock. Luke says an angel of the Lord “appeared,” and so I’m going to guess that the appearance was sudden and completely unexpected.
We know what happened next – the angel announces that Zacharias and Elizabeth will have a son. The angel tells Zacharias he will name the son John. The Angel goes further to identify John with the person prophesied in the Old Testament lesson from Malachi we hear read a while ago. Gabriel quotes a phrase from the last verse of the Old Testament to be committed to writing – that Elijah the Prophet will come and turn the hearts of the fathers to the children. And he says this verse will be true concerning John.
I suppose we have may have heard this story many times. But, something jumped out at me this year as I was reading it, something I’d never noticed before. The very first sentence which Gabriel speaks is amazing! He says – “Do not be afraid, Zacharias, for your prayer is heard; and your wife Elizabeth will bear you a son.”
When do you think Zacharias and Elizabeth had been praying for a son? Do you think it was recently? No, more likely it was a long, long, long time ago. It would have been normal for them to have married in their late teens or early 20s at the latest. And, after a year or so, I think they must have begun to fret because Elizabeth had not conceived. More years passed, and I’m sure their prayers became earnest and pleading – that the Lord would be merciful to them and grant them a son. A son would have provided them a kind of security in their old age. But, you know, I wouldn’t be surprised if they got around to praying for a daughter too, for a daughter would have been a joy and a comfort and a help for them far more so than no child at all.
But, eventually, the day came when they no longer prayed for a child, son or daughter. As the years rolled by, as Elizabeth passed through menopause – well, these things are not rocket science. Both Zacharias and Elizabeth knew that the time of child-bearing were over.
So now here are Zacharias and Elizabeth, well advanced in years – which is a quaint way for saying they are Really Old – and Gabriel comes along and says, “Your prayer is answered.”
And Gabriel says a whole lot more than that. Do you realize that Gabriel’s words are the first message from God to Israel since those last words we heard read from the Prophet Malachi? After Malachi, there were no more prophets in Israel until John the Baptist. And there was no more word from the Lord during those centuries, until Gabriel appears here in the Temple to Zacharias.
Luke says that a crowd of people were out in the courtyard of the Temple praying while he was offering incense. Of course they were praying for a great many things, but surely among them were many prayers for God to fulfill his promise of sending the Messiah to save Israel out of all its troubles. Here, then, is the Angel Gabriel, telling Zacharias that all those promises were beginning to be fulfilled.
But, what does Zacharias think? Evidently, all the things Gabriel says fall by the wayside, because Zacharias stumbles on the fact that he is now very old, and Elizabeth too is very old. He has given up, and when the good news comes, he’s unable to receive it with joy. Having prayed for so long without seeing an answer, he is unprepared when the answer comes.
Advent is a season of preparation, and on this first Sunday in Advent, our first together as an Anglican parish, I ask that you consider Zacharias’s lack of preparation as something to avoid in our own spiritual life, particularly as it touches some of those old, old prayers that you have prayed, those fervent prayers which have, thus far, gone unanswered.
From Zacharias, we learn this:
Do not suppose that an unanswered prayer is one which will never be answered.
Do not suppose that a prayer which looks impossible for God to answer is actually impossible.
You know of such prayers peculiar to your own spiritual journey. But for now I will point to some dreams and prayers which we are praying about here as a parish –dreams and prayers for growth, for a spiritual revival in Waxahachie, for our success in planting the seeds of a renaissance of the English Reformation in our country in the next generation. Sitting here in Waxahachie, Texas of all places, does it look likely that these sorts of dreams and prayers can ever be realized?
North Texas, or Ellis County, does not have any special affinity for Anglican spirituality. We all know that the first parish to occupy this sanctuary took 115 years to grow large enough to move out of it. And, at one time in its history, its numbers were less than a dozen. How many prayers for growth do you suppose were offered up from the pews you are now sitting in? And how long did it take for the first of those prayers to be answered?
Let me ask you this – if you knew that prayers for the growth of this parish would not be answered in your lifetime, would you still pray those prayers? I certainly hope you would. I know I was encouraged when my daughter Alexa told me a day or so ago that she has been praying all summer for the next priest who would follow me here at St. Athanasius.
We are usually like Zacharias in this respect – we naturally think of our prayers, and God’s answers to them, in terms of our own lifetimes. But what Zacharias did not consider – what we too do not consider – is that the things we pray for may be all wrapped up with movements in history that stretch centuries into the past and centuries into the future. Zacharias had been praying for a son, thinking only in terms of his own fatherly hopes, thinking only in terms of his own wife’s honor (for it was a disgrace for a woman to be barren). It never entered his mind that the son he was praying for would turn out to fulfill centuries old prophecies, or that his son’s ministry would stretch for thousands of years into the future. I’m quite confident he never considered that 2000 years later, a group of Christians in Waxahachie Texas would be reading about his encounter with the Angel Gabriel.
Of course, prayers that seem impossible to be answered don’t always take centuries to come to pass.
When I was scurrying around getting ready for my ordination to the diaconate just nine days ago, I found the following message in my email inbox:
“Dear Husband,
“Working on your alb, I had occasion to remember my long interest in the tabernacle and my several efforts at reproducing from fabric, wood, and metal copies of various elements of the Lord’s Old Testament service. Now I find myself working on real priestly garments for an actual deacon, soon to be priest, in a beautiful house of God.
“I can remember about ten years ago walking in the park imagining how wonderful it would be if you could return to the pastorate in a high church setting with orthodox doctrine at our beautiful Chapel. Of course it seemed like an impossible dream. But it has come to pass as we have walked the pilgrim path together. … That pilgrim road before us is not as long as it once was, but I pray that there will be years ahead and that they will be the most joyful and productive of our lives. “
Well, I join her in those prayers, and I hope you do too.
But, as we embark on this first Advent season together, I ask that you take to heart the understandable lack of preparation by Zacharias that we find in today’s Gospel lesson. I ask that you purpose in your own heart to repent you of any similar lack of faith or lack of preparation as this evil age rushes forward to Christ’s second Advent. I entreat you to perseverance in your prayers for the growth of this parish and for its contribution to the work of the gospel in our day and in this part of the world.
And, finally, I ask that in the coming days of preparation, you revisit some of those old prayers you have left off praying, because you no longer believe that they can come to pass. I ask that you persevere in those prayers which you are tempted to abandon, thinking that God will never say “yes.” Zacharias also learned that the God in whom he trusted 9”is not slow in keeping his promise, as some understand slowness. [but] He is patient with us, not wanting anyone to perish, but everyone to come to repentance.” So, repent, for the Kingdom of God is at hand!
God grant that we may pray always and not grow faint, trusting in the goodness and wisdom of our heavenly Father, to the end that all our hopes and dreams and prayers, fastened on Him and His grace, may find their fulfillment in the day of Christ.
In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.
