Before The Birth

The week in between Thanksgiving and Advent is always a bit of a weird week; not exactly time to start a Christmas series but also too late to continue whatever we did before Thanksgiving. The in between week, and as I have been thinking about this sort of in between I started thinking about what happens before Christmas. We know the Christmas story well, even if we haven’t been in church long we have most likely heard the story. It seeps into our cultural dialogue, in fact I was recently in New York and went to go see the Rockettes and in the middle of their Christmas dances, pop, in comes a nativity scene. We know the Christmas story, but the New Testament doesn’t start with the Christmas story. Today we are starting at the beginning of the Gospels, to see what we learn before the birth. Now the Gospels all start in different ways; Matthew 1 starts with a genealogy which, don’t worry, we wont be going through all the names. Mark 1 passes over the birth and we are welcomed to the gospel with an adult John the Baptist. John 1 starts with a deeply rich theological exploration of the omnipotence of God, which even for the nerdy is above and beyond. Today we are exploring Luke 1, the story before the birth, and from Luke 1 we are going to sit in God’s word with the hope of resetting our hearts and minds for the upcoming Christmas season. So here is what happens before the birth in Luke 1. It is a lengthy passage, but let us spend some time in God’s word together. Here is what Luke reveals to us in the introduction to his Gospel. Birth of John the Baptist Foretold 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. And they were both righteous before God, walking blamelessly in all the commandments and statutes of the Lord. But they had no child, because Elizabeth was barren, and both were advanced in years. Luke 1:5-7 Luke introduces us to the main characters of this introductory chapter. He places us in a timeline, the time of Herod. A priest and his wife who by any other circumstance would have just been another member of the tribe are the focus of the chapter. Luke includes their lineage, which is something the original hearers of the chapter would have understood to be important. Zecharia is a priest and is from the division of the Abijah tribe. Why is this included? Well in the Old Testament, in 1 Chronicles 22-25 we read about how David and the people of Israel were preparing for the temple and part of this preparation was to divide the labor and groups of people. David in chapter 23 reconstructs the role of the Levites and then in chapter 24 discusses the division of the descendants of Aaron, the 8th grouping or tribe being the group that Zechariah came from. Part of this division was a reconstruction of the labor that the Levites and priests did, so people hearing this and knowing Zechariah’s lineage would better understand who he was and why part of his work was in the temple. Now Elizabeth also gets a little lineage shoutout, she is a wife from the daughters of Aaron, which means that she was also a part of the priestly lineage. These two people aren’t just random members of some random tribe, they both carry in them lineages that richly connect them to the exodus, to the Israelites historical life. Not only do they come from important families but Luke tells us that Zechariah and Elizabeth are devoted to their community and to the communities religious practices. Luke says they are righteous before God and that they follow all the commands and walk blamelessly. They have the important heritage but they also have an active faith life. Yet despite all of this, despite being shining stars of religious dedication, they are childless. So Luke starts out with two characters both blessed and righteous but bearing the shame of not having a child. Luke continues the chapter and We are going to skim over the next few verses because the story may be a bit familiar to you and it’s a lot of verses so Ill summarize for you. So Zechariah, the old priest, is on duty. When David redesigned the roles of priests and levites he set up a sort of calendar system so that all the tribes of priests could serve in the holiest area of the temple, and that is where Luke leads us to. In Luke 1 Zechariah saunters into the temple with fear and reverence and as the prayers erupt around him he carries the sweet smelling incense into the temple. Past the drapery, past the guarded areas, he enters and comes face to face with an angel. As happens in a large number of Biblical texts the angel brings fear, we read that Zechariah was troubled and fear fell upon him. This isn’t the little cherub in your grandmothers paintings, this is an awe and fear invoking angel of the Lord. And what was already an exciting day in Zechariah’s vocational life became a miraculous day for the individual. We read that Zechariah enters and in the midst of the stillness and quietness, as fear and incense swirl in the holiest of places, the angel speaks. And the angel tells Zechariah that his prayers have been HEARD and that his wife will have a baby. Not only will he have a baby but that this baby will bring joy and gladness and a whole bunch of people will rejoice because of this child. Luke writes this about the baby, And you will have joy and gladness, and many will rejoice at his birth, for he will be great before the Lord. And he must not drink wine or strong drink, and he will be filled with the Holy Spirit, even from his mother’s womb. And he will turn many of the children of Israel to the Lord their God, and he will go before him in the spirit and power of Elijah, to turn the hearts of the fathers to the children, and the disobedient to the wisdom of the just, to make ready for the Lord a people prepared.” Luke 1:14-15 The power of this baby, who if you didn’t know is a guy we will meet later in the gospels whose name is John the Baptist! The thing that Zechariah and Elizabeth had been praying for was going to come to fruition and not only were they going to have a baby but this baby was going to be EPIC. Zechariah heard the news, and his mind wandered not to praise and excitement but rather to questions and then silence. Zechariah, perfumed by the incense and delayed by the encounter with the angel departed the temple with the promise of fatherhood. Because of his questions to the angel He was unable to speak and when his time of service ended he went home to his wife. And at home, while we don’t have the words, we can imagine that they somehow communicated and Elizabeth found that she would have a baby, even though she was old. Luke writes, After these days his wife Elizabeth conceived, and for five months she kept herself hidden, saying, “Thus the Lord has done for me in the days when he looked on me, to take away my reproach among people.” Luke 1:24-25 Elizabeth conceived a miracle, and for five months she kept herself hidden from the world around her. Scholars have differing opinions on why she hid. Some say she hid as a way to show an extension of Zechariah’s silence, some say she hid because she didn’t want to interact with the sort of gossip around town. We do not fully understand, fully know, why Elizabeth hid but even in the midst of her hiding she knew that the Lord had worked in her life in miraculous ways and that the child she hid from the world was a sign of the wonders that God could and can do. This is how Luke starts his gospel, a story of old priestly people being blessed with a baby boy. This boy would be John the Baptist who would prepare the way for Jesus’ ministry. This is the story before the birth. So often we start our Christmas season and advent reflection with a different miraculous birth; the birth of Jesus in and through Mary and Joseph is obviously important but before the birth of Jesus we find God working in and through Elizabeth and Zechariah. It is the perfect story to preempt the christmas story, and it hopefully reveals some truths about God and about us that will shape our Christmas and advent season. As I was reflecting on this passage I was struck by three truths that took place before the birth. The first of these is that before the Birth, here in Luke 1, God used someone who was considered second to bring about an incredible blessing. There is this saying in the history academic world that winners write history. And in some ways that is true, winners or those who get first, write history. Winners or rulers or whatever you want to call those at the top certainly seem to be the ones who are remembered, the ones who set the rules, the ones who make the headlines. As some of you know I am a bit of a formula one nerd; this season the main driver, the guy who has been winning it all, the one who already won the world championship even though the season isn’t over, is a driver named Max. Now Max has a teammate, Checo Perez, every team in formula one has two drivers. Max has won it all, his team has already won the team championships, which is why it was such a surprise when a few races ago Max wouldn’t let Checo ahead of him during a race. Max wasn’t winning, and Checo needed to be 5th and not 6th because of drivers points, but Max the winner, Max the first, said no. He literally said over the team radio, I am not going to do that, meaning he wasn’t going to let his teammate, his partner pass him. Even though it was better for the team, even though the race didn’t really matter to Max, he said no. Sometimes winners, the 1st, can be like that. Sometimes it seems those people in our life who always win, who are always first, just always come out on top, they are constantly number one. Do you have that person in your life? The one who always seems to win, the one who always seems to get the job promotion, who always has an easy time at life, well those people are our firsts. And sometimes it seems like those firsts get all of the blessings, all of the good things. They have the best looks, the most money, the Formula One World Title, they get everything. Firsts never fail, they just get more and more blessings. Well, God doesn’t work like that, in fact it often tends to be the opposite. God is a god of those we deem seconds. God gave a stuttering murder the plans for a great exodus, God led a tiny shepherd overlooked by his brothers to slay a gaint, God gave a widowed and pennliess woman who was by all means an outisder a field to glean from, God gave a bunch of shepherds who were outcasts and ostracised a first glimpse of a baby, and God gave a group of stragly men, some with impulse issues, a front row seat to what Jesus had done. God is a god of those who may not seem like winners, and God uses all of us even if we consider ourselves a second. Luke 1 reveals to us this truth, God is a god of the second. Elizabeth was in so many ways second. She was a woman, which we all know historically hasn’t always been the best if you want the first seat in the hierarchy. And aside from her gender Elizabeth came from a line of seconds. Her family and her lineage was a lineage of being second, Aaron was second to Moses and even though Aaron carried so much importance his name at times is left out of the story. Elizabeth came from a line of seconds and culturally her gender placed her in second and then you add on that she was also childless in a society where being childless carried shame and for some reflected a sinful person, even though Elizabeth was righteous. She carried this outsider chip, she by all means did everything right and yet she wasn’t by culture standards whole. Yet despite this, despite being second, God saw her and God heard her and God answered. God saw her as the beauty she was, a being created in His image, bearing the fullness of what it means to be a child of God. Before the birth, God chose a second to start the story of Christmas. Our family ministry staff does a weekly devotional and as we were reading through this passage all of us were struck by this truth of God, the truth that God chooses and works through the seconds. It touched each of us because, while we all carry different stories we have all felt like Elizabeth at one point. And maybe you are a friend or a family member are carrying this feeling of second or outsider into the holiday season. If that’s you, if you feel distant from God or ostracized from God. If you feel like you’re being ignored or simply existing in the background, remember that like Elizabeth you are seen and valued even if someone or something is calling you second. Before the birth, God worked through someone who was deemed second, and I believe that God is doing the same for some of you now. Working in the second status of our lives because our God is a God who sees you. Nothing like being told you are second during a sermon ;) Well God didn’t merely work through the second, but before the Birth, God responded and did some miracles. We know that God is a God of miracles. We see them throughout the Bible, and we see it in this story now. Elizabeth and Zechariah had longed for a baby, and they prayed year upon year, month upon month, day upon day for this child. I imagine they grew tired of praying and waiting, as we probably all would, they grew tired of the hope and expectation of getting pregnant, but even in the midst of this all they waited and prayed. Waiting isn’t easy, and most of us would say that waiting isn’t necessarily enjoyable. If you’ve ever spent time with a toddler, you know waiting isn’t fun. Or if you’ve ever waited for a ride at Disney, or more likely waited on a new opportunity you know that waiting can be stressful and challenging. Elizabeth and Zechariah waited, and waited, and waited, and then God responded. God always responds, not always in our timeline in fact very rarely in our timeline but God responds. God always responds, not always in the way or matter we would ask for, but God responds. And we see this so clearly in Luke 1. Before the miraculous birth of Jesus, God was working in other people’s lives and responding to prayers. And I hope that reminder, that truth, helps us today. I know because I know you all that some of you have been carrying big prayers around this year. I’ve been carrying some prayers too. And as we draw to the end of our calendar year it’s easy for us to reflect on those prayers and the truth that so many of them have seemed to go unanswered. And those unanswered prayers, or the things that have been prayed over but haven’t experienced movement on, can bring with them a weight or anchor that sits in our chest. Elizabeth’s story represents a small beacon of hope. That as we prepare to celebrate the birth of our Savior, the birth of Jesus, that we can know that God hears and is responding even if the momentary response seems to be silence. Luke starts his story before the birth with a reminder of God’s response, his gospel is this reflection of God’s action to the waiting. So if you find yourself waiting today, waiting for something small or something big, I hope you remember that God is responding. That God is moving and as we respond by praying for our longings and needs that before the birth there was movement and response. And God’s response in Luke 1 brought wholeness, completeness, peace. Which is our final reflection for Luke’s introduction to his gospel. Elizabeth longed and waited and prayed and then was made whole. Her response in Luke 1:25 she says, “The Lord has done this for me,” she said. “In these days he has shown his favor and taken away my disgrace among the people.” The response of God changed Elizabeth and Zechariah’s life like any baby would change someone’s life; but it wasn’t merely an addition to their family that changed them, God’s response restored Elizabeth to her community. The broken bits of who she was and the shame she carried, as Luke told us in the beginning verses of this story, were slowly put back together. It reminds me of this method of pottery repair I learned about from a professor a few years ago. My professor was an artist and practiced a method of japanese pottery repair called Kintsugi which I am sure I am messing up the pronunciation. This ancient method takes broken vessels and pots and pottery and sticks the broken pieces back with Gold. Clearly I am not an artist and have no idea what the technical names are, but imagine it. Our broken vessels, our torn shirts or crooked glasses, made whole by using the most precious of metals. The cracks in those pottery pieces are still evident, they still exist, but they are made beautiful because of the Gold that fills them. I am struck by the way that Luke starts the story before the birth with a story of kintsugi. Of God hearing and responding to the brokenness of Elizabeth, filling her life and answering her call with a baby. And this response restores her in her community and fills this void in her life. We know John the Baptist is an integral fulfillment of prophecy and a major part of the ministry of Jesus but before that, before the birth, John’s life started as a response that healed. Some of us sit here today like the broken jars of clay that have yet to be put back together; we sit here like Elizabeth who was first introduced as this woman with lineage and importance but a woman who wasn’t whole. And yet the story of Luke 1 is a story of how, before the birth of Jesus, God filled the cracks and restored Elizabeth. Because our God is a god of restoration, a God who hears the seconds and responds in his time, and this response brings new life, new hope, to broken vessels. Before the birth of Jesus we see God moving in mighty ways; we see promises and hope and purpose for Eliabeth and Zechariah. We tend to start our Christmas celebration with stories of marry and joseph and shepherds, all of which are importance, but Luke 1 reminds us that the story of Jesus starts with his relatives; it starts with a story of two old people who God heard, God responded to, and God made whole. I hope that as we prepare ourselves for this Christmas season that you find yourself in this story of Luke 1. That as we prepare for the birth of Jesus, that as we prepare for all the forced family fun and Christmas shopping, that the truths of God being a God who hears the second and responds and makes whole fills your life. During the in person service we are going to end our time with communion; it’s a little more difficult to do that online obviously but instead of communion I encourage you to spend some time with God during this last song. Reflect on the story of Luke 1 and on elizabeth and zechariah, and prepare yourself for the joyous Christmas season ahead. Lets spend some time with God. Blue Oaks Church Pleasanton, CA