Sunday, June 24, 2018

God forms us through weakness for powerful speech – Luke 1 Extracts

Birth of St. John the Baptist; St. Casimir's.


[Vigil and Mass of Day present two different extracts from the story of Zechariah. At each Mass I preached through the whole story, narrating it afresh for the portions we hadn’t heard. So, what was preached differed more substantially than usual than what is reproduced below. In the introduction to the Mass, I explained that we’re celebrating the birth of JBap today, why this feast is always 6 months before Christmas (/3 months after the Annunciation), why it is celebrated even on a Sunday.]

What we just heard from Luke’s gospel was really just an extract from what Luke tells us about how the birth of John the Baptist came about, and to get a sense of what God might be saying to us through this, we really need the whole story.


Zechariah was a priest and he and his wife were a very devout couple, but they’d never been able to have children. One day, Zechariah is ministering in the holiest part of temple, offering incense. In the psalms, we read that our prayers rise up to God like incense. The psalms assume that the people singing will know well the experience of burning incense, of seeing the smoke rise, of smelling the smoke rise, maybe of feeling the heat, and the psalms use that physical experience to tell us that our prayers work just like that. Incense gets burned up, but in its being burned up, it’s not destroyed, but transformed into something that rises up to heaven, and is received with delight by God and all the angels. That’s how we’re meant to understand prayer. I don’t know if you’ve had the experience of praying for something so desperately that you felt like the desire was spending you, consuming you, burning you up; the prayer that comes from that kind of burning desire that’s sacrificial rises up, and is received with delight by God and all the angels.


And then one of those angels comes to Zechariah in the Temple. He’s scared, as you might expect. When you hear angels, don’t think of the pretty winged creatures with harps; these are heavenly creatures who burn with the fire of God’s love, they’re not safe, they’re kind of scary. And the angel has heard Zechariah’s prayer, the deepest longing of his heart, for a child. And the angel proclaims that he and Elizabeth will have a son. But, like all gifts of God, this gift is not given just for Zechariah and Elizabeth’s sake alone. No, this boy is given for the sake of the whole people of Israel, really the whole world. The angel tells Zechariah to name him John, which means gift of God or “God is gracious,” and the angel says that John will do something to bring people back from error and sin to righteousness. What we know, knowing more about John the Baptist’s ministry, is that John will proclaim that the kingdom of God is at hand, that God is near, and call people to a baptism of repentance, of turning their lives around, and that Jesus will hear that call and make it his own. It’s by proclaiming the nearness of God, the graciousness of God, that God is giving, that John will summon people to turn their lives around, to return to righteousness, to justice.

Zechariah, pretty naturally, struggles to believe this, “How can this be?” This isn’t a sinful question. Moses asked a similar question when God commissioned him. Mary will ask a similar question when the angel comes to her before she gives her “yes” that changed the world. But in response to this question, the angel declares that Zechariah will become mute, unable to speak, until “these things occur.” We should notice first that it’s can’t have been clear to Zechariah how long he’d be mute for. Until Elizabeth conceived maybe? That would be when these things started. Until everyone make perfectly righteous? That would be the end? It turns out neither of these are what happens. Zechariah remains mute until the baby is named John. Elizabeth proposes this name, but all their kin refuse to listen to her. When Zechariah gets his voice back is when he writes on a tablet, “his name is to be John,” backing up his wife in her mission to obey God against those who would try to dissuade her, that’s when he gets his voice back. Maybe that’s when he, who was already devout, discovers a new, deeper righteousness.

I wonder what you or I might say if we’d just spent nine months and eight days unable to speak. Zechariah sings a song of praise to God: “Blessed be the Lord, the God of Israel, for he has come to his people and set them free.” Zechariah proclaims that closeness of God that his son will go on to proclaim. Zechariah proclaims that God comes close in order to set his people free. Could Zechariah have ever proclaimed that if he hadn’t known the imprisonment, the social shame, of being mute for so long? Zechariah’s muteness was no punishment, for his question was no sin. No, Zechariah’s muteness was his formation, was how God prepared him for powerful prophetic speech, and how he prepared him to raise a son whose speech would be more powerful still.

Powerful prophetic speech always comes from people who have known weakness, because we can’t feel God’s liberating hand when we’re doing well enough in life that we can kid ourselves that we don’t need God’s hand. Whoever we are, that challenges us. If we have known pain, shame, weakness, God has given us in that something to say that we need to dare say. If we haven’t, we first need to listen to those who have, especially those our world makes mute by refusing to hear their voices (and it’s not like you can just divide humanity into two classes here; all of us have something to say, and stand in need of listening too). And we also need to ask ourselves, am I too comfortable for God to form me for powerful prophetic speech?

Because the message matters: our God has come close, and he’s acting to set us free from all that keeps us from righteousness.

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