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French painter and illustrator James Jacques Tissot (1836-1902) rendered his interpretation of the vision of Zechariah in Luke 1:8-20 on opaque watercolor over graphite on grey woven paper. The image is owned by the Brooklyn Museum and used from here.
+ + + In Nomine Jesu + + +
Please join me in prayer: May the words of my mouth and the meditations of our hearts be pleasing in your sight, O Lord, our Rock and our Redeemer. Amen.
Dear Brothers and Sisters in Christ,
Grace to you and peace from God our Father and from the Lord Jesus Christ.
This Advent is our fourth together as pastor and people. In our Midweek Advent Vespers the first two years, we reflected on the ancient “O Antiphons” with the hymn “O come, O come, Immanuel”, and last year we considered prophecies of the Savior’s birth fulfilled for us. This year the Lutheran Church—Missouri Synod suggested that midweek Advent services reflect on the events before Jesus’s birth, as narrated in St. Luke’s Divinely‑inspired Gospel account, and, despite some overlap with the appointed Sunday Readings in this year of our three-year series, we are going to largely follow the Synod’s suggestions with a few adaptations. Thus, this Advent season and into the Christmas season, we hear and reflect on the announcements and miraculous births of sons to two seemingly insignificant women. Tonight we heard the announcement of John the Baptizer’s birth, and we reflect on that under the theme “Believing words fulfilled in their time”.
Tonight’s Second Reading, from St. Luke’s Gospel account, tells, as it were, the “beginning” of the fulfillment of prophecy God made through the prophet Malachi, which we heard in tonight’s First Reading. Just before that First Reading, the people of the day were asking where the God of justice was (Malachi 2:17), and so, in the Reading, the Lord through Malachi told them that the Lord Whom they were seeking would come to His Temple unexpectedly, but not before the long‑promised extraordinary messenger, one like the prophet Elijah, came first, in order to prepare the Lord’s way (see Isaiah 40:3-5; Malachi 4:5-6).
In the Second Reading, the words of the angel Gabriel that stand at the center of the reading make clear that John the Baptizer is that long‑promised extraordinary messenger, the one who will go before the Lord in the Spirit and power of Elijah (see also Matthew 17:11-13; Mark 9:11-13). As with the prophet Daniel hundreds of years earlier (Daniel 9:21), Gabriel appeared to Zechariah at a time of sacrifice, when Zechariah was serving in what may have been a once‑in‑a‑lifetime (if ever) role at the Temple. Zechariah and his wife Elizabeth were both descended from priestly lines, but they themselves were childless. Zechariah had been praying for a son and yet did not have the faith to believe that God’s words spoken through His messenger about the birth of a son would be fulfilled in their time.
God’s Word spoken to us through His messengers makes all sorts of promises to us. How well do we believe that those promises also will be fulfilled in their time? When we question the fulfillment of those promises, are our questions more logistical (like Mary’s, which we will hear next week), or are they more unbelieving, like Zechariah’s (which we heard tonight)? To be sure, our sinful human nature does not want to and cannot on its own believe God’s promises to us. Perhaps we are like the people of Malachi’s day, asking where the God of justice is or regarding as good in the sight of the Lord what in His sight actually is evil (Malachi 2:17). As I yesterday prepared the first test for the youth catechumens, I included on the test the various things forbidden and commanded by the Ten Commandments, and I was reminded how much I sin by doing things forbidden and by failing to do things commanded. I am sure that when you reflect on the Ten Commandments, you come to the same conclusion.
As the Lord makes clear through Malachi, He is coming in judgment—not only to be a swift witness against the sorcerers, against the adulterers, against those who swear falsely, against those who oppress the hired worker in his or her wages or who oppress the widow and the orphan, against those who thrust aside the sojourner, and against those who do not fear God, but also against all those who sin in any other way, against all the godless, as we are by nature. As many of those sins named through Malachi were punishable with death, so we all deserve death now and for eternity on account of our sin.
By nature none of us can endure the day of the Lord’s coming or stand when He appears, unless we return to Him, that is, unless we repent. When we return in sorrow over our sin, trust God to forgive our sin for Jesus’s sake, and want to do better, then God truly forgives our sin and our sinful natures. Thus, John the Baptizer and Jesus after him preached repentance and the forgiveness of sins: God’s law that condemns sin and God’s good news of the Gospel that in Jesus Christ our sins are forgiven. So, through John the Baptizer, the Holy Spirit turned then and turns now many to the Lord their God, making ready for the Lord a people prepared.
The Lord’s words to Zechariah through Gabriel were fulfilled in their time, and, as we will hear more about in two weeks, the sign given to Zechariah, his inability to speak, came to an end. More importantly, the Lord’s words to us and all people through Malachi were fulfilled in their time, as we will hear more about in the Christmas season. After Malachi’s prophecy and some 400 years of prophetic silence, the Lord unexpectedly came to His Temple in the flesh of Mary’s infant, Who grew up to be the Man Jesus. Jesus was and is the messenger of the covenant in Whom all who believe delight. As we fear God, as we believe in Him, in His death on the cross and resurrection from the grave for us and for our salvation, we are delivered from our sins. As we heard in the psalm tonight, God’s mercy and love for us lead to our redemption and forgiveness. Or, as in Malachi’s prophecy, because the Lord does not change in the ways of His mercy and love, we are not consumed by His wrath.
To be sure, God through His Son does purify and refine us so that, as if new children of Levi, we bring offerings in righteousness to the Lord. Through God’s Word and Sacraments, preached and administered by His chosen messengers, God brings us to faith and gives us the forgiveness of sins that Jesus won for us on the cross. Jesus’s death and resurrection are our exodus from our slavery to sin (Luke 9:31), and, as with the people of Israel’s exodus from slavery in Egypt, we cross through the waters of Holy Baptism and feast on the new Passover Lamb, Who gives us His body and blood in, with, and under bread and wine. In these ways, He Who was dead and is alive makes us to be living sacrifices, presenting our bodies as our spiritual worship, in which we are not conformed to the world but transformed by the renewal of our minds (Romans 12:1-2). We are a holy priesthood offering spiritual sacrifices acceptable to God through Jesus Christ, proclaiming the excellencies of Him Who called us out of darkness into His marvelous light (1 Peter 2:5, 9). Like Zechariah and Elizabeth before us, we are righteous before God by grace through faith; we walk blamelessly in all the commandments and statutes of the Lord, as we are forgiven for our failures to do so, even, in some cases, our failures, like Zechariah’s, to believe God’s words to us will be fulfilled in their time.
Gabriel told Zechariah and that he would have joy and gladness and that many would rejoice at John’s birth, as they did, indeed. One of my joys in preaching these Midweek Advent Vespers and every Sunday is the opportunity for the Holy Spirit to lead me to new insights into what are often very familiar passages of Holy Scripture. In the case of tonight’s Second Reading, a new insight for me was that the people waiting for Zechariah may well have expected that, when Zechariah came out of the Temple, he would give them the Aaronic benediction, which I give to you at the close of every Divine Service (from Numbers 6:24-26). One particular commentator suggests that, in a sense, this benediction withheld at the beginning of St. Luke’s Gospel account is given at its end, when Jesus Himself blesses His disciples, before He ascended into heaven and they returned to Jerusalem with great joy and were continually in the Temple praising God (Luke 24:50-53; Just, ad loc Lk 1:5-25, 59, citing R. Brown, The Birth of the Messiah, 280-281). We who are sinful by nature ourselves are blessed as we repent and believe and are forgiven in Jesus Christ. Next week we will hear His birth announcement and how the Virgin Mary, perhaps the first person other than Zechariah to break Elizabeth’s solitude and to know of her pregnancy with John (which was a sign of the certainty of God’s promises to her)—how, in believing His words to her would be fulfilled in their time, she was blessed (Luke 1:36, 45), blessed as we are in believing all His words to us, either at our deaths or at His final coming, finally and completely will be fulfilled in their time.
Amen.
The peace of God, which passes all understanding, keep your hearts and minds in Christ Jesus. Amen.
+ + + Soli Deo Gloria + + +