Sermon: The hope of a crying child (Luke 1:5-25)
by Pr. Paul Drees 11/31/2024
The central message of today’s gospel is this: trust in God. Zechariah is serving as a high priest, one of the most prestigious positions in all of Israel, and he’s randomly chosen to enter the sanctuary of the Lord to offer incense, a huge honor. So he prepares his incense, purifies himself, and enters the sanctuary of the Lord, a place where very few people have ever been. And in that space, he encounters the angel Gabriel, who has good news! ‘Zechariah! You’re going to have a baby boy.’ This is truly wonderful news. In many ancient cultures, Israel included, not having an heir was considered a sign of shame. It was a sign that you had done something wrong to the deity, and that deity was withholding blessing from you. So, to have a baby boy would prove to his community that indeed, Zechariah and Elizabeth were indeed beloved by God. This is big news that Gabriel is delivered.
But, Zechariah is doubtful. 'How can I know that this would happen? I am an old man, and my wife is getting on in years’ he responds. Just a side note, if you ever encounter an angel in the sanctuary, just trust the angel. Trust in God, even if it seems unlikely. Thankfully, our God is not one of wrath, but of humor. So Gabriel gives Zechariah this news, and then makes Zechariah mute, because Zechariah did not trust in the angel.
Now I sympathize with Zechariah. There’s a lot of terrible things going on in the world, and I don’t always see how God can possibly work through them. Regardless of how you feel about the politics of climate change, things are getting weird. It felt like things were a lot more stable when I was a kid, so I looked into some data from NOAA to see if I was just nostalgic. Turns out I was not, things have gotten much weirder as of late. Since 1980 we’ve had sixty two climate disaster events, each costing over 1 billion dollars. Half (32) of those have happened in the last 10 years. If you were to take all the data and average it, you would expect 1.3 events per year. If you were to take the data over the last 4 years, we would expect 4.2 events per year. It’s like this all over the world, things are getting real weird.
I went to a presentation by someone from the Minnesota Department of Natural Resources, and they said that the Plant Hardiness zones are shifting up. Pretty soon, the natural range of many trees is going to shift, and those cold hearty trees are going to die off. The presenter said she advised government officials in the lower half of Minnesota to stop planting Birch trees, as they won’t survive the incoming shift. That was profoundly depressing.
I won’t bore you with facts and figures about this all, there are just a lot of reasons to look at God’s message of hope, and say ‘I don’t know about that.’
And yet, John was born. Gabriel came to Zechariah, and told him of this good news, Zechariah doubted, and despite that, Elizabeth and Zechariah got a son. I can’t help but connect this idea to my life over the last few days.
Anna and I traveled to Southern Minnesota on Tuesday to go to the funeral of her grandfather, Harold Skow. He was 86, but his decline was pretty rapid, so his passing took us by surprise. In the midst of all this grief, and those reminders of his death, at the visitation and the funeral, there was this baby. My niece, who is six months old, seemed totally unconcerned by our grief. All she knew was that she wanted to eat, and sleep, and she needed to be within seeing distance of her mom. So this led to many memorable moments, where the preacher was talking about what a great farmer Harold was, and the baby would start crying. Or where we were viewing Harold in his coffin, and the baby would start crying. Or when we were gathering for the first thanksgiving meal without Harold, and the baby would start crying. All those moments were reminders for us, that despite our grief, there is life. God is making a way. Despite the darkness that was in our hearts, new life is all around us. In the midst of a time of death, life.
I don’t know how this would work, but I do think there’s a liturgical role for a crying baby at a funeral. A reminder that God is not done with us, that despite our despair, despite the pain we are feeling, new life is coming into the world. Even though the large trees may fall, their saplings still are growing.
Recently I learned about one of many solutions to the climate crisis. There’s a company called Clime Works that is taking carbon dioxide out of the air, and stuffing it back into the ground. It’s a pretty simple concept, the more carbon dioxide we have in the air, the warmer things get, the more arctic ice melts, and so on. So if we can get rid of that carbon dioxide, we can reduce the global warming effect that’s causing all this weirdness we’ve had to live with. It’s not a perfect solution, but it is a step in the right direction. It is a light in the darkness. One of the many ways God is trying to help us.
This gospel message is one of hope. That God will help his people, even if they don’t say the right words, or believe it’s even possible. We can lean into that hope, and will continue to do so throughout Advent. We tell this story of Jesus’ birth again and again so that we might be reminded of this, that God is faithful, and we can trust in God. That God will be there with us, despite our own foolishness. Amen, thanks be to God.