Luke 1:5-25
December 1
David A. Davis
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The day before Thanksgiving as I pulled out of our driveway, a van was parked at the curb in front of our next-door neighbor’s house. The logo on the side of the van said “bright nights”. The neighbors moved in this summer and have been having quite a bit of work so I didn’t think much about it. When I came back to our house a few hours later, I realized that the “Bright Nights” contractor was putting up our neighbor’s holiday lights. It wasn’t like the tree company putting lights on the tree in Palmer Square. The company wasn’t stringing lights along high eaves of the house like families in the neighborhood celebrating Diwali. These were tiny sparkling lights in the bushes. I don’t think they even needed a ladder.
With the lights on our neighbors’ bushes now lit, Cathy and I had a conversation remembering how our families did or did not decorate the outside of childhood homes. When I was young, the Christmas tree wasn’t even in the house before I went to bed on Christmas Eve. I have distinct memories of my father’s routines the weeks before. I can see him placing spotlights to shine up into the evergreen trees that lined the driveway. I can remember him hanging out an open window to put the string of lights around every front window. The kind of string with what seems like big bulbs now that broke very easily and then you had trouble getting the remains out of the socket. I remember very well when the mantle of preparation passed to me. My brother was off to college and it was now my turn to help. My father would hold my legs as I stretched out the second-floor window with a hammer nailing brad after brad into the caulk of the window to hold that string of lights. While I can remember the house all decorated on the outside, the memories of the preparation are much more vivid. I am guessing that for many of us, the preparations for the Thanksgiving meal likely hold more memories than the meal itself this week. Sometimes the preparation is the best part. When we were preparing the nursery for Hannah, our firstborn, I put the crib together in the upstairs hallway in the manse we lived in at the time. I had to put that crib together twice after we discovered it would not fit through the doorway to the bedroom. A little bit more focus on the preparation would have been helpful.
The story of the angel Gabriel, Zechariah, Elizabeth, and baby John shines a light on preparing the way of the Lord. Yes, John the Baptist is pretty much the definition of “preparing the way of the Lord.” But even here in Gabriel’s annunciation to Zechariah, the focus is on preparation. As the angel describes the gift and purpose of Zechariah’s son to him, Gabriel puts it this way: “to make ready a people prepared for the Lord.”
The group of priests Zechariah was assigned to were on duty that day. That is like his communion server team, his usher team. Zechariah’s name was picked out of a hat and he was the one to go into the sanctuary and light the incense at the appointed time. It was in there at the altar of incense where none but the priests could go that the angel appeared. While the angel and Zechariah chatted a bit at the altar, the people outside were wondering what was taking so long. Apparently, the lighting of the incense was a rather ordinary everyday religious chore that shouldn’t take all that long. People “wondered at his delay in the sanctuary”. When Zechariah came out, they figured out from his gestures, his excitement, and the look of wonder on his face, that he had seen a vision there in the sanctuary. But Zechariah was unable to tell what had happened, what he was told, who he was with.
While it must have been notable to the people gathered outside of the sanctuary that Zechariah came out unable to speak, it also seemed like a rather ordinary day around the sanctuary. As one member of the staff observed in our discussion of the passage on Tuesday morning, the bible records that Zechariah didn’t go home until the “time of service was ended.” The angel announced that Elizabeth was going to have a baby and Zechariah stayed to finish his shift! He didn’t rush home to share the news, he finished the work day. According to Luke, Zechariah went from terrified and overwhelmed with fear to learning Elizabeth was going to have a child to losing his ability to speak to just hanging around to clock out.
Readers of the gospel are drawn to all the religiosity and piety described in the story: Zechariah and Elizabeth were “righteous before God” and “living blamelessly.” That theme of barrenness and fertility that never seems to leave the scriptures page points to a familiar theological theme. There is, of course, the angel talk. And Gabriel says that John “will be great in the sight of the Lord….even before his birth he will be filled with the Holy Spirit.” Before his birth. That must be how he knew in utero that Mary was carrying the Messiah. That time when John leapt into Elizabeth’s womb. He was filled with the Holy Spirit. Yes, the passage has all the trappings of religion and the miraculous that one would expect when one of the angels shows up.
Yet, it also seems like making ready “a people prepared for the Lord” started on an ordinary day at the office for Zechariah and the people of God. For Matthew, the preparation begins with the long list of genealogies. Mark begins with John the Baptist proclaiming in the wilderness. You remember that John’s gospel starts “In the beginning”. Here in Luke, the preparation begins with a local priest going about his day in the neighborhood parish down the street. As to the nature of the preparation, Gabriel foretells? “With the spirit and power of Elijah, John will go before the Lord, to turn the hearts of parents to their children, and the disobedient to the wisdom of the righteous” Or in the words of Eugene Peterson’s paraphrase “John will herald God’s arrival in the style and strength of Elijah, soften the hearts of parents to children, and kindle devout understanding among hardened skeptics—he’ll get the people ready for God.”
Getting ready for God by proclaiming the Word, tending to the most important relationships, and nurturing within God’s people a craving for the wisdom of God in their lives. Announcing the coming reign of God, filling tender hearts with love, and sparking a yearning for the righteousness of God. Pointing to the coming of the Christ Child with energy and enthusiasm and excitement, fueling a contagious spirit of kindness and mercy, and looking to the presence of God to shed the light of meaning in our lives, a meaning that looks to God’s wisdom, God’s justice, and God’s way. Getting people ready for God in the everyday routine of life.
This may not be a surprise to you, but people often have an inflated view of church work. They overestimated the daily piety of members of the clergy or thought that working at a church was like one long extension of a youth retreat. I don’t want to shatter any of your illusions, but for those of us who work here at Nassau Presbyterian Church, our lives are just like yours. Our work lives are like your work lives. Some days are just long and boring. Some weeks are more of a grind than others. As Frank, who works at McCaffrey’s said to me in the parking lot Friday after I greeted him and asked how he was doing, “Well, you know how it is, same job, different day.” It can be pretty everyday and ordinary around here. And here we all are amid that daily, weekly, mundane routine of life. Here we are preparing for the coming of Christ in our lives. Together trumpeting the gospel of Jesus with a Spirit-fed, Spirit-let joy. Together, sharing love in our relationships at home, here, out there. And together, discerning God’s call to discipleship. God’s call to us to live these ordinary days guided by God’s wisdom, God’s justice, God’s righteousness. And yes, amid our collective effort to get ourselves and others ready for God, sometimes an angel shows up and takes your breath away.
Once or twice a year, in the Cook Davis kitchen, we pull out Nana Lease’s hand grinder. We attach it to the counter. Take the cranberries, the orange slices, and some other fruit out of the fridge. We spread newspaper on the floor because grinding up the cranberry dressing always makes a mess. As their mother did before them, our young granddaughters stood on a stool at the kitchen counter, turned the crank, and giggled at the mess being made. Four generations or more with that grinder and cranberry sauce. Here’s another secret, nobody at the Cook-Davis table actually likes the cranberry dressing. But it never was about the sauce, was it?
As you come to the Table today, look around the room, and ponder all the ordinary, everyday ways that we prepare ourselves and the world for the coming of Jesus. Getting ready for God by proclaiming the Word, tending to the most important relationships, and nurturing within God’s people a craving for the wisdom of God in their lives. From one generation to the next generation and the generation after that. It’s what it means to be the church of Jesus Christ bearing witness to his light amid our preparation.
Even so, come Lord Jesus.