We are beginning our Advent, our new church year and the time in which we anticipate Christ’s historical and contemporary and future breaking into the human experience, right at the beginning of the gospel according to Luke. It’s a different place to do it. Many times we start with big cosmic stories of apocalypse. Other times we do it walking with Mary and Joseph through their suddenly disrupted engagement. And then there are the years where we look to the ancient prophecies from Isaiah for the promise that God has come, is coming, and will come again.
But this year, we’re starting right at the beginning of Luke’s gospel with the story of Zechariah in the temple, learning that he will have a son at an unlikely time. His son, we find out when the story unfolds in later verses and chapters, is John, the one who baptizes Jesus, the one who prepares the way for the Lord, who preaches and prophesies in the desert, who where’s camel hair and eat locusts. This year, we start with Zechariah and Elizabeth, both them “righteous before God, living blamelessly according to all the commandments and regulations of the Lord.”
This year we also start with a time stamp, almost like a news report dateline, and I don’t think that’s a throw away line. Luke sets this story in time, “In the days of King Herod of Judea,” and that time matters. It matters to the characters in the story, and it matters to Luke’s first audience. I’d say it matters to us today, too.
There are two King Herod’s in the gospels – the one who is on the throne during the birth of Jesus, and the one who rules when he dies. They are father and son. They are kings who are Jewish, but they are not ruling an independent Jewish kingdom. Instead they are, essentially, puppet kings whose strings were pulled by the Roman Empire, which had been ruling in Israel for about 60 years by the time Jesus was born, about 150 years by the time Luke’s audience is hearing this gospel. Roman rule is often described as bringing the “pax Romana,” the peace of Rome – which when viewed from the perspective of the empire is a time a great prosperity, flourishing of culture, and stability. When it’s viewed from the perspective of those whom the empire has conquered, there is a different take.
The peace of Rome was a peace achieved through force, through tight control of the people it conquered, through disruption of traditions and disregard for any practices of their faith that sounded like disloyalty to the emperor, through their oppression. By the time Luke’s readers have his gospel in their hands, the Roman Empire had destroyed the Second Jewish Temple in Jerusalem, the very temple in which Zechariah was serving when Gabriel appeared with startling news. When they heard “In the days of King Herod of Judea…” they heard a reminder of just how long Israel had been under the rule yet another foreign king, how many generations had lived in fear of the Empire.
Fear is an important piece of the story here. In addition to the political fear, there is the jump scare of Zechariah who is approached by Gabriel in a room he knew to be empty. But also I hear what I interpret as a spiritual fear, a worry, some anxiety, for Zechariah and Elizabeth. They are, as the text says, “getting on in years.” They are not young. They believe they have been faithful. Luke tells us they were righteous before God, blameless, even, when it came to living according to God’s commandments. And yet, they had no children.
Childfree-by-choice was not really a thing in ancient Israel. Instead being without children was widely thought to be a sign of a couple’s, or more accurately, a woman’s disfavor in the eyes of God. I wonder about the fear that could produce for Zechariah, a priest, and Elizabeth, a descendent of Aaron. Their lineage says they know how to follow God. The witnesses who told stories about them even almost a hundred later remember their faithfulness. But here they are, experiencing what their understanding, their neighbors, their culture considered a punishment. Maybe I’m projecting, but that would make me fearful. Do I really know what I think I know? Is my faith true? Is my God true??
The threads of fear running through this text are part of what make it relatable today. Political fear, fear of violence, fear of the unknown, spiritual fear – these are very real, if not all of them in our own lives, some of them in each of our lives. This week I responded to a call from an Emergency Response Network to join a few other colleagues in accompanying a documented immigrant to a routine appointment because he lives in fear that his papers and processes don’t keep him safe. Routinely the news broadcasts contain stories of gun violence or road rage. We live in a country so divided that in the midst of a battle over budgets politicians can cut of vital food aid to those who hungry.
And sometimes, even when we feel like we’re doing every good and faithful thing, our bodies are weaker than they used to be. Our health isn’t reliable. Our future feels uncertain. Our congregation feels smaller; our efforts are spread thin. Our building is more expensive. It can feel like God isn’t answering, or like maybe God is just gone.
Fear is real. In some ways it is protective. It’s our body’s natural response to a threat that alerts us we need to do something to reduce our risk. It’s also revelatory. Fear shows us what matters to us. It shows us what we worry about and what we long for, and those are good things to know.
In addition to the child they may have given up expecting, but possibly still longed for, I think Zechariah and Elizabeth’s faithfulness to the life of the priesthood show they still long for God’s presence in their life. They long for a relationship with the Lord. They, not unlike the people of Luke’s day remembering the temple’s existence and centrality, long for a world where God’s presence is sure and palpable.
What do you long for? Do you long for health and wholeness? Do you long for food and safety? For yourself and all people? Do you long for certainty and faith? Do you long for those things for your children and your children’s children? For all of God’s children?
The days of Zechariah and Elizabeth, the days of Luke and the early followers of the risen Jesus, our own days, they have things we fear, and yet the angel Gabriel then and now, speaks into our fears, “Do not be afraid.” He doesn’t say don’t have fears. He doesn’t say things aren’t scary. He says, “Do not BE afraid.” Do not live from your fear. Do not let it hold you. Do not let it consume you. Do not let fear have the final word in your mind, in your heart, in your spirit.
Because God shows up. The witness we have from scripture, from the ancestors in faith, from our own stories and those of our neighbors. God shows up. The one who lamented at the Babylonian destruction of Jerusalem proclaimed it even during exile, “[Y]ou heard my plea…. You came near when I called on you.” God shows up. Zechariah experienced it – maybe every time he went in to offer incense, definitely when an angel appeared. God shows up. Elizabeth knew it when she became pregnant; the child in her womb was sure of it, jumping at the proximity of the unborn Jesus in his own mother’s body. God shows up.
We can cling to our own experiences. We can mine our days for the little and big ways we find signs of God’s presence. A boring, routine, bureaucracy day at the immigration office. God shows up. The call from a friend when news we got from the doctor was not what we hoped. God shows up.
What does Luke tell his audience God does EVEN (especially) in fearful times
- God shows up, Lamentations – You came near
Blesses Zechariah’s time in temple by showing up to meet him there; - God interrupts – maybe not when we expected it (baby may have been better news a few years before!), maybe not how
But God shows up with
tells him about the future, with new life;
V. 14-17 – son will have big influence for the whole people of God, bigger than Herod, preparing the way for the Lord
So like Zechariah, we too can show up – that’s what hope is, showing up, continuing to do the one next right thing – staying in relationship with God – longing for God – longing itself is hope because that desire for something new is born out of a belief that something new can happen. as we trust that God breaks in, in God’s good time, in God’s unique way
Shocking way to show up – it is even scary itself
Because sometimes God shows up in ways we never expect. Sometimes God’s answers to our fears sound scarier than the fear itself.
Sometimes
God’s been listening, God gives hope, and answers prayer even in ways we may never expecte
What gives you hope when you are feeling fearful?
Scripture:
Lamentations 3:55-57 & Luke 1:5-13
Preached at First Presbyterian Church of Allentown on November 30, 2025 by Pastor Stephanie Anthony