A few days ago I was preaching about Zechariah’s encounter with the angel Gabriel at the beginning of Luke’s gospel. The story is well-known: Zechariah goes up to the sanctuary of the Temple in Jerusalem to offer incense, and has a vision. He is told that his wife Elizabeth will give birth to a son (John the Baptist) who will prepare God’s people for the coming saviour. When Zechariah expresses his disbelief, he is struck dumb, and doesn’t speak another word until the prophecy is fulfilled.
As I was doing some background reading about this passage I came across a wonderful explanation of the significance of Zechariah’s inability to speak (in the New Jerome Biblical Commentary, p. 680). This is how I went on to express it:
At the end of his vision, Zechariah is struck dumb — he can’t speak a word. And the silence has a curious effect. It means that when, in his priestly role, he leaves the sanctuary and goes out to meet the people, he is unable to give the final blessing. As he steps outside to bring the service to a close — he remains speechless. So this service, this Temple liturgy, remains unfinished. Put another way: It remains open-ended, continuing.
It’s as if Zechariah steps out into the temple precincts, into the streets of Jerusalem, and into his own home still presiding at the liturgy. It’s as if the doors of the temple had been left open wide, and the worship of God spills out into the streets behind Zechariah – who continues his priestly work, unable to bring it to a close. It’s as if the whole people are holding their breath, a divine hiatus, wondering how they are meant to live this liturgy in these unfamiliar places. Wondering when the final blessing would come.
I like this idea of the sacred spilling out into the secular, and almost embracing it. It’s the deepest meaning of Christianity: that the whole world is redeemed; that God steps into his creation through the Incarnation, through the birth of Jesus; and that Jesus steps outside the boundaries of Judaism in order to draw all people into his embrace. It doesn’t mean that the distinction between the secular and the sacred is lost – as if there were no longer any possibility of identifying the divine or taking hold of what is holy. It means, instead, that God’s presence can be discovered in every situation, because the whole of creation has been gathered together in the humanity of Christ.
This interpretation of Zechariah’s silence fits with another scriptural idea: that Jesus was crucified ‘outside the city gate’ (Heb 13), outside the world of the sacred, so that he could offer up and sanctify the secular.
[If you want to read the whole sermon I have pasted it below as the first comment.]
Westminster Abbey Evensong, 6 Dec 2009
Homily by Fr Stephen Wang
Scripture Readings: Isaiah 40: 1-11. Luke 1: 1-25
A few months ago there was an exhibition at the British Museum about the ancient city of Babylon. It included a scale model of the city. In the centre stood the temple. And leading to that temple, from the edge of the city, was a magnificent highway — the via sacra, the Sacred Road. You could see from the model that this road was lined with a wall on either side; and fixed to these walls were figures of fantastical animals, coloured and glazed, as if they were walking beside you in procession. (They had four of these very figures in the exhibition.) So it was more like an alley, a passageway, than an open street – with these high walls channelling you towards the temple.
The leaders of the Jewish people were living in Babylon at this time, in captivity, and their own city of Jerusalem was in ruins. To them, the Sacred Road must have been an ambiguous symbol. I’m sure they admired its beauty. But it must have reminded them of their own lack of freedom – especially at festival times when the huge crowds would have been hemmed in like cattle, herded towards the temple.
This is the very moment when the Lord speaks to his people through the prophet Isaiah — as we heard in the first Scripture reading this afternoon. He says: Comfort, comfort my people. Speak tenderly to them. He says: I have not forgotten you. Don’t worry about the Sacred Road in Babylon. I will show you another road, another highway, which will take you home, and take you back to your own temple — to the temple of the Lord. A road that will cut straight through the wilderness.
But the difference is this: You have to build it for yourselves — through your faithfulness to me, and through your love for my Law. If you build this road, in your own hearts, and in your community, then I will give you back the Temple you long for, and reveal my glory to you there.
We ourselves are not in exile in Babylon, but there are many different ways that we can feel trapped and hemmed in. We can feel trapped by our circumstances: by our work, or our lack of work; by our relationships; by our responsibilities. We can feel trapped by our secular culture: the pressure it puts on us to go against our conscience, to give up on our Christian faith, to think that God is just a myth or a kind of madness. We can feel trapped by our own personal limitations: the mistakes we have made, the gifts we don’t seem to have, the quirks of personality we do have, the dreams we can’t let go of.
God says to us today: Comfort my people, comfort them. Console them. I haven’t abandoned you. There is another way – a way through the wilderness. I don’t promise to lift you out of this situation straight away, because it has a meaning you cannot yet grasp. But I do promise to help you discover a new freedom within it. Your task is to worry less, and to believe more. To trust that this new road is already being built. To be faithful in the present, however difficult, and to trust above all in my own faithfulness to you.
In the New Testament reading the priest Zechariah is standing in Jerusalem in the very Temple that God had promised to build for his people. He is in the inner sanctuary performing his priestly duties, when the angel of the Lord appears to him to say that his wife Elizabeth will bear a son, John the Baptist, who will lead people to the Lord. The angel says, in effect: God wants to lead his people not just to a place, but to a person. The real reason for building a road in the wilderness was not to lead you to the safety of Jerusalem, but to the safety of Jesus. This is the promise made to Zechariah: that John the Baptist will lead us to meet God face to face in his beloved Son. And this is the deepest meaning of Advent.
All the times you may have wondered to yourself: Is there a God? How can I find him? And now there is an answer, even if you can only half hear it — that he can be found in Jesus. All the times you may have struggled to do what is right, to follow your conscience, despite the false steps and failures: And now there is another path: the wisdom and healing that come from Christ. A pure gift, the gift of grace – which is the gift we are really longing for this Advent.
At the end of his vision, Zechariah is struck dumb — he can’t speak a word. And the silence has a curious effect. It means that when, in his priestly role, he leaves the sanctuary and goes out to meet the people, he is unable to give the final blessing. As he steps outside to bring the service to a close — he remains speechless. So this service, this Temple liturgy, remains unfinished. Put another way: It remains open-ended, continuing.
It’s as if Zechariah steps out into the temple precincts, into the streets of Jerusalem, and into his own home still presiding at the liturgy. It’s as if the doors of the temple had been left open wide, and the worship of God spills out into the streets behind Zechariah – who continues his priestly work, unable to bring it to a close. It’s as if the whole people are holding their breath, a divine hiatus, wondering how they are meant to live this liturgy in these unfamiliar places. Wondering when the final blessing would come. (It comes, by the way, right at the end of the Gospel when Jesus blesses his disciples just before his Ascension. In another sense, it comes in Christ’s final blessing at the End of time.)
Most of us here today are visitors to Westminster Abbey. The beauty and history of the building help us to imagine what it must have been like for Zechariah to minister in the Temple. When we leave, let’s pretend that the final blessing has not happened. (I know it will — but let’s pretend!) Let’s imagine that the service we have begun here is simply continuing as we leave, following in our footsteps.
Let’s listen to the people we will meet later in the day, to the voices we will hear, as carefully as we have listened to this heavenly choir. Let’s speak to others with words as kind and tender and uplifting as the words we have uttered today in these formal prayers. And let’s worship God in the temple of our own hearts, and in the intimacy of our personal prayers, as devoutly as we have worshipped him here this afternoon – building a sacred road that will lead us to Christ in the crib, and then to Heaven itself.
Thank you, Stephen, for posting the whole sermon. Very thought-provoking.
Thanks Fr S. I enjoyed your reflections
antonia