Afraid to Hope

Intro

What does it feel like to wait?

*Pause*

It’s unnerving, isn’t it? I hate waiting. I do. I’m very impatient and I like to feel in control. I can’t stand getting haircuts because it puts me in a position of waiting on someone else who now has control over my appearance. Each year we go get out Christmas Trees 2 or 3 days before Thanksgiving because there’s no line, and no wait to get your tree trimmed and bagged. My wife calls it my favorite Christmas Hack. It’s true.

What about when we wait on the Lord? What does that feel like? To give ourselves into his hands, to be completely dependent on his provision and his timing? What about when we pray, week after week, month after month, year after year, and our prayers seemingly go unheard? When sorrows endure and there seems to be no light of his grace falling upon us?

A very real ache sets in, doesn’t it? Sometimes it can be painful to turn to the Lord again and again when all it feels like all we are doing is waiting with no movement, no answer, from him.

Advent is a season of waiting. We look back on the birth of Christ into the world some 2000 years ago; we look forward to the day he will come again and make all things new. Like the people of God before his birth, we find ourselves waiting and hoping on Jesus to come and be true to all that he has promised.

Hope. In our waiting we hope that God will be true to what he has spoken, we look forward to the fulfillment of all things, even when the storms of life seek to blow away all reason to hope; even when it becomes too painful to keep on hoping for what God has promised.

But we are so accustomed to trust being broken and promises going unmet. As we experience the sorrows of this life; the confusion of prayers seeming to go unanswered, to hope in God’s promises to us can be painful. Hope in a broken, dark, and scary world can seem foolish; even frightening. As we prayed together this morning, to hope might feel like an open wound.

It’s here where we enter Luke’s gospel and meet the first characters in his story: Zechariah and Elizabeth, an older couple who were well acquainted with waiting and hoping. They waited not only for God’s promises to be true to Israel; they waited on their prayers for a child to be granted to them. As their story connects with our own, God is showing us that he has not forgotten us, just as he had not forgotten Zechariah and Elizabeth. And in a dark, frightening world, where God has spoken there is always reason for hope.

Continuous Faith

Luke framed his account of Zechariah and Elizabeth in such a way that it rhymes with familiar stories in the Old Testament. They are described as righteous, much in the same way that Old Testament figures such as Abraham or Noah were called righteous. Like Abraham and Sarah, they are advanced in years and have been without child. The angel Gabriel connects this story with the events of the prophet Daniel, where Gabriel was a key figure in the prophet’s visions. This promise of John going in the spirit of Elijah is a clear connection to the ending of Malachi, the last revelation of God given about 400 years prior to our story here.

It’s important for us to see these connections from the outset of this gospel. Luke not only wanted to give us an accurate history of the life of Jesus, but he also wanted us to know that what God is doing in Christ is not altogether new or disconnected from what has happened before. This hope being held out to Zechariah and Elizabeth is not something entirely new, it is an old hope now fulfilled in Jesus who is to come.

It was on this ancient hope that Zechariah and Elizabeth staked their lives on. Life was hard for this couple. For decades they prayed to the Lord for a child and God was silent. They endured the shame of their peers who surely believed that they must have commited some great sin or unfaithfulness to be without children, and they did so faithfully, believing God and taking him at his Word.

Luke tells us they were righteous, a word that I think we sometimes overcomplicate. Righteous doesn’t mean perfect or sinless, but it does mean they believed God and kept his commandments. They believed and participated in the gospel as they had it up until this point, and like Abraham, it was counted to them as righteousness.

Luke wanted his audience to know that Jesus is both the fulfillment in which all history finds its meaning, as well as the hope on which all futures depend. Christianity cannot be reduced to fit into any one history, party, platform, cause, movement, or culture. Christ stands outside of time and space, but in his grace he breaks in and reveals his all-surpassing glory to us. The hope that Christ brings enters into our world from unseen, heavenly places, and invites all people from every place and time to come under his rule and care.

Christianity cannot be reduced.

I think one reason why some of us may be afraid or reluctant to put our hope in Christ and his promises is because we have been hurt before by reduced Christianity and the smaller, lesser hopes it offers. We’ve put our hope in movements, parties, platforms, leaders, or churches, who may have even used the name of Christ to advance their cause. But when those things failed, we struggle to separate the platform from their use or abuse of Christ and his Word. In our hurt, we wonder if the collapse of the one might mean that Jesus is not actually who he said he was.

Please believe me when I say our family knows that hurt and we share it with you. I think Zechariah and Elizabeth can be a great example to us to strengthen our hope even when it hurts.

Zechariah and Elizabeth had been hurt. No doubt they had been hurt, by peers, by friends, by families. This is why Luke tells you they were righteous, so we don’t make the same wrong assumptions others did. They had been hurt by those who would use their shared faith as a weapon to induce shame and isolation. Does any of this sound familiar? But their hope endured because it was rooted not in what was seen but what was unseen; they trusted by faith that God had been and will be true to his promise, even when year after year, decade after decade, all earthly circumstance seemed to prove otherwise.

It takes exceptional courage to remain hopeful when everyone else abandons or opposes us. Zechariah and Elizabeth had a courageous hope, anchored in the promises of a God who had broken into history before, and who they believed would break in once again. That’s the hope God is inviting us into this morning, and for some of us that will take a great deal of courage. God’s promise is that your courage will not be lost or forgotten.

Beautiful Faith

Zechariah takes center stage as the story moves forward. Zechariah is a good man. He loved his God, he loved his wife, he loved his people. He’s righteous. He was faithful in his duties as a priest, and now he stands at the height of his career. There were 24 divisions of priests serving in the temple, of which the order of Abijah was the 8th. There were some 18,000 priests serving in the temple; to be chosen by lot to enter and burn the incense was a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity which many priests would never receive.

Now, he enters into the temple, where, like a classic Christmas movie, he has some spiritual experience followed by a great deal of shenanigans, beginning with his encounter with the angel Gabriel. In our reading of Scripture we may get the idea that something like this happened every other week in Israel, but that is not the case. It had been nearly 400 years since something like this had happened. That God would speak again was expected, but it was not Zechariah’s expectation that it would be directly to him.

The promise is made to Zechariah that he and Elizabeth would give birth to a child named John, who would fulfill the prophecy of Malachi and go forward in the spirit of Elijah. Their child would not only be a great joy to them, but to many. He would turn hearts back to the Lord, restoring families, turning the disobedient toward righteousness, preparing the way for the Messiah to come.

In Zechariah’s encounter with Gabriel, God’s unseen realm is once again breaking into the seen, not just in his presence with Gabriel, but in this promise of joy, life, and restoration entering into the world.

I think this promise is an idea that our hearts are especially tuned to during the holiday season. Something happens in our culture around the holidays, where it’s almost like the world we all long for becomes a little bit more real. Last week I was serving Thanksgiving meals at Matchbook Learning, one of our community partners on the near Westside. Our family has been getting to know a teacher who moved this past summer from Kenya to teach at the school. I asked her what she thought about the event as we were serving together, and she said to me, “Now I’m starting to get an idea of what American hospitality and generosity could be like.”

I think she put her finger on something true that many of us sense and feel deep down. It’s almost like, for one month out of the year, we all decide to put our swords down for a little bit, we’re all a bit kinder, more generous, more forgiving, then we are the rest of the year. Don’t get me wrong, I’m not saying we achieve world peace. But something happens to us that is almost enchanted.

One of my favorite authors is Yuval Noah Harari, an author and historian at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. He’s written a few bestselling books, including his first, titled Sapiens: A brief History of Mankind. Now, I have profound disagreements with him, but I enjoy his writing so much because as a historian and atheist, I find him to be entirely consistent. Harari is honest about the human condition, that we have always been and continue to be violent and oppressive toward each other. There is no rose-colored history of harmony that we need return to, and there is nothing outside of us that gives us any kind of objective virtue.

The virtues that hold us together, such as love, mercy, and justice come from what he calls an “imagined order.” Imagined orders are constructs we create so that we can cooperate more effectively as a society. They are not objectively true, there is no higher, unseen world these virtues come from, but they are based on myths we tell ourselves, such as varying religions or political ideologies.

Let’s run with his argument a little further. If he’s right, I don’t think it’s simply that we imagine these virtues as a merely intellectual exercise. I think these virtues arise in us because we desire them, we want them to be true, even if we don’t think they are.

That’s why this season of the American liturgy feels almost enchanted, not because we actually become kinder, but because we want to be kinder. So perhaps we could say that during the holidays, our culture takes part in a “desired order”: a world that we want to be true, whether we believe it is or not.

Now let me ask you: would you truly be satisfied knowing that your desire for love, peace, and justice is simply imagined? A shared social construct? Even if you don’t believe in a better, unseen world with joy, hope, and peace that breaks into our own world, wouldn’t you at least want to?

Why do Christians sing about things like joy and peace on earth this time of year? Because we believe that knowing Christ means enjoying his peace that he brings into the world. To make Christ’s name known is to bring about the peace from unseen heavenly places, breaking into this world now. That’s a better hope than what anyone or anything else can offer us.

This is where these gospel promises through Gabriel meet us this morning, daring us to hope, daring us to believe that the peace on earth we sign about each year is not just possible, but that it’s true. It’s true because Jesus has come, and he will come again, and he promises to be the one who will make all things new. John’s ministry would be just a shadow of the things to come.

Necessity of Faith

So how did Zechariah respond?

Let’s back up for a minute. Our tendency is to read Zechariah as a very flat character in his response: he was a priest who should’ve known better, he doesn’t believe, and he’s punished for it. But there’s more to Zechariah - and the Lord’s rebuke - than that.

What stories did Zechariah bring into the temple with him? Certainly one layer is the story of the priesthood, faithfully serving on behalf of God’s people in the holy place.

But let’s go deeper. As a righteous man who trusted God, Zechariah was waiting, aching for the fulfillment of what God had promised. He longed for the restoration of his people, for the promised day of the Lord to come. Year after year he prayed; decade after decade God was silent. He carried in his soul the burdens of a people in waiting.

Deeper still is the ache he carried of having no children. He longed to be a father. Silence. He not only endured social shame himself, but he watched as for decades his wife was shamed, presumed to be unfaithful, of having commited some great sin to have gone childless for so long.

It is these stories Zechariah carried into the temple, and these stories inform his response. Was there unbelief? Yes. But there was also deep hurt, even fear, that this promise might be too good to be true.

So he is silenced and made unable to speak. This might seem harsh or undeserved to us. But we must remember that the Lord disciplines those he loves, and his discipline is never separate from his gracious character.

There’s a great scene in the first season of Ted Lasso (Sam isn’t the only one who can use Ted Lasso references) where Ted, the coach of this soccer club, benches their star player Jaimie Tartt in the middle of a game. Jaimie was prideful, a real jerk, and couldn’t play well on a team. Ted benches Jaimie not only for the team’s sake, but for Jaimie’s sake. Ted loves Jaimie too much to keep letting him be a fool. By putting him on the bench, he starts a journey for Jaimie of healing from his deep emotional wounds, such that he’s able to come back and be a faithful member of the team again.

Zechariah is put on the bench. He’s not removed from the game, nor is he kicked off the team. He’s silenced because the Lord loves him too much to allow him to continue in unbelief. Instead he says, “hey, I want you to stop now, and just watch what I’m about to do. You’ll see, and you’ll believe.” It’s rebuke, but it’s rebuke in love.

So he’s benched, for another 40 or so verses Zechariah fades to the background and it is Elizabeth who emerges at the center of the story.

Elizabeth , according to God’s promise, becomes pregnant. She carried with her all of Zechariah’s hopes and hurts, and then some. And in her beautiful response, we find the last Old Testament rhyme in our passage. Echoing the words of Rachel in Genesis 30, she said: “In these days he has shown his favor and taken away my disgrace among the people.”

The language of showing favor could also be translated as, “He has looked upon me.” This is common biblical language for “The Lord has seen me, and has remembered me.” Elizabeth was not forgotten. Though she waited for decades, her prayers had not gone unheard or unanswered. Now, the hopes and dreams of God’s people are being fulfilled, and the promised restoration of God’s people would begin in her womb with the birth of John. Elizabeth’s story was now caught up in God’s story, and she praises him as the one who has taken away her shame.

She knew now that God had looked upon her, and a better word of hope and promise had been spoken over her. Elizabeth learned that where God has spoken, there is always reason for hope; a hope greater than any shame, any fear, any wound.

Elizabeth shows us that the hope of Christ cannot be grasped by religious performance or knowledge; and it is not just for those who have it all together. We hold onto hope by faith in what God has spoken.

So Bring your shame. Bring your fear. Bring your unbelief. Bring your sin. Bring your hurt. The invitation for us this Advent is to receive the hope of Christ that has and is breaking into the world.