God Points So He Doesn’t Have to Wave
Notes
Transcript
Handout
Advent is the act of God coming close enough to speak sense into and transform every category of darkness into light. In our text for this morning we meet a man named Zechariah who asserts that this is what happens when God gets close.
Zechariah is John the baptists dad. Upon John the Baptists birth, Zechariah prophesies, and speaks on behalf of God, over what his son will have to do. In this statement, Zechariah shows what kind of character God has, what He will do and what He is like but does so through Christ’s coming to the earth. He does so as a God who intermixes Himself with humanity.
Christ gives
“light to those who sit in darkness.”
and comes to “guide our feet in the way of peace.”
This kind of light and this kind of guidance does not happen from a distance. It has to happen up close. Advent is always about the nearness of God. And it turns out, if we are going to get any kind of help,
if we are going to receive any kind of guidance, location matters.
You know this if you have ever tried to point something out to someone
Location Matters
Location Matters
Imagine that you and I are standing in a field in Western Massachusetts. It’s got mountains and beautiful landscapes. We are standing somewhere in the Bershires on a clear day. The horizon is wide and we are taking in the view. All of a sudden, rising up out of the treeline, way off in the distance you spot a hot air balloon.
It’s a hot air balloon!
Now this hot air baloon is way off in the distance, from our perspective it seems no bigger than the head of a pin. But it’s there and you see it. But I say,
“where?”
And you point to the horizon and say,
“there!”
I point in the general direction you are pointing and say
“there?”
You reply,
“yes.”
I say,
“there’s nothing there! Where is it?”
You try a different tactic.
“look at your 2:00 o clock”
I make a motion with my hands miming a clock hand facing 2 and stare into the distance.
“nothing.”
“see that tall evergreen tree?”
“yes”
“look about 200 feet to the left”
“200 feet from the balloon to the tree or 200 feet from our perspective?”
Now you are getting rightfully frustrated
“From the tree.”
“nothing.”
In a last ditch effort you decide to make it awkward and stand right next to me, arm to arm like soldiers. You raise your left arm to the sky and you through gritted teeth, tell me to raise my right arm right next to it. Your arm acts like a guide for me to be able to see exactly where you are looking. I look, squint, and see a tiny red dot on the horizon.
“its a hot air ballon.”
“finally”
If we are both trying to look at the same thing and talk about the same thing and be able to reference the same thing, sometimes that can be difficult. It becomes a real life “who’s on first” situation.
Zechariah’s First Response: Standing in the Wrong place
Zechariah’s First Response: Standing in the Wrong place
Look at how this plays itself out in the story of Zechariah. He is a priest in Jewish law and was he was chosen to provide worship by burning insence before God in the temple. This was an opportunity of a lifetime. He went into the holy place, the place, the location where God resided in order to worship.
Now while he was serving as priest before God when his division was on duty, according to the custom of the priesthood, he was chosen by lot to enter the temple of the Lord and burn incense.
While he does that an angel of the Lord visits him and speaks on God’s behalf, telling him that he and his wife elizabeth will have a son.
And there appeared to him an angel of the Lord standing on the right side of the altar of incense. And Zechariah was troubled when he saw him, and fear fell upon him. But the angel said to him, “Do not be afraid, Zechariah, for your prayer has been heard, and your wife Elizabeth will bear you a son, and you shall call his name John.
Now both of them were old and past child bearing years so Zechariah wants details. How will this happen? And the angel is pointing out what will happen. He is speaking on God’s behalf, right next to Zechariah and he still can’t see what God is doing. So the angel tells him
You will be
silent and unable to speak until the day that these things take place, because you did not believe my words, which will be fulfilled in their time.”
Zechariah learns in this that it is not about him figuring it out but about God coming close and inviting him to be a part of what God is doing.
Finding the right perspective or posture or orientation is not always about simply working things out. Because if we are standing in the wrong place, it doesn’t matter how much we try and work things out we will still be left looking at the wrong way.
So the angel silence in Zechariah because no amount of configuring or reasoning or rationality is going to work this out.
This will not come from rationalizing, this will come from revelation.
So there are times in our lives when we can’t configure everything, but we can’t reason everything out. It’s not better logic but better perspective. What we need is not better reasoning but what we need rather is someone pointing out where we need to be looking in the first place.
Zechariah is silenced because he has everything he needs to look in the right direction, the thing that is getting in his way is himself.
Zechariah’s second response: Addressed by God
Zechariah’s second response: Addressed by God
Zechariah understood the event of his son’s birth. But the Lord made sense of it through guiding him in it. We see that finally Zechariah gets it. Let’s look at the naming of his son.
After 8 days, a child is named. And it would normally be assumed that the child would take the father’s name. as the family talked about it, they assumed that the child would be named Zechariah. But
but his mother answered, “No; he shall be called John.”
This was confusing to the family. No one understood why he would be called John. No one else was called that name, where did they get that name? Zechariah, who still couldn’t speak, is asked about it and
And he asked for a writing tablet and wrote, “His name is John.” And they all wondered.
Zechariah doesn’t wonder, doesn’t ask, doesn’t question. God has pointed something out, and Zechariah has aligned to God’s ability to find the right perspective. He doesn’t say his name might be or could be or should be John. Notice how he says it
“His name is John.”
Zechariah is pointing to something that has already been pointed out to him. He is following the Lord’s guidance, His instruction. This is what he has already been called, Zechariah’s role was to understand it from God’s perspective and respond.
His name already is John.
When we enter into a relationship with God, we are entering into a whole new world, a new way of thinking, of acting, of living. What Zechariah’s response shows us is that we have an incredibly rich world that is filled with the activity, the language, the power, the strength, the glory and the grace of God.
When the believer acts on God’s promises and work, they see just how big of a world we live in, one filled with God’s provision and action. One filled with the entire possibility of God. God is presently doing a work, before yours or my understanding. The incarnation is the miraculous reminder that God has prepared and is working and is responding not outside of but within our complicated darkness.
What Zechariah is doing is responding to God having already addressed Him. God points, He speaks, and it takes a minute for Zechariah to get lined up, but he responds to God’s perspective. The possibility of the incarnation, of God coming to the earth, preceded by this guy whose name is already John, suddenly shifts everything into right perspective.
Like crossing a threshold. It entirely changes how you view something
The Holy Family Orthodox Coptic Church
I drove by it 1000s of times. Never went in
Egyptian food festival. 4 years ago.
Went in, got food, got a tour, met some people. Walked through the building. Now I don’t just see the outside, I know the inside. When we reply to God’s direction and pointing from His perspective that is always near us, it is the difference between driving by a building and getting a tour of it. We see an entire world that we previously didn’t give much attention to.
God Makes Himself Knowable
God Makes Himself Knowable
Zechariah is given this understanding in begin addressed by God. He sees God’s perspective and responds to it through being filled with the Holy Spirit and uttering the opening lines:
“Blessed be the Lord God of Israel,
for he has visited and redeemed his people
and has raised up a horn of salvation for us
in the house of his servant David,
as he spoke by the mouth of his holy prophets from of old,
that we should be saved from our enemies
and from the hand of all who hate us;
to show the mercy promised to our fathers
and to remember his holy covenant,
the oath that he swore to our father Abraham, to grant us
that we, being delivered from the hand of our enemies,
might serve him without fear,
in holiness and righteousness before him all our days.
Remember how this account begins. Zechariah is unsure about how God will accomplish what has been spoken over him. He asks for details. He isn’t asking with humble faith, he wants details. He wants in on the planning. He wants to provide insight.
But he was standing in the wrong place. He goes from that into responding to God who has acted, who has already addressed him. Zechariah doesn’t need to ask why, he now replies to God’s abundant activity in the world and more specifically, in the incarnation.
And you, child, will be called the prophet of the Most High;
for you will go before the Lord to prepare his ways,
to give knowledge of salvation to his people
in the forgiveness of their sins,
because of the tender mercy of our God,
whereby the sunrise shall visit us from on high
to give light to those who sit in darkness and in the shadow of death,
to guide our feet into the way of peace.”
Zechariah is responding to God coming close enough to point out the right perspective. That He has offered eternal life and salvation, He has given the forgiveness of sins, because He is merciful.
This is the understanding of the incarnation. The mercies of God come close to “guide our feet in the way of peace.”
This is why perspective matters. Because if we are going to be guided, if we are going to have the right perspective pointed out, it can’t come from a distance. Because often times we are facing something and it doesn’t make sense. And we need more than someone to from a distance, tell us how or where to move. We need someone close by to walk with us toward the right perspective. Otherwise it can mostly look like we are looking at junk.
Watch this short video by artist Michael Murphy.
Perspective art.
Everything snaps into place when you look at the objects in the right way. This is the Gospel, Christ coming to earth and making God knowable.
This is what the Gospel does. We see God pointing from the right perspective to the right perspective. And He calls us to understand what life is like when we follow Him into it. When we follow where God is pointing. Christ becomes the measure from which we measure all other things. He is the plumb line from which we take all measurements.(Von Balthasar).
communion is our plumb line
Where Is God Pointing in Your Life?
Where Is God Pointing in Your Life?
Where is God pointing this morning? What adjustments do you need to make?
Do you need to switch positions?
Or change your outlook? (Repentance)
What do you need to do to come under the perspective shifting quality of God’s incarnation. He has moved near, come to the earth, participated in creation and humanity, told us about it. Maybe you are experiencing a certain frustration this Christmas season. You can’t figure out why nothing makes sense. You keep hoping God will intervene, that He will miraculously change your circumstances or do something massive in order to shift the world into your favor.
We keep thinking He is at a distance waving a magical wand in a way that will just altar our world to our advantage. We keep hoping that God will do something massive and explosive. Not that God doesn’t do those things, but we keep forgetting that God doesn’t operate from a distance.
Have you ever yelled someone’s name because you are looking for them in a crowded room and you hear them respond in a normal voice, I’m right here. You think they are across the room but really they are right next to you.
This is the case with the Advent. We ask God to change and move and act in our lives. We yell His name because maybe He will hear us from across the room. We have to be reminded that He responds from right next to us. The work is not getting God to do what we want but is aligning ourselves with Him,
The “sunrise” who visits us from on high.
Dorothy Sayers sees God as someone who doesn’t wave but points so we can align with Him.
Christ was seldom very encouraging to those who demanded signs, or lightnings from Heaven, and God is too subtle and too economical a craftsman to make very much use of those methods. But He takes our sins and errors and turns them into victories, as He made the crime of the Crucifixion to be the salvation of the world. (Sayers 15).
He is pointing something out to you. His Advent shows us that He has drawn near and wants us to align with His perspective. We don’t need waving and yelling when we have Emmanuel, the God who is with us.
*Balthasar, Hans Urs von. A Theology of History. Communio Books. San Francisco, CA: Ignatius Press, 1994.
