The Songs of Christmas: The Benedictus

Luke 1:57-80 The Songs of Christmas (The Benedictus) Introduction: As I mentioned last week the first two chapters of Luke read like a musical... In both instances we have an angelic being delivering the message of God’s long awaited salvation through his Messiah being brought to pass, which results in praise from the recipient. The first two songs of Luke (Mary’s song and Zechariah’s song) are filled with tension and anticipation. They are setting us up, preparing us, pointing us forward to the grand event. Again, it is so good and right for us to feel this tension. Longing is good for the soul. It gets us to get our eyes off of everything trite and unimportant and gets us in touch with our deepest and most true desires. “We have become so accustomed to the idea of divine love and of God’s coming at Christmas that we no longer feel the shiver of fear that God’s coming should arouse in us. We are indifferent to the message, taking only the pleasant things and agreeable out of it and forgetting the serious aspect, that the God of this world draws near to the people of our little earth and lays claim to us.” -Bonhöeffer It is so good and right for us to slow down and enter into the longing and tension that we should feel at Christmas time. Advent helps us do exactly that. The Benedictus (also, the Song of Zechariah), was the song of thanksgiving uttered by Zechariah on the occasion of the birth of his son, John the Baptist. Historically the church has employed this song in various uses, for instance, it is often used at a funeral, at the moment of burial, when words of thanksgiving for God’s Redemption are specially in place as an expression of Christian hope. You might recall the story -It was told to Zechariah through the angel Gabriel that his child, John, would be the one to “prepare the way of the Lord,” that he would turn the hearts of the children back to their fathers and the disobedient to the wisdom of the just! He is the last prophet who will prepare the way for the long awaited Messiah. Of course when Zechariah first heard it, he was so jaded and cynical that he didn’t believe it. He had seen evil triumph for so long. He had seen the Levitical priesthood prostituted out to the Roman Empire, corruption infecting the “Righteous people of God”. He himself had experienced a lifetime of suffering and barrenness. He was living on the tale end of 400 years of silence from heaven. All he saw was darkness and evil. He had given up all hope, he had given up the fight. In many ways Zechariah wasn’t wrong. The world is a dark place. Evil is in the world. We might not always feel this way, but sometimes it is so clearly seen and even felt - when tragedy hits, when we see the ugliness of racism in our own country, the greed of Wall Street bankers, the violence of terrorism (thinking of the gruesome beheadings of ISIS), or maybe in our own homes and relationships, broken marriages, fractured families -We have seen ugliness, we have seen darkness. And usually when things like this happen we have a renewed vigor to deal with evil, to make sure that these things don’t happen again. For instance, think about the League of Nations (which was eventually replaced by the U.N.). The whole reason it was formed was so that the world would never again experience the hell of war that happened with WWI and WWII. Of Course legislation and policies like this are good; it is good to put up barriers, checks and balances against evil and to do all that we can to promote justice and peace in the world. But what we must keep in mind, is a broader principle about evil, suffering, and the darkness (something Zechariah knew all too well). Tolkien puts it so eloquently in the LOTR. He says, “Always after a defeat and a respite the Shadow (Evil) takes another shape and grows again." Evil, the darkness, has this amazing power to return in some new shape or form. Anytime we try to stop it, to push it out, it is only a matter of time until it returns in some different manifestation. But something changes when John is born - Zechariah’s hope is renewed, he has what I would call a hopeful defiance as he exclaims - “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.” What renewed Zechariah’s hope was that this was not another program, not another prophet, not a new priesthood, but God come on the scene, light coming into darkness -God come to deal with the darkness. Christmas is about God’s plan, not to just do something about the most recent shape or manifestation of the darkness. Christmas is about God dealing with sin and suffering and evil and death and dealing with it for good. Christmas is about God dealing with the darkness. How will God do this? 1. The Benedictus a. “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. 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.” Luke 1:67-79 b. The whole song naturally falls into two parts: i. The first part is a song of thanksgiving for the realization of the Messianic hopes of the Jewish nation; God has visited and redeemed his people just as he promised. As we said last week the picture is of God the long absent King finally returned to restore his kingdom. Again we have these amazing metaphors and pictures of revolution and restoration, salvation, deliverance, healing, help, wisdom and guidance. A dispelling of the darkness. ii. But how is this different than any other king or kingdom come to power? How is this different than any other revolution or technological advancement? iii. Go back to Tolkien’s statement for a moment - “Always after a defeat and a respite the Shadow (Evil) takes another shape and grows again." If you snuff out evil it will just take a different shape or manifestation. 1. Over time the world has definitely had some amazing developments especially since Biblical times, even in the last ten years there have been amazing advancements in technology and science that we should be grateful for. I often talk about the advancements in the arts, medicine, philanthropy, science and technology that have come about in our world. There are great advancements that have taken place in history a sort of dispelling of the darkness. We can harness the power of nature, we have eradicated plagues and diseases, we can go to space, we can fly airplanes around the world, we can talk to someone face to face in real time on the other side of the world. But we also take that power and use it for great evil- We split the atom and then built bombs to drop on Japan, we build airplanes and then we fly them into buildings to ensure maximum death and carnage, we create ways to communicate with people all around the globe and then use that social media to broadcast the beheadings of ISIS. The discovery of nuclear the fear of nuclear war at the push of a button. All technology does is creates new shapes to the darkness. 2. Mankind has done many things to bring great advancements in life, health, technology, peace and so on. But all of our dealing with the darkness is basically topical treatment. 3. See the great problem of evil is that if you kill it, it simply takes a different form. You know why? Because evil isn’t out there somewhere in the world, in some location, or in something. Evil is embedded deep into the heart of all human kind!! The human race is infected with a deadly disease - the disease of sin. 4. Martin Luther said, “Human nature is curved in on itself.” We are radically wicked and self absorbed creatures. And all the suffering, evil and darkness of the world can be attributed to the evil of the human heart; And if you don’t know that then you don’t really know yourself, you don’t know the depths of your own heart. It is the darkness of the human heart that is the source of all evil out there. 5. So how is the Messiah, how is Christmas, dealing with the darkness? 6. Jesus comes as a baby, he comes in weakness, and frailty, he comes not as a conquering Messiah, but as a crucified criminal..how is that dealing with the darkness?? 7. Look again at what Zechariah says, “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.” 8. Messiah comes to give knowledge of salvation/deliverance to his people..... in the forgiveness of their sins….Light shining in the darkness…leading away from death into the way of peace. The darkness is removed by the forgiveness of sin. 9. The Bible tells us again and again that our deepest issues are not what we take in, or what is around us, but it is evil deeply embedded in our hearts. a. Jesus himself said, “out of the heart come evil thoughts, murder, adultery, sexual immorality, theft, false witness, slander. These are what defile a person.” b. We don’t just need God to come and fix what’s wrong with the world - we need God to fix what is wrong with us. We need him to get rid of the darkness and evil that is inside of us. In fact, if God showed up on the scene to snuff out evil, if Jesus had come in his first coming with the sword of Judgment, to get rid of evil, to get rid of the darkness no one would have lived to tell the tale. c. Instead though Jesus comes not to bring judgment but to bear it; to become our darkness so we can have his light. Jesus goes into the shadow of death so that we can be brought into the way of peace. He comes in his first advent in frailty and weakness, to be despised and rejected, to bear the punishment for sin that we deserve, so that when he returns he can end all darkness and evil without destroying us. i. Remember the story of the fox and the fleas…Jesus comes to remove the darkness by taking all evil, sin, and darkness upon himself there at the cross and killing it in one blow. Taking the punishment we deserve for the sin and evil and darkness that we have created. iv. All religions tell you that you can dispel the darkness of your own life, or the darkness around you through reform, through obedience, through this path, through following these pillars, But guaranteed the darkness will simply take another form. You cannot save yourself, you cannot lighten your own darkness, you cannot fix yourself. You must be saved by an act of sheer grace - this free gift is only available through Jesus Christ. Conclusion: “Advent can be celebrated only by those whose souls give them no peace, who know that they are poor and incomplete, and who sense something of the greatness that is supposed to come, before which they can only bow in humble timidity, waiting until he inclines himself toward us - the Holy One himself, God in the child in the manger… The emptier our hands, the better we understand Luther’s dying words: We’re beggars; it is true.” -Bonhöeffer Maybe you’re a little bit like Zechariah, you follow Jesus, but you are disillusioned because of the state of the world around you and the evil, and darkness we see and hear about on a daily basis. Maybe you’re disillusioned because of the state of the Church; maybe you are disillusioned because of the state of your own life.... 1st: You are not realizing what Christ has done....the spiritual work is so much bigger, so much deeper - Through God’s work he doesn’t just make light around us, he lightens us - we become lights in the world, bearers of his image and character, shining his light into the darkness around us through righteousness and goodness 2nd: Remember this word: “So Christ, having been offered once to bear the sins of many, will appear a second time, not to deal with sin but to save those who are eagerly waiting for him.” (Hebrews 9:28) Just as he fulfilled the promises of his first advent he will be faithful to fulfill the promise of his second advent. My prayer is that this year God will give us a song of defiant hope to sing out and to life lived out through the victory of Christ over the darkness.