Dec. 10, 2006

What Child Is This?

by Rev. Dr. Jim Carlson

Luke 1:67-70

Sermon Illustration

Sometimes we read more into a situation than is warranted. And other times we don’t realize that something is a brewing until it’s already on our laps.

I think that’s the feeling the author of Luke wanted to stir up in his readers with this passage we read this morning. What I want to show you this morning is how he used stories and language to signal to his audience that something big was going on when Jesus was born.

I’ll also make some remarks about how we can catch that same sense of expectation in our own lives during this time of waiting for Christmas. This idea is important because regardless of how you interpret the New Testament, I think it’s fairly clear that the folks in the early church understood the Christian life as a life lived in expectation.

In fact, Luke would tell us this sense of expectation was swirling around even before John the Baptist or Jesus were born. This passage we read this morning is the response of John the Baptist’s father Zechariah to the news that John was born.

For those of you who are unfamiliar, John the Baptist was a figure in the first century who saw it as his role to tell the people of Judea that God was moving in a special way, unlike the way God had moved in the world up to that point.

The Jewish people had an expectation, which took many different forms in many different places, of someone who would come and save them from their oppressors. The folks who oppressed them the most at this time were the Romans, who occupied most of the land that used to be called Israel.

But the Jewish land had been occupied many times before by various armies, and people had talked about this Messiah figure for the past 500 years or so. And as this time approached, those expectations were still in full force.

Luke begins talking about the life of Jesus by talking about John the Baptist’s birth. We have this detailed story about John’s mother being too old to have children, only to find that she became pregnant unexpectedly.

John’s father Zechariah is described as a priest who has a vision of an angel coming to tell him that his wife Elizabeth was going to bear a child. When Zechariah tells the angel he trouble believing this news, the angel caused Zechariah to lose his ability to speak until the child is born.

When it finally came time for John to be born, the expectation was that Zechariah would name John after himself. But the angel told him to call the child John. When Zechariah, who was unable to speak, wrote John’s name down for his friends, suddenly Zechariah was again enabled to speak. And when he did, this passage we read this morning was the text of what he said.

Now most scholars don’t think Luke was sitting there with a pen writing down Zechariah’s words. Most people think Luke weaved part of an existing song or a poem or something into this story. When we see how Luke introduced this song, we get a fairly clear sense of the meaning Luke saw not only John the Baptist, but also Jesus himself

Luke introduces his readers to this song by saying that the report about John’s birth went out all around the area. When people heard about the way John was born, they wondered what his birth meant. Was God doing something special through the birth of this child?

These days we don’t tend to assign those kinds of meanings to the birth of a child. We don’t usually talk about the meaning of someone’s life until they’re older and we can see the choices they’ve made in life.

But back then it was not uncommon to talk about a birth as evidence that God was accomplishing something great on behalf of God’s chosen people. Jewish people weren’t the only ones to do talk about births in this way. Other cultures did the same thing.

Luke poses the question in the mind of the people, “What kind of child is this going to be?” Isn’t that the question most parents have in mind when they’re looking at their newborn? What will my son or daughter grow up to be? How will his or her life affect me? What will be his or her contribution to the world?

We’re certain about the meaning Luke assigned to John the Baptist, and in turn to Jesus. In this song, Luke talks about God working in a new way in Israel’s history to bring salvation to the people. Luke sees the birth of John and later Jesus as the fulfillment of promises made to the people of Israel almost 1000 year earlier.

The Jewish people believed God had made a covenant, an agreement or a promise, that King David’s family would always rule the throne of Israel. The only problem is that David’s posterity hadn’t ruled Israel as a sovereign nation, or really at all, since about 590 B.C. So Luke talked about the coming of John and Jesus in terms of God fulfilling that promise again.

Now if you know anything about the Jewish people, you know that news like this will really get them stirred up. It had been their dream for centuries to be a sovereign nation and be ruled by a king from David’s family.

For that to happen, somehow God would have to bring about the overthrow of the Romans who occupied their land. Luke clearly talked about John and Jesus in those terms. He talked about God using these babies to deliver Israel from her enemies. He talked about God fulfilling God’s covenant with Abraham, the father of the Jewish nation, to preserve the Jewish people.

He also talked about these births as signaling a time when the Jewish people would return to a life of right living. The Jewish people would again conduct themselves in obedience to God and serve God without fear.

Finally, Luke talked about John as the one who would announce this action of God to the Jewish people. John would grow up to be the one who said, “Hey folks, this stuff is coming down the pike. Get ready.”

John would remind the people of how they were supposed to live. He would tell people about God's forgiveness. And John would be like a light shining in the darkness for people who felt they had lived their whole lives in the shadows.

One tool Luke used in trying to build up this sense of expectation was to talk about John using words and images that prophets had used earlier to talk about other times when they expected God to break into history and save the people of Israel. 

Luke talked about John the Baptist using words and phrases from the oracles of the prophet Malachi. Malachi lived about 500 years before John, but he also spoke to the people of his time with the intention of putting people on the alert. Malachi told the people God would suddenly appear, and that Malachi himself was the messenger who was sent ahead of time to announce God's appearance.

Luke compared John to Malachi and spoke of John also as someone who would announce God's plan to suddenly act in history in a decisive way. Of course, Luke thought, and Christians believe that this act of God which John announced was the coning of Jesus into the world. And that's the event which folks in the church celebrate at this time of year.

Now imagine yourself hearing this message from John. Imagine how you would feel if you believed that God was about to make an unprecedented move in history and save you from your enemies. Imagine the excitement. Imagine the choices you would make because of this expectation. Imagine the things in your life that would change because you expected this to happen in the near future.

Imagine hearing people talk about it all over town. Think about what life would be like without the Romans telling you what to do all the time. Imagine the opportunity to change all the things that are wrong with your society. And most of all, imagine the world as you know it passing away and God creating a new world in which you are constantly in the presence of God.

What would it be like to live your entire life with that kind of excitement and expectation? That's the question I want you to consider this morning. Because although we live in a very different time and place from the time and place where this was written, we understand that this kind of expectation is part of what it means to be a Christian.

Christians are people who live in the hope and expectation that God is in the process of doing something incredible and unprecedented in the world, and specifically in the life of their own community. If we didn't have that expectation, there really wouldn't be much of a reason to get up on Sunday morning and participate here in church,

We never know just what to expect. We can never say, "Well, this is what we know God will do in our church next year." We can't tell God what to do. We believe that God is mysterious. But we live in the hope and expectation of something new and something better, which is the same kind of expectation Luke was trying to create in writing this passage.

Now some of you are new or are visiting us. And if no one has said so yet, let me be the first to say we are thrilled to have you with us this morning. I hope your visit is exciting and inspiring and refreshing. But what I also hope to do this morning is convince you that life is happiest when you live it in this kind of expectation and hope.

All of us have some kind of hope and dream for our lives or the lives of those we love. We hope our kids will have the opportunity to do whatever makes them happy in life. We want them to be successful. We hope to reach certain career goals; we hope to visit certain places; we hope to see the end of poverty and hunger and war. We all hope for this kind of thing.

But life has a way of bringing us down and convincing us that nothing will ever get better. That's the kind of despair that surrounded the birth of John the Baptist and Jesus. We look at the world and we think, "There is no solution. I'll never be who I want to be. I'll never give up that nasty habit. I'll never finish school. My son or daughter will never straighten up and fly right."

In the church we get into a rut sometimes and we think that there is no hope for our congregation to ever be as vital and vibrant as it once was. We see people getting older and programs getting smaller and budgets getting tighter.

But the reason why I am excited to get up every day and come to the church is because I remember situations like this one with John the Baptist and I see how god acted in a way the really turned the world around. And I believe the same God wants to act in powerful ways in our time, ways we cannot define, but ways which make our world better and brings about salvation today.

That's the reason why I think this place is special. That's why I hope those of you who are visiting us today will consider making this church a regular stop in your busy holiday schedule and beyond.

We believe this child named John and the child named Jesus who came after him were God's way of bringing salvation and peace and justice to a world shrouded in terrible darkness. We expect the same God to bring light to the people of Waukesha who have lost their hope. When I look at this congregation I don't see despair and decline and stagnation. I see hope and light and expectation.

Something's a-brewing here. I don't know what it is, but I like what I see. And like the people in this story, I want to be around to se just what God has planned for us. It's just around the bend, and I can't wait to see it.