November 29, 2009                Edgewood United Church UCC        Rev. Karen E. Gale

 

Barren Belief

Luke 1: 5-25

 

“I believe in the sun, even when it is not shining. I believe in love, even when feeling it not. I believe in God, even when God is silent.”

 

These words were found scrawled on a cell wall in a German concentration camp. They are from an anonymous writer who offers us a deeply profound definition of hope.

 

“I believe in God even when God is silent.”

 

Silence plays a big part in today’s scripture. Zechariah and Elizabeth are old, certainly at least sixty, which is what the Bible considered old. And they have wanted, waited for a child since they were married, probably at age 15 or so.

 

God has been silent a long, long time. Forty-five years of hope dashed month after month as they replayed the same loss: no pregnancy, no child.

 

Elizabeth was considered “barren”, an ugly word for a woman who did not get pregnant, did not bear children. Not only was it a personal tragedy but also considered a sign that they lived an unrighteous life, that God was displeased with them and they had sinned. Barrenness was a social and religious stigma especially since Zechariah was a priest.

 

I imagine Zechariah felt barren, too. That is what happens when our dreams seem out of reach, when all we hoped for has died, been denied, when despite our faithfulness, our pleas, our desperate prayers, God is silent. Or so it seems. Zechariah and Elizabeth have been waiting for God for a long, long time.

 

It’s not a great time to live in Jerusalem or the surrounding towns either. The great Pax Romana or Peace of Rome is only peace at a price. Overwhelming military might and absolute tyranny shape everyday life. The people of Israel had waited for a long time. God has not spoken through a prophet since the prophet Micah over 400 years before. God is silent. How can the people hope?

 

So we are introduced to these people who have waited seemingly in vain. This is ironic in a way. You see Elizabeth’s name is translated “God has sworn” or “God’s oath” and Zechariah means “God remembers.”

 

Our text tells us Zechariah has his time of service. He is a priest. “The priests were divided into 24 groups or divisions (1 Chronicles 10:7-18), of which Zechariah's "division of Abijah" is eighth in the rotation. Priests and their families would live in Jerusalem or in various nearby villages, but when their division was called up for duty for a week, twice each year, the priests would come to Jerusalem to work in the Temple. Each day about 50 priests would have been on duty, with perhaps 300 on duty during a given week.” (textweek.com)

 

All wanted to be chosen to enter the holy of holies, a duty chosen by lot. It was a real honor to offer prayers to God on behalf of all the people of Israel, an honor to be in the most holy place. “The Old Testament tells us that the priest of incense wears a white robe and his feet are bare; he has an assistant on his right hand with a golden vessel with a half-pound of incense; an assistant on the left side with a golden vessel with burning cones. As they go up the steps and approach the Holy of Holies, those vessels are given to the priest of incense. He enters alone, laying the coals on the altar and then the incense on top, of the coals after voicing the prayers of deliverance and redemption.” (Messengers of the Covenant, Rev. Louis H. Zbinden, fpcsat.org)

 

Here is Zechariah, still faithful to God, still faithful to his role, or as a colleague said, “A long obedience in the same direction.” But does he still believe God hears and remembers— either the prayers of Israel or the prayers of his own when God has been so silent and he himself is feeling barren? One wonders if Zechariah believed that God remembered.

 

He hadn’t heard from God in a long time. And when we don’t hear from God, when God seems silent we can think God has it in for us, or doesn’t care about us or ignores us, or there is something wrong with us.

 

There was a couple who had settled into a routine, just moving through life, and they gradually stopped talking to one another, not out of malice but out of habit. One of their weekly rituals was as the week came to an end and as the loaf of bread came to the end, the man always put two pieces of bread in the toaster. But year, after year, after year, as they came to the end, he would put the next to the last piece and then the heel in the toaster, and he always gave her the heel.

 

One day she simply flew into a rage, and she said, After all of these years you have never given to me the next to the last piece – the piece that toasts on both sides; you’ve given me the heel.

 

And he looked at her in shock and dismay and hurt, because the heel was his favorite piece. And he said, Didn’t you know that the heel was my favorite piece; I have been sacrificing all these years to give it to you. He had never told her; she had never heard that. (sermoncentral.com)

 

Not to say that Elizabeth’s inability to have a child was some great favor from God but just that silence can leave us in a place of barrenness. Barrenness without hope.

 

Maybe you know this place. A place in your life where you wait and wait and wait, and nothing changes. Where you pray and pray and pray and God is silent. Nothing changes. Where you try and with all your might and yet find yourself disappointed, alone, in silence. We wait and wait and wait. War continues, peace never blooms, change never takes root. Barren.

 

(silence)

 

Hope is the bird that sings while it is still dark

 

What is it that you hope for, really hope for, or have given up hoping for? I don’t know all of your sorrows, whether a failing marriage, a terminally ill child, a broken friendship, a losing battle with thoughts of suicide, a yearning to have a child,

 

Has God been silent?

 

God remembers.

 

God remembers. That is our hope. That is what our scriptures tell us is true. God remembers. Have hope. We can have hope.

 

Hope is not a fuzzy sweet emotion or state of mind. It is an often bitterly grasped, desperately clung to, painful spiritual state. To choose hope is to choose life and to choose God. To believe that our lives are not barren despite how things seem. To believe that God is indeed bringing something new to birth within us, within our world. Even in silence.

 

It may not be what we have wanted, or how we have wanted it. But God remembers.

 

As Zechariah kneels in the holy of holies an angel appears. You will have a son. He will not drink strong drink, meaning he is to be a Nazirite, or someone who takes a special kind of vow before God as described in the book of Numbers. He will be full of the Holy Spirit, he will lead the people back to God. Many will delight in his birth. God has heard your prayer.

 

And Zechariah can only stammer, but my wife and I are old!

 

We make think Zechariah is a fool or a skeptic. He has been skewered by scholars for being faithless. But imagine Zechariah who had finally laid his dream for a child aside, dare he believe this angel, dare he hope again, hope which can be so painful, nigh on fatal. How can this be after all this time, after all this despair, after all this? How can people be joyful for us, they will think we are freaks? Do you expect me to believe this?

 

The angel says, I’m Gabriel, but since you didn’t believe you won’t be able to say anything until he is born. You will be mute. Silence, again.

 

The congregation is waiting for Zechariah to emerge after all that time. He can’t tell them what has happened. He goes home to Elizabeth. He can’t tell her what has happened. But obviously they figure something out because Elizabeth gets pregnant and goes into seclusion for five months. Again silence.

 

What are Zechariah and Elizabeth doing in the silence? Is it a curse or is it a blessing? If you had waited for 45 years for something and it finally, miraculously, maybe was coming to pass, how would you react? Silence might be exactly the thing.

 

Hope is coming. Hope that we wait for. Hope that we seem to wait for again and again and again. Dare we still hope? Why should I believe that we will find a peaceful solution to Israel and Palestine? Why should I believe that Michigan will emerge from this recession? Why should I believe a child will come into my life?

 

There are places in our lives where we are stuck, have lost hope, feel bound or barren. There are obstacles we can’t seem to get past; we can’t find new way. We feel dead—there is no life, no rebirth. Dare we have hope?

 

Yes. Because God hears. And God remembers. And so we have hope.

 

Now does that mean we will get everything we want? No, I don’t think so. But God will not leave us in barrenness. The challenge is we have to be ready to grow. Ready to open up, ready for what God has in mind, perhaps even a baby born to seventy year old parents.   

 

Zechariah and Elizabeth, and then Mary and Joseph, were willing to be bearers of hope. Literal bearers as first John the Baptist and then Jesus came into the world. Are we willing to be bearers of hope?

 

Preston was a young man with no chances, no hope. He writes:

As a teenager, I once found myself sitting in the back of a patrol car. One of the officers was telling his partner; “I don’t know why we bother; this kid will be dead before he’s 20.” I figured they were being optimistic. Gangs, drugs, poverty. It was that event, however, that led me to Jane Lanzetta who introduced me to the hope trade. The way it worked was simple; I would give her some of my anger and she in turn would give me some of her hope. The challenge was that while she somehow got rid of my anger, I couldn’t seem to get rid of her hope. She was a trader in hope.

 

One day Jane decided that I needed to meet some of the other traders, so I was volunteered to join the Special Olympics. I was assigned to one of the judges named John. John was two years older than I, and had MS. My job was to push his wheel chair from event to event.

 

Usually, when John needed to use the bathroom we would find a nurse, but we eventually found ourselves without a nurse. So, I reluctantly took him to the bathroom, awkwardly helped him take his pants down, and slowly lifted him onto the toilet. Then, when his head was just next to mine, he gently said “tell me again about your problems…?”

 

Later, during my 21st year, I decided to volunteer at a camp for terminally ill children. My job, my only job, was to help the campers be regular kids for one week. No medical tests, no parent tears, just laughter and silliness. What I did not prepare for was the opening ceremony. I did not know that during the ceremony they read the names of the children who had died the previous year. A child near me began to sob, and another child went over and hugged them. I was enraged. I felt that this was too much to ask of these children. I stood up to look for the director only to see she already had found me. Before I could say anything she simply said. “We cannot be afraid of it, we cannot hide from it…”

 

It is in those moments where despair crashes down upon us, that it is easy to let anger and cynicisms blind us to hope. What is hard, what I have spent my life trying to learn, is that in those very moments that we are most entitled to our anger, we must instead trade in hope.

 

But this was too much, I was lost, head buried, tears flowing, lost. Then came the tap on my shoulder…then another. I slowly lifted my head to find a small bald boy standing next to me. He just looked at me and softly said “it’s ok”. It turned out that he was a trader in hope as well, and saw that I was running low. (This I Believe.org)

 

As Christians we are to be traders in hope. As Christians in Advent we are to believe in hope. For this is the season when we wait. And wait. And wait. And we wait. But God remembers. God remembered Zechariah and Elizabeth. God remembers us.

 

I don’t know what you hope for, long for, dream of, wait for, scream for. What seems impossible to you? But I do know that God will not leave you barren. God remembers.

And so we hope.

 

Amen.