Hope for Hope

Luke 1:5-20

Sometimes good news is so good we can’t believe it. So it is with Zechariah as he serves his temple term as a priest. An angel announces the birth of an impossible child―his own son. Zechariah and Elizabeth are well past the childbearing years. Such a child would be akin to the birth of Isaac or Samuel. Zechariah cannot get his mind around it.

I am reminded of the title of a CS Lewis book, “Surprised by Joy.” Such joy is miraculous because it meets us in moments when we thought joy impossible, even when we understand that joy is something wholly other than simple happiness or contentment. Such joy interrupts the normal course of our existence. It is a break with reality. 

In Luke’s Nativity cycle, there are several such breaks―this one, the Annunciation, and the Nativity itself. In each case, God interrupts the flow of human history. God intervenes. 

We are not used to such interventions, and in our time and place, we seem to think they no longer occur. The age of miracles seems to have faded out somewhere around the 11th Century. We smirk at our Catholic siblings when a contemporary saint is canonized, wondering how on earth they found the necessary miracle for canonization, let alone rationalize it after the Magisterium declared it to be so. We leave the miracles in the canon. We no longer make them necessary to orthodox belief. We tend to render them metaphors for God’s amazing grace.

So, we should have utter sympathy for Zechariah. And it should come as no surprise when the angel silences him. As a priest there will be no proclamation without complete faith; ergo, he will not speak until he believes. The angel seems to know that Zechariah will not believe until he holds the child in his arms, so be it! Silence!

The lesson for us is somewhat frightening. Maybe the church and its representatives should no longer speak until we actually believe. In progressive Christianity, there is a move away from the miraculous. We tend to turn the gospel into a moral guideline for social action. We leave it at that. We no longer look for, wait for, or ask for miracles. Is that why the Nones are the fastest growing segment of the American religious? Has God silenced our witness until we actually believe in something transcendent and transformative?