Sermon: No way, God! Yes, Way! (God)
It
takes all kinds of people – heralded and unheralded, doing all kinds of things
–mostly ordinary and sometimes extraordinary, to make the kingdom of God happen
on Earth, and make God’s promise of good news come true.
When
it was Zechariah’s turn to do and be part of something special, though, the old
priest doesn’t think he has it in him.
Nor does he think his wife Elizabeth has it in her either. I understand that.
He and
his wife are already doing God’s work in the world. He is a priest to God’s people, and a good
priest, helping people be reconciled with one another and with God all through
their life. And she is his wife, doing
the things a priest’s wife is to do.
They’ve been good people, doing their part of God’s good work all their
life, and surely that’s enough.
So
when the angel Gabriel meets Zechariah one day in the temple, and tells him they
will have a son who will help the appearing of God’s messiah in their time, the
old man’s first thought is, “No way! Me
– at my age, a father? And my wife – at
her stage in life, conceiving and giving birth to a baby?”
Zechariah
is more mindful of his and his wife’s limitations and the barrenness of their
relationship, than he is of the power of God.
He may also be thinking he’s done enough for God already, without this
extraordinary thing being added to his to-do list.
But
God has a plan and work to be done. God
will help Zechariah and his wife to accomplish
something they have not been able to do themselves, and will use who they are
and what they have as part of something greater unfolding in the world. And there are three stages to this – three
stages to how Zechariah comes to fulfill the role he is given in God’s work of
redeeming the world.
The first is silence. When Zechariah starts off with disbelief,
rather than argue with him, God simply shuts him up for 9 months while God goes
about the business of doing what is promised.
God silences Zechariah’s disbelief.
And is it a punishment and a curse for questioning and doubting God’s promise? Or is it a gift and a discipline that help
the promise begin to unfold?
I wonder how many times I have hindered
the seeds of good ideas from other people from being sown and then taking root
to grow, by the way I often respond to them right away with all the problems
about the idea, rather than silencing that impulse and taking time to look
first at the possibilities and then sort out the problems later? In my own life as well, how many good
impulses and creative urges have I too quickly and easily said “no” to and laid
to rest, just because I thought I couldn’t do it and didn’t have it in me –
whatever the “it” is that I thought I needed to have.
In any process of spiritual discernment
I’ve ever learned or read about, silencing our first responses – either
negative or positive, is always one of the important early steps because we
respond too easily out of habit, or fear, or self-protection, or all kinds of
reasons and agendas that have nothing to do with the question or hand and what
God may actually be doing and wanting us to do at that moment.
Sometimes the most important thing God
can do is make us be quiet – to silence our first disbelieving thoughts and our
instinctive negative response, because God does not need us to completely
believe the promise. Nor does God need
us to be able to see and explain the whole picture to others. What God needs is that we act – that we be
willing to take our part as it’s revealed and given to us, that even if we
don’t quite see what good this will do, for the moment we act “as if” it will
make a difference that’s needed.
When Gabriel tells Zechariah that he
and his wife will have a son who will help pave the way for God’s good news to
come into the world, Zechariah doesn’t quite believe it. He and his wife have not been able to have
children all their long life. What’s to
make anything different now?
But between the lines where it says
“when his time of service was ended, he went to his home,” and then “after
those days his wife Elizabeth conceived,” we know what took place. Zechariah acted on the promise he was
given. He did his part, as did
Elizabeth, and that allowed the work of God to be done through it.
How often do we doubt the value of what
we do, but do it anyway when it’s given to us to do?
Christmas is a great example. We know that giving hats, mitts, scarves, socks,
quilts, gifts and donations to the Wesley Christmas Store, and buying gifts and
gathering money for Christmas dinner for a family in Niagara, and making dinner
and serving it in the Wesley Centre dining hall do not solve the problem of
poverty in the city and in the peninsula.
But we do it anyway – generously and are happily, because these are
things we are given to do. They are
offered to us, as our part of God’s work of healing and redeeming the world.
And there’s what you also do beyond what
we do as a church – through your work, with your families, in your
neighbourhoods, through donations to other organizations – all of whom are
doing their part as well. It takes all
kinds of people and actions to make the kingdom of God happen on Earth, and to
make the promise of good news come true.
And sometimes, as with Zechariah and
Elizabeth, there’s the extraordinary – the unusual and above-and-beyond that we
are called to embrace as well. Do you
remember the Boxing Day tsunami in the Indian Ocean in 2004, and how just as we
were ready to sit back and enjoy a break after all the Christmas busy-ness and
charity, we were asked suddenly to care and to pray and to give
over-and-above?
Some feel the same way about the Syrian
refugees. It seems like maybe one thing too many to care about and take on at
this time of year, but people find ways when the opportunity to do their part
is offered to them.
We even see this in our yearly
second-Sunday-of-Advent stint at Wesley Urban Ministries. Before the dinner at 4, there used to be
worship at 3 that we “brought” to the Wesley patrons as though worship itself
was a kind of “gift” we were bringing. The
last few years this changed. Worship was
made more participatory for all, with us just invited to share in the time with
them – more mutual and collegial, but the divide between them and us was still
pretty visible.
And now this year a new approach. Instead of worship at the Centre at all, Wesley
patrons who like to worship do so in churches in the neighbourhood, and what
happens at 3:00 is that the Wesley Centre chaplain will meet with us to talk
and pray about the time we will have with them at dinner, and to help us be
able to sit and eat and really share dinner-time with them in the dining hall.
My first thought? “Oh no!
I can’t do that.”
But God doesn’t need me believe it can
happen and that I can do it. God just
needs me to do it – to be part of living the kingdom of God in our time when
the opportunity is given.
Which hopefully, in God’s own time,
leads to the third thing – the stage when like Zechariah, I am aware of being
changed within, of being opened in new ways to Spirit, and I open my mouth not
with questions and misgivings and hesitations, but with praise of the work God
is doing in the world, and that I am happy to be part of.
May it be so … for me, for you, and for
all who are called and given a chance to be part of God’s good work in healing
and redeeming life on Earth.
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