Father and Son

Scriptures:      Malachi 3:1-4,  Luke 1:68-79, Philippians 1:3-11,  Luke 3:1-6

Today’s readings give us a rare glimpse of a father-and-son odd couple, Zechariah, an aging priest in the Temple, and his famous son, John the Baptist.  While there are lots of stories of fathers and sons in the Old Testament – all the begats in Genesis, beginning with Adam, all the stories connected to Abraham and his descendants – to my knowledge, even though Matthew’s and Luke’s gospels contain genealogies, this is the only detailed father and son story in the New Testament.  Of course, there’s the story of Joseph and Jesus, but since we’re told Jesus was begotten by the Holy Spirit, Joseph is more like an adoptive father.  And we hear nothing of the sons or daughters of Peter, James, John and the other Apostles, and Paul being unmarried almost certainly had no children.

To back up a bit – and this was covered both in last week’s Bible study and at Wednesday’s Dinner Church, so some of you have heard this before; this will be the Cliff’s notes version – Zechariah was a priest in the Temple, and his wife Elizabeth was also from a priestly family.  They were very faithful, and they had grown very old in the faith….and had been unable to have children.   This would have been seen as a tragedy, even a curse, despite their faithfulness, it meant the end of their line.  They had prayed and implored and begged God for a child, but for years and decades, most of their lives, their prayer went unanswered – but they were not unheard.

Zechariah was of the order of Abijah, one of twenty four orders or divisions of priests who served in the temple; each division served twice a year in the Temple.  Zechariah was chosen by lot to offer incense on the outer and inner altar inside the Temple, and afterward emerge from the Temple to pronounce a benediction on the people.  Each priest only received this honor once in a lifetime, and so this would have been the high point of Zechariah’s priestly service.  When he entered to offer incense, the angel Gabriel appeared to him, and told him he was to have a son, who was to be named John – a name that means “God is gracious” or “God has shown favor”.  This child would bring joy not only to his parents but to many people, would be a prophet with the spirit of Elijah, who would turn the hearts of parents to their children and the hearts of those who had been disobedient to righteousness.  Zechariah, unsurprisingly, told Gabriel, “But my wife and I are too old for this child-bearing stuff.”  Even though Gabriel had announced fulfillment of Zechariah’s many prayers for a child, Zechariah had trouble after all these years accepting Gabriel’s “yes” for an answer.  Gabriel revealed his identity to Zechariah as one who stood before the Lord in the heavens – just as Zechariah had stood before the Lord at the altar of incense - and said that because of his doubt, Zechariah would be silent, unable to speak, until the arrival of the child.  Elizabeth gave birth to a son as the angel had announced, and on the baby’s eighth day , it was to be circumcised.  Although the neighbors thought Zechariah would name the baby after himself, first Elizabeth and then Zechariah in writing insisted that the baby was to be named John.  And then Zechariah’s speech was restored, and he spoke the beautiful words that we first read responsively and then sang in our second hymn.  These beautiful words speak not only of Zechariah’s son, John, but also of the mighty Savior from the house of David whose path John would prepare.

In our reading from the 3^rd chapter of Luke’s gospel, there’s been a time jump.  John has come of age as an adult.  Presumably, since Zechariah and Elizabeth were old when he was born, they’ve since passed away and gone on to their reward.   We’re told that John has begun his ministry.  He’s not burning incense in the Temple, as his father had.  Instead, he’s in the wilderness, far from where his father had served, offering baptism in the river Jordan as a sign of repentance, of turning away from sin.  Luke’s gospel gives us John’s mission statement, a quote from the prophet Isaiah: 

  “The voice of one crying out in the wilderness: 'Prepare the way of the Lord, make his paths straight.
   Every valley shall be filled,  and every mountain and hill shall be made low, and the crooked shall be made straight, 

   and the rough ways made smooth; and all flesh shall see the salvation of God.'"

Luke begins this section of his Gospel by listing those in power, both secular and religious:  “In the fifteenth year of the reign of Emperor Tiberius, when Pontius Pilate was governor of Judea, and Herod was ruler of Galilee, and his brother Philip ruler of the region of Ituraea and Trachonitis, and Lysanias ruler of Abilene, during the high priesthood of Annas and Caiaphas.”   This not only gives us approximate dates to work with, but a cast of characters, nearly all of whom would turn out to be sinister figures in Luke’ s gospel.  And then Luke continues: “the word of God came to John son of Zechariah in the wilderness.”  Note that the list of those in power – Tiberius, Pilate, Herod and his family, Annas and Caiaphas – is also a list of those to whom the word of the Lord did not come.  God didn’t speak to those in power, did not ask them to prepare the way or make straight paths – because these were the very people who had created the conditions of crooked paths and rough ways in the first place, the very people whose corruption and self-dealing left the people without hope.  God did not speak to them.  Instead, God spoke to this son of a priest, you might say a “priest’s kid” or “P.K.” named John.  John offered a way of experiencing God very different from the rituals of the Temple, one that was much more immediate and tangible and personal.  And people responded in large numbers.  Not only the Gospels but the Roman Jewish historian Josephus mention John’s following among the people and John’s eventual execution by Herod.  Even after Jesus’ ministry began and after the execution of John, the community of people John gathered continued to follow John’s teachings.  To this day, a tiny religious sect called the Mandeans, located mostly in Iran and Iraq, continues to this day to follow the teachings of John the Baptist, which were collected in a holy book.

Those of you who are parents, I’m sure, looked on  your newborn son or daughter with high hopes and big dreams of what he or she would be.  Zechariah’s own hopes for a son were heightened by the words spoken by the angel, that his son would change the lives of many for the better. And yet John did not follow his father into the priesthood.  Just as John was not given his father’s name, he also was not given his father’s calling.  It may be interesting to speculate how Zechariah felt as his long-prayed-for son John grew through childhood and adolescence and came of age as an adult – and did not follow in his father’s footsteps.    True, Gabriel had said Zechariah’s son would be a prophet, not a priest, and they are very different callings.  Even so, John essentially turned his back on the Temple and the sacrificial system that his father Zechariah had served so long and so faithfully to follow God’s call into the desert.  In fact, John so thoroughly rejected the Temple system that according to Matthew’s Gospel, when some religious leaders came out to the desert to be baptized, John called them a brood of vipers.   Some of those whom John called “vipers” may well have been associates of his father Zechariah, or children of his late father’s Temple colleagues.  We’ll hear Luke’s account of John’s preaching next Sunday – in Luke’s gospel, the description “vipers” applies to the whole crowd - and John the Baptist did not preach tame sermons.

Why would John reject his father’s way of serving God?   In the church, “preacher’s kids” or “P.K.’s” have a reputation for rebelling against the church, and perhaps John’s rejection of his father’s ways was similar.  After all, P.K.’s see the church up close, warts in all, in a way that most parishioners don’t.  P.K.’s see how much family time pastors give up in order to serve the flock, see the late night phone calls and hospital visits, see the drama and power plays that go on in many large congregations and on their governing boards.  P.K.’s see that being pastor may not leave a lot of energy for just being mom or dad.  Congregations see their pastor at his Sunday morning best, but P.K.’s see the pastor – their father and mother – when he or she is tired, or angry, or when they’ve otherwise dropped their Sunday morning mask.  P.K.’s see the church behind the scenes in a way that few congregation members do – what the congregation experiences as blessing sent from above often looks more like sausage-making behind the scenes – you don’t want to know what went into the sausage - and often, the experience is enough to make P.K’s turn their back on the church, rejecting not only the institution but the God it tries to serve.  Maybe John experienced similar shortcomings among his father and his colleagues – the collaboration with Roman power, the protection of institutional power that may sometimes have led to exploitation and neglect of human need.   We remember the story of the poor widow giving her last pennies to the Temple, and John may have seen how many poor widows were giving their last pennies to keep the Temple system going.  Of course, we don’t know the specifics, but one can speculate.

Many of us have the experience in our families of having that one family member who marches to a different drummer, who follows a path very different from that of his parents and siblings – the son of a military family who goes on to be a peace activist, the son of a lawyer who grows up to be a cabinet maker, the daughter of a factory worker who follows her artistic or musical talents to create works of art or music her parents may not be able fully to appreciate.  If that’s our family’s experience, today’s readings about the priest Zechariah and his rebel son John the Baptist may help us, whether we’re fathers or sons or both, mothers or daughters or both, give space for those who have chosen a different path or who have remained on a more traditional path.  Zechariah served God faithfully as part of the Temple establishment, and his son John served God faithfully far from the Temple precincts.  Though they served in very different ways, they both faithfully served the same God. 

For all of us, our readings remind us that God’s blessings often come when we least expect, when we’ve given up all hope, and in unexpected packages.  If we have narrow ideas about how God can work – if we put God inside a box of our own expectations – we may well  miss the blessing.  But if we can keep our eyes and ears and other senses awake and alert, God may bless us when we least expect.

John prepared the way for the good news of Jesus by preaching about the need for repentance, the need to turn our lives around.  .  We’ll talk more about John’s preaching next week, but suffice for this week to say that the good news of Jesus began with the bad news spoken by John that lives needed to change – along with the good news that change was possible.  It’s the same for us:  if we are sick, the journey to healing begins with an accurate diagnosis of the disease behind whatever symptoms we’re experiencing.  And it’s also generally true that if we ignore our symptoms, the disease will not go away, but instead grow worse.  The same is true of the disease of sin that troubles our spiritual lives – and the diseases of society that bring suffering on so many.  The bad news is that we have to change.  The good news is that we can change, and the really good news is that through Christ, God brings about change. 

The angel Gabriel announced to Zechariah a son who would be a blessing and bring joy, not only to Zechariah and his wife Elizabeth, but to multitudes.  And yet, in order to bring this blessing, John was led on a path that his father could hardly have imagined.  In this Advent season of waiting and preparation, may we, too, be open to the unexpected blessings God may wish to bestow upon us.  May we be open, not only to the blessings, but to the changes to our lives they  may entail. 

Zechariah said, “By the tender mercy of our God,  the dawn from on high will break upon us, to give light to those
who sit in darkness and in the shadow of death, to guide our feet into the way of peace." May these words come true in our lives and in this neighborhood of Bridesburg in which God has planted us.  Amen.