University Worship Service - 11/20/16 - Tom Long

30:12 the most beautiful songs in all of scripture and in this case it's a song not sung by a heavenly choir, but by an old man, Zachariah, surely with a cracking voice and an unsteady pitch of the aged. It's one of the odd and fascinating things about the gospel of Luke to see what a prominent role old people play in Luke's gospel. It's true. More than any of the other Gospels, more than Matthew or Mark or John, the elderly in Luke play cameo roles. Now, I say that's odd because when we think about the dramatic newness of the Gospel, of what God is doing in Jesus Christ, we tend to think about youth. Mary, for example, we are told was probably just barely a teenager.

31:13 when she gave birth to the Christ child. Jesus was about 30 years old when he started his ministry. His disciples, many of them vigorous young fishermen in the prime of their life, at least two of them, James and John, are still young enough to be learning their trade from their father, Zebedee. It's young people that we think about in terms of the gospel, But no, in the Gospel of Luke, the first people we meet are senior citizens. They're all clustered in the first two chapters of Luke's Gospel, which means that Luke decided to introduce the Gospel with the aged. And when they have performed their roles, they disappear from the pages of the Gospel, and we don't see them anymore.

32:09 It's almost as if they do what they're supposed to do, and then they get up and turn off the television and go to bed early and leave the rest of the story to 20-year-olds. But there they are. There's Anna, 84 years old, hanging around the temple night and day, praying and fasting, and desperately hungering for the redemption of Jerusalem. but there's Simeon old enough to be fretting about his own death trying to hang on for a few more days or a few more weeks because the Holy Spirit has told him he will not taste death until with his own eyes he has seen the long-promised Messiah and the salvation of Israel And then there are Zechariah, the old priest, and his wife Elizabeth, good people, quietly living out the commandments, putting one foot in front of the other, trying to live a decent and a righteous life.

33:18 Now, why does Luke do this? Why does Luke introduce the new and fresh action of God in Jesus Christ with all of this gray hair and wrinkles? It may be because all of these elderly people in the gospel of Luke embody and share two qualities that are essential to Luke's theology. First of all, they are old enough to have a faithful memory. They know the story of God's mighty acts, of what God has done to bring the people of Israel out of slavery and into freedom and joy. They respect the commandments. They observe the rituals. They recite the creeds.

34:11 They know the story. They've got a faithful memory. but second they are all restless they are hungering for something new something different to come from the hand of God almost as if to say look the story is wonderful the creeds are great the rituals are fine but they're empty unless there is a living God who continues to act and save now they're hungering for that in that regard the old priest Zechariah is particularly I think an interesting case he's an old priest he's on the clergy rolls at the temple he's not the head priest he's not the high priest he's what we would call an associate pastor but when his time comes on the liturgical calendar he has important responsibilities He goes up to the temple. He smooths out the cloths on the altar. He lights the candles. He gets the incense going, and he prepares to say the prayers.

35:28 It's a quiet life. It's a good life. It's a faithful life. but what most people don't see about Zachariah is that he is hiding a deep and secret wound he and his wife Elizabeth have no children they can't have children now in a way that is different from our time in the first century children were understood in a powerful way to be the The main way that God blessed a family with joy and hope and a future and life. And Zachariah and Elizabeth have no children. Can have no children. Probably when they were a young couple, they dreamed that they would have a house full of children. Children sprouting up like olive shoots around the table.

36:26 They may have even dreamed that on the Passover, the holiest night of the year, they would be at the table and their youngest child would look at Zechariah and in a beautiful child's voice say the words of the ancient liturgy, Father, why is this night different from all other nights? But no, they have no children. The language that Luke uses is harsh, harsher than we would use. Luke says Elizabeth was barren, and she felt it as a shame upon her. And Zechariah felt it as a sadness, a sadness for her, a sadness for himself, a sadness on them as a couple. and they sat at the table night after night, just the two of them, and they knew that it would always be this way because as Luke delicately puts it, they were getting on in years.

37:32 But then one day, Zechariah is in the temple. He's smoothing out the altar clause. He's lighting the candles and suddenly the angel Gabriel is right beside him and it scares the wits out of Zechariah. And so the angel Gabriel says the first thing that he says, Do not be afraid. Do not be afraid. It's a saying, but in a way it's a kind of song. It is a song we will continue to hear in the gospel. It's the song of Christmas. Do not be afraid. It is the hymn of Easter as the risen Christ says, do not be afraid. And Gabriel sings it. Do not be afraid, Zachariah. Your prayers have been answered. Good news, your wife Elizabeth will bear a son. You will name him John.

38:25 He will give you much joy and gladness and he will be great before the Lord. And Zachariah stands there stupefied. and finally when he can speak he says how can this be look at me I'm an old man how can this be look at my wife how can this be and Gabriel draws back I am Gabriel I stand in the presence of God I have been sent to tell you this good news of what God is doing in your life. But because you do not believe it, I am taking away from you your speech. You will be mute until this thing has happened. Now let me ask you something. What does Zachariah not believe? Does he not believe that God can do mighty acts? He believes that. He knows the story.

39:27 He has a faithful memory. He knows that God has brought Israel out of slavery and raised up prophets. He believes that God can do mighty acts. Does he not believe that God can give a child to an aged couple? No, he believes that. He knows the story of Abraham and Sarah, how they were almost 100 years old when God gave them a child. he knows that God can give a child to an aged couple what doesn't he believe he doesn't believe that it can happen here and now in his life several years ago in the church where my wife and I worship in Atlanta we had a guest preacher one Sunday and he preached a marvelous sermon about what God is doing in the world to bring joy in places of sadness to bring healing in places of hurt and sorrow to bring justice in wounded places in our society and he invited all of us to look out and try to discern what God is doing in the world and to join in with it with our own faithful response.

40:47 It was a moving sermon, and then we went to the Lord's table, and our pastor, having listened carefully to that sermon, decided to improvise the invitation to the table by using some of the same language that the preacher had used in the sermon. So he stood at the table and said, if you are hungry for justice, come now and feed at this table. If you are thirsty for the shalom of God, come and drink at this table. Well, they were just words. But the Spirit took those words and put them into the heart of at least one woman in the congregation. Her name, Angela, a homeless woman who worshiped in our congregation. And when she heard those words, they were the voice of God here and now.

41:42 And she got up from her pew. She always sat in the balcony. She bounded down the balcony steps like a gazelle. She dashed up the center aisle of the church before an astonished congregation. and like a base runner, she slid into second base, coming up to the altar with her arms outstretched, ready to receive the blessing of God. Our pastor looked at her like, what am I supposed to do with this?

42:14 It was almost as if they're just words, Angela. I don't think they're going to happen here and now. It was the look of Zachariah. I've seen that look I've seen it on my own face maybe on yours where we come into a place like this and we sing the hymns and we say the prayers and we hear the scriptures read but we don't think it's going to happen here or now not with the election that we've been through not here not now the peace of God don't you know about Syria don't you know about ISIS not here, not now. It's the look of Zechariah. When I was a teenager, the civil rights movement was beginning to get some traction going in the South. And one of the strategies being used by civil rights workers was, it sounds so innocent now, but for African Americans to show up on Sunday morning at 11 o'clock at all white congregations and simply to present themselves for worship.

43:29 Sounds so gentle now, but it was a crisis then, a crisis of identity. What do we believe about the gospel? What do we believe about the children of God? Well, it happened in a couple of churches in Atlanta, and when it did, every white church in Atlanta went through a nervous conversation of what will we do if this happens in our church? Now, my family and I worshipped in a little clapboard Presbyterian church out in the country from Atlanta. Nobody could have found the church, I imagine, if they were looking for it. But our officers went through that conversation. What will we do if civil rights workers come to our worship service? So important was their conversation about it that they reported on it in worship. It was the clerk of session, the head officer of our church, and what he said was, after much prayer and deliberation, we have decided that if black civil rights workers come to our church, they will be seated as long as there is room. We looked around, there were 30 empty pews like there always were.

44:43 The clerk went on to elaborate the policy, and several times he used the phrase, as long as there is room, and it soon became apparent there wasn't going to be any room. That was the way they were going to dodge it. We'd love to have you worship with us, but we don't have any room. Well, about the fourth time he said it, Flora Miller, like Anna in the Gospel of Luke in her 80s and a woman of prayer, Flora Miller, about this tall, always wore a black pillbox hat with a mesh veil every Sunday. Flora Miller, she stood up and she said, Mr. Clerk, if there isn't room, they can have my pew. Flora Miller knew that God was acting for justice here and now. And when Zachariah finally realized that Don from on high had broken in on his life, he was given his voice back, and he didn't preach, and he didn't teach, and he didn't give a paragraph from his memoirs.

46:02 He sang. He broke into song. It's the human voice pressing language beyond ordinary explanation, bearing witness to a wonder too great for ordinary language to express. I have a friend who is a United Church of Christ pastor, and one summer he went to a UCC ministers conference. He was surprised to find himself seated on the pew at the opening worship service next to his old theology professor from Harvard, Richard R. Niebuhr. Well, as it turns out, in that worship service, the preacher for the evening was preaching what he called an experimental sermon, which meant that he preached a couple paragraphs and then the congregation sang the stanza of a hymn. Then he preached a few more paragraphs and the congregation sang the second stanza and then a few and the third and so on.

47:01 And evidently it was not going well. He wasn't catching fire and my friend leaned over to his old theology professor and said, God, this is awful. This reminds me of something you said in class one day. Niebuhr looked at him oddly. Oh, yeah, we were reading J.S. Whale's book, Christian Doctrine, and you said that Whale was a bad theologian because every time he encountered a problem he couldn't solve, he quoted a hymn.

47:37 Niebuhr said, I was wrong. I was young, I was brash, I was wrong. I have since discovered that there are some things in our faith that you can say only in hymns. And Zechariah sang. By the tender mercies of God, the dawn from on high has broken upon us, giving light to those who sit in darkness, even those in the shadow of death, guiding our feet in the way of peace.

48:21 We lost the great Irish poet Seamus Haney three summers ago. he wrote in one of his poems history says don't hope on this side of the grave but then once in a lifetime the long four tidal wave of justice can rise up and hope and history rhyme When he died August three years ago, he died on the operating table. He had taken a fall, was rushed to the hospital. His wife rode in the ambulance with him, but he died on the operating table. As they were preparing him for surgery, his wife sat anxiously in the waiting room.

49:10 She heard the chime of her phone that she had received a text. when she looked at it she was stunned to realize that the text was from her husband in the operating room it turned out to be his last communication and he texted her two words in Latin no lead to Mary do not be afraid it was a text but it was also a song it was Gabriel's song to Zachariah it is the song of Christmas it is the hymn of the risen Christ standing victorious on Easter do not be afraid because the saving power of God is at work