Luke 1:1-25
Lesson Focus
Even though barren brokenness surrounds us, we are called to live with imaginative hope as we wait for God’s salvation through Jesus Christ.
Lesson Outcomes
Through this lesson, students should:
Be encouraged to name the barren brokenness they see and feel around them.
Be encouraged to live in hope-filled faithfulness as we wait for the coming of our salvation.
Catching Up on the Story
Luke, the gospel’s author, is sitting down to write an orderly account of what he sees as a fulfillment of Scripture. What is to follow will be Luke’s interpretation of everything from the birth of Christ to his ascension into heaven.
Luke begins his narrative by providing historical markers that indicate when the story is taking place. Herod was king of Judea, a Roman province that included what was once the southern kingdom of Judah. At this point, Herod is the “real” king of the Jews.
The birth of John the Baptist, which we are concerned with, is a prologue of sorts to the story of God’s coming salvation. God’s people, the Jews, were living in an oppressive time; both the civil and religious authorities taxed them. Many had their land taken and were forced to work as day laborers or slaves. The future was not bright for God’s people; they needed a savior.
Barrenness
The Advent story begins with barrenness. Barrenness is the appropriate place to begin because the inability to be fruitful and multiply is the natural result of human disobedience. I mean this in both the natural sense, as it is with Zachariah and Elizabeth, and in a more metaphorical sense.
Certainly, a couple’s inability to bear a child to fulfill one of the species’ primary missions is not natural. Barrenness results from the world’s brokenness, which our arrogance has caused.
At the same time, however, other forms of barrenness are much more common than the inability of a couple to have a child. The barrenness of which I speak is in the air we breathe.
It is marked by loneliness, despair, and hopelessness. It is darkness.
The barrenness around us is pervasive, and it keeps us from growing into the people God intended us to be. Indeed, the creation God intended us to be and its story are as old as the history of the world.
The larger story of which Advent is a part begins with a good creation, one filled with potential and the possibility for life to flourish in untold and unimagined ways.
In those early days, humanity was told to be fruitful and multiply. To be sure, this command from God is issued more than once, even after disobedience and the barrenness it produces enter the world.
Flourishing and abundant life is God’s plan. It was God’s plan in the beginning and continues to be God’s plan.
If creation’s flourishing is the plan, why start this Advent story with barrenness? Why start with an upright and righteous couple tightly gripped by the barrenness of the world?
The Advent story starts with Zechariah and Elizabeth because it is a story of hope. It confronts the world’s barren and brokenness and declares, in no uncertain terms, that barrenness will no longer be the dominant storyline.
No, the Advent story proclaims to all people in all places who suffer from barrenness that the God who created this world is coming to set things right.
In the Temple
The Advent story begins in earnest with a devout couple. The husband, Zechariah, belongs to the priestly order of Abijah, a descendant of Moses’ brother Aaron. As was customary, priests served in the Temple only occasionally. Most lived outside Jerusalem and traveled to the capital to fulfill their duty. Zechariah, being a righteous person, faithfully served in the Temple.
Zechariah and his wife were rather old at the time of his most recent service in the Temple. Luke doesn’t tell us how old they were, but we can surmise that their childbearing years had long since vanished.
At the time, barrenness was a mark of shame. Anyone not able to have children had surely sinned, and their barrenness was God’s judgment upon them.
Yet, Luke goes out of his way to remind us that this barren couple is righteous. They are a faithful and obedient people.
The time of Zechariah’s service comes, and he is selected by the casting of lots to enter the inner sanctuary and offer an incense sacrifice. Zechariah was in this inner sanctuary alone while the worshiping crowd outside prayed.
As he was going about his duties, suddenly, an angel of the Lord appeared, standing at the right side of the altar of incense. Not surprisingly, Luke tells us that this terrified Zechariah, and he was afraid.
Right off the bat, we must recognize that what follows links Zechariah’s experience with similar visitations in the Old Testament. While the angel announces a new movement of God in the world, it is very much in line with how God has worked in Israel from the beginning.
This Advent story is not a departure from the story told in the Old Testament but a continuation of it. God, in God’s faithfulness, has not abandoned either Israel or the world to remain in its barrenness. New life is on the horizon.
With Zechariah overwhelmed with fear, the angel speaks a word of comfort. “Do not be afraid, Zechariah, for your prayer has been heard. Your wife Elizabeth will bear you a son, and you will name him John. You will have joy and gladness, and many will rejoice at his birth, for he will be great in the sight of the Lord…even before his birth, he will be filled with the Holy Spirit. He will turn many people to Israel and to the Lord their God…to make a people prepared for the Lord.”
I wonder if Zechariah heard much of what the angel said after the “Your wife Elizabeth will bear you a son…” line?
The look on the man’s face must have been priceless. He must have remembered enough of the pronouncement because he can tell the story of his encounter. Still, there’s so much to take in for Zechariah. Yes, the couple will have joy; they were barren, and now they are not.
No doubt, Zechariah would not have been surprised by the angel’s instructions regarding the prohibition of drinking wine or strong drink.
In the Old Testament, those God had set apart as agents of good news or salvation for Israel were instructed not to cut their hair or drink wine.
One of the most memorable instances of this type of instruction was from an angle to Samson’s parents before he was born. The reason for the prohibition against wine or strong drinks seems different in this case, for the angel tells us that even before he is born, the boy will be filled with the Holy Spirit.
This is the first time Luke will mention the Holy Spirit or someone being filled with the Holy Spirit, but it will not be the last.
What will this boy’s job be? He will turn the hearts of the people back to God. Parents will turn back to their children. Children will turn back to their parents. The disobedient will turn towards the wisdom of faithful obedience and righteousness. He will prepare the way.
What he will prepare the way for is not yet explicitly known to the reader, but I’m sure that Zechariah understood that his child would be the beginning of something big, something important in the life of his people.
Zechariah seems to be held up on the “you’re going to have a baby part,” for he asks how he will know this thing will come to pass.
While he is a faithful and righteous man, he lacks the imagination to see how God might work through him and Elizabeth in the same way God worked through Abraham and Sarah.
The angel’s response is swift. “I am Gabriel. I stand in the presence of God…” His credibility and ability to deliver consequences for disbelief are not to be questioned. So, Zechariah is struck mute until the baby, whose name must be John, is born.
Outside the Temple
The encounter Zechariah has with the angel must have taken a bit of time. The people praying outside the inner sanctuary grow concerned by the priest’s delay in returning to them. Eventually, Zechariah returns, and the crowd realizes that something has happened, and the man is unable to speak.
Though he cannot speak, Zechariah remains and fulfills the rest of his priestly obligations. Since Elizabeth is unlikely to have accompanied Zechariah to Jerusalem, he must wait to communicate with his wife about the future.
It’s impossible to know if, through the written word, Zechariah communicated the events of his chat with the angel to the other priests whom he was serving. I find it hard to believe that he would not have found a way to relate to at least one other person what he had witnessed.
Zechariah finally makes it home, and the angel’s prediction comes true. In her old age, Elizabeth conceives.
This week’s passage concludes with Elizabeth’s response to her pregnancy. Her response is what all responses to God’s faithfulness should be: a word of praise and thanksgiving.
“This is what the Lord has done for me when he looked favorably on me and took away the disgrace I have endured among my people.”
So What?
While the Advent story begins with the hopeless barrenness, it quickly moves toward the promise of new life. Like the new baby forming in Elizabeth’s womb, this new life and the salvation that comes with it needs time to grow.
The brokenness of the world didn’t develop in a day. Thousands of years have gone by, and humanity has continued to make a royal mess of things.
The barrenness of the world will not be fixed all at once, either.
As Elizabeth, Zechariah, and later Mary and Joseph had to wait to see the fulfillment of God’s promises, we, too, must wait in patient hope.
Because barren brokenness is all we see, the temptation to respond to God’s promise of salvation and restore all things in the same way that Zechariah did will be great.
We will look around us and lack the imagination to see that the situation might change. We will be tempted to say, “How will I know that is this so? For my family is in shambles, and there seems to be no way out.” Or, “How will I know that this is so? For all I see around me are arguments, hatred, bigotry, racism, and the worst kind of animosity and distrust?”
Yes, that will be our temptation. But hope grows, and salvation comes whether or not we choose to believe it.
Advent is a time of hopeful waiting, surrounded not by the things that make life possible but by death-filled things.
In the coming weeks, the hope-filled story that Luke tells will continue. Eventually, we’ll meet Jesus and the beginning of our salvation.
But until that time, we must wait. We must wait in hopeful expectation.
We must wait with an active imagination that dares to see a future where the barren brokenness that surrounds us is shrugged off and Godly fruitfulness reigns one more.
Discussion Questions
Read the text aloud. Then, read the text to yourself quietly. Read it slowly, as if you were very unfamiliar with the story.
The world around us is broken, filled with hurt and pain. The hurt and pain in the world lead us to live not in fruitfulness but in barrenness. Barrenness is a state where life cannot flourish. Where do you see barrenness in our world today?
How have you personally experienced the barrenness that results from the brokenness of our world?
Barrenness is a theme that runs through the Old Testament. What significant stories in the Old Testament start with the barrenness of a married couple? In each situation, how do their stories end?
How is the story of Zechariah and Elizabeth similar or dissimilar to the Old Testament stories of barrenness? What might we expect from Zechariah and Elizabeth’s story going forward?
Why do you think God sent the angel to talk to Zechariah while serving in the Temple’s inner sanctuary?
The angel gives a small glimpse into the baby’s future that this elderly couple will have. How do you think those who would have first read this story would have reacted to the angel’s pronouncement about what the boy will be?
Zechariah’s initial reaction is disbelief. Why do you think that is? After all, we are told that Zechariah and his wife are faithfully righteous people. Shouldn’t they be predisposed to belief? If so, why? If not, why?
How would you have reacted if you were in a similar situation?
Why is the consequence of Zechariah’s disbelief being struck mute?
What do you think it was like for Zechariah and Elizabeth to wait to fulfill the promise? How would you have waited?
The season of Advent is about hopeful waiting for God’s salvation to arrive. Amid such brokenness and barrenness, what can we do to ensure that we do not lose hope in the promise of God’s salvation?
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