Luke 1:68-79

What’s the longest you’ve been silent? A few minutes? Maybe hours? Perhaps a day or so? Even monastic communities that practice silence observe regular intervals for conversation. Many of the rest of us—adults and children alike—can hardly bear a few seconds of stillness. In a world full of noise, silence is an achievement. It rarely happens accidentally, and when it does, we notice. The less interference there is, the louder the sounds we otherwise couldn’t hear become.

Have you ever kept quiet long enough to remember the first words you said to break that silence? Have you ever lost your voice or been placed on medical vocal rest? Have you ever been physically unable to speak? Except for those without vocal function or who’ve experienced permanent speech loss, a prolonged period of forced, let alone voluntary, silence is virtually unimaginable.

My longest silence is five days. I had tonsil surgery the summer I turned 30. The procedure was extremely dangerous and long overdue. As an opera singer, I had been putting it off for years. I had meant to go a full two weeks post-op without phonating, except that my surgical wound began to bleed. So, I had to talk with the doctors in the emergency room; they made me prove I could still speak. Up to that point, I had been using a handheld dry erase board to communicate, mostly with my wife, whom we had just learned was pregnant with our first child. Heading into that surgery, we joked more than once about how similar our situation was to Zechariah and Elizabeth’s.

Although the Gospel of Luke doesn’t characterize Zechariah as particularly loquacious, the scene in the sanctuary with the angel suggests that the divine discipline for his unbelief was hardly arbitrary either. He was a priest, after all. Working with words came with the job. In Luke–Acts, Zechariah and Saul are two figures temporarily afflicted by divine prerogative. Saul’s loss of sight changed the way he saw the world. Zechariah’s loss of speech forced him to listen. Indeed, Zechariah’s affliction was as consequential for Elizabeth as it was for her husband.

Those nine months must have been the most peaceful and frustrating season in Elizabeth’s life. Perhaps the greatest anecdotal evidence for attributing the Magnificat in Luke 1:46b–55 to Elizabeth rather than Mary, as some ancient authorities indicate,[1] is that not only was Elizabeth blessed by Mary’s visit (v. 48), but her husband was also blissfully unable to interrupt. Elizabeth had enough to do to care for herself, her unborn child, and her household. Now she had to interpret and speak for her incredulous husband too. Based on how the neighbors who’d gathered for her son's circumcision treated her when she insisted the baby's name was John (vv. 60–61), we can guess how well that went. Surely Zechariah’s condition made for weeks of one-sided arguments, awkward gestures across the room, heaving sighs, and disgruntled visitors. The one time in Elizabeth’s life when her husband should’ve been most available to her (even within late Second Temple Palestinian Jewish cultural norms), she instead had increased responsibility for him.

Still, Zechariah’s silence was as much solace as it was censure. God gave Zechariah a unique opportunity to hear and depend upon his wife's voice and to welcome Mary's extended visit, arms open and mouth closed. So, when Zechariah and Elizabeth’s son was born and he affirmed the name Elizabeth and the angel gave him, Zechariah's first words were not wasted.

Source critically, the Benedictus (as Zechariah’s Song is traditionally known), along with the Magnificat, was likely inserted into the Lukan narrative from external authorities rather than original compositions. At least the shift in voice from third person in vv. 68–75 to second person in vv. 76–79, taken together with the first portion’s emphasis on a patently Davidic messiah rather than a prophetic or priestly one, let alone the child John himself, strongly suggests they were originally separate pieces that were stitched together either as part of the gospel author’s compilation efforts (v. 1) or perhaps before. Also, like the Magnificat, the first portion of the Benedictus reads like an anti-Hasmonean Palestinian Jewish allusion to Hannah’s Song (1 Sam 2:1–10) and Tefilla, Jewish daily prayer liturgies. Both canticles then find more explicitly Christian applications within the Lukan narrative.[2] By assigning these prophetic words to Zechariah, Luke’s gospel transforms this liturgical poetry source material into a priestly vision of the role his son would play in the story of Jesus.

The allusion to Hannah’s Song appears most clearly in vv. 69–76. First, the “mighty savior,” styled in the NRSVue, is literally “a horn of salvation” in Greek (κέρας σωτηρίας), symbolizing the royal strength exhibited in 1 Sam 2:10 and invoked elsewhere in the Hebrew Bible (Pss 132:17; 148:14; Ezek 29:21). Second, saying the boy John will be “called the prophet of the Most High” (Luke 1:76) echoes the same line of Hannah’s Song and ties into Mary’s earlier encounter with the angel Gabriel (1:32). The Benedictus is a deep well drawing from a rich aquifer of messianic prophetic literature, and it is a culmination of Luke’s extended introduction.

Nonetheless, the Benedictus is more than an artifact of an ancient story. As scripture, it’s also a song the Holy Spirit still uses to speak to God’s people, and Wesleyans in particular. Zechariah’s prophecy comes as he is filled with the Holy Spirit (v. 67; cf. Joel 2:28; Acts 2:17). The affirmation and anticipation throughout this canticle, especially at the onset of vv. 68–71, testify to the prevenient nature of God’s grace, already evident generations in advance. Even so, God’s faithfulness is hardly confined to the past. The promise of vv. 72–75 not only implies that God desires for us to serve “in holiness and righteousness,” but that such service is the express purpose of God’s salvific activity—that divine mercy is not only salvation from death but salvation for service. Service in holiness and righteousness—neither merely occupying an area of land, however sacred, nor eventually gaining access to a distant heaven—is the presumed outcome of the Abrahamic covenant according to the Benedictus.

Then vv. 76–79 imply that John’s unique opening act for Jesus of Nazareth’s earthly ministry is one the Spirit continues through God’s people to the present: to prepare the way (v. 76) and to give knowledge of salvation (v. 77; cf. Phil 3:9). In turn, God shines divine light into darkness and “guides our feet into the way of peace” (v. 79). In other words, this “way of peace” that John will prepare is not a static destination but a spiritual discipline (cf. Phil 3:6–7). Introducing Christ is not the end; it is the means. It is nothing less than the Way by which Jesus’s followers will be known after his ascension (cf. Acts 9:2). Similarly, the “knowledge of salvation” in v. 77 goes beyond some post-Enlightenment brand of fact to which we may assent. Instead, it’s a knowledge demonstrated primarily by God’s people forgiving others’ sins (cf. 11:4; Matt 6:14–15).

Equally important, this mercy is not simply transactional in some pejoratively judicial sense. Rather, it is “tender” (v. 78), indeed, as tender and brilliant as dawn breaking the horizon—itself a messianic metaphor attested in Torah (cf. Num 24:17) and the Prophets (cf. Isa 60:1–3). Even the harshest scriptural metaphor, like the divine smelting process prophesied in Mal 3:1–4, is undertaken with great care, not unlike divine incarnation through childbirth. As such, the Benedictus suggests that God’s prevenient grace is not some ethereal, metaphysical stuff that somehow wafts ahead of us, like a cosmic breadcrumb trail or navigational route. On the contrary, God’s prevenient grace is embodied in God’s people. It isn’t just a knowledge of salvation we show and tell about; it’s one we share. Like the sacraments, you cannot baptize yourself, and you cannot feed yourself communion. Rather, these are means of grace through which God fulfills the divine promise to shine among us and guide us into peace together.

The Messiah and his messenger whom Luke prepares us to meet is one who also breaks the long, agonizing silence among God’s people—desperate for deliverance. That silence is symbolized viscerally by Elizabeth’s womb and taught first-hand to Zechariah, so he would never forget his feeling of disbelief. As a devout and blameless man, Zechariah’s prophecy might’ve been something like what he would’ve said if he could’ve spoken when Mary arrived. As it is, the Benedictus is an ageless song that incubated for generations until Luke recorded it for us to learn from the events surrounding the birth of John the Baptist. And it’s a song we may sing anew today. It’s a prayer that God would make us instruments of divine peace and forgiveness, to prepare the way for God to be revealed afresh, and to serve God in holiness and righteousness all our days.

[1] Kloha, Jeffrey, “Elizabeth’s Magnificat (Luke 1:46),” in Texts and Traditions (Leiden: Brill, 2014), doi: https://doi.org/10.1163/9789004273931_011.

[2] Stephen Hultgren, “4Q521 and Luke's Magnificat and Benedictus,” in Echoes from the Caves: Qumran and the New Testament, ed. Florentino García Martínez (Leiden: Brill, 2009), 119. https://doi.org/10.1163/ej.9789004176966.i-350.32.