An Echoey Setup

Luke 1.5-25”
“How Can This Be So?”
The Rev. Dr. Fred G. Garry

In the days of King Herod of Judea, there was a priest named Zechariah, who belonged to the priestly order of Abijah. His wife was a descendant of Aaron, and her name was Elizabeth. Both of them were righteous before God, living blamelessly according to all the commandments and regulations of the Lord. But they had no children, because Elizabeth was barren, and both were getting on in years.

Once when he was serving as priest before God and his section was on duty, he was chosen by lot, according to the custom of the priesthood, to enter the sanctuary of the Lord and offer incense. Now at the time of the incense-offering, the whole assembly of the people was praying outside. Then there appeared to him an angel of the Lord, standing at the right side of the altar of incense. When Zechariah saw him, he was terrified; and fear overwhelmed him. But the angel said to him, ‘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. He must never drink wine or strong drink; even before his birth he will be filled with the Holy Spirit. He will turn many of the people of Israel to the Lord their God. With the spirit and power of Elijah he will go before him, to turn the hearts of parents to their children, and the disobedient to the wisdom of the righteous, to make ready a people prepared for the Lord.’ Zechariah said to the angel, ‘How will I know that this is so? For I am an old man, and my wife is getting on in years.’ The angel replied, ‘I am Gabriel. I stand in the presence of God, and I have been sent to speak to you and to bring you this good news. But now, because you did not believe my words, which will be fulfilled in their time, you will become mute, unable to speak, until the day these things occur.’

Meanwhile, the people were waiting for Zechariah, and wondered at his delay in the sanctuary. When he did come out, he could not speak to them, and they realized that he had seen a vision in the sanctuary. He kept motioning to them and remained unable to speak. When his time of service was ended, he went to his home.
After those days his wife Elizabeth conceived, and for five months she remained in seclusion. She said, ‘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, church, what can we learn from Zechariah? He was in the temple beside the altar and had a special visitor. What can we learn from Zechariah? What must one do when an angel comes to visit? Anyone? How about, “Don’t be afraid?” Don’t be afraid. Seems right. And what else? When Gabriel tells you stuff, gives a word from the Lord, what should you do? Should you believe what the terrifying angel Gabriel says? Yes. Yes, you should. No matter how crazy, fantastic it might sound? Yes. Yes, you should.
In terms of literal story value, this is good. May never need it, but not bad information to have on hand. If Gabriel shows up in your backyard or office or kitchen table, be calm and carry on. Listen and believe.

Zechariah is afraid and his response, “How will I know this is so?” Doesn’t set well with Gabriel. Seems what works in our business doesn’t seem to work with angelic business. We believe in: trust, but verify. We are trained to do this are we not? Many of us have learned this the hard way. I get what you are saying, sounds terrific, but how can I be sure? This is not an outlandish request. We might even call Zechariah smart, even someone who demonstrates good leadership. Trust, but verify. Gabriel doesn’t share our value.
From how Luke sets up Zechariah and Elizabeth, we might expect a different response to the angelic visit and message. In short order Gabriel will visit Mary. She’s not afraid of angels; she is just bothered that he would call her favored. When Gabriel tells Mary what’s going to happen, something miraculous and unexpected, she doesn’t balk. She says, “Let it be so.” Here’s Mary a teenage girl and she’s not afraid, she doesn’t balk, why did Zechariah balk? “How will I know this is so?”
Luke leads us to believe he is a good candidate for a faithful response. He and Elizabeth were righteous and blameless and devout. He’s a priest for Pete’s sake standing in the Holy of Holies. Even more, Zechariah is old; he should be wise, ready for the mysterious.

He wasn’t. He wasn’t ready. Neither was Elizabeth ready for this angelic word to be public. She hid for five months. Makes you wonder. Having endured so much, having been so faithful, having an angelic visit, why didn’t Zechariah respond like Mary did? Here I am; let it be so! Instead, we get the cautious, doubtful, “How will I know this is so?”
Trying to answer this question I started with the obvious. Being old is sometimes an advantage, other times not. The study of memory has shown that with age comes a lot of memory, vast storage houses of memory. When the new comes, when someone says, “the future is here, a new dawn,” if you lived a long time you know to check this out. Our memories click into gear and search to see if this is trustworthy. Is this really new? Most of the time what our memories find is a line from Ecclesiastes, “Behold this is new” someone says, but I know it has already been.

As a young pastor I supposed it would be the older members of the church who would resist change. Sacred cows, tradition carved in stone. But they weren’t resistant. They would smile at my novel ideas and say, “yah, we tried that in 1962. Didn’t work then, but you never know. Try it again.” It was younger members who resisted change because they couldn’t see the recurrence. Change equaled loss to them, loss of things they believed couldn’t change.
Was it that Zechariah had heard one too many calls for Elijah? This is what Jesus will call his cousin John, saying, “Elijah has returned.” And when Jesus was dying on the cross the bystanders wait to see if Elijah will appear and rescue him. So it could be that Zechariah has just heard this too many times. Elijah’s return, you say. How do I know this will be so? “Elijah is coming” is not a new one for an old priest.

The obvious reason for balking is more poignant. Elizabeth and Zechariah lived their lives facing indignity, public shame, ridicule. It would have been less painful if they were a childless couple in a village, but Zechariah was a priest. Their shame was public and a deep sorrow you can’t escape.
We lose dexterity in our body when we are old, and we can also lose dexterity of soul. Some hopes, dreams, die and we bury them, come to terms with them. To have someone say, “oh by the way your wife will bear a child and this child we be known to all” this is too much to take in.
I stumbled upon another possibility. Not the chronological age of Zechariah, but the age in which he and Elizabeth lived. Zechariah was a contemporary of Herod the Great, also known as Herod the Builder.

Herod the Builder built everything. He fashioned a port out of coastland; he built five incredible palaces, fortresses really; there were roads and aqueducts and theaters and hippodromes and baths and on and on. Herod did this with violence. Some people were paid to build; some people were slaves. The people who were paid were taxed. Taxed so much it was as if they were paying to work.

Herod’s greatest accomplishment was the restoration of the second temple, restoring Solomon’s temple to its glory. It is said he hired a thousand priests so the work could not be deemed defiled. People like Zechariah were given a trowel instead of a reading lamp and put to work. He was praying in the temple he most likely was conscripted to rebuild and knew the hatred of the people who paid for it, who were forced into labor.

Maybe Zechariah is a bit gun shy of people with big ideas, grand plans, Elijah like dreams. Maybe he has seen a lot of the damage that comes with building a new future. “This will be great.” “How will I know this is so?”

Where my mind went first when I read this story was not neuroscience or cultural shame or even the cynicism of leaders and power. My mind stayed closer to home. Where I connected with Zechariah was the sense of being overwhelmed. How will I know this is so? can be a question of weariness.
At that moment, at that time in his life, it was too much. He needed a moment. Maybe I am just projecting our world unto his, but I take his response not as cynicism so much as I do weariness. "How will I know this will be so?"

Life had become a long series of wars and powerful people doing terrible things and violence and oppression of the poor and unfair labor and on and on and on. Here he was in a moment of quiet solitude and the angel says, “Oh, and Elijah’s coming back, and he will be your son even though you are eighty.”

Maybe Zechariah needed a moment to process, simply asking for a second to catch his breath after being terrified. Rings true to me. What if he was just overwhelmed by it all?
A few years ago, a trauma responder and author wrote a book called, The Age of Overwhelm. Laura Lipsky has spent decades with people who have been victims of violence or suffered tragedy; she trains the people mostly likely to be first on the scene when there is a disaster or an act of terror. She knows all the neuroscience and the somatic theories about how trauma and suffering enter our bodies as well as our memories. In her book she moves through the key parts of the training: the grounding, the fight flight and freeze, the hyper vigilance, the inability to trust, panic.

The beauty of Laura Lipsky’s book is how it is not just a description of what trauma does, but it is also a prescription. It says, here is how to navigate the emotions and panic of being overwhelmed; and here is a way to heal. When you suffer trauma, betrayal of trust, abuse, disaster, you need to heal so to trust the world again.

Better still her book is not just for people who survive a terrible disaster. Her book is really for everyone. Hence the title, The Age of Overwhelm. She believes we are all struggling to cope with too much information, too much hatred and violence, too much disdain, and not enough grounded, simple pleasure of the day to day. We are living in an age of too much, overwhelm.

Years ago, I was trained in this so her words were a strange, familiar comfort. I say strange because it is strange to take comfort in talk about trauma and tragedy. But I did. I took comfort in how she made clear: the way beyond feeling overwhelmed is not to fight fire with fire or flee or deny or just put our head down and endure. The way out of feeling overwhelmed is in small, patient, mundane acts of gentleness. The way of healing from disaster is in modest acts where we regain trust. We come to believe again, “it can be so.”

Interestingly, Lipsky’s wrote her book before the pandemic. I was convinced of what she wrote before COVID, now I trust this without question. When the world is turned upside down, when you suffer deep losses in life, you can heal, you can regain the world. Life can once again be a place where you feel safe. It can be so. But it takes time. Time spent with small purposeful strides, careful, intentional acts of healing.

One of the most poignant ways this healing occurs is when you regain the ability to look forward. People who live in places of violence, trauma, have little ability to consider the future. Try to remember how a few years ago how difficult it was to think ahead. The limit was a few weeks. Next year, five years from now, not possible. Part of healing from trauma or betrayal is regaining the ability to see ahead, to imagine the future, to know it can be so.

As a congregation we suffered and endured the common trauma of the epidemic, but we have also experienced additional betrayal and tragedy. For some this might already feel like a distant memory, but for others it persists and continues to shape the day to day.

I remember one member getting angry with me when I said, it takes a church at least five years to move beyond clergy abuse. Five years to reach a place where what you build is not impacted by betrayal and distrust. The member said, “No way five years. I am already done.” A month later the same person said with tears, “I was wrong. It’s not done.”

Gary Ostermueller and the stewardship commission did a great job in the case study they sent to our members. There are details about finances, both income and expenses. There is clarity about how funds are used and what is needed not only to sustain the church, but also to grow the church. They answer, “How can it be so?”

What is not in there and really can't be in there is a recognition that looking to the future for some is still hard to do. Trust is still being regained; the world is still coming into focus after having been turned upside down.

Sometimes the world moves fast, too fast, and we feel overwhelmed. Sometimes angels show up and give you overwhelmingly good news and you are just not ready to take it in. How can it be so? How can there be healing?

There is a life and faith and a church you can trust. The grace we offer and patience we lend to each other is how it happens. Small steps, deep breaths. Amen.