John The Baptist Prepared The Way... As Did His Mother

Today's gospel reading from the Book of Common Prayer is Luke 1:39-48b. I was struck by something as I read it this morning — something I'd never noticed before.

As preface, it's important to note a few things. First, Luke 1:24 informs us that that Elizabeth went into seclusion for five months after discovering she was pregnant. Furthermore, verse 26 indicates that it was in the sixth month of Elizabeth's pregnancy that Gabriel visited Mary with the news of her coming pregnancy.

So now we pick up the trail on verse 39, which states that Mary hurried to visit Elizabeth only a few days after her encounter with Gabriel. It would seem that Elizabeth's seclusion ended with the timing of Mary's arrival, more or less.

Here is where things get interesting for me.

I may be going too far with this thought, but it strikes me that Elizabeth had not been in the presence of much talk. She had been in seclusion for five months, and her husband Zechariah was literally speechless.

Had Elizabeth heard the voice of anyone recently? Perhaps not. What few interactions she did have, if indeed there were any, would have been with familiar personages from her local community. I'd guess that such greetings, if they occurred at all, would have been subdued.

But now Mary bursts in upon this quiet scene. Verse 40 tells us that Mary entered the house first and then greeted Elizabeth. Heaven knows houses were not big back then! This was a very special meeting conducted in close quarters!

It would surely not be asking too much to imagine that Mary's excited greeting, delivered at close range, might well have been far and away the loudest voice John the Baptist had ever heard before. Small wonder that he leaped so excitedly in his mother's womb!

And is there not a lesson for all of us, as we approach the end of our season of advent waiting? Our world is full of noises, and when the noises go away, not a few of us plug the gaps with iPhones, iPods, and a host of other distractions that may not even involve sound.

But if we want to hear the voice of God, we need quiet seclusion. I don't mean to stretch the analogy beyond the breaking point. Mary was not God, and John the Baptist was not a spirit. That said, I see a parallel in the mix. A good reminder. Silence and seclusion attune our spirits to the intrusion of the almighty.

John the Baptist later recognized the entrance of the almighty not least because he sought out a desert in which to wait for him. In doing so, John followed the good example given him by his own mother. We do well to continue the tradition. If we miss the entrance of the almighty on any given Christmas, it's probably because we're not finding quiet places to wait for him.

One Last Swing At Our Friend Zechariah

A word of preface... having lovingly crafted this little blog below, I discovered shortly thereafter (upon reading more from the first chapter of Luke) that it is highly likely that Zechariah was struck not merely dumb, but also deaf. Turns out that when Gabriel told him he'd be silent, that word (in the greek) can also mean deaf. ...Which explains the odd actions noted in verse 62. Well... if Zechariah was deaf too, that kind of shoots a hole in what I wrote below. Ah well... live and learn.

I had a bit of fun at Zechariah's expense in my last blog, but am not satisfied to leave well enough alone. Tongue firmly planted in cheek, I suggest that Zechariah's punishment did not solely consist in his being struck mute for the duration of his wife Elizabeth's pregnancy.

No, sir.

A close examination of the situation reveals a little nugget — proof that God does indeed have a great sense of humor. To see that this is so, we need merely consider where Zechariah went after he was struck dumb: home.

Imagine the situation. It's 1 BC or so, with no distracting technology in the house, and probably not even a thing to read beyond a few scrolls of various holy scriptures (if that!), and those known well enough indeed already.

Nothing to watch. Nothing to listen to. Nothing new to read.

And this home... it is the home of an old couple. They've been married for decades. Every conversation has already been had. Multiple times.

And they are childless.

This is a quiet house.

But now, something truly new and amazing has happened. Elizabeth discovers she is pregnant. She's post-menopausal, and yet the promise of Gabriel has come to fruition. A true miracle.

Stunned.... Elizabeth retreats into seclusion for five months. Where? Home. It has to be.

What home?

The home she shares with her husband.

The guy who, for the time being, cannot talk.

So it is my contention that Gabriel and God pulled a doozy of a practical joke on Zechariah. Elizabeth, I submit, surely had many things to say. Daily. Hourly? However often it was, she had an audience for her words. For five months, Zechariah couldn't interrupt her or ask her to stop. All he could do was listen.

Listen, listen, listen.

A worthy punishment for a man who was not ready to accept the exciting news on the first pass, delivered from the tongue of an angel: he is forced instead to listen to his wife's reflections on the matter. But Zechariah was given this one mercy. Judging by the few words we know Elizabeth spoke (as recorded in Luke), hers were reflections very well worth listening to.

And the coup de grâce? Just note, friends, when it is that God gives Zechariah his voice back. Yes. Right after the baby was born. Right around the time (as many new fathers can attest) when nobody cares much what dad has to say anyway.

On Talking Back To Angels...

It is the considered opinion of this author that talking back to angels is not advisable. If circumstances require that you do so, however, for heaven's sake don't argue with answers to your prayer!

Today's scripture readings from the Book of Common Prayer include Luke 1:1-25, where we read about a man who got both these points wrong.

In this passage we read of how the angel Gabriel visited a priest named Zechariah to announce the good news that his aged wife would have a son — John the Baptist. Zechariah's reaction was one of doubt, however. "How can I be sure of this? I am an old man and my wife is well along in years."

In response, the angel Gabriel gave Zechariah a tongue-lashing. That is to say, Gabriel lashed Zechariah's tongue safely down in his mouth, so as to prevent further insulting words from spilling out. "I am Gabriel. I stand in the presence of God, and I have been sent to speak to you and to tell you this good news. And now you will be silent and not able to speak until the day this happens, because you did not believe my words, which will come true at their proper time."

At about this point in the reading, I came to the sure conclusion that this blessing from God — a visitation by an angel, no less! — was a blessing for Elizabeth more so than for her husband. Zechariah did not deserve beneficence on this scale! Wise people don't look a gift horse in the mouth but this old man didn't know better than to second-guess a gift-angel.

"It must have been Elizabeth," I thought. "Elizabeth is the one being honored here. Zechariah is being blessed only because, as her husband, he is fortunate enough to come along for the ride." I was about to lodge this thought in the margin of my Bible when my eyes drifted upwards to the top of the page so as to confirm whether I was on the right track.

I was not.

This miraculous and marvelous angelic visitation began as follows... When Zechariah saw him, he was startled and was gripped with fear. But the angel said to him: "Do not be afraid, Zechariah; your prayer has been heard. Your wife Elizabeth will bear you a son, and you are to give him the name John."

Your prayer, Zechariah?? And when an angelic courier brought you a big Yes answer from God, you doubted him?? Zechariah, Zechariah... fool of a man. If you didn't think it were possible, why were you still praying for it?

The scripture reading ends with Elizabeth's words, which she uttered after discovering that she was with child. “How kind the Lord is!” she exclaimed. “He has taken away my disgrace of having no children.” Zechariah is lucky God didn't give Elizabeth a package deal and remove her disgrace of a husband as well for no extra charge. But... God had plans for only one virgin birth, so I suppose God found it expedient to allow Zechariah to make it home in one piece. I cannot resist noting that Zechariah got lucky in more ways than one.

I am, of course, having overmuch fun at Zechariah's expense, and the man's dignity deserves rehabilitation. Let it not be missed, therefore, that verse 6 indicates that both Zechariah and Elizabeth "were upright in the sight of God, observing all the Lord's commandments and regulations blamelessly." If my long-term memory had served me better, I might have been kinder to our friend Zack.

But even so, there is a lesson here. A question. When we ask God for miracles, do we believe he is capable of delivering? Shame on us if we do not, for as Gabriel explained in his next visit to the virgin Mary, "all things are possible with God."

God, I Needed You Last Night, But I Wasn't There.

Agnostics suppose that God might not be anywhere, and atheists assure us that God is definitely nowhere. We who are theists, in contrast, know that God is everywhere.

Yet even staunch theists are tempted, when calamity strikes, to wonder where God went.

He is there. With us. He never left.

The real question is not whether God is with us during those times, because he is.

But are we with him?

If at any time we are not with God, then it will most certainly seem as if he is not with us. (No surprise, then, that so many of us feel that life is a rather lonely journey... but that thought for another day and a different blog!) How blessed are we, however, if even in our darkest moments we remain with him.

There are two great lies we must contend with whenever we suffer. In times of sorrow, Satan would have us believe that we are suffering both (a) alone and (b) for no good purpose. These two lies are disarmed and dismantled, however, if we suffer with the God whom we trust. We might never know here on Earth why God allows us to experience various sorrows, but if we know God is present and can trust him with those mysteries, the pain we endure is robbed of its power.

I recently forced my young son Luke to undergo an H1N1 flu vaccination. I held him in my lap tightly for the entire process, but Luke seemed simultaneously to lose both trust in me and the ability to hear my words of encouragement as soon as the long, sharp needle came into view. The more he focused on the needle, the less he was able to interact with me in any meaningful way. I think it would be fair to say that in some sense Luke faced his fears alone, and the experience for him was utterly terrifying. I was there the whole time, but I doubt it felt that way to Luke.

In fact, Luke has a history of asthma. For him, a case of the swine flu could mean hospitalization — or even death. Many years from now Luke will certainly be thankful for the many vaccinations he received along the way, but he's too young today to understand the science of innoculations. No amount of explanation was going to help Luke accept that flu shot with serenity. Facing a terrifying experience, Luke didn't need explanations. What he needed was trust.

We smile at how children behave when the doctor's needle comes out. But let us be honest with ourselves. Do we accept those needles God sends our way without a struggle? Not often. Do we look for explanations? Or do we ask God for more trust? Exactly.

Trust, however, is the silver bullet. Explanations are for those who doubt. As we learn to trust our God who is with us, we begin to discover that those unpleasant shots in the arm are preparing us for a better future. Luke had only the present doctor's visit in mind, but we, his parents, were taking a longer view. Likewise we humans all too often have only this present life in mind, but God too is taking the longer view.

All these fine words don't make suffering fun, of course, but if we believe them, we can, as the Apostle Paul notes, "not grieve like people who have no hope." (1 Thessalonians 4:13)

Hebrews 12:5-12
...And have you forgotten the encouraging words God spoke to you as his children? He said,

“My child, don’t make light of the Lord’s discipline,
and don’t give up when he corrects you.
For the Lord disciplines those he loves,
and he punishes each one he accepts as his child.”

As you endure this divine discipline, remember that God is treating you as his own children. Who ever heard of a child who is never disciplined by its father? If God doesn’t discipline you as he does all of his children, it means that you are illegitimate and are not really his children at all. Since we respected our earthly fathers who disciplined us, shouldn’t we submit even more to the discipline of the Father of our spirits, and live forever?

For our earthly fathers disciplined us for a few years, doing the best they knew how. But God’s discipline is always good for us, so that we might share in his holiness. No discipline is enjoyable while it is happening—it’s painful! But afterward there will be a peaceful harvest of right living for those who are trained in this way.

So take a new grip with your tired hands and strengthen your weak knees. Mark out a straight path for your feet so that those who are weak and lame will not fall but become strong.

Those last words from that passage in Hebrews may seem a bit odd and almost unrelated to the preceding text, but consider this: perhaps if Luke had endured his shot with serenity, other children waiting in line would been a bit more brave as they themselves approached the awaiting doctor.

The way we endure suffering reveals to a watching world something about the character of the God we serve and whether he can be trusted.

Hebrews 12:1-3
Therefore, since we are surrounded by such a great cloud of witnesses, let us throw off everything that hinders and the sin that so easily entangles, and let us run with perseverance the race marked out for us. Let us fix our eyes on Jesus, the author and perfecter of our faith, who for the joy set before him endured the cross, scorning its shame, and sat down at the right hand of the throne of God. Consider him who endured such opposition from sinful men, so that you will not grow weary and lose heart.

Amen!

A Mouse Unwilling To Die (Literally)

I turned on the light in the basement office this morning and settled down on the sofa to think, read and pray.

My quiet was soon interrupted, however, by a periodic and puzzling rustling sound. Within a minute or two I was up off the sofa and walking slowly toward its source. A mouse? Did we have to call in the exterminators? I was quite relieved to discover that the sounds were coming from outside of the house. A mouse had fallen into the window-well outside my basement office window and was now fully engaged in a strenuous bid for freedom.

Stuck in the window-well? Good news for me. (He's not in the house!) Bad news for the mouse, however! His prospects were grim. Barring intervention on my part, his exhausted demise in the freezing cold would arrive in due time. He had obviously (and quite mistakenly) decided that the light now pouring through the window pane was pointing him to salvation. Every few seconds I could see (and hear) him leap up against the glass pane. All to no avail.

What to do.

Well, I couldn't see myself enjoying my morning prayer time while listening to the rhythmic sounds of a dying rodent hurling himself against my window. To my shame, I do admit that I might just possibly have tolerated a quiet death. But this fellow wasn't going to die quietly. As I watched the mouse continue to struggle, my desire to help him out of his tight spot grew stronger and stronger. But it was cold outside! And how would I do it without hurthing him?

What to do.

Still watching the mouse hopeless flail about, I found myself reflecting on the fact that Jesus approved of retrieving sheep out of wells, even on the sabbath. Should I rescue a mouse from my window-well during this hour set aside for prayer? There was definitely scriptural precedent. I had to try. I sallied forth from the basement, grabbed a bucket and a stick, and ventured out into the cold, dark morning air to redeem a helpless mouse from certain death.

My mission was noble and my cause was right, but it quickly became clear that the mouse saw things differently. As soon as he saw me, he pressed himself into a tight corner of the window-well and refused to budge. How to tempt, badger or otherwise cajole him into the bucket? Thus began my early-morning battle of wits with a rodent.

It being a dark and cold morning, I confess I wasn't about to play the long game. I began to prod the mouse with the stick, hoping to work him toward the bucket. This mouse, however, was not ready to die just yet. After several minutes of poking and prodding, all I had managed to do was to make him squeal a great deal and scoot several times from one tight corner of the window-well to another. Time for a new strategy. Time for better tools!

I went to the garage and returned with a gardening trowel. With this equipment upgrade I did finally manage to flip him unceremoniously into the bucket — but it took several minutes of effort and I am fairly sure that I gave the poor, bedraggled, frantically squealing mouse a rather comprehensive bruising in the process.

I emptied the bucket out onto the frozen ground and watched the ungrateful wretch scurry off into a neighbor's garden. Mission accomplished. As I walked back into the house, I found myself pondering the lessons lurking in what I had just experienced.

If the mouse had trusted me and/or been ready to die, things would have gone very smoothly. But this mouse did not trust me one bit and he wasn't ready to die either. Zero for two. So, for our little friend the mouse, the road to salvation was paved with pain, panic and fear.

It did not have to be thus. After all, both the mouse and I shared a common goal: we both wanted him to be freed from the window-well. The problem, of course, was that the mouse didn't know better than to trust his bodily instincts for self-preservation. In this situation, of course, those instincts served him poorly. He did not understand that the great power looming over him with a stick was actually working for his eventual good.

Needless to say, I was reminded of how we struggle in like manner with our Lord. How much of our pains and sorrows would cease if we would simply let God have his way with us? It might mean letting some things within us die. Are we prepared to trust him with that? Or are we, like that mouse, going to make the process a painful debacle for all participants?

C. S. speaks eloquently of this in the following passage taken from his book Mere Christianity.

The Christian way is different: harder, and easier. Christ says `Give me All. I don't want so much of your time and so much of your money and so much of your work: I want You. I have not come to torment your natural self, but to kill it. No half-measures are any good. I don't want to cut off a branch here and a branch there, I want to have the whole tree down. I don't want to drill the tooth, or crown it, or stop it, but to have it out. Hand over the whole natural self, all the desires which you think innocent as well as the ones you think wicked - the whole outfit. I will give you a new self instead. In fact, I will give you Myself: my own will shall become yours.'

Both harder and easier than what we are all trying to do. You have noticed, I expect, that Christ Himself sometimes describes the Christian way as very hard, sometimes as very easy. He says, 'Take up your Cross'- in other words, it is like going to be beaten to death in a concentration camp. Next minute he says, 'My yoke is easy and my burden light.' He means both. And one can just see why both are true.

Teachers will tell you that the laziest boy in the class is the one who works hardest in the end. They mean this. If you give two boys, say, a proposition in geometry to do, the one who is prepared to take trouble will try to understand it. The lazy boy will try to learn it by heart because, for the moment, that needs less effort. But six months later, when they are preparing for an exam, that lazy boy is doing hours and hours of miserable drudgery over things the other boy understands, and positively enjoys, in a few minutes. Laziness means more work in the long run. Or look at it this way. In a battle, or in mountain climbing, there is often one thing which it takes a lot of pluck to do; but it is also, in the long run, the safest things to do. If you funk it, you will find yourself, hours later, in far worse danger. The cowardly thing is also the most dangerous thing.

It is like that here. The terrible thing, the almost impossible thing, is to hand over your whole self - all your wishes and precautions - to Christ. But it is far easier than what we are all trying to do instead. For what we are trying to do is to remain what we call 'ourselves,' to keep personal happiness as our great aim in life, and yet at the same time be 'good'. We are all trying to let our mind and heart go their own way-centred on money or pleasure or ambition-and hoping, in spite of this, to behave honestly and chastely and humbly. And that is exactly what Christ warned us you could not do. As He said, a thistle cannot produce figs. If I am a field that contains nothing but grass-seed, I cannot produce wheat. Cutting the grass may keep it short: but I shall still produce grass and no wheat. If I want to produce wheat, the change must go deeper than the surface. I must be ploughed up and re-sown.

Amen.

I'm A Dead Man (And Other Lies We Tell)

"I'm a dead man."

I'd heard him say it before, maybe a year or two ago. I don't see him often, but our paths had crossed again. Once more the familiar words rolled out of his mouth as he reclined on a sofa in rude health, having just enjoyed a large and sumptuous meal.

A few minutes earlier he had been excitedly relating to me the latest on his search for the ideal retirement community – one which would doubtlessly be warm all year long and situated near a golf course. But conversation had now moved on to the topic of life with Christ, and his language suddenly changed so as to suit the occasion.

"I'm a dead man."

I didn't believe his claim the first time around, and this second pass wasn't any more convincing. I've never seen a more self-satisfied dead man in my life. I know something of his daily life, and best I can tell it has precious little to do with daily death.

So much for this other fellow. What about me? I ate that same tasty meal he ate, and I hope to retire one day too. Am I really different? if so, not nearly enough.

We all, to varying degrees, leave the dying to Christ. We are in the business of comfortably living. Our common desire to arrange for a suitable retirement is just the final chapter in a book devoted to the same enterprise.

Christ's participation in our lives is always commensurate with our participation in his death. Given that we devote our lives to avoiding crosses, why should we be surprised that the American church evidences so little of his resurrection power? Only the dead can be resurrected, and we refuse to die.

The question inevitably arises.... What does it mean to die with Christ? The entire New Testament is an end-to-end answer that question. So why then is the question so inevitable? It's inevitable because we read New Testament like the consumers we are. We pick and choose what we read, notice and remember – and it's usually things we've been trained by our consumerist society to value. Given that our society places a premium on avoiding death, it's not surprising that we fail to notice that death to self is the first, main ingredient in God's recipe to make us anew into the image of Christ.

By avoiding the blindingly obvious scriptural call to die with Christ, we generally miss not only the forest but also the vast majority of the trees. Truth be told, it's a good day when we notice the shrubs. Take Mark 10 for a simple example. The entire chapter reeks of self mortification (both literal and figurative), but our consumerist take-away from Mark 10 is the two verses where Jesus promises us a hundred-fold return on whatever we give up for his sake. (1oo-fold? In this life? Yahoo!) Driven by our fleshly desires, we fix our eyes on a solitary shrub in a chapter full of trees.

Even the shrubs we do not examine too closely. Who remembers that in those same two verses Jesus also promised us persecutions? As the old joke goes... "Is that a promise? Or a threat?" At best we in the American church would take such words as "advance warning." Those who have died with Christ, however, call them a promise – and a good one at that. The Apostle Paul said as much in his letter to the Corinthians.

But we don't want a promise like that, so we firstly ignore it, secondly forget it, and thirdly (the coup de grâce) get offended when the promised persecutions arrive. (Witness the righteous indignation in those various circulating religious emails we all see from time to time.)

We forget everything else Jesus said in Mark 10 too, which explains why we proceed to divorce as often as anyone else, hoard up money just like everyone else (for our retirement, we explain...) and avoid placing ourselves in danger just like everyone else. Like the rest of the general population, we want nothing to do with carrying crosses, be they relational, financial, or physical.

Crosses are for dead men.

2 Corinthians 12:10
That is why, for Christ's sake, I delight in weaknesses, in insults, in hardships, in persecutions, in difficulties. For when I am weak, then I am strong.

Mark 10:22
At this the man's face fell. He went away sad, because he had great wealth.

Are You Lying To Me? Or Just To Yourself?

I am shocked to see how often people speak untruthfully. More shocking still is the sublime sincerity they exude while pouring patent and potent falsehoods from their lips. I am frequently forced to conclude that the sincerity is not a show. They believe their own words. They are the first victims of their own deceitfulness.

And yet I should not be shocked. I sometimes catch myself lying to myself. That is a sure indication that there have been other occasions when I lied to myself... and didn't catch myself in the act.

How often, O Lord, have I lied to you... and believed my own words? How badly I would like to say that never happens.

But I'd be lying to myself if I said that.

Psalm 139:23-24
Search me, O God, and know my heart;
test me and know my anxious thoughts.
See if there is any offensive way in me,
and lead me in the way everlasting.