Close to Home: Into the Ways of Peace
Luke 1:57-80, Philippians 1:3-11
Emmanuel Baptist Church; Rev. Kathy Donley
December 5, 2021
Image: Berakah by Hannah Garrity © a sanctified art | sanctifiedart.org
Note: A recording of the worship service in which this sermon was preached may be found here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sMrJCLdJFDU
John the Baptist shows up every Advent. You might not know that because your current pastor doesn’t always follow the lectionary, but it’s true. If it’s the second Sunday in Advent, John is going to be preaching in the wilderness. In Lectionary Year C, which is this year, we get even more. This is the year of Luke’s gospel, so this year, as well as hearing about John the adult, we also hear the story of Elizabeth and Zechariah and the baby John. That’s a story only told by Luke.
We picked up the story at the point of John’s birth. You will remember that John’s father, Zechariah, was a priest. It was his turn in rotation to serve in the Temple about 9 months before John was born. You will remember that when he went into the Holy of Holies, he was surprised by the presence of the angel Gabriel. By the end of their encounter, Zechariah could not speak, an apparent consequence of failing to believe what the angel said. He was speechless for months until the day when baby John was to be named.
Zechariah often gets judged pretty hard for asking the kind of question that any of us might have. I mean, when Gabriel went to Mary, Mary’s first response also was “How can this be?” Gabriel treated her question with respect. But I’m jumping ahead. Mary’s story is not the one we’re focused on today.
Gabriel told Zechariah that he and Elizabeth were going to have a baby, and that their son would do incredible things. That was when Zechariah said, “How will I know that this is so? For I am an old man and my wife is getting in years.”
Now, when I read this story, what I usually hear is Zechariah saying “I am too old to have a baby.” This week a colleague helped me hear it slightly differently.
The Rev. Joanna Harader is a pastor in Kansas. She is Mennonite, but she comes from American Baptist stock. Joanna says “Maybe Zechariah is not asking such a stupid question. Maybe Zechariah is questioning another part of Gabriel’s proclamation. Maybe he is questioning the parts about the great works John will do. Maybe when he says, “I am an old man” it is not to say that he doubts that Elizabeth will be pregnant, but to say that he will not live to see the great deeds of his son. How will he know that his son will turn people to the Lord? . . . It is reasonable to assume that Zechariah will be dead by the time his son reaches puberty. How will he know the great works to come?”[1]
I appreciate Joanna’s framing of the situation. It is kinder to Zechariah, for one thing. It is also a question that resonates with me especially now. How do we exercise trust for the future? Where do we find hope?
By the time John is born, Zechariah has had a lot of silence in which to reflect on those questions, to dig down into his faith and reach into the stories from his ancestors. His answer, which comes out in song, is that he trusts God for the future because he believes that God was faithful in the past.
His song ends with this beautiful line
“By the tender mercy of our God,
the dawn from on high will break upon us,
to give light to those who sit in darkness and in the shadow of death, to guide our feet into the way of peace.”
He has just been talking about his son John as a prophet who will go before the Lord and then he ends with the words “to guide our feet into the way of peace.” Now, I have a lot of associations with John the Baptist, but peacemaker is not high on the list. Agitator, disturber of the peace, someone who wears strange clothes and leads a movement – yes to all of the above, but peacemaker doesn’t readily spring to mind.
But as I think about it, that’s true for many others who were tried to change hearts and minds for the cause of peace and justice. I think about John Lewis and his tag-line, “make good trouble.” I think about Dorothy Day whose 124th birthday was last week. She said that she loved reading about the ways that saints in the past had cared for others through acts of mercy, but it raised a bigger question which was “where were the saints [trying to] change the social order, not just to minister to the slaves, but to do away with slavery?” [2]
People who resist the way things are, people who try to change systems of oppression are more often seen as trouble-makers than peacemakers. It is often only after their life is over that their work is truly respected.
I wonder about John the Baptist. There is so much we’re not told. I wonder about being born to parents who had longed for him and about the love that they surely showered on him. I wonder about being born into a family of priests on both his mother’s and father’s sides. He’s a pastor’s kid, a double PK – the chances are slim to none that he’ll turn out normal.
I wonder what combination of nature and nurture produce someone like John. We can guess that his parents died before he reached adulthood and we might wonder what effect that had on him. He did not go into the family business and become a priest. Instead he wound up as a prophet, someone seeking to reform the religious institution of his parents, and I wonder if that’s not another side of the same coin.
In his letter to the church at Philippi, the apostle Paul said, “I am confident of this, that the one who began a good work among you will bring it to completion by the day of Jesus Christ.”
It is helpful to remember that Paul is speaking to a group of people. His claim is that God will complete the work begun in that community, not necessarily that every individual will see it, but that their labors with God will bear fruit.
I go back to the questions underlying Zechariah’s response to Gabriel. How do we exercise trust for the future? Where do we find hope?
Bryan Stevenson is a name known to many of us. Bryan is a lawyer and social justice activist. Representing people on death row, he began to challenge biases against the poor and minorities in the criminal justice system. Many of us have read his book Just Mercy or we’ve seen the movie version. He initiated the National Memorial for Peace and Justice in Montgomery, Alabama which honors the names of more than 4,000 African Americans who were lynched in this country and the Legacy Museum which documents the white supremacy which undergirds the high rates of incarceration and execution of people of color. His goal is to help people recognize the injustices in our system so that there can be restoration and redemption, so that we can live in peace. He has won many awards for his work, but of course, he has also been seen as a troublemaker.
In an interview about a year ago, he talked about the arc of his life. His great-grandfather was an enslaved person in Virginia who learned to read when that was illegal. Bryan marveled at “the kind of hope, the kind of vision it took to believe that one day, you’re going to be free, even when nothing around you indicates that freedom is likely for enslaved people in Virginia in the 1850’s.” [3]
After Emancipation, other formerly enslaved people would come to Bryan’s great-grandfather’s house, and he would read the newspaper to them. Bryan’s grandmother shared her memories about sitting next to her father on those occasions because she loved the power that he had to engage people, to help them feel more informed and calmer.
Bryan started elementary school during segregation. His first school was a colored school. He experienced racism in all its ugliness, but he also came from a family that instilled in him love and faith. He speaks from that foundation when he says, “I think hope is our superpower. I mean, hope is the thing that gets you to stand up when others say, Sit down. It’s the thing that gets you to speak when others say, Be quiet.”
I think about Bryan’s great-grandfather. Like Zechariah, he would not live to see all that God did for his people. But also like Zechariah, he remained faithful in spite of the circumstances. That faithfulness was part of the legacy inherited by his great-grandson, part of the guiding of Bryan’s feet in the ways of peace.
Bryan talks about being nurtured by his family, but also by a community of women who had fought for justice. One time, Rosa Parks came to town and Bryan was invited to be there. He was invited by Ms Johnnie Carr, a child-hood friend of Rosa Parks and one of the primary organizers of the Montgomery bus boycott. So, of course he went. He sat on the porch with Rosa Parks and Johnnie Carr and they talked and talked. He remembered that they weren’t talking about any of the extraordinary things they had done in the past. They were talking about the things they still wanted to do. He said there was a hopefulness in their conversation and he just sat there, soaking it in.
And then Rosa Parks turned and asked Bryan about his work. Bryan gave her his pitch, “Well, we’re trying to end the death penalty. We’re trying to help people on death row. We’re trying to challenge conditions of confinement. We’re trying to help the mentally ill. We’re trying to help children. We’re trying to help the poor.”
He said that Rosa Parks leaned back smiling. 'Ooooh, honey, all that's going to make you tired, tired, tired.' Everyone laughed. Bryan looked down a little embarrassed and then Ms. Carr leaned forward and put her finger in his face and talked to him just like his grandmother used to. She said, “That's why you've got to be brave, brave, brave.” [4]
Bryan said he’ll never forget that. Those women taught him about the necessity of courage in the work of justice and peace.
So beloved ones, be courageous. Hold on to your hope, because hope just might be our superpower. I am confident that God who began a good work in us will be faithful to complete it and to guide our feet in the way of peace. Thanks be to God. Amen.
[1] https://spaciousfaith.com/new-testament-texts/luke-15-25/
[2] Shane Claibourne, Jonathan Wilson-Hartgrove, Enumo Okoro, Common Prayer: A Liturgy for Ordinary Radicals (Grand Rapids, Zondervan, 2010).
[3] https://onbeing.org/programs/bryan-stevenson-finding-the-courage-for-whats-redemptive/
[4] https://onbeing.org/programs/bryan-stevenson-finding-the-courage-for-whats-redemptive/