Reta Bethany Presbyterian Church
WAITING Lafayette, Indiana

Luke 1:67-79

December 10, 1972

In the Gospel according to Luke, there are several stories that preceed the birth of
Jesus. Luke, alone among the Gospel writers, mentions them. They include the annunciation
to Mary by the Angel of the Lord that she will bear a son: Mary's response, known to us as
“The Magnificat" - "My soul magnifies theLord, and my spirit rejoices in God my Savior, for
he has regarded the low estate of his handmaiden...": and then the long and rather complicated
story of Zechariah and Elizabeth - and their soon-to-be-born son, who would be named John.

It's abbng and involved preface to what really aepears to be the beginning of the story -
the birth of Jesus: and we have to assume that Luke included all this material for a reason.
I thought about that this week - havine before simply ignored most of the first chapter of
Luke: and I would like to explore it with you this morning under the topic, "Waiting". But
first let's refresh our memorics.

In the Sth verse of the first chapter of Luke we are intrudced to a very interesting
couple: Zechariah, an old priest, and his aged and barren wife, Elizabeth. their childless-
ness had become over the years, a matter of deep concern. They wore long past the time when
conception ordinarily occurs: and yet old Zechariah continued to pray fervently that he
wold be given a child, and that his wife might be spared that special Hebrew stigma
described negatively and coldly as “Barreness".

One day, as he took his priestly turn burning incense at the altar Zechariah liad a
vision: his wife would conceive and bear a son tolbe named John. When Zechariah emerged
from the temple to bless the people he was speechless - an appropriate response to such a
dramatic experience - except that his speechlessness extended throughout the period of
Elizabeth's pregnancy.

Luke describes further a similar annunciation to May: a strange meeting between
Elizabeth and Mary ~ kinswomen he tells us; and the fact that Elizabeth recognized the
tremendous significance of Mary's pregnancy.

When Elizabeth's infant son was born her friends rejoiced. And when she and her
still speechless husband took him to the temple on the 8th day for circumcision, everyone
assumed that he would be named after his father. Elizabeth protested and when Zechariah
was consulted he asked for a tablet and wrote: "His name is John." Suddenly he was able

to speak again and he said quite a bit. His words are our New Testament Lesson this

morning, found in Luke 1:68-79,
THE NEW TESTAMENT LESSON

There's a lot going on during the Christmas season. In terms of time alone, I don't
know anyone who does not feel pressed: there are more taings to accomplish before
Vecember 25 dian there are hours in the days which remain. And so it's a little frantic
aid sur frenzy of activity tends to hide something else that's going on: something deep
and difficult to exthin: common and yet so individually personal that we can't always
assign words to it. There is something about the season that gets to us; for some reason
normal every-day enotions are amplified. Lonliness can be unbearable at Christmas: love
is more intense. generosity is obviously more real: pain is more painful: grief more
depressing. We lve with all of these - but at Christmas we feel them more deeply. Holding
a child is something special to me at Christinas - I'm not sure why, but 7t is. And I want
to do it as much as I can. Babies look more beautiful to us - even puppies are cuter
when they are related to Christmas. It's almost as if our intellects - our spirits -
all our emoticns are on edae-raw-sensitive.

Christmas arouses even the most dormant emotionally = Chenezer Scrooge, for instance,
because Christmas is about some of the deepest human hopes and dreans and experiences. And
beneath it ali is the very real human experience of waiting. iow, ordinarily we would not
assign much significance to waiting. I want, however, to suggest that it is a “loaded”
word theolowically.

Zecharian and Elizabeth waited all their lives for a son. And when the son was given it
punctuated for them a reality far greater than the birth itself. Somehow the birth of John
meant that the waiting was over ~ not only fhe waiting for a child, but also the waiting for
Sod to act. “IT HAS HAPPENED", Zecharich prectaimed: I not only have a son, but now there
is light in our darkness and peace.

The story of Zechariah and Elizabeth is a prototype, really, of the entire Biblical
narrative. For the Bible is full of peqie waiting. The Bible spans thousands of years
of history, and most of that time is taken up in waiting: the Hebrew tribes waiting for
years in Egyptian slavery: the same tribes wandered for forty years through the Sinai
desert, waiting to settle finally in a land of their own: centries later we see them

waiting again ~ this time as captives in Babylon - waiting for delivwrance and freedom:

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in the words of the prophets we sense a waiting over the centures for God's untimate act of
redemption ~ the coming of the Messfah: and to bring it immediately up to date - those same
people waiting from the year 70 AD until 1947 ~ dispersed through out the world - pushed into
gnettoes - concentration camps and finally cas chambers - waiting for a restoration - a
home - freedom and life.

Waiting is ne small matter: {t ds certainly more significant than passing time in the
context of theology. And the common thread between that and our own experience ds that mich
of human life - our lives - may be called waiting.

That thought occured to me on Wednesday night as I sat in front of the television
sharing dohn Chancelor's frustration, as we waited for the biast-off. IT OCCURED Ta ME,

AS WELL, that second only to “we'll see” my most Trequeat verbal transaction with my own
children is “wait'.

Waiting is an early human experience. Children weit to go to school, wait impatiently
for the years to brine them to the first date, driver's license, sraduation, riarriage. As I
Took back on it now much of the co-lege years were invested in waiting te cet out. We
wait for a better job, for children, for a new house. Sometimes - many times - life feels
like it's standing stil] - and we find ourselves weiting - and not knowine what ft ds we
are waiting for. we wait for retirement ~ for freedon and liesure: and one of the new
problems brought about by extended life expectancy is how to prevent peonle in homes for
the aged from doing notiing but waiting for death.

Waiting is waat divides generations. My parents could and did wait ~ I had trouble
waiting - anc I sense that my children can't and won't wait - for material goods, furniture,
cars, hases, but also for peace and justice anc integrity. A whole era in our nation's
life is defined in a book title, “Why We Can't Wait", by Martin Luther King, dr.

All of that is happening on the surface of cur lives. And beneath he surface, I
believe, there is a deeper waiting - a profoundly theological waiting symbolized by the
image of Isracl waiting in Eqyot, in the desert in’abylon: a profoundly theological waiting
verbalized by the old priest Zechariah in terms of this child bring “light to all who sit
in darkness and in the shadow of death."

Helmut Thielicke, a German theologian, suggests that to be human is to wait - and that

men are waiting for the dark and incomprehensible to be clearedup. I'm not sure that's

~ ~4-
adequate but I do know that this philosophic sense of waiting for something is an important
theme in Titerctur:..

samuel Beckett in nis play "Waiting for eodot", suggests that there is something for
which all men wait, and without which life acs no maaning. Two tranns, Vladimir and Estragon,
wait day in and day out for Godot - who never appears. In their waiting they talk nonsense,
inconsequentials, just chatter. If Godot would only come they would komw what to do next.
But Sedot does not cove and the viewer is left with the dismal suggestion that sothing
really matters: that human life fs really nothing more than the empty patter of two tramps.

In Franz fafba's “The Trial”, the main character who is known only as °K", is on triaT.
But ne ceesntt know why ~ and he never Fines out. Having waiting and struggled for an
answer he is finally cxecuted - and it coms almost as ¢ blassed relief.

Arthur filler, in ‘Tne ceath of A Salesman” tells the depressing story cf a small-
time salesman who sponds his whole life waitiae for something great te happen. Watting
is what keeps iit fro going: and wnen it becomes clear that nothing great is ever going to
happen to him be bevins to come apart at the seams, and finadly takes his ovn Tife.

Waiting is an important Biblical and Theological idea. It is reflected in secular
literature and drana. And when we are co-pletely candid I think we wil] see that it is
one of the most important realities in our own experience.

For we, too, are waiting: perhaps, as Thielicke sugasts, for the riddic of evil to be
resolve, but more realistically, 1 think, far something we can't quite axpress: something
aS Vagus 23 sou0t, something as fiaportant as Willie Loman's dram. We are waiting for "it"
to happen,even though we don't kaew what “It? is.

I'm inclined to call it wrat old Zechariah call it - when it happaded to him: namely
salvation. And by that Inean some sense that there is a God: some sense that life does
have meaning: some sense of wholeness, at~homeness in the world: sume sense of self-
acceptance: some sense that our relationships with our wives and husbands and children
and parents and loved ones are parmanent, that their death or our own does not terminate
those relationships; sone sense that death is not the final answer to our questions.

That's what I mean by salvation: that's what we're waiting for: that's the content
of Israel's longling for the ‘lessiah: that's waat is behind and beheath the universal human

experience of waiting,

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And here cones dd Zechariah saiing that the birth of his son Jolm, and the birth of
another child for chor Jodn eiil surve as the ferefunner is the signed that “it" has
happened: the waiting is over: salvation is here: theme is light in the darkness, the shadaw
of death has bee banisved, and peace -wholensss - "shalon" is now a nossibility.

THat's how we Christians understand the event that happened in BethTeham of dudea.
But you Know, strangely, the coodnuss of the Good News spills over inte th: lives of thers,
others who wait, others who do not call themselves Christians, who have no particular
theological uncerstanding of the Christras event, but wie nevertheless snese that becsuuse
of tiis - because of tiis strange birth - tke waiting is over.

dow, cacre is nothing in the Bible, and nothing tn our experiance. that quarantees
that a wan is goiny tu Sense that 24 hours a day, every day. Some expressions of the
Church try to aave Tt that way, but not very monestly. To the comtray tne b aby about yhom
Zechariah got so enéite grew upeard ue day fad te send a wessage tu desus asking if he
really were the one or snould they be looking for another. Everyday ts not Christmas -
even in the Bible. It happens only accassionally, wita a lot of waiting in between,

But every now anu tuen thure is a aint - a break-through - in the highly charged
atmosphere of Advent, in the faces of sinuine children, in she words of akeloved carol,
or for me - in those moments wnen I uold my own child, and know deeply within myself that
the waiting is over, that “it' has happened.

Here again tie woras of that singularly fortunate first man who sensed that I have
been tryiug te describe: old Lecharian, not many years from death, his yoice rcturned xa
at toe birth of a son

“Elassed by the Lord God of Israel, for he has visited and
redeemed his people.....

And you, child, will be called the prophet of the Most high.....
to give knowledge of salvation to his peopic.

to give light to those who sit in darkness and in tho
shadow of death: to guide our feet into the way of peace.”

AME I