Luke 1:68-79
“Praise be to the Lord, the God of Israel, because he has come to his people and redeemed them. He has raised up a horn of salvation for us in the house of his servant David (as he said through his holy prophets of long ago), salvation from our enemies and from the hand of all who hate us— to show mercy to our ancestors and to remember his holy covenant, the oath he swore to our father Abraham: to rescue us from the hand of our enemies, and to enable us to serve him without fear in holiness and righteousness before him all our days. And you, my child, will be called a prophet of the Most High; for you will go on before the Lord to prepare the way for him, to give his people the knowledge of salvation through the forgiveness of their sins, because of the tender mercy of our God, by which the rising sun will come to us from heaven to shine on those living in darkness and in the shadow of death,to guide our feet into the path of peace.”
So far this Advent, we have thought about how the promise of truth leads us to the promise of justice and makes possible the promise of restoration, and in the next short while I want us to think about the promise of compassion, which wraps around all of it. Our way in is the last reading we heard, which comes from what is perhaps one of the less familiar parts of the Christmas story. Before the angel visits Mary, they first visit her relative Zechariah, to announce another miracle baby, the child who will come to be known as John the Baptist. Luke tells us this:
In the time of Herod king of Judea there was a priest named Zechariah, who belonged to the priestly division of Abijah; his wife Elizabeth was also a descendant of Aaron. Both of them were righteous in the sight of God, observing all the Lord’s commands and decrees blamelessly. But they were childless because Elizabeth was not able to conceive, and they were both very old. Once when Zechariah’s division was on duty and he was serving as priest before God, he was chosen by lot, according to the custom of the priesthood, to go into the temple of the Lord and burn incense. And when the time for the burning of incense came, all the assembled worshipers were praying outside.
Then an angel of the Lord appeared to him, standing at the right side of the altar of incense. 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 call him John. He will be a joy and delight to you, and many will rejoice because of his birth, for he will be great in the sight of the Lord. He is never to take wine or other fermented drink, and he will be filled with the Holy Spirit even before he is born. He will bring back many of the people of Israel to the Lord their God. And he will go on before the Lord, in the spirit and power of Elijah, to turn the hearts of the parents to their children and the disobedient to the wisdom of the righteous—to make ready a people prepared for the Lord.”
After this, Zechariah is struck dumb until his son is born, at which point he is filled with the Holy Spirit and prophesies the words we heard earlier, speaking of salvation and forgiveness and the tender mercy of God, “by which the rising sun will come to us from heaven to shine on those living in darkness and in the shadow of death, to guide our feet into the path of peace”. Zechariah's song follows on from Mary's, with her talk of the mighty brought down and the humble lifted high, the rich sent away empty and the hungry filled with good things, and together they offer a wonderful vision of God's plan, which is unfolding through these two impossible babies. As Kate Bowler puts it, “the mighty reversal of the world has just begun”.
As John grows, he is keen to downplay his own importance in order to emphasise Jesus, but he continues to be a hugely significant voice within the gospel narrative, calling people to pay attention and hear the good news, then respond with lives of justice and generosity. We still need those voices. Very few people come to faith through a spontaneous encounter with Jesus; many more people come to Jesus through an encounter with someone else. Whose were the voices that called you to pay attention and hear the good news? Whose are the voices that call you to live with justice and generosity? Perhaps they are gifts to give thanks for this Christmas.
People often associate John the Baptist with a harsh message of repentance, and there was a directness to his words, but his father's song of God's tender mercy should be a reminder that his true purpose was to call people to reorient themselves towards God's compassion. Because to quote Kate Bowler again, “Jesus is the picture of God's love on display...Jesus is God-with-us so he could be God's compassion for us, in word and deed. Compassion, in Latin, means to suffer with. When Jesus saw someone suffering, he wept with them and came to their aid. He talked with the excluded and marginalized and ate with the outcasts. There was no one whose illness or status rendered them unapproachable or untouchable. This is the kind of radical compassion that says, I am not just helping you, I am with you.”
You may have already picked up on my enthusiasm for Christmas carols, which I would happily sing all year round, but there is one popular choice that I'm really not such a big fan of, and that's ‘Once in Royal David's City'. I have some hesitation about characterising the child who argued with religious leaders and then sassed his parents as mild and obedient, but mostly I'm not keen on the lines ‘And he feeleth for our sadness/And he shareth in our gladness’. I know they were just trying to avoid repeating the same verb, but I have never liked the distinction between feeling for and sharing in. I remember as a small child thinking that it sounded like God enjoys life with us when things are good, and then sort of pats us on the shoulder and says “there, there” when things are bad, which is very much not my experience. I believe that God is right there in the thick of things for good and bad, feeling for us and with us. That is the compassion that God promises, which is most fully realised in Jesus living not only for us and with us, but as one of us.
The incarnation is quite literally an act of compassion, of suffering with us. But I think we can also understand it more broadly as an act of feeling with us, because life isn't all suffering. That is why I love all of the sparkle and silliness of the Christmas season. Of course we need to guard against overconsumption, but I don't see the twinkly lights and the turkey and the television specials as distractions from ‘the real meaning of Christmas’, however little of Christ they may appear to contain. For me, they celebrate so much that is good and joyful about our own incarnation, which I think is a glorious way of celebrating Christ's incarnation, and all the promise that contains. So may the next few days be full of good and joyful things, and may they reorient you towards the promise of compassion.
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