“The Women of Christmas: Let All Mortal Flesh Keep Silence” Luke 1: 5-25

I have a friend who leads trips every few years to the Holy Land. Whenever she goes over she will bring me something back, usually made of olive wood. One year it was a carving of a pregnant Mary. This year I am patiently awaiting the carving, which I’m told is of Elizabeth. 

I was thinking as my friend was talking about shipping the figure, that I am now two-thirds of the way of having carvings of the women of Christmas. There are three women who are absolutely vital to the Christmas story, yet often we only hear about one of them, Mary the Mother of Jesus. But Elizabeth, her cousin, and the prophet Anna also played such big roles in preparing for and proclaiming the birth of the Christ child.

For the next few weeks, during the season of Advent we are going to jump into their stories, as well as the stories of others who play a role in the coming of the Christ child. Often we just want to jump straight to the story of Christmas Eve, but friends, we need to prepare our souls  for that story. For in the coming of Jesus Christ we have the gifts of love and hope embodied. This is not something to be taken lightly or simply to skip past. We need to dwell in this story, preparing our hearts to receive him anew. 

Advent is this blessed four-week season of preparation, but it is also a time of renewal and reflection. For some of us, the stories we hear will be familiar - then let us ask God to reveal to us new truths for our spirits for such a time as this. For others of us, maybe we haven’t heard these parts of the Christmas story before - then may we ask God to reveal a blessing for us that is within them. 

Our Gospel Message today, one of the first few verses in the Gospel of Luke, tells of Zechariah and Elizabeth. Zechariah was a priest in the regiment of Abijah. There were twenty-four divisions of priests, so there were a lot of them, but they all took turns doing various duties - preparing the temple for worship, handling the sacrifices for offerings, singing praises to God at the gates of the temple, amongst many other things. 

Elizabeth would have been considered a special woman to marry, for she, too, was from the house of priests, the house of Aaron. She, along with other wives of priests, made sure their garments were prepared for their service to the Lord and welcomed people into their homes to discuss the business of the temple. 

We are told that Elizabeth and Zechariah were righteous and blameless before God, and yet Elizabeth was barren. Elizabeth not having any children would have been viewed by those in her community as punishment from God - it had to be her fault for some unconfessed sin in her life that God has not blessed her. She must be displeasing to God. And yet, their righteousness, their blamelessness, their ability to stand firm in the midst of the whispers, that would not have been by their own strength, but by the grace and power of God working in their lives, which allowed them to respond with what happened next. 

Zechariah entered the temple to intercede for the people - which was both a duty and a privilege. But in that place, at that moment, the angel of the Lord showed up and told him that God has been hearing Zechariah’s prayers and pleas all of these years, and now was the time they would be answered. Gabriel revealed himself to Zechariah as he was going about the task he was supposed to be doing that day. How would you respond if God sent you a personal messenger to tell you that your prayers have been heard? How would you respond if you were going about your daily job and suddenly found your waiting ended, and your prayers had been answered. Would you too need to be told to “Do not be afraid”. In this moment we see grace and divine kindness - a God who listened to Zechariah’s cries, tenderly caring after his immediate needs in the face of unspeakable fear. 

  The angel goes on to tell Zechariah that the child he would be blessed with was more than he could have ever imagined praying for. He would be great in the sight of the Lord. He would turn the people of Israel to the Lord their God. The child, to be named, John would be a blessing to the entire nations of Israel. 

And how did Zechariah respond? He asked how this could be so? He started to think about all of the reasons it shouldn’t be able to happen instead of leaning into the gift that God was offering him and his wife. And for his doubt, he was struck silent. But  I also love the fact that Zechariah’s punishment is not so much a punishment as a time of silence. In a day and time when we seemed to need to be entertained at every minute - always having something confront our senses - Zechariah’s punishment could actually be seen as a gift. A much needed time of silent retreat to ponder the unbelievable. To focus himself on what was coming. 

Personally, I crave silence. When I sleep, I have to put in earplugs in order to shut off the noise of the world, or I can’t rest. Yet, for Zechariah, silence was not seen at first as a welcomed gift, but instead as a barrier between himself and being able to share with those around him what he had experienced. 

While Zechariah’s silence was imposed, a speechlessness, that led him to a time of reflection, Elizabeth chose her own form of silence. While many women who have been waiting for a child for as long as she has cannot wait to tell everyone and anyone they are with child, Elizabeth chose to stay in her home, keeping her pregnancy a secret for the first twenty-two weeks. Away from all of the neighbors who thought she displeased God, away from all of the gossip of those who had considered her to be less than. 

Silence can often feel like barrenness. We don’t particularly like it when things are quiet for too long. Even those of us who need silence to function, still need human interaction as well. Yet it is often in the silence that God is trying to speak into our lives. For silence helps us define our meaning. It was in the silence that Elizabeth found that God had looked favorably on her and removed her disgrace. It was in the silence that Elizabeth and Zechariah could grow in faith, and trust, and hope. It was in the silence, that Elizabeth and Zechariah realized they were so much more than the barrenness they had let define them for so long.

According to author Enuma Okra, “The more we inhabit silence, the better our hearing becomes”. Maybe that is what we need a little more of this Advent season - intentional, holy silence. Waiting for a birth within our spirits. Waiting for new life to emerge. A time when we can trust that God is still working in the silence. A time that reminds us who God is and who we are as a child of God. Praying that the seeds of faith, hope, and trust grow in you. Let us keep silence as we prepare our hearts for the coming of our King. Amen.