Crescent Hill Baptist Church
Crescent Hill Baptist Church
Louisville, Kentucky
The First Sunday of Advent
December 3, 2006
W. Gregory Pope
Surprise Pregnancies
Luke 1
In the fall of 2011, as one child of mine enters the eighth grade, it is quite possible that my wife and I will also be attending an orientation for parents of college freshmen as well as an orientation for parents of kindergartners. It will be enough to blow our minds.
In case you did not know, our one-year-old son Ryan came about because of a surprise pregnancy. Cindy and I were surprised in October of 2004 with the news of her pregnancy. We wandered around in shock for a few days, but soon found ourselves full of excitement. It was also during this time that we had begun conversation with the Pastor Search Team of Crescent Hill Baptist Church. Such events began a whirlwind from which we are still trying to recover.
As I believe I have shared with you before, during week nine of that surprise pregnancy in mid-November 2004, we were heartbroken with the news of a miscarriage. The surprise pregnancy had surprised us with so much joy. So we decided to go ahead and try again to conceive. And so, in late January 2005, one week after having made the decision to move here to Louisville, we learn that Ryan Gregory Pope is on the way. You know the rest of the story. Our world would be turned upside down in ways we never expected.
Our surprise pregnancy, however, pales in comparison I’m sure to the day Zechariah and Elizabeth, Mary and Joseph received their news of babies on the way.
It began with Zechariah on the day he was to be Israel’s priest. A once-in-a lifetime privilege. He would enter the holy sanctuary and offer incense to God as a prayer offering for the people. The whole assembly would wait outside the Temple for Zechariah to return and speak to them from the sanctuary steps Aaron's benediction: The Lord bless you and keep you. The Lord make his face to shine upon you and be gracious unto you. The Lord lift his countenance upon you and give you peace.
That’s what was supposed to happen. But something else happened that would change his life and begin a series of events that would change the world. Zechariah entered the sanctuary and an angel of the Lord appeared to him. This terrified Zechariah as it would you or me. But the angel said to him (as angels always say), “Do not be afraid. Do not be afraid, Zechariah, for your prayer has been heard.”
You see, Zechariah and his wife Elizabeth were “on in years.” Scripture tells us they were blameless in God's sight, having lived lives of righteousness. Their only sorrow was that they were childless. It was an old sorrow. Perhaps it had softened through the years. But on occasion, I’m sure, the sadness would return to pierce right through them - always without warning and always with a sharpness that took them by surprise. Their hope for a child seemed now to be only a cruel fantasy.
But the angel brings astounding news. “Zechariah, your prayer has been heard. Your wife Elizabeth will bear you a son, and you shall name him John.”
How long, how long had it been since their lips had dared utter that prayer for a child?
The angel went on to say: “You will have joy and gladness, and many will rejoice at his birth, for he shall be great in the sight of the Lord. With the spirit and power of Elijah, he will come and make ready a people prepared for the Lord.”
Could it be? Could hope be alive again? Have you ever had one of those moments when you were surprised by hope? You had reached the place where you thought the tide would never turn. You had given up your dreams for dead. And then, it was as if the prophet Gomer Pyle appeared from nowhere with God’s message of: Surprise! Surprise! Surprise! And you began to see shades of hope once again.
Or maybe you’re still waiting for hope’s surprise. Maybe you’ve given up waiting. Too many disappointments. Too much pain over dashed hopes. Hope seems beyond lostness. Hope has become another profane four-letter word. And you don’t hope for anything any more. And if an angel from heaven appeared to you in church or in your home and told you your dream was going to come true, you would probably respond like Zechariah did to the news of Elizabeth’s pregnancy. You wouldn’t believe it.
Zechariah didn’t believe it. He couldn’t trust his senses. Was he out of his ever-loving mind? “Do you expect me to believe this?” he sputtered. “This cannot be. My wife is on in years. And as for myself, I am a Romeo no more.”
Zechariah speaks here out of self-defense. He doesn’t want to get his hopes up again, only to have them dashed.
Have you been there before? Afraid to hope again?
It’s where Zechariah was. But the angel seemed to have no compassion with Zechariah’s disbelief. He said, “I’ve been sent to bring you this good news. But because you don’t believe my words, which will be fulfilled in their time, you shall be unable to speak, until the day of promise comes.”
Kathleen Norris says, “God’s response to Zechariah is to strike him dumb during the entire term of his son’s gestation, giving him a pregnancy of his own.” (Kathleen Norris, “The Annunciation,” in Watch For the Light: Readings For Advent and Christmas, Plough Publishing House, 2001, 52)
I can identify with Zechariah’s silence. Cindy broke the news of the surprise pregnancy when I arrived home from church on a Wednesday night. In her own disbelief she had been unable to attend prayer meeting that night. An angel of God had already made its visitation to her!
When the kids had gone to bed she told me. I was struck mute for quite some time. I believe I went to the kitchen for some ginger ale. Who knows it may have been an angel that made me speechless, knowing that if a sound came from my mouth, it was not going to be my own version of Mary’s Magnificat. My wife was as displeased with my silence as I’m sure Elizabeth was with Zechariah’s.
Was the angel being cruel to old Zechariah? Perhaps. But I think he was teaching Zechariah an important lesson: the danger of giving up hope.
I am aware that today’s stories may be painful to those of you who hoped for a child of your own for years. It may still be your hope. But your unfulfilled hope in the face of these stories perhaps make you angry.
No doubt Zechariah and Elizabeth knew your pain and anger. More than that, God knows your pain and understands your anger. The biblical stories of barrenness giving way to pregnancy are often difficult to hear and interpret. I read them as signs of hope that God is active in the world. I do not believe that God strikes women and men with the inability to bear children. I don’t believe God determines who has children and who does not. In the mystery of conception and life, at times there are other factors that keep pregnancy from happening.
Very little can replace having a child when that is something you want. Sometimes our hope is so desperate we are searching for a reason to a live. Whatever your hope I would ask that we learn from these stories that as dangerous and as painful as holding on to hope can be, life without hope is even more dangerous. Life without hope can kill us. With God, however, there is always reason to hope.
Well, Zechariah and Elizabeth return home from the temple. The Bible uses discretion only to say that “after those days Elizabeth conceived, and for five months remained in seclusion.”
In the sixth month of Elizabeth’s pregnancy, the angel Gabriel who had appeared earlier in the mighty Temple of Jerusalem, now appears out in the country to a small town in Galilee called Nazareth, to a young teenager, about 14 years old, a virgin named Mary, betrothed to a man named Joseph, of the house of David.
Betrothel was more binding than what we call engagement today. It lasted one year. Then the husband would take his wife to his family’s home for the wedding and the consummation of the marriage. So solemn were betrothel vows that if a man died sometime in that year the wife was considered a widow. And if either of them took up with another person it was considered adultery.
Mary was betrothed to Joseph when an angel appeared to her with these words: “Greetings, favored one! The Lord is with you.” And in good liturgical fashion she responded, “And also with you.”
Not quite. Mary, like Zechariah, was perplexed and frightened. But the angel said to her, just as he said to Zechariah, “Do not be afraid. Do not be afraid, Mary, for you have found favor with God.” I love the way Eugene Peterson translates this text: “Mary, you have nothing to fear. God has a surprise for you.”
The angel goes on to say, “You shall conceive in your womb and bear a son, and you shall call him Jesus. He will be great. He will be called the Son of the Most High, and the Lord God will give to him the throne of his ancestor David. He will reign over the house of Jacob forever, and of his kingdom there shall be no end.”
And Mary said to the angel, “How can this be, since I am a virgin?”
First a barren woman. Now a virgin. Surprise pregnancies to say the least.
The angel said to Mary, “The Holy Spirit will come upon you, and the power of the Most High will overshadow you; therefore the child to be born will be holy; he will be called Son of God.”
Then Mary said, “Here am I, the servant of the Lord; let it be with me according to your word.”
And the same Spirit that moved across the face of the deep and created the heavens and the earth moved across this young girl named Mary and created a child of heaven and earth named Jesus, which means God will save us.
The angel had told Mary of Elizabeth’s pregnancy. So Mary sets out with haste to cousin Elizabeth's house. She entered the house and greeted Elizabeth. I cannot read this text without remembering the scene from the movie Jesus of Nazareth where Mary and Elizabeth meet each other for the first time after the angel’s appearing. Mary greets her and Elizabeth feels her baby leap in her womb. John the Baptist is already wanting to prepare the way for the Messiah. Elizabeth is filled with the Holy Spirit and exclaims with a loud cry of blessing to Mary, “Blessed are you among women, and blessed is the fruit of your womb. When you greeted me, Mary, this child in my womb leaped for joy.”
Knowing that Mary and Elizabeth had gotten together, we can only hope that Joseph and Zechariah got together as well. Zechariah would need someone he could talk with without having to talk. God’s cat having gotten his tongue. And Joseph, with all the unusual goings on in his life, he needed a friend too. A man friend to mutter with about how God’s ways are stranger than any fiction, and how they aren’t as easy to explain or as easy to live with as they tell you in church they are.
Mary remained with Elizabeth about three months, then returned home. The time came for Elizabeth to give birth. And she gave birth to a son. On the eighth day, according to Jewish custom, the baby came to be circumsized and named. Everyone was sure his name would be Zechariah after his father. But his mother said, "No. He is to be called John." They didn't understand. No one in the family was named John. Why John?
So they turned to Zechariah. God’s cat still holding on to his tongue, he motions for a writing tablet and wrote, “His name is John” (which means "Yahweh has given grace.") And all of them were amazed, scripture tells us. And immediately, Zechariah’s mouth was opened and his tongue freed, and he began to speak, praising God. Fear came over all the neighbors. Something was going on of a nature they knew not. And the news of what had happened was talked about throughout the entire hill country of Judea. They were wondering among themselves, “What will this child become?” And Zechariah, filled with Holy Spirit, began to sing a song of hope fulfilled. Holding up his boy, he said:
you, child, shall be called the prophet of the Most High;
for you will go before the Lord to prepare his ways,
to give knowledge of salvation to his people by the forgiveness of their sins.
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.
Zechariah, the mute priest, now singing prophet. Singing songs of hope about the God of surprising hope.
We learn from people like Zechariah and Elizabeth, Mary and Joseph, Simeon and Anna that
hope requires the practice of waiting - active, patient, open-ended waiting in community. They and their ancestors before them had been waiting for their hopes to be realized, enabled by a sense of promise, God’s promise of salvation and redemption. (Henri Nouwen, “Waiting For God,” in Watch For the Light: Readings For Advent and Christmas, Plough Publishing House, 2001, 30).
Henri Nouwen says that hope requires an active waiting. Hope requires that we be fully present to the moment where we are. It involves nurturing the moment, as a mother nurtures the child that is growing in her, trusting that God is indeed a God of surprises, trusting that God is always doing a new thing in us and around us, new things far beyond our wildest imagination. (Nouwen, 31-32, 34)
It is crucial that we wait and hope together, as did Mary and Elizabeth. They came together and created space enabling each other to wait. They affirmed for each other that something was happening that was worth waiting for. That is who we are and why we are here. To be a community of hope, to be together, gathered around a promise, celebrating what has already begun in us. “Christian community,” says Nouwen, “is the place where we keep the flame alive among us and take it seriously, so that it can grow and become stronger in us,” enabling us to live and wait in hope. (Nouwen, 34-36)
How has your hope been lately? If it’s been a fearful enemy or at best a distance friend, I pray this Advent season God would plant within you seeds of hope. That you may have your own surprise pregnancy of sorts that gives birth to grace and new life, that gives you courage to face the circumstances of your life and to see with eyes of faith what new thing God may be doing in your life.
We wait with the promise found in the song of Zechariah: that “through the heartfelt mercies of our God, God’s Sunrise will break in upon us.” (The Message).
So let us wait together for that night ahead when all our hopes and fears will be met in Bethlehem.
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CRESCENT HILL BAPTIST CHURCH
2800 Frankfort Avenue
Louisville, Kentucky 40206
(502) 896-4425
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