No more words: Advent Days 2 & 3

Zacharias

Words, words, words. 

Sometimes he felt that all he did was speak words no one believed anymore, words he himself struggled to cling to.

He was a man of reason. He had been as faithful as he knew how to be, earnestly following the teachings he had received. Even under the heavy rule of the Roman Empire. Even in the years of Elizabeth's barrenness. Even when he watched many of those he served halfheartedly participating in these religious rites, knowing they were only playing along. He saw that they had long ago lost faith, though they didn't realize it. He had continued to seek God, for himself and for these lost children. He knew how to speak the faith he wasn't always sure he possessed. He knew how to say the words that would soothe troubled hearts, though not his own. He clung to the words as his only lifeline.

It wasn't as though he were asking for great things. He only wanted what other men had. That gleam in the eye when they spoke of their sons. The joy of leading his boys to the temple to teach them the ways of God. The laughter of scooping up a giggling girl with golden hair. Those little arms around the neck. Those earnest questions. The roughhousing, the boisterous meals, the songs in the dark at bedtime. These things seemed even more precious than the freedom they all longed for.

He had watched it all unfold around him again and again. He had served these families as their priest for many years, seen the children grow up and begin families of their own. And each day he had lived with the knowledge that they spoke of him in whispers, shook their heads and wondered what he had done to earn God's disapproval. Each day he went to his quiet home, his faithful wife, and tried not to question God.

He had long ago given up asking for a son. He had accepted the look of pious pity in the faces of his congregation. He no longer expected joy. He had stopped praying for the deliverance of his people. 

Now he was just waiting. 

He didn't know what he was waiting for, exactly. He still believed in this God he served day after day. He knew that God was there. He had felt it, experienced it in ways he couldn't describe. But he didn't understand this God. He wasn't sure this God understood him. So he just did his duty, waiting to see if God would show up. He was old enough now to look forward to death and to the end of all his questions. To peace. He read the words again and again, spoke them over and over as a wall to hold back the tide of despair. And when the people came to him, broken, confused, afraid, he gave them the only answers he knew. But lately those answers had begun to ring hollow.

His turn came to burn incense before the Lord. He prepared the sacrifice that would burn continually throughout the day, thinking of how it symbolized the prayers of the people going up to God as a sweet fragrance. A pleasing aroma. What exactly would God be pleased about? he wondered. The halfhearted prayers of a people poor and oppressed, a people who hadn't heard from their God in hundreds of years? And maybe this God is just a God who takes and never gives, who commands worship but who never responds. 

When he looked up and saw the angel, the fear came from knowing the angel saw right through to his very soul, and he instantly felt that all his thoughts were lies and that he was longing for something he didn't understand. He felt the weight of God's presence. He felt his frame of dust crumbling under all that glory. 

But the angel did not strike nor condemn. "Do not be afraid, Zacharias. Your prayer is heard."

The words washed over him like pure love, like power. And as the angel described the son he would bear--he, a father!--he could only think of his faithlessness. He was afraid. How could he be the one to father such a child? 

Words sprang from his fear. "How shall I know this? I am an old man, and my wife is old also."

And Gabriel said, "I stand in the presence of God. I was sent by him to tell you these glad things. And because you did not believe my words, you will be mute and not able to speak."

So Zacharias was given a pregnancy of his own.* His wife's belly swelled and the people marveled and whispered. All the while this unspeakable joy swelled and grew within him, this holy stillness. Words were taken from him and for once he didn't have to have the answers. God himself was the answer. And God was coming, he realized, because God had been there all along. It was they who had stopped looking. His unbelief was silenced as the wonder of it all filled him. In the quiet God came near. 

Finally the day came, and oh, holy miracle, a son. And more than a son. Hope. Life. Salvation. And all those words that had been building in Zacharias came out like a flood, and he said things he didn't even know he knew, things that could only come from God, and his words held the life of belief. His words didn't have to be enough, because the One who was coming, he was The Word, and it was all we would ever need. Now his words could simply praise, rising up like a sweet fragrance of faith. 

All those days of emptiness? The hours of waiting? They filled with purpose and holy joy. The people who had whispered judgment now cried aloud at the grace of God. And had things been any different--had Elizabeth borne children at an early age, had Zacharias kept his speech--well then the miracle would have slipped by unnoticed. The sunrise is always brightest after the darkest night. The things he had longed for paled in light of what he had been given. This God of love offered far more than he had ever desired.

He still does. He is here in the waiting if we only silence our words, let the space become pregnant with his presence. He has come and is coming.

* From "Annunciation" by Kathleen Noris, taken from Watch for the Light, Orbis, 2011