Ongoing
Campbell Dye
December 18, 2021
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Luke 1: 76-80 (NRSV)
76 And you, child, will be called the prophet of the Most High;
for you will go before the Lord to prepare his ways,
77 to give knowledge of salvation to his people
by the forgiveness of their sins.
78 By the tender mercy of our God,
the dawn from on high will break upon us,
79 to give light to those who sit in darkness and in the shadow of death,
to guide our feet into the way of peace.’80 The child grew and became strong in spirit, and he was in the wilderness until the day he appeared publicly to Israel.
So, we come to the end of our look at Zechariah’s song of praise, the Benedictus. He turns his attention from the cosmic to the specific as he foretells the part his son, John, must play in God’s great plan.
It’s easy for us to understand this because we can read in Luke’s history of Jesus how it all played out – John became the last of the great prophets and got people ready for the imminent ministry of Jesus. But imagine how this must have sounded at the time – Zechariah, the silent man had finally found his voice but what was coming out of his mouth was surely delusional, egocentric, maybe even a touch insane. God had been quiet for generations and, whilst everyone understood that Zechariah was proud of his newborn son, this was all a bit over the top, wasn’t it?
Zechariah had an incredible insight into what God was up to. God was about to break his silence in the most unexpected way and John was the warm-up act. John’s ministry would be to tell people where they were going wrong and to baptise them back into God’s fold. He was to prepare the way for Jesus.
As such, Zechariah’s words about John are clear continuation of the story he had set out in the earlier verses – John is a working out of God’s plan which will be completed in Jesus.
It is sometimes when God seems to be at his quietest that He is at his most powerful and dramatic. If we listen carefully this Advent, what part in God’s great ongoing plan are we being called to?
PRAYER:
Father God, let me listen. Let me hear. Let me understand. Let me respond. AMEN
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