What Made the Old Man Sing

He was well along in years, and his wife had never borne him a child. In that time, in that place, childlessness was catastrophic, even shameful. For some reason, God had withheld His blessing from this godly couple, and their grief was deep and painful.

But today something made the old man sing, and he wasn’t singing the blues.

As he sings, Zechariah speaks as a representative of a people who had been held captive, a people who were tempted to give up hope. All he and his people had known – for centuries – was bad news:

-- their humiliation in the Babylonian exile

-- their return to find the Land of Promise in ruins

-- their role as a helpless pawn in the land wars of a succession of superpowers

-- and now their occupation by Rome, the latest of those superpowers

All this was enough to cause many to give up hope in Israel’s God. Yes, He had delivered their fathers from Egypt, but now He has grown distant and silent.

Surely Yahweh has forgotten His people.

Then Zechariah’s world is upended by the announcement that Israel’s God is once again on the move.

So he sings a song of praise to God, and he celebrates more than the miraculous birth of his son, John. Zechariah celebrates the fact that Israel’s God is fulfilling His promises to His people.

Blessed be the Lord God of Israel,

For He visited and accomplished redemption for His people,

And raised up a horn of salvation for us

In the house of David His servant—

As He spoke by the mouth of His holy prophets from of old—

Salvation from our enemies,

And from the hand of all who hate us,

To show mercy toward our fathers,

And to remember His holy covenant,

The oath which He swore to Abraham our father,

To grant us that we, being rescued from the hand of our enemies,

Might serve Him without fear,

In holiness and righteousness before Him all our days.

And you, child, will be called the prophet of the Most High,

For you will go on before the Lord to make ready His ways,

To give to His people the knowledge of salvation

By the forgiveness of their sins,

Because of the tender mercy of our God,

With which the Sunrise from on high will visit us,

To shine upon those who sit in darkness and the shadow of death,

To direct our feet into the way of peace. (Luke 1:68-79, LSB)

Zechariah’s despair dissipates like fog, and not just because he now has a son. He knows that Yahweh has crashed into history – Israel’s history, his own history – and the story of his people has turned a corner.

But this cataclysmic upturning comes as no surprise to the old man.

Why?

He knew his Bible.

In his song Zechariah recalls promises that were two thousand years old, as ancient to him then as the time of Christ is for us now. The old man rejoices that Yahweh is remembering His ancient oaths so that now His people “might serve Him without fear, in holiness and righteousness before Him all [their] days.”

And why has all this come to pass?

It is not just because God keeps His promises (although that also is good news). Zechariah sings that Yahweh has come to rescue His people because His great heart is full of tender mercy, “with which the Sunrise from on high will visit us, to shine upon those who sit in darkness and the shadow of death.”

One of the biggest differences I’ve noticed between being a teacher and being a pastor is that I am more aware of the deep heartaches of people. As a teacher, the troubles I encountered had to do with school life: a girl or a guy or a grade or a game. This might have been the stuff of monumental catastrophe for teens, but as an adult who had survived his teens, I could see that things weren’t as bad as my heartbroken adolescents supposed.

Not so with the pastorate. Marriages do crumble. People do suffer long-term, debilitating health problems. Loved ones die.

In other words, there are times when we find ourselves trusting God for a future we cannot envision.

There are times when we’re so low and so discouraged that we can’t even imagine what healing and restoration would look like.

Sometimes we are Zechariah. Our own circumstances are bleak, and if we pop our head up to look around, we see that our culture is disintegrating.

Not much to hope for, no matter how we look at it.

That is when we have no choice but to put our confidence in the tender mercies of our promise-keeping God. We persevere in trusting Him not because we are desperate but because He is faithful and good.

This Christmas season let’s be sustained not just by the warmth of nostalgia and sentiment but by the sure knowledge that the God we serve is wise and good and faithful.

Because we know His heart, we can know that God is good, even when life is not. 

Persevere, Paul Pyle Pastor of Discipleship