A sermon preached by the Revd Dr Trevor Jamison at
Saint Columba’s United Reformed Church, 8 December 2024
Zechariah was a priest of the Jewish religion. He was just an ordinary priest, not one of the high priests who resided at the Jerusalem temple; people like Annas, or his son-in-law Caiaphas (3:2). No, Zechariah was an ordinary priest who lived in a small town somewhere in the Judean hill country. (1:39) He was only on duty at the temple in Jerusalem that day because it was the turn of his group of priests, and among them he had been chosen by lot to serve as priest in the most important place in the temple. (1:8-9)
Even in the ordinary day to day run of things, though, no one could deny that Zechariah was a priest because he met the first essential criteria listed in the job description for that role; his father was a priest. Priestly status was an inherited one; they were all descendants of Moses’s brother, Aaron. In fact, not only were Zechariah and his male ancestors all priests, he also was married to someone – Elizabeth – who, Luke tells us, was also ‘a descendant of Aaron.’ (1:5)
So any son that they might have would certainly have been regarded as a priest, whatever else he might get up to in life. The only problem there was that Zechariah and Elizabeth had not had any children, and there was little prospect of them doing so because both of them were getting on in years . (1:7) At least that was the situation up until the point when Zechariah was doing his duty in the Jerusalem temple, which was possibly the highlight of his priestly career.
Things changed, of course, when ‘an angel of the Lord’ (1:11) appeared right next to the altar in the temple, which not surprisingly left Zechariah ‘gripped with fear.’ (1:12) Who could blame him? The first piece of information from God’s messenger was that Zechariah’s prayers for a child had been answered: ‘your wife Elizabeth will bear you a son, and you are to call him John’ (1:13) – a name which means, “God is gracious” or “God’s gift.” So any “Johns” who are present in the congregation today and who are under the impression they are “God’s gift” …
Now you might expect that the son of a priest, of a mother and father who both were both descendants of Aaron, would grow up to be … a priest. The angel’s message, though, set out a different sort of prospect for the future John the Baptist. He was going to put his energies into being a prophet rather than a priest: ‘He will bring back many of the people of Israel to the Lord their God. And he will go on before the Lord, in the spirit and power of Elijah [a well-known Israelite prophet], to turn the hearts of the parents to their children and the disobedient to the wisdom of the righteous—to make ready a people prepared for the Lord.’ (1:16-17)
The job description for a prophet was different to that for a priest. The essential qualification for being a priest was being the son of a priest. The role of the priest was to service the ongoing religious system so that the people could be brought into the presence of God, and God could be rendered present to the people.
Prophets were different. You did not have to have the right parents in order to be a prophet. Instead you had to have a call from God to be a prophet to God’s people. And there had been all sorts of prophets over the year: Elijah and Ezekiel, Jeremiah and Isaiah, Amos and Hosea; and a whole host of prophets whose books you will find near the end of the Old Testament: Micah, Nahum, and Habakkuk, Zephaniah, Haggai and Malachi. Confusingly, there was even one called Zechariah, who was a completely different person from John the Baptist’s father.
In terms of life circumstances maybe John comes closest to Samuel. Samuel, a very early Old Testament prophet, who identified and anointed a young David as King of Israel, was the son of parents who had long been childless. In his case it was his mother, Hannah, who had been the one praying for a child, and doing so in the Jerusalem temple. And it’s interesting, given the parallels in the birth stories of John and Samuel, that Samuel should be so well known for pointing to the one who was going to become the King of Israel: David.
You see, it was the job of prophets to look around them and to tell people both what God thought of what was going on and what God was going to do about it. Given how human beings behave it’s no surprise that prophets might spend some significant amounts of their time telling the people that God was not happy with them. Yet it was also the role of prophets to announce good news to the people; to proclaim that God was at work to put things right. And, importantly for us, as we look forward to Christmas during this Advent season, this involved prophets making a promise that God would provide a righteous king, or saviour, or messiah for the people.
Today’s reading from the prophet Isaiah, for example, reads like another job description – a job description for a king who will bring peace to the land. First, as with priests, it’s a matter of descent: ‘A shoot will come up from the stump of Jesse ‘ i.e. Jesse, the father of King David; so a descendant of David. (11:1) Such a Saviour/King will be Spirit-filled: ‘The Spirit of the Lord will rest on him— the Spirit of wisdom and of understanding, the Spirit of counsel and of might, the Spirit of the knowledge and fear of the Lord.’ (11:2) And he will be a discerning, righteous judge, who has the needs of the poor and of the earth always in mind.’ (11:3-5) Who on earth would qualify for such a role?
And in Isaiah’s prophetic vision this Davidic king and saviour will inaugurate a new age in the existence of the earth. The world will be transformed. The vulnerable will no longer prey to the powerful. Lambs, calves and children will have nothing to fear from the lions, bears and vipers of this world. (11:6-9) It’s a wonderful vision of what sometimes is called “the peaceable kingdom” , when nations gather together, not for war but to rest together in safety. (11:10-11)
And it’s this prophetic sort of work, the angelic messenger informs Zechariah, that his son, John is destined for: ‘he will go on before the Lord, in the spirit and power of Elijah, to turn the hearts of the parents to their children and the disobedient to the wisdom of the righteous—to make ready a people prepared for the Lord.’ (1:17)
Just as the Isaiahs and Jeremiahs had prophesied about God’s promise of one who was to come who would save God’s people, so John was going to get the people of his time ‘prepared for the Lord.’ The prophets pointed to God’s promise of a Messiah – a Saviour/King who would change the way of the world, and inaugurate an era of peace. John was the last in line of a set of prophets who proclaimed such a message about God’s promise. What would be distinctive about John was that he was going to point towards an individual – Jesus – as one greater than him; not only a priest (by descent) and a prophet (by calling), but a king – a saviour, a messiah, who was going to set about changing the world for the better.
Here, in the second Sunday in Advent, as we remember the promise of the prophets, and the focus begins to narrow down to John and to the saviour he would precede, Jesus the Christ. So let’s look with expectation towards Christmas, to the birth of king, to God’s promised messiah, and to the prospect of the arrival of that much-needed peaceable kingdom of God here on earth.
So let us pray: Lord God we bless you for those prophets who, without much light but with great longing, looked for the coming of salvation for the whole human race, and for your creation. They did so through suffering and joy, through harsh oppression and hard-won freedom, at great cost and with great resilience, as they looked forward to the Perfect day. Help us to enter into their joy even as through their witness and its message we are being healed. Amen.