Ordinary People

Date: December 13, 2020
Scripture: Luke 1:68-80
Preacher: Rev. Beth Neel

Sermon

There are days when I think that stories are all that we have. I wonder what stories we will tell when this pandemic is over—stories a year from now or stories a decade from now. We don’t always remember the facts, and we don’t always get all the details right, but the stories we tell about the events in our lives are our attempt to capture a particular moment or a season.

The story of Zechariah is a lesser-known story in the narrative of the birth of Jesus. Neither Matthew, Mark, nor John say anything about this man—priest, husband of Elizabeth, and father of John the Baptist. Perhaps his is a lesser story that we need right now, a less-familiar story, the story of a man who was simply doing his job when he got tapped on the shoulder by the angel of God.

We enter the story knowing nothing and quickly meet Zechariah. We learn that he and his wife have no children and probably won’t because they are old. Zechariah is carrying out his priestly duties in the holiest of holies. Then the angel Gabriel appears and tells him that indeed, his wife will have a baby. And then Gabriel fills in the details: a gender reveal that it’s a boy, a command to name him John, a prediction that he will pave the way for the messiah, and then, because of Zechariah’s disbelief, a temporary stay of speech. Zechariah is struck silent, which must have made for some interesting pantomimes when he left the temple.

Today’s reading tells the end of Zechariah’s story. The baby is born and is named John. Zechariah is overwhelmed by God’s goodness and faithfulness, and in a book that is filled with songs, Zechariah adds his own.

Biblical scholar Fred Craddock reminds us of this story’s place in the whole story of the people of God, stretching back to the stories in Hebrew scripture to the life of Jesus. He writes, “…Luke wants the reader not to move too swiftly through the narrative. Hence Luke’s restraint: eighty verses in chapter 1 and the child [Jesus] is not yet born. First there must be visions and angels visitant; mothers-to-be must wonder and talk and sing; history must roll to a particular moment when Caesar Augustus will put Mary and Joseph in Bethlehem. Hence Luke’s poetry, borrowed, some say, from early Christian liturgies.

“Poetry slows down thought and invites participation in the experience being created. Luke wants the reader to savor new stories that are old stories: an old childless couple are now to have a child; a routine service at the altar becomes a God-filled moment; God turns to the simple and powerless to bring in an era of justice and mercy; God will again put an heir on the throne of David. To say that these new stories are old stories is not simply to say that they were patterned after Old Testament records; rather, it is to say that the writer apparently assumed that the reader would recognize the old in the new.

“… what could be Luke’s reason for creating such an experience at the entrance of his Gospel? …The new is at the door, to be sure, as new as the young Mary who visits old Elizabeth. But for now, it is enough to be assured that the new continues and fulfills the old, with the same God remembering covenants kept and making good on promises made.” (Fred B. Craddock, Luke. Louisville: John Knox Press, 1990, pp. 23-24)

I wonder if we have a sense that we belong to this story too. Most of us would see ourselves as bit players in the saga of God and the people. If we have visits from angels, we keep that to ourselves. If we are tapped on the shoulder for holy work, we feel that it’s simply a part of living our faith. If we are struck silent by the holy, it’s because we feel awe and not because we are being punished. If a song rises to our lips, it is in spontaneous joy, not to be recorded forever in sacred scripture.

And yet… and yet—there would be no Christianity, there would be no church, there would be no Westminster were it not for ordinary people living out their faith. Living out one’s faith may be punctuated by the occasional miracle, and highlighted now and then by the saints, but it is flawed, failing, hopeful, tired, just, loving people like you and me who have added our bit parts so that the story of faith is bigger and stronger.

Can we see our story in the big story? Maybe that is a question that only God can answer, or something we can only answer at the end of our lives. But in the end, stories are all we have, and it is in stories that we will be remembered, just as it is in stories that we remember God’s goodness.

Every year when we decorate our Christmas tree, we tell stories about particular ornaments:

  • the felt stocking ornament decorated with a felt candle that hung on Gregg’s dad’s first Christmas tree, something that has managed to survive 80 Christmases;
  • the glass Chinese takeout carton ornament that reminds us of the moment on a date at a Chinese buffet restaurant when I read my Chinese zodiac horoscope and Gregg realized he would marry me;
  • the cat ornament my sister gave me after my beloved kitty died.

Our tree is full of stories; maybe yours are too.

So I wonder what stories we are creating in these isolated months of living in COVID-19, and I wonder what stories we will tell years from now.

There will undoubtedly be stories of grief and loss and despair. There will be reflections on isolation, I think—stories about the deepening realization that we really aren’t meant to be alone, that we really do need to be in community, seeing people, hearing people, hugging people; stories about what happens when we are by ourselves too long and come face to face with the ghosts we so often hide away.

There be good stories, too—stories about people from all walks of life who risked so much by coming together to demand justice; people standing on the corner of 15th and Broadway at noon, reminding pedestrians and drivers that Black Lives Matter; stories about new friendships made among the protesters, stories about honks of support, stories about hard conversations that didn’t change anyone’s mind but at least they happened.

There will be stories of generosity, too—I have bundles from Westminster in these last nine months. I can’t decide which is my favorite story—the one about overflowing generosity that allowed for our neighbors in the Head Start program to have a decent Christmas or the one about our support of Northeast Emergency Food Program.

Do you know that story? It’s the story of a little feeding program operated out of the basement of a little Lutheran church off the main drag. It’s the story of ordinary people who were a bit stymied because they couldn’t do their normal thing of bringing food donations to the church. It’s the story of people who lost their jobs, or who had a cut in pay, or whose benefits ran out, so they turned to the

feeding program for help. It’s the story of a presbytery that gave every congregation $1,000 and said, “See what you can do with this.” It’s the story of multiplying that gift to pay for another staff person to work at NEFP. It’s the story of monthly bread drives. It’s the story of pounds and pounds and pounds of food donated right before Thanksgiving. It’s the story of Fred Meyer gift cards given to the staff there, a small thank you for the way they have approached their work which has increased ten-fold.

And do you know who’s in that story? You are. You are. You are in that story, and I hope it’s a story you will remember.

My mom once told me a story about my grandmother, all five feet of her, the woman who ran the world wearing size 4 pumps. She and my grandfather, a builder, raised six children in Tacoma back in the 1930s and ’40s. During the Depression, my mom told me, men would come to the back door asking if my grandmother had any food to give them. Without hesitation, she would give them a sandwich or an apple or something.

That story has stuck with me. Maybe I don’t remember it correctly, and maybe my mom got some of the details wrong, but the essence of the story is there. The story has stuck with me, and is, in part, why I believe so hard in feeding people, and why our story with NEFP resonates so deeply with me.

In this season—this season of Advent; this season of COVID; this season of racial reckoning—we wait. We wait for justice, we wait for a vaccine. We wait for God again, for God once again to do those things that Zechariah sang of, so that

“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.”

Amen

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