Silence

Sermon

It is my hope that this sermon will serve as an invitation to you to experience, or consider, or maybe even enjoy the season of Advent. So…

To pretend to have a sense of Elizabeth and Zechariah’s world, we’re going to try a little experiment and observe 30 seconds of silence—or as much silence as we can make! So let’s go.

Shakespeare once wrote, “Silence is the perfectest herald of joy.” And maybe—and it’s a big maybe—Zechariah needed that silence to fully experience the joy of his son’s birth. Then again, maybe Elizabeth was grateful to have some quiet, for Pete’s sake, around the house, without her husband roaming around spouting strange little aphorisms.

It’s curious to me why Luke chose to start his gospel with this side story about Zechariah and Elizabeth. Yes, according to Luke, they are the parents of the boy who will grow up to become John the Baptist; and yes, Elizabeth is some sort of kin to Mary and offers Mary comfort. But the story of Jesus would work just fine without them.

Some have suggested that by including this story, Luke sets his reader up for the theme we will encounter throughout this gospel: the reversal of things. As scholar Stephanie Buckhanon Crowder puts it, “Zechariah, a member of the elite, was made an outcast by his speechless, voiceless state. Though rich in status, Elizabeth was poor in honor. Her high social standing could not erase the humiliation of her childless state.” (True to Our Native Land: An African-American New Testament Commentary, p. 160)

Some have described the Jesus-world Luke creates as an upside-down kingdom, where the rich become poor and the poor become rich, where honor and shame are tumbled out of existence, where human speech cannot compare with the quiet miracles of God.

And so, silence. Zechariah must be speechless for a good nine or so months before he can speak again. Can you imagine? It’s not like visiting a country where you don’t speak the language; you can still make noise and say yes or thank you or I don’t speak your language. But to not speak at all? To be silenced, and to be silenced by God? That is a powerful thing.

How was that thirty seconds of silence for you? Maybe just what you needed, amid all the noise that constantly surrounds us. Maybe it was excruciating, a reminder that your life is too quiet. Or maybe it was just uncomfortable as you tried to stifle a sneeze or cough or the giggles some of us get at the most inappropriate moments.

I love a good silence now and then—to fall asleep to nothing but the sound of rain on the roof, to go for a walk without any leaf blowers blaring or motorcycles roaring, to sit in this big sanctuary during the week when no one is here and absorb a full kind of quiet.

We need silence. It can be calming; it can make you aware of the sounds of life that aren’t fueled by battery or fossil fuel: the cawing of the crows, leaves rustling and falling to the ground, the hum of the river as it makes its way to the sea.

And yet silence can be painful, too. Do you ever feel as though silence is closing in on you, that you’ll go mad if you don’t turn on a podcast or the TV or listen to some music? Silence can be the sound of loneliness, the reminder that there’s no one around to laugh with you or tell you a story or sing a silly song. Silence can be the sound of grief, too—the reminder that the sounds your beloved used to make have been quieted forever.

And sometimes, when you’re trying to have some quiet, some silence, all you hear is the shrillness of the world—a siren goes by, a car backfires, you hear your neighbors fighting next door. Unwanted interruptions to our silence can remind us of what we think is wrong with our lives or with our world.

I wonder what Zechariah’s silence was like for him and Elizabeth. Maybe at first Elizabeth tried to fill the silence, chattering on about her day and what was for dinner and who she saw at the well and how the neighbors all hoped Zechariah would find his voice again.

And as the baby began to grow in her and she was in seclusion for those months, maybe the silence beat down on them. She had no one but her muted husband for company, and as her belly grew bigger, she grew sick and tired of trying to figure out Zechariah’s pantomimes.

But maybe, in those last few months of his silence, his speechless state changed them both. Maybe words were replaced by wonder as she of old age grew rounder and rounder. Maybe tears came to both their eyes as they realized anew that their God was a God who kept promises and made miracles happen. Maybe they who had known the honor of being a priestly family and the accolades of their community realized that none of those words of praise mattered to them as much as sitting next to each other, her hand on her belly, his hand on hers, basking in joy for the child about to be born.

I wonder if this punishment, Zechariah’s silenced tongue, morphed into something else. Surely he had felt shame that he disbelieved the angel’s words and that the consequence of his doubt was put on display before the whole community. Maybe those gathered at the temple that day, or those back at home in their hill town, felt he deserved it. It’s easy to judge someone else, isn’t it? But if an angel spoke to you or me, might not we too disbelieve? And would we be struck silent?

Of course, you and I might know people who we wish would be struck silent. But there is the reality that some have had their voices silenced not by God but by the powers of oppression and injustice. We need to listen hard for those who have not been allowed to speak.

In one of our Presbyterian creeds, the Brief Statement of Faith, we confess that “In a broken and fearful world, the Spirit gives us courage … to hear the voices of peoples long silenced.” Those peoples aren’t the Zechariahs of the world, the powerful and privileged whose actions may or may not have consequences. Those are the people we don’t hear about in the news, the people whose freedoms and free speech have been taken away because they are feared to be dangerous to the status quo.

If it were not for our partnership with the microloan program in Guatemala, I would never know the story of the two women who thought they were aunt and niece only to learn, after being reunited following the civil war, that in fact they were sisters. To hear them tell their own story in Spanish was to fall into a rapt silence, my own voice humbled and quieted as I heard of their pain and courage.

Who is hearing the voices of migrant children separated from their parents at the border? Who is hearing the voices of Russians who are against this war? Who is hearing the voices of Black mothers whose children are shot in the streets? And whose voice needs to be silenced so their voices are heard?

Now, as I said at the start, this sermon is an invitation to experience the season of Advent, and those last couple of paragraphs might not have seemed very Advent-y. And yet. God did not promise Elizabeth and Zechariah the miracle of a son because they had finally gotten their act together. God did not wait until the world was safe and at peace to bring John and his kinsman Jesus into the world. These births happened when things were as bad then as they are today. War, poverty, famine, crime, shame, grief: it was all there then as it is all here now.

The beauty in this story of the Christ child’s birth is the truth that God chose the most unlikeliest of place and some socially insignificant people to bring all this about. There is no wrong time for God to enter the world—people in Russia and Ukraine; migrants seeking a better, safer life; and parents who have lost a child to violence and brutality all pray that God would come now, enter the world, and make things right, because the world is still full of greed and hate and fear.

Here’s something a little more Advent-y, then. You might not have noticed—it took me a few readings to see it—but the very first words quoted in Luke’s gospel are those of the angel Gabriel, who says, “Do not be afraid.”

Do not be afraid though you cannot speak.
Do not be afraid though you’re too old to have a baby.
Do not be afraid of the ridicule of your neighbors.
Do not be afraid of Herod and his schemes.
Do not be afraid of Rome and all its power.
Do not be afraid, for God is here, and God is with us.

And that brings us back to joy, heralded perfectly by silence.

You will hear Zechariah not only speak but sing at the end of this Advent, but for today, the joy heralded by Zechariah’s silence is from the one who was not silenced—Elizabeth. This woman, “getting on in years” (as the translation so quaintly put it), was chosen too. She had had a place of honor, being a descendant of the priest Aaron, the brother of Moses, and being married to a priest. But that honor of status was taken from her because she did not have a son.

And for whatever reason, as Luke tells it, God chose this woman, long in tooth and full of sadness, to bear a son. Not God’s son, but the one who would herald God’s son.

What’s funny is that we don’t know how Elizabeth found this out! When the angel told Zechariah, they were by themselves in the holy sanctuary. And then Zechariah couldn’t speak. Can you imagine all the rounds of charades Zechariah would have to go through to tell Elizabeth all that had happened?

Or maybe he didn’t tell her. When she realized she was pregnant—and maybe only because her body began to change—she gave God the praise. Only God could bring about that miracle, and she didn’t need Zechariah to tell her. As she stayed at home with her silent husband, these words poured from her mouth. “This is what the Lord has done for me when he looked favorably on me and took away the disgrace I have endured among my people.”

This sermon is an invitation to you to experience and enjoy Advent. Maybe you will be intentional about silence for these next few weeks. And maybe in that silence you will hear things you had not before noticed or remember things you had forgotten.

May you hear some of those silenced voices and remember that the coming Christ child came to upset the unbalanced order of things.

May you hear your own heart beating, and notice just how alive you are, and remember that the coming Christ child came to bring life—and life abundant.

May you hear the song of an angel, with words that are a bit unbelievable, and remember that God continues to do marvelous things among us.

May you have a good Advent, and even a quiet one.