Advent 4
December 22, 2024
William G. Carter
Then his father
Zechariah was filled with the Holy Spirit and spoke this prophecy:
‘Blessed be the Lord God of Israel, for he has looked favorably on his people
and redeemed them.
He has raised up a mighty savior for us in the house of his servant David,
as he spoke through the mouth of his holy prophets from of old,
that we would be saved from our enemies and from the hand of
all who hate us.
Thus he has shown the mercy promised to our ancestors, and has remembered his
holy covenant,
the oath that he swore to our ancestor Abraham,
to grant
us that we, being rescued from the hands 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 before the Lord to prepare his ways,
to give knowledge of salvation to his people by the forgiveness of their sins.
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.’
One of the remarkable gifts of a true Christmas carol is its ability to transport us to another time and place. We sing here and now, and we are carried back to there and then.
Take, for instance, the carol, “O Little Town of Bethlehem.” We will sing after the sermon. It is one of my favorites, probably one of yours. “O little town of Bethlehem, how still we see thee lie! Above they deep and dreamless sleep the silent stars go by.” I can still remember singing it as a kid, snapping out of my own dreamless sleep and imagining the little town. It was magical. I could picture it, even see the humble place where Jesus was born. I wouldn’t see Bethlehem until I was forty years old, but I could imagine it in my mind. Through the Christmas carol, the ancient story became real to me right then and there.
Years later, I learned the story of how the song was written. It wasn’t written in Bethlehem, but in Philadelphia, in an Episcopalian church on Rittenhouse Square. The Rev. Phillips Brooks wrote the words, then handed them off to the church organist Lewis Redner, who dreamed up the tune. The original manuscript is framed in the narthex of the Church of the Holy Trinity.
Brooks wrote the words, remembering a Christmas journey to Bethlehem while he was taking a sabbatical from his church. He had sat on horseback, gazing at the fields where the shepherds had heard the angelic choir. He took his place in a pew and worshiped at the church that had been built upon the traditional site where Jesus was born. Here’s the thing: he composed the poem in 1868, three years after he had returned from his trip. And he wasn’t only remembering the journey from three years before. He was remembering back over 1868 years.
This is how a lot
of Christmas carols work. They travel back in time and take us with them. That’s
how the song of Zechariah works. He sings of Christmas in the past tense: “Blessed
be the Lord God of Israel, for he has looked favorably on his people and
redeemed them. He has raised up a mighty savior for us in the house of his
servant David.” The mighty savior is Jesus, of course. Never mind that Luke
puts these words on his lips before Jesus was even born. Zechariah sings
on behalf of all of us who look into the manger with believing hearts and see
the child who redeems us as a sign of God’s favor.
In turn, as Zechariah celebrates the birth of Jesus, he also looks backward. He remembers the ancient promises of the holy prophets. He recalls how God promised to rescue him and his people from trouble and hatred. Then he remembers that God also remembers. God looks back to the holy covenant made with Abraham and Sarah, that, “You shall be my people, and you shall multiply like the stars in the sky.”[1] God remembers and makes good on that promise.
Whatever else we say about it, Christian faith is the practice of memory. Can you remember Bethlehem? Can you see it? Not with the eyes in your head but with the eyes of your heart. That’s the faithful practice of memory.
I tell you, if we only looked at Bethlehem with the eyes in our heads, it could be a disappointment. The shepherds’ fields are full of condominiums. The original manger is covered by a basilica, massive and overbuilt. The site is managed by Catholics, Armenians, and Greek Orthodox, who regularly squabble among themselves. Sometimes the Coptic and Syriac Orthodox join in the arguments. The neighborhood is subject to violence. The Israelis lock it down on a moment’s notice. And when the mood is peaceful, there are more gift shops than there are fleas on a camel. In his Philadelphia Christmas Carol, Phillips Brooks spoke of “dark streets.” They are still there.
And yet, can you remember Bethlehem? Can the Holy Child of Bethlehem, born so long ago, “be born in us today”?
I ask because Christmas, for a growing number of people, is a flat memory, not a living one. Maybe it happened, maybe it didn’t. If the story happened, the retelling of it may have been enhanced. It is not enough to have an unwed couple placing their newborn infant on a bed of straw. We must add a drummer boy and friendly beasts, and a talking snowman, and eight reindeer, and then a ninth reindeer with a bright red nose.
Certainly, the simple story of Christ’s birth has expanded into a cast of thousands, including the North Pole workshop, the Island of Misfit Toys, and the Radio City Rockettes. The guy around the corner from me seems to have spent thousands of dollars on artificial stars, inflatable elves, and a ten-foot-tall Halloween monster who is now wearing a Santa hat. I am not sure he’s remembering his redemption, but he’s spending a lot of money. A lot of people do.
In the thick of all the commercial pressure, family expectations, and the demands of the cold weather, can we remember Bethlehem?
Some help for us comes through Zechariah and his Christmas carol. For one thing, he is not only singing of Jesus before his birth; he also sings of his newborn son John. John, who we will later know as John the Baptizer, comes to prepare the way of the Lord. That is, he prepares the way by which God will come to us.
We remember John. He has come to clear God’s highway by cleaning out the spiritual underbrush. He works by speaking, announcing as loudly as he can that our mistakes and miscues are cancelled. Our sins are forgiven. God comes to straighten out the things we have twisted out of shape. John speaks the liberating wisdom that we do not have to remain captives to our foolishness. There is nothing we can do to remove us from the presence of God. This is John’s message of preparation. His father Zechariah sang about it in the future tense. It is going to happen. God’s coming is a sure bet.
And then Zechariah sings of here and now. The coming of the Savior is God’s rescue. It is here now, as surely as it has happened. The impact of it all is to serve God, to not be afraid of God, and to live in “holiness and righteousness.” Did you all write that down? Don’t be afraid of God. Instead, live in holiness and righteousness.
Now, I can imagine the cackling in coffee hour if I wander over to your table and refer to you as God’s “holy and righteous” ones. To a one, you’d say, “We’re not worthy.” True enough. Of course we’re not worthy. But in the New Testament, “holiness and righteousness” are not human achievements. They are God’s affirmations. We are called saints because God is doing the sanctifying. We are holy because God has taken away all our excuses. We are declared righteous because Christ is our righteousness. To remember Bethlehem is to remember all of this and live as if it is true. We are loved, we are called, and we are commissioned to make a difference in the name of the One who loves us all.
This is Zechariah’s Christmas carol. Grammatically, it moves freely between the tenses. It looks back to the past, scans ahead to the future, while remaining planted in the present. The story of Christmas is sung again, in our time, in our place. Those who were dwelling in darkness discover light shining upon them.
That reminds me of a man named Brooks. Not Phillips Brooks, but David Brooks. Those who have read his columns in the New York Times in recent years may have detected a shift in his spirit. On Friday’s column, he offered a complete confession of what has been going on in his spiritual life. And it is remarkable. Brooks writes:
He had some moments. They did not answer his questions. Rather, they opened him up to enormous mysteries. One April morning, he was riding a subway car in New York. He says,
I looked around the car, and I had this shimmering awareness that all the people in it had souls. Each of them had some piece of themselves that had no size, color, weight, or shape but that gave them infinite value. The souls around me that day seemed not inert but yearning — some soaring, some suffering or sleeping; some were downtrodden and crying out.
These thoughts prompted him to reflect on his job as a journalist. The people he writes about have souls, a spark of the divine, while simultaneously fallen and broken. And then he thought, if people have souls, maybe there is a soul-giver. Not long after that, he was hiking in Colorado. Stopping at a mountain vista, he paused to read from a book. It was a volume of Puritan prayers, of all things. He read these words:
Let me learn by paradox that the way down is the way up,
That to be low is to be high,
That the broken heart is the healed heart,
That the contrite spirit is the rejoicing spirit,
That the repenting soul is the victorious soul.
The upside-down logic startled him. He sensed a goodness greater than anything he could have imagined, a goodness that sounds like the beatitudes of Jesus. It hit Brooks with the force of joy. “I wanted to laugh (he says), run about, hug somebody. I was too inhibited to do any of that, of course,” but he found some happy music to listen to as he smiled his way down the mountain. Something had clicked into place. It was like falling in love.
I like how he concludes:
(More than a conversion), the process felt more like an inspiration, as though someone had breathed life into those old biblical stories so that they now appeared true. Today, I feel more Jewish than ever, but as I once told some friends, I can’t unread (the Gospel of) Matthew. For me, the Beatitudes are the part of the Bible where the celestial grandeur most dazzlingly shines through. So these days I’m enchanted by both Judaism and Christianity. I assent to the whole shebang. My Jewish friends, who have been universally generous and forbearing, point out that when you believe in both the Old and New Testaments, you’ve crossed over to Team Christian, which is a fair point.[2]
Hear what he said? “It felt like someone had breathed life into those old biblical stories.” That is what Zechariah was singing about. The past becomes the future, which is now woven together in the present. In that eternal moment, we know it is all true. There and then. Here and now.
That hearkens back to the other Mister Brooks, not David Brooks but Phillips Brooks. Here is one of the stanzas we are about to sing:
How silently, how silently, the wonderous gift is given!
So God imparts to human hearts the blessings of his heaven.
No ear can hear him coming, but in this world of sin,
Where meek souls will receive him, still the dear Christ enters in.[3]
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