HOME FOR CHRISTMAS - PART 4
THE QUIET GAME
Sunday, December 22, 2019
Luke 1:5-25, 57-80, Psalm 113
We often think of Zechariah’s silence as a punishment or consequence of his doubt. In Luke 1:20, we read: “because you didn’t believe, you will remain silent, unable to speak until the day when these things happen.”
Yes, the silence is a result of Zechariah’s unbelief, but nowhere does it say he is being punished. What if in fact the silence was a gift, a difficult gift to be sure, but a gift nonetheless. For it is in this silence that Zechariah’s faith grows beyond measure. When he is again able to speak, he can only speak the prophetic words of the Lord which the Holy Spirit had written on his heart all those months. Silence clears out the rambling chaos of our minds and fills the emptiness with the Word which speaks all of Creation into being.
It is silence in which God in known and through the silence of His mysteries that God declares Himself to us…
…We are to be silent at the beginning of the day so that God can have the first word to us. And we are to be silent when we lie down to sleep at the end of the day so that God can have the last word also.
Dietrich Bonheoffer
Baron von Hügel, that great nineteenth century mystic, said,
Be silent before all great things. Let them grow inside you.
I wonder how Zechariah felt all those months as he waited for his promised child to come. How was his heart and mind and soul being renewed and transformed? As the baby grew in Elizabeth, faith and a new recognition of the greatness and power of God grew in Zechariah.
Sometimes when we speak before great things we shrink them down to size. When we speak of great things sometimes we swallow them whole, when instead we should be swallowed by them. Before all greatness be silent, in art, in music, and above all in faith.
Baron von Hügel
Perhaps at this stage of our Advent journey, the best thing we can do is to embrace the gift of silence. Words about the Christmas story and God’s great work of redemption have been spilled enough over the centuries to fill the oceans, and yet still our words cannot fully contain the significance of the miracle we celebrate at Christmas.
And so as the ancient hymn writer suggests:
Let all mortal flesh keep silence,
And with fear and trembling stand;
Ponder nothing earthly-minded,
For with blessing in His hand,
Christ our God to earth descendeth,
Our full homage to demand.