Advent Devotional for Tuesday, December 19

Based on Luke 1:5-25 (read it here: http://bible.oremus.org/?ql=33558577 )

The story of Zechariah and Elizabeth should feel familiar to readers steeped in the Old Testament. The story of a barren woman having children as the result of divine intervention was a common theme in the Hebrew Scriptures. Abraham’s wife Sarah, Jacob’s favorite wife Rachel, and Samuel’s mother Hannah all were believed to be unable to have children until God directly intervened.

Especially in the story of Abraham and Sarah, one of the important points is the belief (or failure to believe) of the parents when God promised a child. As those of you who have children know, a woman doesn’t usually know right off the bat whether or not she is pregnant. Even with the advance of modern technology, women have to wait at least a few weeks to find out if they are pregnant or not. In this culture, the wait surely would have been longer. So a person could not appeal to evidence when deciding whether or not to believe God; one simply had to have faith.

In this respect, Zechariah failed the test. He did not simply believe an angel who told him that Elizabeth was finally going to have a child. He wanted proof in an age before home pregnancy tests. The angel interpreted his demand for proof as a lack of faith, and so Zechariah was struck silent as a sort of punishment for failing to believe this messenger of God.

Often, we are called on to believe that God will deliver something for which we have no evidence. We are called on to believe that God has prepared a life for us after death. No one can vouch for this life reliably as an eyewitness. We are told to believe that based on the death and resurrection of a man born 2000 years ago across the sea who we could not pick out of a police lineup if we had to.

To believe this requires tremendous faith. Yes, there are powerfully good reasons for believing the Christian story. For instance, if Christ was not raised from the dead, why did the disciples put their lives on the line and found a church that they all died for? Did one of them just get some friends together and say, “Let’s invent a religion” knowing that any religion that competed with Caesar would get its leaders tortured and killed? That seems unlikely, and even more unlikely that none of them would recant when threatened with death. To me, the most compelling proof for Jesus’ resurrection is that none of the disciples recanted even though they were all punished to the point of death for their preaching.

There are other good historical reasons to believe, too, which you are welcome to talk with me about at any time. But for the purposes of this devotion, we have to realize that no matter the evidence, there is still a lot of faith involved. We cannot know that the Jesus story is real in the same way we know that there are leftover burritos in the refrigerator. We cannot simply go to the fridge and see with our own eyes. There must be faith for the Christian.

In a sense, our whole lives are like those few months that Elizabeth and Zechariah wrestled with whether or not they would truly have a baby. Elizabeth hadn’t developed the pregnancy “bump” yet, and there was no way to know for sure that there was a baby in there at all. Those few months seemed to take forever as they wondered whether or not there faith would be rewarded. So it is for us; we too wait for the promises of God to be revealed. But take heart; the God of Elizabeth and Zechariah is the same God we worship today, and he will just as surely reveal his gifts for us.