Jeremy L. Berg

This is my imaginative first person account of Zechariah’s story found in the Luke 1 shared at our Advent Service this Sunday.

I come from a very religious family and background. A family of priests in the order of Abijah to be exact (1 Chr 24; Neh 12). I then doubled down on religious piety by marrying a woman who traces her ancestry back to Moses’ priestly brother Aaron himself! So you can imagine that faith and piety is central to everything we do, an ever present part of our waking lives—and sleeping lives for that matter.

For years I had a recurring dream that I was chosen by lot for the treasured priestly duty of going into the sanctuary offer incense at the morning or evening hour (see Exod 30:7-8). In my dream, the sanctuary always becomes shrouded in a thick and heavy fog of the LORD’s manifest presence, the shekinah glory. Afraid of messing up and being struck down dead on the spot, I carefully shuffle through the fog toward the altar with the dish of incense in my hands.

In my dream, or nightmare as it seems to be, I always lose my way in the cloud, start to panic and end up tripping and crashing into the altar. As the holy altar overlaid with gold begins to tip over in slow-motion, I reach out to steady it but to no avail. Just before it crashes to the ground, I wake up in a cold sweat, relieved it was only a dream. 

We priests were so numerous that we were divided up into 24 groups, and each group only served twice a year in the Temple for a week at a time. I was now advanced in age and still had yet to be chosen for the once-in-a-lifetime honor of offering incense in the sanctuary. Because of my recurring nightmare, I was quite relieved each year my name was not chosen. But this was all soon to change. 

If you’ve heard anything about me and my wife Elizabeth, you probably know that we were not able to bear children. This was a great source of pain and confusion, public disgrace and spiritual doubt. Here were two pious people from devoutly religious families deeply committed to God, but somehow His face seemed turned away from us. Why was God withholding this blessing from us? Were we being punished for our sins or the sins of our fathers? What more could I possibly do to demonstrate my faith in the God?

Like many other devout Israelites, I memorized and regularly recited the psalms. But I never could get through Psalm 127 without either breaking into tears or shaking my fist at the Heavens in anger. In it the psalmist says

“Children are a heritage from the LORD, offspring a reward from him. Like arrows in the hands of a warrior are children born in one’s youth. Blessed is the man whose quiver is full of them” (Psalm 127:3-5).

What was my heritage? What was my reward for a lifetime of priestly service? Why must I face all life’s battles exposed and defenseless, a poor wretch with quivering chin holding an empty quiver in his hand? While hearing this psalm read in the synagogue a while back, I made a silent vow to God that if we ever came face to face, I would be expecting an explanation for this great sadness and public disgrace we’ve had to bear. 

Now I’m really not a whiner and a complainer by nature. I’m more of a quiet and dutiful type. I’m a creature of habit, trying to live out my lot in humble obedience. I say my prayers. I go to synagogue. I honor my priestly origins and try to live out my priestly obligations faithfully. My faith is a practical faith expressed in ritual observance. Not loud and flashy and expressive. I don’t need to “feel” God’s presence in my life; I am content serving God behind the scenes and simply observing the Law of Moses. But herein lies the danger in my religious-acts-of-piety kind of faith: the danger of losing connection with God by becoming overly absorbed in the religious rituals and daily observances. Today, you call this “going through the religious motions.” 

I was kind of going through the motions when I was finally chosen, by lot, to go offer incense in the sanctuary of the Temple in the days of Herod. I would be lying if I didn’t acknowledge that my affection toward God had been growing dimmer with age, with a root of bitterness that grew with each passing year of barrenness. But I still showed up at synagogue. I said my daily prayers. I completed my priestly tasks. I kept the Law Moses to the best of my ability.

By all outward appearances, I was a devout man of faith sharing a life with an even more devout wife of deeper faith. So, Luke is not wrong when he describes me and Elizabeth as “righteous before God, living blamelessly according to all the commandments and regulations of the Lord” (Luke 1:6). But you can remain outwardly “righteous” even while an invisible wall 3 feet thick stands between your heart and God’s.

The light of faith and hope that once burned bright in my soul as a younger man, was like a bruised reed blowing in the wind; my passion for God was a smoldering wick a breath away from being snuffed out in my old age. I needed to know if the God I had served for so many years, through so many rituals, was alive and real—mindful of my pain and anguish, and sympathetic to my deep longings and anguished prayers. My body was not the only part of me that was growing old and frail. My soul was slowly shriveling up and dying even while I continued to show up to perform my priestly duties. 

This was the state of my soul as I packed my bags for my trip to Jerusalem to serve my week in the Temple. As I kissed Elizabeth goodbye, I placed my hands on her face and noticed the wrinkles and creases deepening with age illuminated by the rising sun. My legs felt heavy and my back increasingly bent. I didn’t want to go—“I’m getting too old for this,” I said to my wife still aglow with a hope that was evaporating within me. I needed a real encounter with the living God on this pilgrimage. Simply serving Him while going through the religious motions would no longer suffice.  

. . . . . . .

On the brighter side, I always love a good road trip in a caravan of good company. The two day trip from the hill country to Jerusalem would provide much time for catching up on village gossip, talking politics, bemoaning the latest news from Rome and discussing King Herod’s latest scandalous act.

Now I’m a bit of a talker. I enjoy shooting the breeze, and to be honest, prolonged silences unnerve me for some reason. Perhaps, I am afraid of my own thoughts. I’m uncomfortable when my deeper yearnings and hidden fears begin to bubble up in the stillness and make themselves known. Elizabeth is also a yapper, so you’ll be hard pressed to find any prolonged silences in our home. While Elizabeth and I are good at letting our continuous conversation distract us from our own unsettled thoughts, we run the risk of letting our non-stop chatter deafens us to the Voice of God that comes in “a still, soft whisper” (1 Kings 19:12). But God has His many ways of breaking through our defenses as I would soon discover. 

When my name was chosen by lot to go at last into the sanctuary to offer incense, my recurring dream flashed through my thoughts and flooded me with fear. But my fear was combined with a palpable excitement. This was a high honor, one that usually came around once in a lifetime. Thankfully, my nerves ensured that I would not be having any bad dreams this night—because I wouldn’t be sleeping a wink.

The following morning I went through all the religious motions as usual, saying my prayers and reciting the Shema. I rehearsed the rituals in my head, visualizing a smooth and uneventful experience, and as the sun began to set I was prepared for my big moment. Luke has recorded what happened next and, let me tell you, when I first sat down with Luke to be interviewed, I never would have dreamed that my holy encounter would be read all around the world in every language every year in houses of worship for the next 2,000 years! Once again, here’s Luke’s account:  

10 When the time for the burning of incense came, all the assembled worshipers were praying outside. 11 Then an angel of the Lord appeared to him, standing at the right side of the altar of incense. 12 When Zechariah saw him, he was startled and was gripped with fear. 13 But the angel said to him: “Do not be afraid, Zechariah; your prayer has been heard. Your wife Elizabeth will bear you a son, and you are to call him John. 14 He will be a joy and delight to you, and many will rejoice because of his birth, 15 for he will be great in the sight of the Lord. He is never to take wine or other fermented drink, and he will be filled with the Holy Spirit even before he is born. 16 He will bring back many of the people of Israel to the Lord their God. 17 And he will go on before the Lord, in the spirit and power of Elijah, to turn the hearts of the parents to their children and the disobedient to the wisdom of the righteous—to make ready a people prepared for the Lord.”18 Zechariah asked the angel, “How can I be sure of this? I am an old man and my wife is well along in years.” 19 The angel said to him, “I am Gabriel. I stand in the presence of God, and I have been sent to speak to you and to tell you this good news. 20 And now you will be silent and not able to speak until the day this happens, because you did not believe my words, which will come true at their appointed time.” 21 Meanwhile, the people were waiting for Zechariah and wondering why he stayed so long in the temple. 22 When he came out, he could not speak to them. They realized he had seen a vision in the temple, for he kept making signs to them but remained unable to speak.

. . . . . . .

Three divine gifts of incalculable worth were lavished upon me in that holy encounter—three gifts I pray you all might enjoy this season of Advent. 

First, I was given the gift of knowing that God had heard all my prayers all these years. God was not deaf to my cries. He was not indifferent to my pain. The thick wall separating me from God’s presence and goodness was only in my imagination. The coldness between us was one-sided and self-generated. I had let my feelings of abandonment outweigh the truth and promise of Scripture that says, “In my distress I called upon the Lord…From his temple he heard my voice, and my cry to him reached his ears” (Psalm 18:6). 

In fact, if I were paying attention to the meaning of what I was actually doing with that dish of incense at God’s altar, I would have seen a visible picture of my prayers and the prayers of all God’s people rising up to the Throne of God. The Apostle John, writing decades later in his book of Revelation, paints the scene for us of an angel with a golden censer approaching the altar with incense to offer that symbolizes the prayers of all God’s people. He says, “The smoke of the incense, together with the prayers of God’s people, went up before God from the angel’s hand” (Rev. 8:3-4).

The next time you feel like the Heavens are closed up tight and your prayers are just bouncing off the ceiling, go light a candle or sit by a campfire and simply watch the smoke as it rises heavenward without any worry or wrangling. Trust that the sincere prayers of God’s people rise on the wings of the wind and reach Heaven’s Throne as “a sweet aroma of Christ to God” (2 Cor. 2:15).

Second, and most obviously, I was given the news of the gift of a new and miraculous life about to be born out of barren land, a shoot of hope growing out of the dry dust of despair. What God was about to birth in us, the angel said, would “be a joy and delight” and “many will rejoice because of his birth” (Luke 1:14). I thought I was too old for fresh beginnings. The “joy” and “delight” the angel spoke of seemed like the distant memory of another lifetime—the happy possession of children at play. But I was wrong.

We serve a God who never tires of birthing new possibilities in the hearts of souls young and old. Are you open to the reality that God may have another exciting chapter awaiting you? Or have you also bought the lie that your best days are behind you, and that you are too old for God to birth something new in you? You may laugh in disbelief like Sarah did, and share her cynicism as you mutter her words under your breath, “After I have grown old, shall I have pleasure” (Gen. 18:12)? But then be ready to laugh with delight when God delivers on His promise and you find your shriveled soul being born again, your heart pregnant with a new vision, your spirit rising again out of the dust of dashed dreams!

The life carried in my wife’s womb would prepare the way for the One who would carry us all into a New Day and teach us all how to dream again. As God spoke through the prophet Joel, “I will pour out my Spirit on all people; your sons and daughters will prophesy; your young men will see visions, and your old men will dream dreams” (Acts 2:17). May the wonder of this season and the miracle in my story inspire you to let your self dream of what new thing God wants to birth in your life! 

Finally, thirdly, in that holy sanctuary long ago I was given the gift that centuries of readers and worshipers have tended to see as a curse and punishment from God. This task-oriented and talkative priest, too busy serving God to  carve out quality time to commune with Him, was given the gift of an extended silent retreat that I never asked for but my soul deeply needed. In the days that followed my being struck mute, I was embarrassed and confused. Then I spent some days being angry. Finally, a few days of woe-is-me self-pity, I  accepted my new predicament and stopped focusing on my inability to speak. For the next several months, my normal rhythms were completely overturned. 

Instead of my normal routine of small talk and gossip in the village square, I found myself taking long walks alone in the country—reflecting on my life and getting reacquainted with my own thoughts. Instead of burning the midnight oil as I talked Elizabeth’s ear off every night in bed, we both spent more time in quiet prayer and meditating on the psalms and the scriptures. I was afraid that the silence  would create a void and bring an awkward emptiness into our home and lives. We were surprised when we began to sense a Deeper Presence filling and flooding, decorating and dazzling all of the silent spaces where sound and fury, words and worries use to reside. 

God’s ship of bountiful goods sails upon the seas of silence, and finds safe harbor in souls that welcome solitude. What you consider a curse of silence was the pathway that led me to the presence of God. Those months of silence were full of quiet communion and intimate conversations with the God I had served my whole life, but never taken the time to be with personally.

As my lips were silenced, my ears were awakened. I learned to listen to God and to others better. I had no choice but to be “Slow to speak and quick to listen” (James 1:19). Instead of venting all my frustrations on my friends and family, I was forced to turn to God in unspoken prayers and the “wordless groans” of the Spirit (Rom. 8:26). Yes, my lips were stilled as a punishment for doubting the angel’s words, this is true. But know this Scripture: “The Lord disciplines the one he loves, and he chastens everyone he accepts as his son” (Heb. 12:6)—not out of spite or anger, but for their own good and their own growth. My faith was renewed and my relationship with God restored thanks to the gift of this long, uninvited but blessed silent retreat of the soul. 

Would you give your soul the gift of some silence and solitude over these next four weeks of Advent, as you find your own way to slow down, quiet your lips and seek His Presence and Voice in the stillness where “Deep calls out to deep” (Ps. 42:7)? In that silence, may you find the other two gifts mentioned earlier: 1) the reminder that God hears your prayers and is aware of your deepest yearning; and 2) no matter how old you are or how dry and barren things feel in this moment, God wants to birth something new in you in the coming days—maybe even tonight.