Light in darkness (Lk. 1:67–79)
Introduction
Even before the season of Advent starts, which begins four Sundays before Christmas Day, the world around us has already started ramping up the hype and anticipation. The Adelaide Christmas Pageant seems to be the marker for the beginning of the Christmas season for most of us. Even our own Mount Gambier Christmas Parade was scheduled a week before Advent this year.
It might already be too late, but it is important for us as a church and as Christian people to be prepared and focused on what Christmas actually means for us. This is a sacred time for us as we get ready to celebrate the birth of our Saviour and everything that means. This is a holy time. We set this time apart from other church seasons. Advent, like the season of Lent before Easter, is a time of preparation.
Today is the last Sunday of the Church Year. The new Church Year begins on the First Sunday of Advent, so today presents us with an opportunity to put a full-stop on 2022 before the whirlwind of end-of-year gatherings and work Christmas parties hits us. Maybe we’ve already missed the boat on that one, too, but let’s try anyway.
This day is also known as Christ the King Sunday, or Reign of Christ. Before we join the narrative of Jesus’ birth and everything that happened around it, we remember who it is that is coming to us. We remember the King that Jesus is and what his reign means. We take a moment to try to understand the weight of this King’s arrival and why we make such a big deal of Christmas.
The Song of Zechariah is a liturgical song. In some ways, it’s quite similar to the Song of Simeon which we often sing at a Service with Holy Communion. It is a song that Zechariah sang when he held his newborn son, John, in his hands.
The verse prior tells us that Zechariah was filled with the Holy Spirit and prophesied. In Luke’s gospel and in the Book of Acts, when someone is filled with the Holy Spirit, God’s word spills out of them.
The Baptist as a prophet is filled with the Spirit in his mother’s womb (Lk. 1:15). When Elizabeth is filled with the Spirit, she, in a prophetic oracle, declares that Mary is the mother of her Lord (Lk. 1:41–43). When the disciples are filled the Spirit on the day of Pentecost, they speak in tongues and prophesy (Acts 2:4; cf. Acts 2:18). Peter, filled with the Spirit, boldly speaks the word to religious leaders (Acts 4:8). When the disciples are filled with the Spirit, they boldly speak God’s word (Acts 4:31). Paul is filled with the Spirit and proclaims that Jesus is the Christ (Acts 9:17–22)... So too here we have the inspired and Spirit-filled words of Zechariah.
Thomas R. Schreiner
Zechariah proclaims that his son, John, is the fulfilment of Old Testament prophecy. He also proclaims, and it’s his main point, that Jesus is everything that has been promised for centuries. Before Jesus has done anything and before he is even born, the Spirit convinces Zechariah that this man is the long-awaited Messiah.
Zechariah proclaims that Jesus fulfils the Old Testament prophecies in a few specific ways.
God has visited his people
God has redeemed his people
God has saved all people
God has visited his people
God is not distant from us. God does not forsake us. God does not leave us to our own devices.
If we are ever isolated from God, it is because we make it happen.
God has visited his people. This word, “visited”, doesn’t mean what it sounds. He doesn’t briefly drop in and then head off again. The Greek word, episkeptomai, means, “look after, appear in order to help.” God arrives on the scene and gets to work. He comes near in order to care. God says through the prophet Ezekiel: “Behold, I, I myself will search for my sheep and will seek them out.” (Ezk. 34:11)
God, the creator of heaven and earth, makes the effort to search and care for his sheep himself.
Our Prime Minister cannot be everywhere at once. His role is to lead and govern, but he can’t respond to every call for help and every request for funding personally. He needs a team of people to carry out those tasks. He needs to delegate. Human beings do not have the capacity to love and care that God does. Any good leader recognises their limits and delegates well.
God does not have to delegate—he has the power to visit us and care for us himself. Does he? Yes. How? Through means. Here, the means is his own Son. God himself is born. God himself comes to us as a human being. God himself walks and talks among normal people. God himself visits his people.
Jesus is no longer with us as a human being—he has ascended to heaven and now sits at God’s right hand, we confess—but that doesn’t mean God has left us. He has provided us with two sure signs of his continued presence with us: Jesus is truly present by his word in the bread and wine of the Lord’s Supper, and he has promised us his Holy Spirit when we gather in his name, when we read and hear his word, and by the waters of baptism.
God could have just given us one way to know that he is still with us. Instead, he’s given us all kinds of promises and ways that we can be sure that he continues to be present.
God has redeemed his people
Redemption has to do with paying the cost for freedom. Redemption is an exchange. Something is given up in order to receive the desired outcome.
God gave up his Son, and the Son gave up his life. All for our benefit. All for our redemption.
Redemption didn’t stop with death. Jesus says, “For this reason the Father loves me, because I lay down my life that I may take it up again.” (Jn. 10:17)
Death does not have the final say. By taking his life back up again, Jesus, the Redeemer, defeated death forever. That is what he came to this earth to do. That’s what he was born to do. That’s what the prophets of old said he would have to do.
It seems a bit weird to celebrate the birth of Jesus and talk about his death, but his arrival is only worth celebrating because of the redemption that he came to complete for us.
Jesus came to give light to those who sit in darkness and in the shadow of death, Zechariah says. Who are they?
Jesus says, “I am the light of the world. Whoever follows me will not walk in darkness, but will have the light of life.” (Jn. 8:12) On the flip-side: whoever does not follow Jesus walks in darkness.
Jesus is our one and only light. When you take away the light source, darkness floods in. Without Jesus, there is only darkness. Without Jesus, death does have the last say. The shadow of death looms over us each and every day. Death surrounds us on all sides despite our attempts to ignore it. We see so much death and darkness that we become desensitised to it. We even get comfortable with it because it means we can hide.
Light exposes what is kept hidden in the dark. There are things we would rather kept hidden away. There are things we are ashamed of. There are things we even hide from ourselves.
Jesus is the light that exposes our sin and brokenness, but it’s what he does with it that matters most.
God has saved all people
God saves. Jesus is our Saviour. We get used to hearing those words. How do you know that? How can you be sure that you have been saved from death and darkness?
Knowledge of salvation comes to us in the forgiveness of our sins. The sound of those words of absolution, the sound of that water trickling into the font, the taste of that bread and wine at the altar… These are how we know anything about salvation.
We can learn about it and read about it—and they are good for us to do—but salvation is not something we merely know about. Salvation happens to us. Salvation has come to us in the long-promised Messiah and King. Salvation has happened to us by the blood of the cross. Salvation will happen to us on that last day.
God has saved his people by sending us his Son to redeem us. God will save his people by reckoning Christ’s righteousness to us on the day of judgment. God is saving his people by the work of his Spirit through his holy people, his saints, his church.
Conclusion
In the excitement and the business of this Christmas period, which is already well underway, remember that you have been visited by God himself, you have been redeemed by the sacrifice of Jesus, and you have been saved by a gracious and merciful King. Remember Christ, find peace and joy in Christ, and share Christ each day.
In the name of Christ. Amen.
