Luke 1:68-79 (NRSV)
68
“Blessed be
the Lord God of Israel,
for he has looked favorably on
his people and redeemed them.
69
He has raised
up a mighty savior for us
in the house of his servant
David,
70
as he spoke
through the mouth of his holy prophets from of old,
71
that
we would be saved from our enemies
and
from the hand of all who hate us.
72
Thus he has
shown the mercy promised to our ancestors,
and has remembered his holy
covenant,
73
the oath that
he swore to our ancestor Abraham,
to grant us74 that we,
being rescued from the hands of our enemies,
might serve him without fear,75
in holiness and righteousness
before him all our days.
76
And you,
child, will be called the prophet of the Most High;
for you will go before the Lord
to prepare his ways,
77
to give
knowledge of salvation to his people
by the forgiveness of their sins.
78
By the tender
mercy of our God,
the dawn from on high will break
upon us,
79
to give light
to those who sit in darkness and in the shadow of death,
to guide our feet into the way of
peace.”
Year C
Sunday of Advent
December 6, 2015
Cross~Wind
December 12, 2012
Cross~Wind
Christmas Forgetfulness
Going deeper - This is my Bible study on the passage, much more than what I usually say in the sermon!
Luke 1:68-79 (NRSV)
Luke
1:57-80 relates the story of the birth, circumcision, and manifestation of
John, with the Benedictus. The story is unique to Luke. Due to the doubt of
Zechariah, God muted his response to the power and mercy of God. Having
regained his voice at the birth of his son, the Spirit enables him to prophesy.
The circumcision of John was important to Luke in that it made the connection
with the covenant between God and Israel clear. In this story, the neighbors
witness the birth, while in the story of the birth of Jesus it will be the
shepherds who witness. Verse 66 raises the main question of this passage: What
will this child become?
In
68-79, the song of Zechariah brings the narrative time to a halt in order to
provide commentary on the extraordinary events that it recounts. It rehearses
major themes of the importance of John as prophet and forerunner, the
interweaving of the stories of John and Jesus into the one tapestry of the
redemptive purpose of God, the faithfulness of God, and the character of the
coming deliverance and restoration of the people of God. As one of three
"canticles" or songs found at the beginning of Luke's gospel, the
Benedictus (1:68-79), along with the Magnificat (1:46-55) and the Nunc Dimittis
(2:29-32), occupies an important part in the ancient devotional exercise known
as the Liturgy of the Hours. The liturgy consists of a schedule for prayer and
reflection on Scripture at specific times of the day and night. Although it
focuses mainly on the Psalms, these three passages are included in the Liturgy
of the Hours as major elements. This indicates that they were themselves
considered, by those who devised the exercise, to be of the same literary
tradition as the Old Testament Psalms. This would have pleased Luke. One of his
main goals was to clarify the many ways in which Christ's ministry was a
continuation and fulfillment of God's ongoing relationship with Israel as
revealed in the Old Testament. More than Matthew's interest with proving by
citation of texts that Jesus was the expected Messiah, Luke wished to impress
upon his largely Gentile audience that Jesus was the proof that God's promises
to Israel had not been forgotten. So just as the Old Testament contained Psalms
that told of God's trustworthiness, Luke begins his Gospel with several new
Psalms of his own.
Luke
is deeply concerned with the problems of theodicy raised by many historical
catastrophes experienced by Israel. A provocative question: "If God has
not been faithful to the promises made to God's elect people and has allowed
their holy city and temple to be destroyed, what reason do Gentile Christians,
who believe in this God, have to think that God will be faithful to promises
made to them?" The answer, according to Karris, is that Luke demonstrates
that God - through Jesus - was faithful to promises made to Israel, but in an
unexpected way to include Gentiles, the unclean, the poor, women, Samaritans,
rich toll collectors, and assorted other outcasts as well as elect people who
are repentant of their initial rejection of Jesus, God's prophet and Chosen
One. [1]
In
verse 67, we may see a reminder of the prophesy in Joel 2:28 that the Spirit of
the Lord will come upon all flesh, “and your old men shall dream dreams.”
[The
first portion of the Benedictus (vv. 68-75) echoes Mary’s Magnificat and also
resonates with Elizabeth’s words of thanksgiving.]
68 “Blessed
be the Lord God
[God is called "Lord
God," reminding one of the Hebrew divine title YHWH Elohim.] of Israel, is one we also find in Psalm
41:13, 72:18, and 106:48. In Genesis 24:27 we find a similar phrase, only now
with “God of my father Abraham.” In I Kings 8:15, Solomon in his prayer uses
the phrase. Barth directs our attention to the word, “Blessed,” offering praise
to God, but then wonders why we are to praise.[2]]
for he has looked favorably [a
parallel thought in Exodus 3:16, “I have given heed to you and to what has been
done to you in Egypt.” The visitation of God in the New Testament is a
favorable thing. We see this in Luke 1:78, 7:16, and 19:44.] on his people and redeemed them. [God is
also described as a "redeemer" calling to mind the role of the
nearest relative within covenant law to ransom his kin from debt slavery and
imprisonment. In Psalm 111:9, God sent redemption to the people of God.]
69 He
has raised up a mighty savior for us
in the house of his
servant David,
[The
NIV translates as “He has raised up a horn of salvation for us.” The image of
the horn as a symbol of strength for the Davidic monarch occurs in Psalm
132:17. In Ezekiel 29:21, the Lord “will cause a horn to sprout up for David.”
In Psalm 89:17, the Lord has lifted up the horn of Israel by divine favor.
David refers to God as “the horn of my salvation” in I Samuel 22:3. In Psalm 18:2,
the Lord is “the horn of my salvation.” However, Luke may also be calling to
mind the meaning of Jesus' name in Hebrew when he predicts that God will raise
up a "horn of SALVATION" (Hebrew yeshua, Greek for Jesus) in the
house of David.]
70 as
he spoke through the mouth of his holy prophets from of old,
[Thus,
the “holy prophets” have predicted this same salvation, whose words Jesus now
fulfills. Luke will refer to this again in Acts 3:21. Paul will stress this in
Romans 1:2, where “God promised beforehand through his prophets in the holy
scriptures.” The Lord is ready to do a new work of redemption in faithfulness
to the divine Word. To state the obvious here, Jewish people will differ that
Jesus of Nazareth fulfills the prophecies to which the New Testament refers.
However, I would pause and ask them. If not in Jesus, how do you expect
fulfillment today? We need to be open to unexpected fulfillment of prophecies,
of which there are many in the Bible.]
71that
we would be saved from our enemies
and from the hand of all who hate us.
[It suggests political
deliverance. Barth stresses that the Lord has not forgotten the covenant. The
covenant is invoked in general as well as specifically in reference to Abraham
(vv. 72-73, Luke 1:55; Acts 3:25).
Leviticus 26:42
… then will I remember
my covenant with Jacob; I will remember also my covenant with Isaac and also my
covenant with Abraham, and I will remember the land.
Psalm 105:8-9
8 He is mindful of his covenant forever,
of the word that he
commanded, for a thousand generations,
9 the covenant that he
made with Abraham,
his sworn promise to
Isaac …
Jeremiah 11:5
… that I may perform the
oath that I swore to your ancestors,
to give them a land
flowing with milk and honey, as at this day.”
Micah 7:20
You will show
faithfulness to Jacob and unswerving loyalty to Abraham,
as you have sworn to our
ancestors from the days of old.
Another
echo of Old Testament covenant traditions can be seen in the fact that the poem
begins by recounting the mighty acts of God (vv. 68-73), just as covenant
ceremonies begin in the Old Testament (Deuteronomy 1-4; Joshua 24).]
72 Thus he has shown the mercy promised to our ancestors,
[We have a parallel thought,
Micah 7:19-20
19 He will again
have compassion upon us;
he will tread
our iniquities under foot.
You will cast
all our sins into the depths of the sea.
20 You will show
faithfulness to Jacob
and unswerving
loyalty to Abraham,
as you have
sworn to our ancestors from the days of old.]
and has remembered his holy covenant,
[We find similar thoughts in
these exilic texts.
Psalm 105:8-9
8 He is mindful
of his covenant forever,
of the word that
he commanded,
for a thousand
generations,
9 the covenant
that he made with Abraham,
his sworn
promise to Isaac,
Psalm 106:45
45 For their
sake he remembered his covenant,
and showed
compassion according to the abundance of his steadfast love.
Ezekiel 16:60
60 yet I will remember my covenant with you in
the days of your youth,
and I will
establish with you an everlasting covenant.
Pannenberg
thinks we have a biblical hint of what it means that God is omniscient. God
knows the needs of the people of God, and the remembrance of them is the
comfort of the righteous.[3]]
73 the
oath that he swore to our ancestor Abraham,
to
grant us74 that we, being rescued from the hands of our enemies,
might
serve him without fear,75 in holiness and righteousness
before him all our days.
[We find a hint of the promise to
Abraham.
Genesis 22:16-18
"By myself I have
sworn, says the Lord: Because you have done this, and have not withheld your
son, your only son, 17 I will indeed bless you, and I will make your offspring
as numerous as the stars of heaven and as the sand that is on the seashore. And
your offspring shall possess the gate of their enemies, 18 and by your
offspring shall all the nations of the earth gain blessing for themselves,
because you have obeyed my voice."
As Barth points out, the aim of
God in days past had been to deliver the people out of their hand of their
enemies, to free them from fear, that they might serve in holiness and
righteousness before God. This still defines the divine purpose.]
[The
second portion of the Benedictus (vv. 76-79) takes up and answers the question
of the neighbors in verse 66, “What then will this child become?” As Luke
narrates Zechariah’s answer, he loosely rehearses Gabriel’s previous
announcement to Zechariah about John’s birth and Elizabeth’s greeting.]
76 And
you, child, will be called the prophet of the Most High;
for
you will go before the Lord to prepare his ways,
77 to
give knowledge of salvation to his people
by
the forgiveness of their sins.
[Luke
casts John the Baptist as a prophet of the Old Testament type as well. Just as
Jesus in 1:32 is the Son of the Most High, John in 1:76 is the prophet of the
Most High. Passages about the expected prophetic precursor to God's return are
applied to John several times here and in the first few chapters of Luke. Luke
1:17 evokes Malachi 4:5-6 when it portrays John as the one who comes in the
spirit and power of Elijah. Luke 1:76 and 3:4 alludes to Isaiah 40:3-5,
equating John with the voice that cries in the wilderness in preparation for
the Lord's arrival. Luke 7:27 cites Malachi 3:1, equating John with the
messenger whom God sends. Luke has the message of John the Baptist correlate
with the message of the apostles as he depicts it in repentance and forgiveness
of sins in Acts 2:38, 5:31, 10:43, 13:38, and 26:18. Such a message is a
fulfillment of the time to which Jeremiah looked forward, when the Lord said,
“I will forgive their iniquity, and remember their sin no more.”]
78 By
the tender mercy of our God,
[The
reference to the tender mercies of our God strikes Barth as confirming that the
love and grace of God have their true origin in the movement of the heart of
God. For him, everything that God is and does is determined by the fact that
there is rooted in God this original, free, and powerful compassion, and thus
is from the outset open to the need and distress and of another. Compassionate
words and deeds do not have their ground in a subsequent change to conditions,
but have their root in the divine heart.[4]]
the
dawn from on high will break upon us,
[Consider the following:
Numbers 24:17
1 Arise, shine; for your light has
come,
and the glory of the Lord has risen
upon you.
Isaiah 60:1
1 Arise, shine; for your light has
come,
and the glory of the Lord has risen
upon you.
Malachi 4:2
for you who revere my name
the sun of righteousness shall
rise,
with healing in its wings.]
79 to give
light to those who sit in darkness and in the shadow of death,
[The image of one whose dawning brings light to those who
sit in darkness is powerful. It has several parallels in the Old Testament.
Psalm 107: 10-15
10 Some sat in darkness and in
gloom,
prisoners in misery and in irons,
11 for they had rebelled against
the words of God,
and spurned the counsel of the Most
High.
12 Their hearts were bowed down
with hard labor;
they fell down, with no one to
help.
13 Then they cried to the Lord in
their trouble,
and he saved them from their
distress;
14 he brought them out of darkness
and gloom,
and broke their bonds asunder.
15 Let them thank the Lord for his
steadfast love,
for his wonderful works to humankind.
Isaiah 60:1-3
1 Arise, shine; for your light has
come,
and the glory of the Lord has risen
upon you.
2 For darkness shall cover the
earth, and thick darkness the peoples;
but the Lord will arise upon you,
and his glory will appear over you.
3 Nations shall come to your light,
and kings to the brightness of your
dawn.
Isaiah 9:2
2 The people who walked in darkness have seen
a great light;
those who lived in a land of deep
darkness— on them light has shined.
Isaiah 42:7
7 to open the eyes that are blind,
to bring out the prisoners from the
dungeon,
from the prison those who sit in
darkness.
The reference to “the shadow of death,” as Pannenberg
suggests, is a somber biblical reminder of the basic human truth that the end
that has yet to come casts a shadow in advance and defines the whole path of
life as a being for death in the sense that our end is not integrated into our
existence. Rather, it threatens each moment of our living self-affirmation with
nothingness. We thus lead our temporal lives under the shadow of death.[5]]
to
guide our feet into the way of peace.”
[In short, the Benedictus is framed
as a prophetic psalm, by a priestly Israelite, attesting to both Jesus and John
as the long-awaited fulfillments of God's promises to Israel - the proofs of
God's faithfulness. As Barth puts it, it is this merciful and redemptive
visitation of Israel by God, in faithfulness to God and to the people, that
forms the subject-matter of this hymn, as well as the magnificat.]
The
Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat (1970, 1985) is a book by Oliver Sachs. He is a psychologist who provides in
each chapter a story of how the brain, if denied certain things, can mess with
how the individual perceives reality. One chapter has the title, “A Matter of
Identity.” It relates the story of William Thompson. William has an excess of
amnesia. We may forget where we put the keys. William has no recent memory, so
he must connect what he experiences now with the remote past he does remember.
He cannot recognize anyone he sees now and here, but he can create fictional
characters for them on the spot. If you have seen the movie Fifty First Dates (2004), you have an image of what this might
be like.
Dr. Sacks walks into a room to meet
with William. When William sees Sacks, he identifies him first as a customer in
the deli William used to operate, then as an old friend, then as Hymie the
butcher next door, and finally as a doctor. The progression from one identity
to the next is rapid fire, but the result is that William becomes scared at his
inability to correctly identify who he is with and where he is. As soon as
correct recognition begins to take hold, William begins the series all over
again, assuming once more that Sacks is a customer in his deli. William suffers
from Korsakov's Psychosis, but does not realize it. He dances from one
confabulation or made up story to the next with the ability to make those
around him believe he is perfectly normal. He seems to have an anxiety within
him that results in making every effort to make the world around him feel
normal. He does it by making up identities and stories of the people with him.
Think of it. He must continually create a world and self to replace what was
continually being forgotten and lost.
The account reminds me of how
important memory is to our identity or our sense of who we are. Think you are
forgetful? Cannot find the keys? Cannot remember the name of the dog of your
neighbor? People who suffer from Korsakoff's Psychosis (a Russian psychiatrist
one hundred years ago) have no recollection of ever having keys or of meeting a
neighbor, much less the dog. Although it can also result from an accident or a
genetic factor, most sufferers are chronic alcohol abusers with an extended
history of nutritional deficiency. Brain damage caused by a lack of vitamin B1
(thiamine). Many sufferers bring this disease upon themselves. Treatment
involves primarily keeping it from become worse.
We may not realize how important it
is – until it is gone. If you can imagine losing it, you probably imagine
disorientation and confusion, and you would be right.
I am thinking today of how easy it
would be to become disoriented as a Christian at this season of the year. I
want to encourage you not to let that happen. We can become caught up in the
American brand of excessive party-going, shopping, materialism, and envy. We
could give our children and youth such ideas as well. We may have developed
some biblical and theological amnesia.
We must not let a permanent amnesia
work its way into our Advent and Christmas season. Christmas is a time to
remember, not only the relatively recent past, such as your family traditions
or the memorable Christmas times of the past. Christmas is a time to remember
our history as the people of God.
Application
“Our Christmas Dinner” is a play
that the Uptons and Plasterers saw on Wednesday in Shipshewana. In one part of
the play, it was clear that the wife wanted to maintain some family traditions.
She had one large soldier that was like one would see in the Nutcracker suite. One
new person to the circle asked the kids if they knew what this tradition had
meant. They had no idea why the decoration was important to their mom. If
people no longer remember, the tradition is simply external performance.
What do we remember about Christmas? Childhood memories, to be sure,
some of which we have exaggerated and cleaned up for our own entertainment and
sanity. There are the funny stories, the moving stories, and the tragic stories
of the Christmases of our past. We shared some of this at Triple S this past
week. From childhood, I still like my oyster stew. However, that simply has to
do with the German background of my family. Suzanne likes to make pecan pie
during the holidays. I like that tradition! Mom made sure, through my teen
years, that we were in church. We went to Christmas Eve services. Now, of
course, planning Advent and Christmas services keep me centered. How do you
keep yourself focused on Jesus? How do you help children and grandchildren keep
focused.
Some of us have blocked out the
disappointing reality. We may have even made up some stories in order to make
it sound better. Some of us cannot remember much of anything.
Some of us today are going through a dark Advent and
Christmas season. I am thinking of Paris and San Bernardino, CA.
One of the beautiful things about
being part of a community like that of the church is that you can “remember,”
not just your own history, but the history of what God is doing with humanity.
You get to become part of a much larger story than just your story. If your
Christmas memories are not that great, why not try remembering this.
* At Bethlehem, God was in Christ Jesus.
* That the child came to save us from our sins.
* That his name is called Wonderful Counselor, Mighty God,
Prince of Peace, the Everlasting Father.
* That he will reign on David's throne for ever and ever.
* That this child was born to die.
* That the Spirit of the Lord rested upon him, the spirit of
wisdom and understanding, counsel and power, of knowledge and the fear of the
Lord.
* That his name Jesus means Savior.
* That although born in an obscure village and to humble
circumstances, and that although he would write no books and live publicly in
the company of humanity for a brief 36 months, no person has left such an
indelible mark on human history as this man.
* That the Bethlehem child makes the difference between a
life of quiet desperation and a life of meaning, memory and purpose.
Conclusion
If we have forgotten any of this,
we are likely to create some wild and woolly story to fill in the blanks. Maybe
something like a savior in a red suit who drives a miniature sleigh with eight
tiny reindeer? That would be a theological form of Karsakoff's Psychosis.
What we want is the Bethlehem blessing that rests upon
us when we come out of our seasonal amnesia and remember what it is all about.
[1]
Robert J. Karris, O.F.M. ("The Gospel According to Luke," in The New
Jerome Biblical Commentary [Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice Hall, 1990]).
[2] (Church Dogmatics, IV.2 [64.3], 183).
[3] Systematic Theology, Volume I, 379.
[4] (Church Dogmatics, II.1 [30.2], 370).
[5] Systematic Theology, Volume I, 272.
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