The Birth of Saint John the Baptist, 2023
Seniors’ Lunch Eucharist
ISAIAH 40:1-11; PSALM 85:7-13; ACTS 13:14b-26; LUKE 1:57-80
I am an old man, and my wife is getting on in years
Usually I’d be a bit reticent about preaching on something in such a focussed way as I will today. To say something that is so attached to being a particular age, or some specific stage in life. I’d usually want to be more inclusive, and to speak to people who are in any number of seasons of life. At worst, I wouldn’t want to offend! And have someone buttonhole me after a sermon to say, “I’m not as old as you think I am!”
But, seeing as you’ve all shown up for a Seniors’ Lunch and a Seniors’ Eucharist, and though so many of you are most certainly young at heart, I feel like I’m on pretty safe ground here to take the opportunity to say a few things about Zechariah and Elizabeth—the parents of St. John the Baptist.
And to say something about how old they were.
Luke seems quite keen to make sure we know that at the time of John the Baptist’s birth, Zechariah and Elizabeth are not young. When Luke introduces them, he tells us that Zechariah and Elizabeth are “righteous before God,” yes; that they lived “blamelessly according to all the commandments and regulations of the Lord,” for sure; but also that they were both “getting on in years.” Not young, were these two faithful people; elderly, in fact, were these two blameless followers of the Lord.
But this truth about their age, the fact that they were “getting on in years,”was no obstacle to the Lord who called them into a new future, and into unexpected ways of being faithful. Not young, elderly and advanced in years, seniors of the first century AD; no matter how you put it, they were elderly, and the Lord still stirred up their lives, and called them yet closer to himself.
Zechariah thought his age might be an obstacle to the Lord’s work. So when he is visited by Gabriel, and told that he would be a father very late in life, the father of a prophet no less, Zechariah protests: “I am an old man, and my wife is getting on in years.” Gabriel, though, will have none of it.‘Who do you think I am?’, says Gabriel. ‘Who do you think sent me?’, says Gabriel. “I am Gabriel. I stand in the presence of God, and I have been sent to speak to you and to bring you this good news.”
And for his lack of faith, his putting up obstacles for his Lord that his Lord cannot even see, for saying “I am an old man, and my wife is getting on in years,” Zechariah is struck dumb.
Elizabeth, though, despite being “advanced in years,” as Luke again puts it, Elizabeth conceives; Elizabeth responds with faith: “This is what the Lord has done for me when he looked favourably on me,” she proclaims. Doubt will give way to faith for Zechariah, too; upon naming his son John, according to Gabriel’s command, Zechariah’s tongue is loosed, and he is filled with the Holy Spirit, and he sings in his own words the prophecy given to him by Gabriel, a song we continue to sing to this day.
So what am I getting at? Well, you too may be getting on in years; you might be an old man, or you may be a woman advanced in years; not young but elderly, getting on in years, seniors of the twenty-first century AD; but the Lord isn’t done with you any more than the Lord was done with Zechariah and Elizabeth. Elderly or advanced in years, these are no obstacles to the Lord.
Will you become a parent to the last of the prophets, John the Baptist? Nope. That was something that could only happen once because of John the Baptist’s role as the forerunner of Jesus; the one crying out in the wilderness who would make straight the way of the Lord; the Lord who would be crucified for our sake, and rise again offering us new life in him. There is but one Baptist, and one Lord.
But you are most certainly called to the work of God in the world. Like Zechariah, you may well need to repent; like Elizabeth, you may well respond with awe and obedience. But you can never imagine that the Lord is done with you, because the Lord is always ready to stir up your life; you are called to this altar, and to a life of sacrifice and obedience, but a life saved in Jesus; and that through this calling our Lord is bringing you ever closer to himself.
It’s only a matter of what the Lord is calling you to do, now, in this moment. You probably know what it is, if you were to take a moment, and to bring it to mind. Because you too are called to serve, to serve in loving response to the one who comes to serve, the one who comes to make our way straight to the kingdom of heaven, the one who beats for us a path into the shared life of the Holy Trinity, and to the place reserved for us there, with him, our Lord and saviour Jesus Christ.