(Originally written 12/3/19, 11:00 AM.)
Luke starts with a comic scene, and the old preacher is the butt of the joke. Silenced! A blow against the patriarchy! Wait, this is not the kind of change I wanted.
My morning prayers did not feel as holy as yesterday’s. Also the tendon on my right leg, tweaked in Judo, is tight and sore. I guess that’s what happens if you take it up again after 40 years. Also I must deal with Medicare today. It feels like a Zechariah kind of day. He goes to the altar hoping to encounter the divine, but it doesn’t go as he expects.
The story: Zechariah in the Temple.
Knowing the Story
It’s a long narrative in two parts: (1) Zechariah’s encounter in the Temple and (2) his conversation, or lack of it, with the people who are waiting and praying.
The story is not hard to memorize. (a) It begins with introductions, (b) then setting, (c) then the terrifying appearance! (d) The angel makes a speech, good news. (e) Zechariah doubts and is struck voiceless. (f) People are waiting! Zechariah can’t speak to them. (g) He goes home. (h) Elizabeth (remember her?–verse 5!) conceives–though one assumes Zechariah had something to do with it! So he wasn’t completely sidelined.
I find speeches more difficult to memorize than the exciting stuff. The angel is “monologuing.” Its flow makes sense, more or less: “here’s what’s going to happen, here’s what it means for you, here’s what it will mean for Israel.”
Right away, Luke sets this story in a world timeline: Herod is the ruler of Judea. The story begins in the Temple, which among Jesus’s people is the primary location of worship and a primary symbol of God’s presence. So that’s where Jesus’s story begins, at the Temple, and his people (the Jews) are there too. Service in the Temple, for an ordinary priest, was an honor, maybe a once-in-a-lifetime thing. (So say Barclay, Craddock & Boring, and the New Interpreter’s Bible.)
Zechariah is granted a vision there. But then he’s struck silent. That may be a consequence of not believing the angel. Also angels in the Bible are fearsome creatures.
Telling the Story
I didn’t realize this was “comical sidekick” material until I told it aloud. Zechariah goes into the Temple, the locus of the divine – he gets a visitation – does some mansplaining to the angel – and is silenced. Apparently this Temple, this altar, is not God’s chosen route to the new world. I think his line is comedy gold: “I am old, and my wife is… um, getting on in years.”
There’s also something more darkly ironic. The old priest presents himself before the altar, and then is terrified when God actually shows up. Zechariah is apparently given a chance to be a key broker or messenger, and he sort of blows it.
I picture the angel leaning forward at that point and saying, “I am Gabriel. I stand in the presence of God.” For some reason when I told it out loud, my voice came out kind a Dirty Harry, “Being that this is a .44 magnum, the most powerful handgun in the world.” Then, “do you feel lucky, punk?” and the angel takes Zechariah’s voice. (One church member says that’s so he won’t pester Elizabeth with questions and comments.)
Living the Story
How nice! Here I am, a priest “getting on in years,” and here’s a story about one of us, Zechariah!
Who is told to shut up?!
God begins this new world by setting aside the aged leaders and brokers of the divine. Not angrily, I think–Zechariah will have his moments going forward. But the key events (spoiler alert!) will be in the hands of women for a while. Thirty-three years, actually.
And yes, I identify with Zechariah. I’m a year into retirement and have no idea what I’m doing. I always thought I’d enjoy retirement, I’m ideally suited for it: I can do nothing but read for days on end and not feel guilty. But I thought writing would be my retirement project, writing fiction, and it’s not.
I’m not sure I want to be the comical sidekick.
My writing habits were mainly formed around preaching every Sunday. Now I don’t have that deadline and I don’t have that audience. I enjoy: sitting on the left-hand side of the couch in the living room, a pile of Books To Be Read on my left, sometimes a blanket on my lap. So far I’ve avoided the rocking chair. But my phone’s near at hand, and it shows me the clash of politics, the tabby cat pictures of friends, every story on the Washington Post. There’s a cold can of Diet Dr. Pepper on the coaster. And I know where the hidden stash of chocolate is. Also, I help my wife with her balloon art. Ideal life, right?
But still I’m restless.
Addendum: Time went by, and at night, I woke up at 3:15 AM and got up at 4:15. I lit candles, I prayed.
What occurred to me is that Zechariah is old. Maybe not as old as me, but old. He’s got his tragedies, like being childless. That means that if he dies before Elizabeth, suddenly she’s a widow, a famously poor category in Israel. And she has no children, no firstborn male, to take care of her, which at the time was the “retirement plan” for widows. So Zechariah must have been overjoyed to know he would have a son.
The story so far seems to say that even problematic old priests have joy.
Also, about that retirement plan–maybe I should get a job.
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My guides: Fred B. Craddock and Eugene Boring, People’s Commentary on the New Testament, p. 178.
William Barclay, The Gospel of Luke, p. 10.
R. Allen Culpepper, The New Interpreter’s Bible: Luke, p. 46.
Dave Raines, Writer 