Sermon: "Lost and Crying Out"
Do you hear the silence in this room? In the silence, we can feel the distance between each other, but with the sound of a voice, the words of just one mouth, it can be filled. The waves of air broken in every direction, bringing us into contact with one another, making us one space, one people. Our human voices have this very real power, to bridge across the space that separates you and me, to call across our distance from one another. Our voices place us in one another’s presence, and so there is nothing so terrifying as to hear the street filled with the sound of someone crying out for help, or as whispering ‘I love you’ in the small gap between two lovers’ faces. It is by our voice, which fills an empty space that we lie open, vulnerable, naked before other human beings, that we are exposed in our deepest pains and deepest hopes. And we often feel the pressure of the large, silent hall.
Among our scripture from today we hear of two figures who break a silence with the cry of their voice: Zechariah and his son John. And these cries are the cries of a people with lifetime’s worth of deep and painful longing in their souls, calling across the distance to their God and to all people with a message of hope and trust, a message that risks vulnerability, the nakedness of a voice hanging in the silence – cried with a trust that by its sound people will be comforted and the emptiness filled, that isolation will be replaced with presence, and fear with joy. They speak in the hope that when their voice goes out into empty space it will be met with the response of other voices that join it in a harmony, clothing it in love, a community of cries in which the gaps between us close.
In last week’s sermon we left Jesus at the edge of the woods, but this week I want us to imagine the feeling of being lost in the woods – lost and alone in the cold, dark silence, waiting for the sound of a voice that will bring us assurance, direction, and comfort. But I also want to challenge us to the courage that cries out first to become hope for others.
We met Zechariah in his song that began, Blessed be the Lord, the God of Israel. We meet him in the moment in which his voice bursts forth in song, a song of praise, a song of hope for redemption, for the one who will go before the Lord to prepare his way, for one who will be bold enough to reach out across the silence with a bold voice to comfort people and point them towards salvation. But if we venture back a little further into Zechariah’s story, we find that it took Zechariah time to find that voice. I think that maybe we are often a bit more like Zechariah than John, it often takes time to cry out into the silence in our lives. You see, when Zechariah cried out, his song didn’t just break the silence of the moment, but a long period of silence in his own life, a long period of time in which his lips had been sealed and he had been living cut off from the people around him, unable to take the risk of speaking. Lost and alone.
A few months prior, Luke tells us that Zechariah had been visited by an angel of the Lord who had arrived with great news, that after a long lifetime of waiting, he and his wife, Elizabeth, were finally going to have a child. God’s voice came across the long silence of a lifetime of holding out for that one hope, unanswered prayers, and nights of crying – it broke the silence of despair that had settled in over his life – and yet when Zechariah heard this he couldn’t believe it – maybe it was just too good to be true -- too good to be true, because it was just too close to what made Zechariah feel weakest of all – what had made Zechariah feel so distant from others, he and his wife who had for their whole lives been set apart as the childless ones, the one’s waiting.
Right after he heard the angel, Zechariah’s friends saw him and could tell something was wrong, but Zechariah couldn’t speak, he couldn’t say what he had seen, he could not get his voice to cry out, he was afraid to lie open in front of so many that lifetime’s worth of suffering, that hope so near and dear to his heart that it would have stripped him naked down to his deepest vulnerability. What if it didn’t happen? What if that which he hoped for failed to arrive? – and Zechariah was afraid – and Zechariah was silent.
It was only at the naming of his son John, after waiting through months of Elizabeth’s pregnancy that Zechariah broke the silence with his cry. At that moment, surrounded by friends and family, in the celebration of his son, when Zechariah’s hopes had already been fulfilled, when he was freed from waiting and able to be happy at last, encouraged by the song of those around him, Zechariah found his voice – and he raised up his song, praising God for all that he had received.
Now, I think it is good, even at this late hour, that Zechariah was able to open his lips, to cry out and sing with praise. It is certainly a wonderful thing about us that we can cry out into a harmony with others, to share in joy, and to participate in a love that is present. I think we so often need this time - the courage to risk exposing our deepest hopes and pains with others needs a gestation period and often some encouragement from others. Yet, when we hear the song of Zechariah, we hear the longing for something more, the longing for the kind of courage that could have spoken sooner. He sings to his new child, “You, my son shall be called the prophet of the most high, and you will go before the Lord to prepare his way, to bring his people knowledge of salvation by the forgiveness of their sins. In the tender compassions of our God, the dawn from on high will break upon us, to shine on those who dwell in darkness and the shadow of death, and to guide our feet unto the way of peace.”
Left in Zechariah’s happiness is a further hope that others will be strong enough to speak even into the silence, to rejoice even for hopes that have not yet been fulfilled, because he sees that when we cry out into silence, our voice gives others the courage to speak, as well - our voice can span those distances that leave people feeling isolated, and pull them out of the silence and into peace – but it takes courage and faith and hope to go before the Lord, before the promise arises, to praise God even as we wait.
In our gospel we meet John, Zechariah’s son, all grown up. And we meet him in his own kind of silence. We meet John in the wilderness, surrounded by a company of those who have gone out to the wilderness and are there with him. We meet a group of people congregated - not in rejoicing but in silence. A group of people who even though they are together, stand apart from one another, divided, isolated, distant. We have here a group of Zechariahs, a group lost in the woods, a group that we often times resemble, people afraid of each other, of our own vulnerability showing through, of being present before one another in our pain and brokenness, lacking faith, lacking hope, lacking courage. And the tragedy is, that our silence adds to the isolation that every other person feels in that group, silence isn’t just passive, but an active decision to hide ourselves, our refusal to speak, and to be present before one another to admit our own vulnerability, our own weakness in this life. Hear the silence.
But then, hear the voice of one crying in the wilderness: Prepare the way of the Lord! For He is surely coming to our aid!
John cries into the silence, John cries to the lost and isolated. Prepare
the way of the Lord, that is, rush out ahead into the silence. Cry out into this distance that surrounds us that a loving God has not abandoned this world, that a loving God has not and will not abandon you. That our vulnerability is met in God’s strength. Make his paths ready! Begin the song – begin the healing of those distances with your voice, with your presence before others with the cry: all flesh will see the salvation of God. Because our isolation is not the final word, our pain is not the final word, silence is not the final word. But God’s word is final – the Word which has life and gives life, which brought forth this world from nothing and calls you forth out of the silence and into life. Echo this word into the silence of tis world and it will not face – cast a joyous sound that pierces the cold, dark silence.
You see, what we need is not just the message of John, but his voice – the voice that is first to cry out into the wilderness. We need his willingness to speak out for the hope we see. We need his willingness to risk our vulnerability in the trust that God has transformed it into strength - to be the first to speak of love in an environment of hate, the first to speak of healing among the sick, the first to speak of God’s presence in a world of violence and decay, the first to not step back from the promises which God has in store for this world. We need the voice of the apostle Paul, who cries out that the highest value and hope in this world is not found in our security or wealth, fit bodies or good jobs, intelligence or happiness, but in a man from a nowhere country who, in the midst of the silence of humanity, died unjustly on a cross. For God shows his strength in human weakness. God lifts up the lowly and saves the lost. God is a God over silence, who breaks into our world, our space, our neighborhood, our lives with a liberating cry.May God give us the courage to speak and fill the silence with a joyous voice, to be a light in the darkness, a rescuer to those who are lost in the woods, a comfort to those in loneliness and pain, a cry of assurance and aid – just as God has sent His own Word into our lives. Thanks be to God! Amen.