Advent IV: God's faithfulness to us

A reading from the Gospel of St Luke

Then his father Zechariah was filled with the Holy Spirit and spoke this prophecy:  

‘Blessed be the Lord God of Israel,  

for he has looked favourably on his people and redeemed them.  

He has raised up a mighty saviour for us  

in the house of his servant David,  

as he spoke through the mouth of his holy prophets from of old,  

that we would be saved from our enemies and from the hand of all who hate us.  

Thus he has shown the mercy promised to our ancestors,  

and has remembered his holy covenant,  

the oath that he swore to our ancestor Abraham,  

to grant us   

that we, being rescued from the hands of our enemies,  

might serve him without fear,   

in holiness and righteousness  

before him all our days.  

And you, child, will be called the prophet of the Most High;  

for you will go before the Lord to prepare his ways,  

to give knowledge of salvation to his people  

by the forgiveness of their sins.  

By the tender mercy of our God,  

the dawn from on high will break upon us,  

to give light to those who sit in darkness and in the shadow of death, to guide our feet into the way of peace.’ 

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Zechariah had got it wrong. A righteous man, he is serving as a priest in the Temple when he has a vision of an angel of the Lord. The angel tells him that he and his wife Elizabeth will finally bear a son in their old age and should call him John. A blessing given up as impossible, and so Zechariah doubts. He asks the angel “how will I know that this is so?” and the angel tells him that, since he doubted, Zechariah will be unable to speak until these promises are fulfilled.  

When Elizabeth has given birth, they are asked what they will call the child, and Elizabeth says, “John.” Now this goes against all the traditions of naming, so they ask Zechariah, and he writes, “His name is John.” Immediately, he is able to speak again, and he gives the prophecy that we heard from Luke’s Gospel.  

Zechariah has got it wrong – despite a lifetime of righteousness and duty, when the angel arrived to promise him a child, he just could not believe it. His faithfulness wavered, but God’s didn’t. God still fulfils the promise he made to Zechariah; Elizabeth gives birth to the son we know as John the Baptist, and Zechariah gets it right when out of his silence, he still communicates his faithfulness to God’s plan.