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Love
Teaching Text: Luke 1: 5-38
In the time of Herod king of Judea there was a priest named Zechariah, who belonged to the priestly division of Abijah; his wife Elizabeth was also a descendant of Aaron. Both of them were righteous in the sight of God, observing all the Lord’s commands and decrees blamelessly. But they were childless because Elizabeth was not able to conceive, and they were both very old.
Once when Zechariah’s division was on duty and he was serving as priest before God, he was chosen by lot, according to the custom of the priesthood, to go into the temple of the Lord and burn incense. And when the time for the burning of incense came, all the assembled worshipers were praying outside.
Then an angel of the Lord appeared to him, standing at the right side of the altar of incense. When Zechariah saw him, he was startled and was gripped with fear. But the angel said to him: “Do not be afraid, Zechariah; your prayer has been heard. Your wife Elizabeth will bear you a son, and you are to call him John. He will be a joy and delight to you, and many will rejoice because of his birth, for he will be great in the sight of the Lord. He is never to take wine or other fermented drink, and he will be filled with the Holy Spirit even before he is born. He will bring back many of the people of Israel to the Lord their God. And he will go on before the Lord, in the spirit and power of Elijah, to turn the hearts of the parents to their children and the disobedient to the wisdom of the righteous—to make ready a people prepared for the Lord.”
Zechariah asked the angel, “How can I be sure of this? I am an old man and my wife is well along in years.”
The angel said to him, “I am Gabriel. I stand in the presence of God, and I have been sent to speak to you and to tell you this good news. And now you will be silent and not able to speak until the day this happens, because you did not believe my words, which will come true at their appointed time.”
Meanwhile, the people were waiting for Zechariah and wondering why he stayed so long in the temple. When he came out, he could not speak to them. They realized he had seen a vision in the temple, for he kept making signs to them but remained unable to speak.
When his time of service was completed, he returned home. After this his wife Elizabeth became pregnant and for five months remained in seclusion. “The Lord has done this for me,” she said. “In these days he has shown his favor and taken away my disgrace among the people.”
In the sixth month of Elizabeth’s pregnancy, God sent the angel Gabriel to Nazareth,a town in Galilee, to a virgin pledged to be married to a man named Joseph, a descendant of David. The virgin’s name was Mary. The angel went to her and said, “Greetings, you who are highly favored! The Lord is with you.”
Mary was greatly troubled at his words and wondered what kind of greeting this might be. But the angel said to her, “Do not be afraid, Mary; you have found favor with God. You will conceive and give birth to a son, and you are to call him Jesus. He will be great and will be called the Son of the Most High. The Lord God will give him the throne of his father David, and he will reign over Jacob’s descendants forever; his kingdom will never end.”
“How will this be,” Mary asked the angel, “since I am a virgin?”
The angel answered, “The Holy Spirit will come on you, and the power of the Most High will overshadow you. So the holy one to be born will be called the Son of God.Even Elizabeth your relative is going to have a child in her old age, and she who was said to be unable to conceive is in her sixth month. For no word from God will ever fail.”
“I am the Lord’s servant,” Mary answered. “May your word to me be fulfilled.” Then the angel left her.
Themes
Consider these themes and ask your group what else they see in the passage:
Watching for the Light
PEACE: See a light—God's unchanging Character Across the Ages
Series Intro:
God is near
God is saving and rescuing
God is filling and healing.
But that can be confusing or disillusioning because life has quite a lot of waiting, some real season is difficultly, loss, grief. Life has what feels like delays. It has uncertainty, pain, and longing.
And so we need the darkness of Advent also. We need the wilderness and waste places of Lent, we need the confused grief of Holy Saturday when Christ has died but we see no sign of resurrection.
Formation
Thoughts and notes you can use for discussion:
Types of Silence
Silence of despair
Sometimes suffering can make us forget, and that moment of forgetting is despair. It is the moment we forget that God is a God who hears the cry of his children.
And in the story of the Hebrew/Israelites: hope was a groan and a cry
If your silence with God is one of despair, then it is time to cry out.
Silence of shame/unacknowledged sin
When I kept silent, my bones wasted away through my groaning all day long. For day and night your hand was heavy on me; my strength was sapped as in the heat of summer. Then I acknowledged my sin to you and did not cover up my iniquity. I said, “I will confess my transgressions to the Lord.” And you forgave the guilt of my sin.
– Psalms 32:3-5 NIV
Jeremiah 31:3 : “I have loved you with an everlasting love;
I have drawn you with unfailing kindness.
The hope of Advent is a God who is coming all the way to you. All we have to do is not hide
Silence of awe
The silence of awe is also present in the advent story at the birth of Jesus. The shepherds who heard the announcement of the angels and who saw the newborn Jesus, shared with their neighbors what they had seen and heard.
Luke writes in his gospel:
And all who heard it were amazed at what the shepherds said to them.
– Luke 2:18
The ESV better here it says: “And awe came upon every soul…”
Awe is our most reasonable response to the presence of the trinitarian God or to witnessing the direct activity of God in the world.
Tyler Staton: “Fear of the Lord is the willed choice to give my attention to God—to listen to the story He tells about who I am, who He is and where we’re going together—and then live in a contested world of competing fears like God is in fact the only one telling the truth.”
Are you building your life on God’s faithfulness? Do you believe the story He is telling in the world? Because if you do, if you can live in the fear of the Lord, then you can experience what I will call the silence of trust.
Moses answered the people, “Do not be afraid. Stand firm and you will see the deliverance the Lord will bring you today. The Egyptians you see today you will never see again. The Lord will fight for you; you need only to be still.”
– Exodus 14:13-14 NIV
ESV renders it: you need only be silent.
The enemy you fear no longer has any power over you (fear of death, fear of failure, fear of abandonment). You just need to be still. Stand in the place where you are (keep worshipping, keep serving, keep living into the Messiah’s picture of human flourishing)--stand firm and see the salvation of the Lord.
INVITATIONS
Perhaps we need silence to determine what kind of silence we are in. When the quiet comes and you’re alone, what are the thoughts that comes? Are they of love, trust, hope? Are they of fear, shame?
Sometimes I don't know what my thoughts are toward God until I’m alone with them. I need to be still first. And sometimes that’s when the trembling truth comes: I’m angry with you. I’m disappointed that you let this happen. Or sometimes: thank you, I love you. And sometimes quiet: just being together. And I imagine a hand on my chest. A face next to mine. Ah, there you are. I’ve been waiting. Let’s go on our walk.
