Iowa UMC Conference Blue Christmas Service from Iowa Annual Conference on Vimeo.

Blue Christmas Sermon - Finding Our Voice

Rev. Dr. Lanette Plambeck

A reading from the Gospel of Luke Chapter 1:8-25. One day, Zechariah was serving as a priest before God, because his priestly division was on duty. Following the customs of priestly service. He was chosen by lottery, to go into the Lord's sanctuary and burn incense. All the people who gathered to worship were praying outside during this hour of incense offering. An angel of the Lord appeared to him standing to the right of the altar of incense. When Zechariah saw the angel, he was startled, and fear overcame him. The angel said, “Don't be afraid Zechariah your prayers have been heard. Your wife Elizabeth will give birth to your son. And you must name him John. He will be a joy and a delight to you and many people will rejoice by his birth, for he will be great in the Lord's eyes. He must not drink wine and liquor. He will be filled with the Holy Spirit, even before his birth. He will bring many Israelites back to the Lord their God. He will go forth before the Lord, equipped with the spirit and power of Elijah. He will turn the hearts of fathers back to their children. He will turn the disobedient to righteous patterns of thinking. He will make ready a people prepared for the Lord.” Zechariah said to the angel, “How can you be sure of this. My wife and I, we are very old.” The angel replied saying, “I am Gabriel. I stand in God's presence. I was sent to speak to you and to bring this good news to you. Know this: what I have spoken will come true at the proper time. But because you didn't believe you will remain silent, unable to speak, until the day when these things happen.” Meanwhile, the people were standing outside waiting for Zechariah and they wondered why he was in the sanctuary for such a long time. When he came out, he was unable to speak to them. They realized he had seen a vision in the temple, for he gestured to them even though he could not speak. When he completed the days of his priestly service he returned home. Afterward, his wife Elizabeth became pregnant. She kept to herself for five months saying, “This is the Lord's doing. He has shown his favorite to me by removing my disgrace among other people.” 

When Elizabeth was six months pregnant. Well, that's the rest of the story, the part of the story where young Mary went to Elizabeth. But what I want us to think about in the midst of this service is how Zechariah lost his ability to speak. Zechariah who was seen as faithful and righteous and had a deep love for God and God a deep love for him. In this relationship in which he shared with his spouse, who together carried the burden of the things that brought them grief in life, and even the superstitions or assumptions of community of why they were dealt the cards that they were dealt.

The part of the story that really draws me in, the part of the story that that I pay attention to, is this: Before we even get to Mary and Joseph and that boy child called Jesus, Zechariah and Elizabeth were doing the best they could with what they were given. And they were navigating life and the hardships and the broken places and the grief that life presented them. And they were faithful to God and faithful to the rites and rituals that guided their lives, but that grief that deep grief that was part of that story their story remained. And even when the Angel Gabriel, I mean go there with me for just a moment in that place where incense was burning and Zechariah was offering his prayers. The angel Gabriel shows up and says to Zachariah, “Don't be afraid.” And then he explains that the impossible was possible. And that God was entering into that grief. Because of uncertainty, because of brokenness, it may be because of the surprise of the moment of the angels showing up that Zachariah wondered how this could happen. And in that doubt the gift that he was given for a season was the inability to speak. 

Now I don't know about you, but the unexpected grief, disappointment, disenfranchisement, and dis-ease that we are experiencing as a nation and as a church, or even in our households as we deal with loss; whether that is loss of relationship loss of connection loss of somebody that we love or loss of job. It could be any form of loss. That grief that comes out of the thing is when we come into moments of our lives where we lose our voices. And we don't lose our voices because we doubt that God is present with us, but the uncertainty, the dealing with the unexpected, and the hard. Those are the moments when we struggle with hope. When we struggle with faith and love. When we struggle and we lose our voices we don't necessarily know that the right words or if we should even speak words into these experiences that we are feeling. 

When I was a little girl, there was a repeat series on TV that I would turn on when I would get home from school. I don't know if you're familiar with it, but it was called The Brady Bunch. One of my favorite episodes was a Christmas episode in which Mrs. Brady, Carol Brady, was supposed to sing Oh Come All Ye Faithful in the church choir for the Christmas Eve service. But she lost her voice, and the youngest daughter went to see Santa with her dad. The one thing that she asked Santa Claus for was the restoration of her mom's voice. Now, because it is make-believe because it is created for TV, you might guess that Carol's voice was restored. She awoke the next day, humming Oh Come All Ye Faithful in her sleep. And shortly after that, we are brought into a scene where she is singing in the location of church. What I am paying attention to with her story is sometimes there are reasons that we lose our voice. And for me, and for so many going through a season of grief, we don't necessarily know how to speak into that. It is hard to find our voice, and to tell others that this is a hard season for us. It is. We are uncertain whether we can use our voices to say, “I really miss this person in I am struggling. I'm struggling with my relationships. I'm struggling with my work. I am struggling with my faith.” It's hard to find our voices. 

I look to Zechariah and Elizabeth’s story, not the end of the story when John, who we will eventually call John the Baptist, was born. But those moments that led up to that time in that sacred space of incense burning and prayer offering, where Elizabeth and Zechariah navigated a lifetime of trying to find their voice. When they had to deal with the grief of the things that they were certain would never be theirs. And not only does Zechariah’s voice eventually show up. God showed up the living word showed up and spoke a moment into the life of Zechariah and Elizabeth.

The voice of God is speaking into your life, into my life, into the life of the church, the life of our state, the life of our nation and world even right now. It is true that grief in these unprecedented times is hard. We've had to experience loss and separation in ways that don't make sense unless you are in the season called the pandemic, and I even lean away from calling it a season because it seems so much longer than just a season. But I think about Zechariah and Elizabeth, who taught us while navigating the times of life, to hold it to the practices of rites and rituals to continue connecting with God and neighbor. Connecting to one another, creation and self. To find voice within. 

Friends, I want to just give a couple of resources that might help you if you're in your own time of grief this season. Resources that might empower you or encourage you to find your voice. If you have words that you want to speak but you're not certain you can speak them out loud,I invite you to journal and write your words down and at least read your words out loud, so that you can hear yourself speaking those words.Finding people who are safe to you to speak out loud your hurts and the hardships. Ask them if they are a space or a place where you can remember the life of a loved one, a loss, or to share an experience or a struggle that you're currently in. I want to invite you to also be a place of invitation that if you know that there are people that are struggling in some way that you might reach out to them as a sacred place, as an altar with incense that that you might bring light and love into that space and say, “I am offering you open ears, and an open heart. This is a safe space for you to speak your pain.”

I don't know for sure what Zechariah was praying that day. I am sure that it was an hour of set aside time if you will, and there were probably particular prayers that he needed to pray. But you know sometimes our prayers are not only coming out of our mouth. The words might be part of a thought or a memory in our mind but there's also that other prayer that sits in our heart all the time. I want you to know that that God is receiving your prayers. That God is receiving your pain. That God hears the voice of your spirit crying out. And that in the places where you are experiencing brokenness or despair that God is there. In those experiences when you're wondering if forgiveness can happen or wrong things can make be made right. God is there. And that Emmanuel, God with us, isn't just an experience of the past in a town called Bethlehem many years ago. The experience of Emmanuel, God with us, is here with us right now in God's whisper. And God's promised to us is that any words we need to speak, the hard things and the holy things, God is here open to hearing from each and every one of us.

There is a movie that spoke to my daughter way more than The Brady Bunch ever did. It never made sense to her. In fact, she'd often say, “That’s silly Mama”, but she loved the movie Home Alone. And there is a scene in home alone toward the end of the movie where the little boy that was left alone and the neighbor that was oh so scary find themselves in the same sanctuary on Christmas Eve. The scary neighbor was there listening to the voice of his granddaughter. They were singing and being part of the Christmas Eve service but even in the midst of that moment he was confessing to this little neighbor boy about the brokenness and the separation in the family and his expectation that there would never be reconciliation or resolution to the things that separated them. As you come to the end of the story that when Oh Holy Night was framing the conclusion, you see families reconciled. You see the scary pieces of life made right and made sensical again. You experience the hope, love and joy that is the intended outcome, even for those who are left out feel home alone. 

This has been a home alone season for so many of us. May we find our home. May we find our love, our restoration, and our reconciliation. May we find our home in the holiest of nights in which Christ entered the world in the form of this baby that we call Jesus. May we find holiness and hope. And in that holy night where God said, “I am making right this world and your life once again.”

Amen.