"Then Zechariah was filled with the Holy Spirit and spoke this prophecy:
‘Blessed be the Lord God of Israel,
for he has looked favorably on his people and redeemed them.
He has raised up a mighty savior 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...'" (Luke 1:67-71)
for he has looked favorably on his people and redeemed them.
He has raised up a mighty savior 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...'" (Luke 1:67-71)
Hope has a way of messing with your mind's sense of time--in the best possible way.
At least, in the Biblical story, the folks who have been captivated by a hope in God often find themselves so sure of what God has promised that they speak of it as already accomplished, even when it is still off in the future. And even though that might sound bizarre, it's really kind of beautiful.
Here's a case in point. In the opening chapter of Luke's gospel, we are introduced to Zechariah, who will be the father of John the Baptizer. After an unexpected pregnancy (reminiscent of Sarah and Abraham) and a visit from an angel, Zechariah bursts into praise when his son his born after nine months of silence. And when he looks into his newborn boy's eyes for the first time, he speaks of what God is going to do through this child... in the past tense.
Look at the verbs in the opening lines of this song, which many of us heard read in worship this past Sunday, and channel your inner grammarian to note the tenses of those action words: God, he says, "has looked favorably on his people and redeemed them. He has raised up a mighty savior for us." Those are all stated as accomplished facts, as a done deal, as a past reality rather than a future potentiality. And yet, his son, who will be the opening act who comes before the promised Savior himself, has only just been born and named!
All of this begs the question: what's going on with Zechariah's sense of time? Why is he talking about future events like they are already past? Why is he saying God "has raised up a mighty Savior" when the Savior is, at that time, still forming in Mary's womb? And why does Zechariah say that God has "redeemed" God's people when they are still under the boot of the occupying Roman Empire?
Well, once we rule out the science-fiction based hypotheses (time-travel, extra-dimensional perception, or becoming the human companion of a traveling Time Lord who bops around the universe in an old British police box), we are left with a theological answer: hope. For Zechariah, who has at long last learned (after nine months of reflecting in contemplative silence) that God keeps even the promises that sound impossible, this is about the assurance of hope that is grounded in God. Zechariah dares to trust that when God says a savior is being raised up, a savior really is being raised up. In fact, from God's vantage point, it is already a certainty. Zechariah has learned to trust that when God makes a commitment, God keeps it. You can count on it as sure as the sun shines and the rain falls. You can take one of God's promises to the bank. And because Zechariah knows that God's promised future is reliable, he acts and speaks and thinks as if it is already a present reality. His hope in God enables him to step into that future now, taking it as such a certainty he can speak of it as something God has already done.
In a sense, then, being people of hope is something like having birthright citizenship. We live in a country with a long and honorable heritage of saying that if you are born on this soil you are automatically a citizen here. There are rights and privileges and protections that you can count on--and which your parents could trust would be granted to you--even before you have done a thing, learned to speak, or paid a cent in taxes. Expecting parents here know that their child will be a citizen and take it as a given even during the pregnancy. It is technically a future reality, which happens only after the child is born, but it is a certainty within that future. So they count on it during the nine months of the pregnancy as something assured. Zechariah sees his son's future story in much the same way. He speaks of God's saving action--through John and through the One who comes after John (Jesus)--as an accomplished fact, something so certain that he can speak of it as a completed action rather than a future possibility.
That's what it is like for us to live on the edge of hope as well. We are people who dare to take God's promised future so seriously that we live in light of it now as an accomplished reality, like it is the kingdom in which we are citizens already by birthright. Hope is what pulls us forward to act, think, and speak as though God really has redeemed us, really has raised up a savior for us, and really has looked on this world with love to make all things new.
Listening to Zechariah's song will indeed mess with our sense of time--we will start to take God's promised future as more definitive of our identity than anything in our past. Today, then, is a chance to live with his kind of hope, and to make his song our own.
Lord God, give us such confident hope in your promises that we can live now in light of when you keep them.
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