Let me tell you a story this morning.

In the olden days, the days of Herod the Great of Judea, there was a man named Zechariah (whose name means “The Lord Remembers”). He was married to Elizabeth, (whose name means “My God is Faithful”). Zechariah and Elizabeth were good, solid, salt-of-the-earth people. The large sadness in their lives came because they had no children. They had waited for ever-so-long, but now they were well up in years.

Zechariah, along with thousands of others in Judea, faithfully put his name into a lottery that would be his ticket to assisting with worship and the sacrifices in the temple in Jerusalem. He longed for the chance. He waited a long time. Most people never had their number come up, but Zechariah’s finally did. It would be a high point in his life.

When the day came and Zechariah was inside the temple at the altar, a throng of people were outside in the courtyard praying. They waited for him to finish the incense sacrifice and then come out to pronounce a benediction. They waited a long, long time, and when he finally staggered out, he could not speak. It was clear he had experienced something very powerful.

He had come face to face with an angel, Gabriel, who had told him they were about to have a son and name him John (“Grace of God”). John would be filled with the Holy Spirit, and help prepare Israel for the Lord’s coming, like some kind of Elijah.

Zechariah respectfully doubted this could happen. There were good physical reasons it could not. He and Elizabeth were well up in years. But the angel insisted…and took away Zechariah’s speech for a time, a reminder, perhaps, that God was able to do anything. Anything.

Lo and behold, Elizabeth did become pregnant.

Lo and behold, Elizabeth gave birth to a son.

The in-laws wanted to name the baby after poor, speechless Zechariah. But Elizabeth felt they should name him John (which means, remember: “Grace of God”). They turned to Zechariah for the final answer, and he grabbed a tablet and wrote, “His name is John.” (That’s what is depicted on the front of bulletin in a 15th century piece of art).

At that moment, Zechariah’s tongue was loosed and he spoke about this boy John who would come to be called The Baptist: (Read Luke 1:67-79.)

“How long, O Lord? Will you hide yourself forever? Remember how short my time is,”

the Psalmist pleads in Psalm 89. How long must we wait? And God’s answer seems to sometimes be little more than “longer still.”

Dietrich Bonhoeffer, the German theologian and pastor was arrested in April of 1943 for conspiring against the Nazi regime, and was eventually executed. Shortly before his arrest, he had become engaged to a young woman named Maria. It was several weeks before Maria learned of her fiance’s imprisonment. Little did either of them know that never again would they see each other outside of the walls of a prison.

They were able to do some corresponding, letters which were published in a book called Love Letters from Cell 92. In December of 1944, after 18 months of imprisonment, Bonhoeffer wrote Maria a Christmas letter in which he said, “We’ve now been waiting for each other for almost two years, dearest Maria. Don’t lose heart!” And then he sent her a poem which ends like this:

“By kindly powers so wondrously protected
we wait with confidence, befall what may.
We are with God at night and in the morning,
and, just as certainly, on each new day.”

Bonhoeffer knew something about waiting.

And surely if anyone knew about waiting, it was Zechariah. Waiting a lifetime without a child. Waiting for a low-odds lottery for the honor of serving at the temple. Waiting months without speaking a word.

And Zechariah’s people had waited a long, long time. Depending on how you think about it, perhaps 400 years! The mouths of the prophets, which had been the most consistent way of hearing God, had been closed tight for generations. Through lifetimes, the people waited:

“How long, O Lord? Will you hide yourself forever? Remember how short my time is.”

Longer still.

1. The truth is…waiting is hard.

We were up at Whidbey Island this weekend…and everything is different. The grasses in the wetlands are browns and yellows. The frogs don’t croak at night, only the coyotes howling. The surf washes far higher on the beach, the south wind pushes against the doors and windows.

When Anne and I walked, we stopped and looked at a little apple tree. Not more than six feet high, but with a bumper crop of hundreds of apples which someone had apparently forgotten to pick. All but four or five apples lay in a heap at the base of the little tree, and not a single leaf left on the branches. Spring is a long way off.

Waiting is hard. I don’t know what Zechariah thought as he waited, mouthing words but not hearing them. Using sign language. Wondering if he had really been in the temple, if he had really seen the angel, if Elizabeth’s belly was really growing.

I don’t know what you wait for. Maybe some physical miracle. Maybe someone close to you to find Jesus. Maybe for life to take on more joy. Maybe for a terrorist-filled, terrifying world to change.

It might be indicative to think about what you wait for.

Is it just the next weekend, the trip?
Or does your heart long for something more?

The truth is, waiting is hard.

2. The amazing thing is…God works while we wait!

I had a wise friend tell me, after holding four different jobs in his career, that he thought God was using each job to prepare him for the next one. He just couldn’t see it until he looked back, but God was at work all the time.

I know, from enough years at Whidbey now, that we simply have to wait for the spring. It will come. Leaves, green grasses, new fruit will come. But not without waiting. Longer still. We cannot speed it up. And all winter long, things are going on inside that little apple tree that will enable another glorious spring miracle to take place.

The poem Kelly read said,

“Deep beneath (the earth’s) crust of cold nurses fire unfelt; unseen.”

Things happen when we wait. And as Zechariah waited and wondered…the Holy Spirit of God seems to have broken out.

Who would have thought, that in Zechariah and Elizabeth’s lifetime, the unfelt, unseen fires would break out like some Middle Eastern Mt. St. Helens finally erupting again?

If you read the scripture, you’ll find the Spirit of God present and active in the Old Testament, here and there, glimpses and hints and very occasionally at some specific times. The Spirit fell on Gideon to make him a leader, on Samson to give him strength, on Isaiah to allow him to preach. But pretty few and far between.

“How long, O Lord? Will you hide yourself forever? Remember how short my time is.”

But suddenly in the beginning of Luke, when nothing is apparently happening, out of the 400-year silence it comes. Angels make a habit of showing up. The child John will be filled with the Holy Spirit. Zechariah breaks out in song, filled with the Holy Spirit.

And over in Nazareth, Elizabeth’s relative Mary has also seen an angel. The Holy Spirit will visit her and provide her with a son, the Son of God.

And when the two women meet, Elizabeth will shout out, “filled with the Holy Spirit.” And Zechariah, the father of John breaks his silence with this prophecy, “filled with the Holy Spirit.” And even as Zechariah sings, Jesus is en route. The Spirit of God has broken out of waiting.

God was working all the time.

3. As hard as it is…waiting gives perspective.

Zechariah’s song, this “canticle” as they called it, is in Latin “The Benedictus,” for the first words of “Blessed be…the Lord God of Israel.” Within the song itself, the days of old and the days of new merge together. This boy John will straddle the days between the Old Testament and the New. And so imbedded in these words are the patriarch Abraham. The line of David. The salvation of being saved from enemies, rescued. The covenant of God and people. John will embody such things.

But even more importantly, he will embrace and prepare for the personal visitation of God in Jesus. Zechariah’s song speaks of a

“knowledge of salvation that comes through forgiveness.”

There is a realization imbedded here that enemies do not lurk only on the outside, but even more on the inside. And so as the Catholic scholar Raymond Brown says, Zechariah is singing that

“The Lord who made the covenant with Israel…was a forgiving God. It was to be expected that when He would visit his people, they would come to know it in the forgiveness of their sins.”

God was about to do a new thing, through a mighty savior, and all the long waiting will focus the eye to see it. Waiting gives perspective.

4. And thankfully…waiting does not last forever.

The coming of the Son of God in human flesh…was the beginning of this certainty. Zechariah sees that

“God has raised up a mighty savior for us in the house of his servant David.”

Literally, the words mean God has “raised up a horn of salvation.” Rooted on the earth, the horn is like the strength of a bull’s horns, and God has raised up this One. And,

“the dawn from on high will break upon us,”

light coming from heaven to earth. Sent down from heaven and raised up from earth. In Jesus, the waiting begins to end. Waiting does not last forever. He will bring

“light to those who sit in darkness and in the shadow of death.”

And our assurance is that though our waiting may be “longer still,” there will come an end to that waiting. It’s assured in Jesus’ first coming. And finalized when he comes again, when we will see Him face to face.

On April 7, 1945 Dietrich Bonhoeffer was still in a Nazi prison at Flossenburg. He led his cell mates in morning prayers. A short time later he heard the words “Prisoner Bonhoeffer, get ready and come with me.” The camp physician later wrote this about what happened:

“Pastor Bonhoeffer, before taking off his prison garb, knelt on the floor praying fervently to his God. I was most deeply moved by the way this lovable man prayed, so devout and so certain that God heard his prayer…At the place of execution he again said a short prayer and then climbed to the steps of the gallows, brave and composed…I have hardly ever seen a man die so entirely submissive to the will of God.” (Christianity Today, April 3, 1995)

Bonhoeffer’s last words, to convey to friends, were these:

“This is the end—for me, the beginning of life.”

In this season we look back to the coming of Christ. We look ahead to the second coming at time’s end. But in the meantime, we live. We live in between. If we live well, we wait, we look and listen. The apple tree will again bear fruit, the croaking frogs will return. God is even now preparing things that bubble below the surface, that we neither see nor hear. Yet one day we will.

“How long, O Lord? Will you hide yourself forever? Remember how short my time is.”

How long do we wait? A little longer still. But not forever.