A reading of the holy gospel according to Luke. In the days of Herod, king of Judea, there was a priest named Zechariah of the division of Abia, and he had a wife of the daughters of Aaron, and her name was Elizabeth. And they were both righteous before god, walking in all the commandments and ordinances of the lord, blameless. But they had no child because Elizabeth was barren and both were advanced in years. Now, while Zechariah was serving as priest before God when his division was on duty, according to the custom of the priesthood, It fell to Zechariah by lot to enter the temple of the lord and burn incense.
And the whole multitude of the people were praying outside at the hour of incense. And there appeared to Zechariah an angel of the Lord, named standing on the right side of the altar of incense. And Zechariah was troubled when he saw him, and fear fell upon him. But the angel said to him, do not be afraid, Zechariah, for your prayer is heard, And your wife Elizabeth will bear you a son, and you shall call him John. And you will have joy and gladness, and many will rejoice at his birth, For he will be great before the lord.
And he shall drink no wine nor strong drink, and he will be filled with the holy spirit even from his mother's womb. And he will turn many of the sons of Israel to the lord their god. And he will go before to him in the spirit and power of Elijah to turn the hearts of the fathers to the children and the disobedient to the wisdom of the just to make ready for the lord, a people prepared. And Zechariah said to the angel, how shall I know this? For I am an old man, and my wife is advanced in years.
And the it's a very good question. And the angel answered him, I am Gabriel who stand in the presence of God, and I was sent to speak to you and to bring you this good news. And behold, you will be silent and unable to speak until the day that these things all come to pass because you did not believe my words which will be fulfilled in due time. The people were waiting for Zachariah outside, and they wondered at his delay in the temple. When he came out, he could not speak, and they perceived that he had seen some sort of a vision in the temple.
He made signs to them and remained dumb. And when his time of service was ended, he went home. After these days, his wife Elizabeth conceived. And for five months, she hid herself saying, thus the Lord has done to me in the days when he looked on me to take away my reproach from among men. And this is the gospel of the lord.
In In the name of the father and of the son and of the holy spirit. Amen. Now, of course, you see the parallel between the the reading from the book of judges about Samson's conception and birth and this extraordinary event that we have today about Zachariah and Elizabeth and their son John. It's all very marvelous and separated by a considerable amount of time, let me tell you. And now the next step of course will be the account of our Lord's birth.
Twice now I have referred to this matter of the infancy texts. And here again in this account that we have from Saint Luke of what happened to Zachariah and his and his wife Elizabeth, we have it here for in a text by Saint Luke. And I just looked up again last night and father Brown himself says that these gospels, some of them could have been as written as early as sixty AD. Sixty AD. And the latest '90.
You can put them any place you want in there. This is you must keep in mind. Now I'm not in the least saying that that that what we have here in the four gospels, that you have to take every word literally. That's ridiculous. Remember, Clive Staple Lewis said there are some people who shouldn't read a book, and I say amen to that.
You've got to have some intelligence to read any book, and a book has to be taken in the context of his time. And one of those context is this, you can't read into the year AD one, our conception of history as we have it in the Western world, and remember there are plenty of people who don't share this concept of history, but as we have it inherited mostly from German scholarship, as we have it today in this country and in some other countries that every statement in a text has to have a half a dozen footnotes, this is completely ridiculous. You have to take what is written in the context of its time. And if you want to compare something, compare this for example to Caesar's Gallic War or something of that sort, or Herodotus' text of that sort. Now what I'm saying is this, when you read this text of Saint Luke and these events that that that Luke recounts, can you avoid the fact that this sounds like just straightforward reporting?
And you're not dealing with one person, you're dealing with crowds of people. And and John I I mean, Zacharias is being struck dumb, the birth of John, the business of his being called John instead of a named after his father, these are all very factual things. And remember, the Jews knew about birth conception. They knew about barrenness. They didn't make any mistake about those things.
They didn't wait for 1980 to have some obstetrician or gynecologist to come around and teach them a few things. They knew a few things about how human beings come into this world. And you're dealing here with an a woman, first of all, who was barren, and secondly, who is way beyond childbearing age. And furthermore, her husband probably and for almost for certain would be incapable because of age of procreating a child. These are facts.
And you can't get away from them without by saying it's some kind of figure of speech or or a a fiction that is created in order to create a certain kind of impression. That's ridiculous. If that's what it is, it's utterly false and misleading, and multitudes were misled. Keep that in mind. You're not dealing here with some kind of a private little thing.
Now if and keep those dates in mind, '60 to '90. And remember, what we have written was orally passed around before it was ever put down in writing. Remember our lord remember Christ did not write a book. He didn't write a single word as far as we know, not a single word. We have no letters.
Just imagine somebody today trying to write a biography of somebody and they couldn't get a million letters together. I've just been finished reading biography of Helen Keller and her great teacher Annie Sullivan Macy. That biography is almost entirely almost entirely based upon letters. We don't have a single letter of Jesus Christ. People wrote letters in those days.
Look at Paul. What did Christ say to his apostles? You go and teach what I've taught you. Keep that in the back of your head all the time. Our religion isn't based upon a book.
Now I know people will say that Christianity, Mohammedanism, and Judaism are religions of the book. That in in a sense is not true of Catholicism. It is true of Judaism. It is true of Muslim Mohammedanism. It is not true of the Catholic church.
Christ did not give us a book. His name isn't signed to any of this stuff. All he said was to a living bunch of men, go out and you teach the world everything that I've taught you, and behold, I'll be with you. And a lot of stuff that I haven't told you, I'll tell you later on after I rise from the dead. And these are facts.
Or if they're not, let's forget the whole mess because we're wasting a lot of time, money, and effort, believe me. Let's have fun while the time is with us. And so I come back to some very simple ideas that here you have this account today, Luke about John, how the birth of John the Baptist, the marvelous things that happened to his father. The notice Zachariah was no fool. He acted just the way any sensible person would act.
Anybody can get a little bit of euphoric when you have a lot of incense around you in a hot room. And when he hears all this stuff from an angel, he said, look, forget it. It sounds great, but tell me how it can be. That's a very sensible question. It's the question of an honest man with some sense, and he got an answer.
The blessed mother did the same thing. The blessed mother didn't ask for a motive of credibility, but she got one. Remember, when she said, how can this happen to me? The angel said, look, the downer visit your cousin Elizabeth. That woman who is old, barren, she's she's she's just pregnant.
You you talk about a motive of credibility. You see what you're dealing with here? It is real. It is factual. And anyone who who who denies that, the burden of proof rests on them, not on me.
Keep that in mind. And I I I this is to me, it is extremely important these days. We are having a rebirth. This is what this is just an opinion of of what we used to call Gnosticism. Gnosticism.
You see, just read just just this past twenty four hours, see, there are people who say, it doesn't make any difference whether these things actually happened or not. After all, we have a Christ who's a savior. We have that concept and that's what we need. That is a lot of feathers or more, I could use other words. The thing is either what we have read here in substance in substance is correct and factual as it's presented or you can throw the whole business out of the window.
And remember, we are not a religion of the book. We are a religion of the living Christ who speaks through a living church. That's important to remember. We listen to a living voice. All I can say, god help us if all we have is a book.
In the name of the father and the son and holy spirit. Amen.