Specifically, it's about the noise. Everything is noisy at this time of year, and not the nice sort of sleigh bell noise. No, it's the noisy noise. A long, long time ago, I saw a performance by the Calgary philharmonic orchestra of 'Emily saves the Orchestra,' which is a show that I'm not entirely sure anyone else remembers. Anyhow, the point that I'm trying to get to is that the villain of the performance was a monster called Cacopholous (the monster that I saw was 40 feet tall, but had to be retired due to not traveling well). Back then, I'd never heard of the concept of cacophany, but it was in the show, noise personified. Cacopholous was a monster who lived to remove music and replace it with cacophany, with noise, for the sake of noise. No rhythm, no music, no tune, nothing. Just noise, grating noise.
And yeah, at this time of the year, the grinch has a point. There's a lot of noise. The noise isn't tuneful, rhythmic, or pleasant. It is, honestly, noise. It's loud, and it's unpleasant - and there's plenty of it. And that's what makes the start of Advent so jarring - this first week in Advent doesn't start with noise at all. It starts with silence.
In the Advent and Christmas seasons, we tend to focus on a few people who carry forward the spirit of Advent. We think about John the Baptist, the forerunner of Christ who prepares his way. We think about the family of Jesus, of Mary and Joseph and their journey to Bethlehem. We think about Andrew and Peter, the men who were disciples of John before they were disciples of Jesus, but we rarely think about someone very special, and very specific. We very very rarely think about the father of John the Baptist - Zechariah. It's easy not to think too much about Zechariah, of course, given that he has very few lines in the Bible, and he is quickly overshadowed by other people in the Gospel account. But hold on just for a second, because Zechariah's story is pretty important as far as these things go.
Back in the day, Zechairah is visited by Gabriel, that great angel, and Gabriel announces to Zechariah that his wife will conceive a child, and will give birth to an incredibly important person in history. "He will be great before the Lord ... he will turn many of the children of Israel to the Lord their God, and he will go before 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 you know what Zechariah's response is, of course.
It seems unlikely that Zechariah and Elizabeth will have a child in their dotage, and Zechariah doubts this message openly when Gabriel informs him of what will happen. And Gabriel has a stiff rebuke for Zechariah when he hears it: 'Behold, you will be silent and unable to speak until the day these things take place, because you did not believe my words, which will be fulfilled in their time."
And thus begins the perfect pregnancy for Elizabeth. For once, while a woman is with child, her husband isn't talking about how tired HE is, isn't whining about how hard the pregnancy is on HIM, isn't discussing how he would much MUCH rather be watching sports than buying gravol, etc. Instead, he's completely silent all the way through her pregnancy, all the way until the naming of John, as the law requires in the scriptures.
And this is the part that is interesting, is important for us, especially this time of year. The grinch, when he reacts negatively against the noise, we can feel him on that, we truly can. But more than anything else, Zechariah does what so few of us do, especially not in Advent: He listens. And this is genuinely important, given who Jesus is and what Jesus is all about. For at this time of year, in the hustle and bustle, it's really easy to want to look at Jesus, to observe him from the outside, to see him as a baby in the manger, and then to take in all sorts of other things. But it's not as easy to do what the voice of God from the cloud counsels all of us to do, in all circumstances and in all seasons - "This is my son, my chosen. Listen to Him." In the Christian faith, we are people of the word, people who listen. At this time of year, we are told to listen to John the Baptist, the voice of one crying in the wilderness. We are told to listen to Mary, who speaks the magnificat, the song of response to Gabriel's annoucement of her own pregnancy. We are told to listen to the Old Testament prophecies of prediction of Jesus Christ, and what he will do.
And in all this, the only way we are going to get to do any of this is to follow what happened to Zechariah - spending Advent listening.
Now it isn't that Zechariah doesn't talk, though. He sure does. But when he talks, thanks to the silence, he really only speaks when he has something remarkably important to say. He only speaks when he has something vital to say, and after he names his own son what Gabriel had told him to, his tongue is loosed, and he exults forth with such a magnificent song of praise that it forms part of Morning Prayer in our Lutheran liturgy even today.
So it's not about silence for silence's sake, nor is it about noise for noise's sake. It's about taking the time to listen for what is important, and then responding with words of equal importance. It's about fulfilling the directives in the book of James, that we should be quick to listen, slow to speak, and slow to become angry. For if we listen to what God's word says at this time of year, if we hear the voice of one crying in the wilderness, we will hear of sin, of pain, and of redemption and sacrifice. We won't hear about the meaning of friends and family, of food. We'll hear about a fallen creation, a wounded world, a world straining against darkness and desperately seeking a light for the nations. And as Christmas approaches, we will see that light come into the world - Christ the Lord, the propitiation, the lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world.
You'll catch all that. If you listen.
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