God’s Peace Campaign
Luke 1:5-25, 57-80
Emmanuel Baptist Church; Rev. Kathy Donley
December 7, 2025
Note: A recording of the worship service in which this sermon was preached may be found here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UAVePS3No54
It was a precarious time to be a priest in Zechariah’s day. Herod the Great was King of Judea, serving his own interest and those of Rome. Caesar Augustus was the Emperor. He had beaten down all his military opponents until they lost the ability to resist. This absence of war in the Mediterranean ushered in the golden age known as the Pax Romana. It was not as wonderful as you might have been led to believe.
As military violence waned, economic oppression increased. Tributes were demanded by Caesar, taxes had to be paid to Herod and tithes were required by the Temple. When Herod became king, he had killed the current high priests and brought in those from other regions who supported his interests. These priests collected the temple tithes and used them to subsidize their opulent lives in Jerusalem. What little remained went to local priests. Zechariah received a smaller and smaller paycheck. Today, we would call him a bi-vocational pastor. He was likely a farmer. As he had aged without children to help share the labor, the planting, pruning, harvesting and threshing were likely more physically demanding every year.
As a village priest, Zechariah was in a position to see the burden that peasants were bearing. Farmers were required to give over half of their harvest to Rome, leaving little for families to survive on. Small landowners often had to borrow against their land to pay tributes, taxes and tithes. This world of peace was a world of foreclosures, evicting families from their land. Economic loss separated families, caused malnutrition in children and left many women widowed and vulnerable. What looked like a world of peace kept most of the population in a constant position of economic stress by imperial design.
Zechariah lived in a village and worked as a farmer, like the other peasants. But, as a priest, he made trips to Jerusalem twice a year to serve in the temple for a week at a time. He was well aware of God’s concern for justice and the provisions for the poor, widows and orphans. He would have seen how that was disregarded in order to support the lavish lifestyles of Jerusalem elites. He would undoubtedly have bristled at the practice of offering sacrifices two times day for Rome and Caesar. He was in a position to recognize the hypocrisy, to be most sensitive to the oppression of his people. And so, in the song he sings when his son John is named, we hear these words “that we would be saved from our enemies and from the hand of all who hate us . . . to remember the holy covenant that we might serve him without fear.”
It was a precarious time to be a priest in the days of Joseph Mindszenty. He was a Catholic bishop in Hungary who spoke out against the Nazis and their racial persecution before and during World War II. On the day after Christmas in 1948, the communist government of Hungary arrested him. By then he was an Archbishop. He was tortured and subjected to a show trial on trumped-up charges and ultimately sentenced to life imprisonment. In 1956, during the Hungarian Uprising he was temporarily freed by revolutionaries. When the Soviets regained control of the country, he sought sanctuary at the US Embassy in Budapest. He lived within the embassy for the next 15 years. Because of his presence there, his story was known all over the world. His unrelenting opposition to dictatorship was a source of hope for millions of people. He was finally allowed to leave the country in 1971. He died in Vienna two years later.
Both Zechariah and Mindszenty remained true to their vocations; somehow. they held onto their faith in the midst of truly difficult times. Zechariah was an old man. His country had been ruled by the Romans and the Herods since before he was born. How hard it must have been to believe that the birth of his son would be the beginning of change, but eventually he found the courage to trust it.
While the Archbishop lived in the US embassy in Budapest, a girl named Katarina was born behind the Iron Curtain in what was then Czechoslovakia. As a child, she watched her father walk around with a radio standing still in awkward positions when he picked up the BBC or Voice of America radio in spite of the jammers. She asked him “What are you doing, Daddy?” But he did not explain because she was a child and that knowledge was dangerous. She was raised as a Catholic Christian and had to celebrate her first Communion in secret because it was illegal.
Her mother was known in town as a rebel because she refused to vote in Communist elections. The people warned Katarina not to take after her mother, but to vote because it would help her get along with the Party. However, she followed her mother’s example and also became known as a rebel. As a young adult, she saw the break-up of the Soviet Union and the end of communist rule. Today she lives and travels freely and runs her own tour guide business. She talks openly about politics and the history of her country and votes for the candidates she prefers. An outcome that Cardinal Mindszenty worked and prayed for, but did not live to see.
When the angel informs Zechariah of what is coming, Zechariah says “How shall I know this? I am an old man.” Can we hear the weariness? He has lived long. He is well acquainted with corruption, hypocrisy, the will to power. The technology may vary from generation to generation, but the basic tools of the oppressors remain – fear, intimidation, pain, threats to family, safety, and economic security. Zechariah doesn’t see how that can possibly change. “How shall I know this?” I wonder if every meeting with something larger than ourselves, something that speaks wonderfully to our deepest longings, has us responding in doubt.[1]
From that moment, Zechariah enters a period of enforced silence. We often interpret this a punishment, but perhaps it is more of a gift. It allows him time and space to listen and reflect on a deeper level. Perhaps in the silence he overhears the conversations between his wife Elizabeth and Mary as she stays with them, to catch from them a sense of hope and possibility.
Bible scholar Justo Gonzalez says, “This entire episode reminds us of a situation in which many faithful believers often stand. They are called to do the unexpected and perhaps the culturally unacceptable.”[2]
When the baby is born, his mother breaks with the tradition of using family names. John is not named after his father. He will not be a priest like Zechariah, but a prophet.[3] He will be part of a generation that returns to God’s vision of peace, one that does not rely on the tools of oppression, or run families out of homes or off their lands. God’s peace proclaimed by John and embodied by Jesus will be good news for the poor and create anxiety for kings and power-brokers. John will be born into an ordinary family with unexpected strength and faith. Elizabeth and Zechariah may have been old and weary, but God was not finished with them yet.
If the angel Gabriel came to us today, what might he say? Maybe “do not be afraid.” Words we need to hear. And then he might say, “God is not finished with you. There is a future. You have life to live and work to do and people to love. You have no idea how you will nurture the next generation.”
May the dawn from on high break upon us, that we may be saved from our enemies and the hand of all who hate us, to guide our feet into the way of peace. May Zechariah’s song be our song. Amen.
[1] Kelley Nikondeha, The First Advent in Palestine: Reversals, Resistance, and the Ongoing Complexity of Hope (Minneapolis: Broadleaf Books, 2022), p 34.
[2]Justo Gonzalez, Luke in the Belief Commentary Series, (Louisville: Westminster/John Knox Press, 2010), p. 28
[3] Amy-Jill Levine, Ben Witherington III, The Gospel of Luke New Cambridge Bible Commentary (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2018), p. 44