People handle this time of year differently. It was a few days before
Christmas on the Oregon Coast when two men, whose families lived next
door to each other, opted to go sailing while their wives when
Christmas shopping. An unexpected storm surprised the weekend
sailors. Before long, the sea became angry, and the two had a
difficult time keeping the sailboat under control. While heading
toward the harbor, the craft hit a sandbar and grounded. Both men
jumped overboard into the icy water and began to push and shove in an
attempt to get the sailboat into deeper water. Knee-deep in mud and
repeatedly bounced against the hull by the unfriendly waves, the one
man said to the other, "Sure beats Christmas shopping, doesn't it?"
Some of us may feel that way. When you think of Christmas, what word
or phrases do you automatically think of? For some of you it might be
"Christmas shopping, nightmare." For others, it might be
"Let's go sailing."
There was a workshop given on the subject "Handling Holidays
Heroically," where some women were asked to write the first
three words that came to their minds when they thought about
Christmas. Here are a few of their responses: "Rushed,
Overwhelmed, Joy"; "Fear, Anticipation, Excitement";
"Gifts, Tree, Stressful."
For a certain couple I know of, the thought of Christmas conjured up
three other words: "Where's our baby?" Betty and Zach knew
the pain of infertility. They understood only too well why the
condition from which they suffered used to be called
"barren." Just as the lifeless Sahara sand baked by the
suffocating sun is hauntingly lonely, so also a barren couple knows
the isolated torment of biological and emotional drought. They are
familiar with the wasteland that separates the childless couple from
a family-centered culture.
Betty and Zach wanted children ever since they were first married.
Zach's position as a minister didn't pay extremely well, but his
income was sufficient so that Betty would not have to work outside
the home once children came along. But children never came along.
At first they weren't all that concerned. They had time. They were
young. Besides, they had friends who hadn't been able to conceive
right away either, but over the years got pregnant. "Sometimes
it just takes time," their friends had said. But every month
would be a regular reminder of failure. Every 28 days like clockwork
there was a double-barreled emotional challenge. Sometimes the clock
would click a little slowly and Betty's hopes would soar, only to be
devastated by the tardy truth a few days later. Those hoped-for
months - those dreaded months - became hopeful and hopeless years.
They tried not to think about the fact that time was running out.
Every year had its predictable hard times. Family times were
terrible. Holidays. The aunts and uncles talking about potty training
and discipline problems; the grandparents doting over the most recent
grandchild; the nieces and nephews asking, "Why aren't you a
mommy yet, Aunt Betty?" It was almost more than Zach and Betty
could take. Even the innocent squeal of delight when a cousin tore
open a present tore at their hearts like an unsharpened knife angling
through a loaf of bread.
Well-meaning friends had their advice. "Just relax. Don't try so
hard. Take an extended vacation. Why don't you adopt a child? Then
you're sure to get pregnant." Or "Have faith."
Or, "Just trust God." That one hurt the most.
After a while, it got to Zach. He wished these well-wishers would
come down with a lifelong case of laryngitis. How could so-called
friends be so cruel? Like those confronted with the doctor's
diagnosis of a terminal illness, Betty and Zach eventually found
themselves working through a complicated set of emotional responses.
First there was denial. The statistics are disconcerting. In
the United States alone there are two million couples each year who
cannot get pregnant. One in six couples who want children are unable
to have them. But Betty would say to Zach, "Despite the
statistics, surely the odds are in our favor."
But then came isolation. As my friends gradually began to
accept the likelihood that perhaps they would never have children,
they began to withdraw from family and friends except for the events
that Zach's position at church required them to attend. They politely
turned down invitations to gatherings where small children would be
present or where the conversation of grown-ups would focus on
parenting issues. Ironically they dearly longed for companionship and
friends with whom they could share their despair, but their
preoccupation with infertility prevented them from experiencing what
they needed most. Not only was their nursery vacant, so was their
living room. They never had people over. Their house was a lonely
place, and all because of an empty womb.
Then came anger. You'd think that having a deep personal faith
in God would make going through childlessness easier, but not for
Zach and Betty. If anything, it made it worse. The Psalmist
delineated the traditional Biblical view of children.
"Children are a reward from the Lord. Blessed is the man who has
his quiver full." The Scriptures they knew so well were filled
with story after story of couples like them who had not been able to
have a baby, and then because of the gracious intervention of a
merciful, loving God, presto!
There was Abraham and Sarah, Jacob and Rachel, Manoah and his wife,
Elkanah and Hannah. Lots of miraculous babies in the Scriptures. And
then there was that haunting reference to the faithfulness of God in
Psalm 113. Zach knew it by heart. "Who can be compared with God
enthroned on high? Far below him are the heavens and the earth. He
stoops to look and lifts the poor from the dirt and the hungry from
the garbage dump and sets them among princes. He gives children to
the childless wife so that she becomes a happy mother."
Oh yeah? Betty was no happy mother. To denial, isolation and anger
add depression. Betty and Zach stumbled down the stairs into
the emotional basement of despair. Without warning, Betty would just
start to cry in the middle of the afternoon. The sound of children
walking home from school was more than she could handle. Meanwhile,
Zach kept his door shut at the office in hopes of not having to talk
to anybody. When someone occasionally knocked, his stomach knotted
up, and he refused to answer, pretending not to be there.
In time, eventually, this couple embraced the last stage of their
nightmare: Acceptance. No more anger, no more isolation. The
dark clouds of depression had lifted. But life was not what it once
had been. Now it was a series of predictable routines. It had taken
years, but Zach had finally made peace with the fact that his wife
was physiologically incapable of having a baby.
And then, the unthinkable happened.
This morning, consider the hand of God in Zechariah' life. He
experienced a divine touch he really never expected. When that touch
came, it wasn't immediately obvious to him that it in fact was a
touch from God, but in the several months of uncomfortable silence
that followed, Zechariah recognized the fingerprints of God in
unmistakable ways.
In Luke 1, it is clear that Zechariah was spiritually sensitive. Why
else would Luke make note of the fact that here were God-fearing
people? Whether that sensitivity grew out of a painful disappointment
of infertility or was already a reality when the diagnosis was clear,
we don't know. But it seems fairly certain that Zechariah and
Elizabeth had finally come to a point where they graciously accepted
the test of faith God had allowed in their lives. They had come to
terms with an empty-nest syndrome that had nothing to do with kids
moving out of the house.
But if Zechariah had become spiritually sensitive from the heartache
and hardships he and Elizabeth had faced, then why didn't he
immediately believe the incredibly good news the angel announced?
Quite possibly, it's because of the ruts that had formed as the years
had passed: that sense in his mind and heart that an answer to their
lifelong prayer at this point would be too late. Routines ruled the
day. Elizabeth had her checklist of regular chores. Zechariah's list
in this particular season included doing his time at the temple. They
had grown accustomed to the predictable ways in which God involved
and didn't involve himself in their lives.
Now this morning you may not relate to the plight of infertility. But
you most certainly can relate to what it means to be hostage to ruts
and routines. When is the last time that you could validate any sense
of the supernatural in your day-to-day existence? That's one of the
things that Christmas is all about. Has God seemed strangely distant?
Has your heart's longings gone unresponded? Do you perhaps feel
worthless and useless, barren and lifeless?
This Christmas we celebrate the fact that God touched us, touched
Zechariah and Elizabeth - Zach and Betty - with a baby's hand. The
baby given to Zechariah and Elizabeth was the prophet John. We know
him as John the Baptist. He would be the one to announce the coming
Messiah. But God sent his son Jesus in another miraculous
circumstance just a few months later, and he came as a baby to redeem
the world from sin.
We've got babies here this morning, and I just want us to appreciate
a little bit what the touch of a baby's hand meant to Zechariah. [walking
into the congregation and embracing newborn] Now Claira
is two months old. When I pick up little Claira, I'm touched. I'm
touched by memories. I'm touched by one memory I had with both of my
little girls when they were newborns a long time ago, 21 years and 18
years ago. I remember in each case the first time they grabbed my
finger. I remember them looking into my eyes and saying with their
eyes, "Mommy, I'm so glad I'm in your family." That touch
cements a relationship for life, doesn't it?
I also remember Thursday night on ABC news, seventeen women who have
given birth since September 11th. Seventeen women who are widows of
the victims of the World Trade Center have given birth. And one of
them looked at her infant son and said, "You are the kiss your
father left behind."
Babies touch us. This one touches us, and many more in this room. But
we are touched because God chose something so wonderful and soft and
innocent to communicate his love and to reach in where we need to be
reached in our hearts. [Returning to
pulpit . . .]
In our spiritual life sometimes we forget that that's the kind of
intimacy that God has given as a gift, the kind of bond that God has
forged with us. We somehow have drifted away, or our hands have
become callused so we can't feel the soft skin. Perhaps we have
sinned or made a regretful error and believe that we are damaged
goods who can never return to the Lord. On the other hand, some of us
may have settled into such a mundane religious routine that nothing
exciting has happened to us spiritually for a very long time.
Just because we aren't expecting God to intervene doesn't mean that
God won't. We take Zechariah as our great reminder.
I'd like to ask you to do something. As you sit there, would you
please hold out your hands, there on your lap, just open. Turn them
palm side up and look at them. Now apart from the ring that may
encircle one or more of your fingers, they are empty. That's the
picture of a vacant womb. It's a picture of an empty manager. It's a
picture of a dish of dreams that, due to leaks, remains unfilled.
While you are looking at this close-at-hand symbol of your neediness,
be reminded that God has not forgotten you. According to the Prophet
Isaiah, the Lord has tattooed our names on the palms of his hands so
that we are never out of reach of his life-changing touch.
No doubt you have heard a classic poem "The Touch of the
Master's Hand", and I'd like to read it to you today and use
that as a means of appreciating the touch and the power of God's hand.
Twas battered and scarred, and the auctioneer
Thought it scarcely worth his while
To waste much time on the old violin,
But held it up with a smile.
"What am I bidden, good folks," he cried,
"Who will start bidding for me?
A dollar, a dollar" - then, "Two!" "Only two?
Two dollars, and who'll make it three?
"Three dollars, twice; Going for three."
But no,
From the room, far back, a gray-haired man
Came forward and picked up the bow;
Then wiping the dust from the old violin,
And tightening the loose strings.
He played a melody pure and sweet
As sweet as a caroling angel sings.
The music ceased and the auctioneer
With a voice that was quiet and low,
Said "What am I bidden for the old violin?"
And he held it up with the bow.
"A thousand dollars, and who'll make it two?
Two thousand! And who'll make it three?
Three thousand, once; three thousand twice;
And going, and gone!" said he.
The people cheered, but some of them cried,
"We do not quite understand . . .
What changed its worth?" Swift came the reply:
"The touch of the master's hand."
And many a man with life out of tune,
And battered and scattered with sin,
Is auctioned off cheap to the thoughtless crowd,
Much like the old violin.
A "mess of pottage," a glass of wine;
A game - and he travels on.
He's "going" once, and "going" twice,
He's "going" and "almost gone."
But the Master comes and the foolish crowd
Never quite understands
The worth of a soul and the change that's wrought
By the touch of the Master's hand.
What sort of fresh touch from God are you seeking today? Maybe you
are in need of the touch of the angel's hand. Is there a message God
is trying to get across to you, but he needs silence in order to be
heard.
Are you here today perhaps because you need the touch of a baby's
hand? What new life is God wanting to birth in your heart?
Could it be that you are here today because you need the touch of the
Master's hand? You feel discarded, damaged by life's hard knocks.
Your true worth has never been discovered nor your potential
discovered. You would like to hear the music again that you were
designed to make.
Let me ask again. Are you in need of a fresh touch from God? Let him
pick you up and hold you in his life-giving hands. Amen.