“It so happened that as Zachariah was carrying out his priestly duties before God, working the shift assigned to his regiment, it came his one turn in life to enter the sanctuary of God and burn incense… Unannounced, an angel of God appeared just to the right of the altar of incense. Zachariah was paralyzed in fear.But the angel reassured him, "Don't fear, Zachariah. Your prayer has been heard. Elizabeth, your wife, will bear a son by you.”
--Luke 1:8-13
I make my living in advertising, as a creative director. But truth be told, writing--song lyrics and short stories, theater pieces, screen plays, novels and creative non-fiction—that’s what I really love. So while I’ve done a certain kind of writing throughout my advertising career, it hasn’t been that fulfilling to me. And while advertising has paid the bills, all my life I’ve also been writing in my spare time—the stuff I really enjoy. But as much as I’ve always wanted to sell a novel or screenplay or a non-fiction book, I haven’t. As much as I want to get paid for doing what I really love, I never have. And most of the time I just deal with it, but as you can probably imagine, it doesn’t always feel so good.
A couple weeks ago, a good friend of mine, we’ll call him Sam, who also has a corporate job and writes “for fun” on the side, got some very positive news about his writing. He’d recently made a trip to LA and while there he made some good contacts for both screenwriting and songwriting and ended up with a few very important, famous, successful type people interested in seeing more of his work. When he told me about this over lunch one day I said “Oohs and aahs” at all the right times. I told him how happy I was for him. Multiple times. I smiled until I thought my mouth was going to fall off. I even offered to help him punch up one of his scripts. And then I promptly went home and ate about half my weight in Doritos nacho flavored tortilla chips. Why? Because it’s my addiction, it’s what I do to numb the pain and to take away the feeling that THERE ISN'T ENOUGH TO GO AROUND. In that moment it seemed like stuffing myself was the only way I could stuff back down this feeling of being ripped off and cheated, it was the only way I could get through the anger and resentment I was feeling toward everyone, including God. All I could think in that moment was that Sam is going to become this huge success doing what I love to do and I'm going to do nothing and get nowhere. And never in my life will I get what I really want.
When you read the gospel of Luke, you find a lot of miraculous events surrounding the birth of Jesus. The first of them happens with the birth of the child of Elizabeth and Zachariah, John the Baptist, the prophet who came before Jesus to preach and prepare the people’s hearts for Jesus’ message.
Elizabeth, and her husband, the priest Zachariah, had been wanting to have a baby for a long time. But it hadn’t happened for them. I can certainly imagine what that feels like. Can’t you? Can’t you imagine how sick with disappointment they were every month when Elizabeth didn’t get pregnant? How deeply jealous they felt when friends got pregnant easily—friends who practically just exchanged a romantic glance across the room and were suddenly “with child”—while they tried and tried, did all the right things, kept trying, and still nothing.
Even if you haven’t gone through this with a pregnancy, I suspect you know what it’s like to desperately wish for something that doesn’t seem to ever happen for you. While it seems to happen easily for others. Maybe like me, you have a dream of work that is actually fulfilling and enlivening to you. Maybe you wish for healthier relationships with family members. Maybe you pray for an end to physical illness. Or an easier sobriety. Or serenity. Or a deeper experience of God’s love. But for some reason, it doesn’t seem to be happening. But we can name ten people it is happening for, no problem. Maybe you want recognition at work. But your coworker seems to get it all. Or you want kids who like to be with you and enjoy talking to you and who shower regularly and with gusto. But the size 4, Lycra-work-out-leggings-wearing neighbor gets those kinds of kids, not you.
I don’t know about you but I believe in miracles…miracles that seem to fall into the laps of everyone but me.
But in the scripture we read today, Zachariah finally gets his miracle. An angel shows up while he’s at work, full of good news for him. What he and Elizabeth have wanted and wished for and prayed for all these years is finally going to happen. Cool, huh?
Zachariah doesn’t start jumping up and down too soon though. He’s like the congresswoman who got a call from president elect Barack Obama this week congratulating her on her re-election, and she hung up on him—twice—thinking it was a hoax. Zachariah seemed to be feeling the same thing. Was he getting punked by an angel?
It was hard for him to believe, I think, because he was just tired of hoping, and maybe in his exhaustion his vision was clouded, clouded by daily life, by business as usual. That’s how I feel too often, I admit. Here we are in this season of hope and joy and angel voices and it’s hard to see much except the lists of things I need to do, the work I need to finish, the dirty dishes in the sink and the bad traffic on the snowy highway. If there are miracles around me, if they want my attention, they better get in line. If you’re going to give me a sign, it better be neon and flashing, and maybe slap me upside the head. Zachariah’s got the angel Gabriel standing right in front of him and even he asks for a sign. And Gabriel says, Hello. I’m Gabriel. I sit next to God. What more do you need? Maybe that’s why Gabriel puts Zachariah into a cone of silence for a while. He forces him to do as the Psalmist says, Be still and know that I am God. Be still and pay attention. Be still and be grateful for the miracles that are all around you. All the time.
I think another reason Zachariah had a hard time taking in the miracle that was being offered to him was that it didn’t look the way he expected. When the angel gave him the news he practically said, Are you kidding me? After all this time? I was expecting this 20 years ago not now, not like this.
I can relate to that too. About 10 years ago I went through a very bad time in my career. I got a new boss who I couldn’t “relate to very well.” He didn’t seem to like me either and he did some very nasty things behind my back and essentially took me off an account that I’d been managing quite successfully for a long time and gave it to some other guy who he liked more. And then while he didn’t take away my title, he gave me the choice of reporting to this guy (which in essence was a demotion) or leaving the company. I think his exact words were “Don’t let the door hit you on the ass on the way out.” I began to lovingly refer to this boss as Satan, not to his face, of course, and I was really strongly thinking about heading out that door. But financially it would have been insane at the time…so I felt stuck, and unsure what to do.
I’d been in recovery a while, and I’d been learning about asking for help…not my strong suit, but I decided to give it a try. I prayed about it, I prayed for the miracle I knew I needed and finally decided to call one of the other big wigs in our agency, we’ll call him Bill, someone I’d reported to only briefly in my career, who was now actually one of the top execs in the company. Bill was higher up on the food chain than my boss, Satan, and I thought maybe Bill would see what an idiot my boss was being and fix everything for me. Get me what I wanted, which was my position and my account back. So I went to Bill’s office. Bill, you should know, was truly a crazy man—hugely overweight, full of barely controlled rage, mercurial on the best of days—but basically he and I hadn’t had any major run ins when I reported to him, and I knew he hated my boss, so I was hopeful he’d take my side.
As I walked into Bill’s office, he got up from behind his desk and started walking toward me. I thought he was coming over to give me a hug. I don’t know why I thought this. He’d never hugged me before. But I fell into his arms and just started crying. I cried and cried and crazy Bill just stood there and patted me on the back. When I calmed down a little, he guided me over to the sitting area in his office and we sat on his couches and talked a while about the situation. Then he asked me if I had a family. I said yes. And he said, “And they love you? And you love them?” I said yes. He said, “You are very lucky. There are many, many people who can’t say that.” And I knew he was speaking of himself. He counseled me that day to keep the job in perspective. He told me I’d always been a team player and to keep being a team player and everything would be all right.
When I left his office I felt much better. I remembered these lines from a D.H. Lawrence poem:
What is the knocking? What is the knocking at the door in the night?
It's somebody wants to do us harm.
No, no, it is the three strange angels. Admit them, admit them.
And I also realized, suddenly, that when my strange angel Bill had started walking toward me when I came in the door, he’d had no intention whatsoever of hugging me. He was simply heading over to sit down on the couches on the other side of the room.
But I got a miracle that day. It wasn’t the one I wanted or expected. But it was the miracle I needed. I followed his advice and I ended up with a better job. I also ended up learning and growing tremendously from the devil boss who turned out to be another strange angel himself.
I was looking at the 12 promises from the Big Book the other day and I was thinking about what a list that is. What miracles would have to occur to see this list fulfilled in my own life:
We are going to know a new freedom and a new happiness.
We will not regret the past nor wish to shut the door on it.
We will comprehend the word serenity.
We will know peace.
No matter how far down the scale we have gone, we will see how our experience can benefit others.
That feeling of uselessness and self-pity will disappear.
We will lose interest in selfish things and gain interest in our fellows.
Self-seeking will slip away.
Our whole attitude and outlook upon life will change.
Fear of people and of economic insecurity will leave us.
We will intuitively know how to handle situations which used to baffle us.
We will suddenly realize that God is doing for us what we could not do for ourselves.
Wow. Hard to believe I’d ever get all that. As hard to believe as a very old barren woman and a crotchety old man having a baby.
I love what it says in the Big Book at the end of this list:
Are these extravagant promises? We think not. They are being fulfilled among us - sometimes quickly, sometimes slowly.
I don’t know what miracles you’re looking for. Hoping for. What miracles you desperately need in your life. But just for today, I can tell you this. They are being fulfilled among us - sometimes quickly, sometimes slowly.
Maybe to see that, we just need to be still, be quiet, pay attention and open our eyes to the strange angels.
And I’m also learning to listen to these words, straight from the mouth of the angel Gabriel: Do not be afraid. Your prayer has been heard.
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