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Speechless
Friday, December 19, 2014
Third Week of Advent
Luke 1:19-22
To Zechariah the angel said, “I am Gabriel, who stands before God. I was sent to speak to you and announce the good news. But now you will be speechless and unable to talk until the day these things take place … The people were waiting and were amazed that he stayed so long in the sanctuary. When he came out he was unable to speak to them, and they realized he had seen a vision.
I realize as I read this story that a major role of the person who represents me before God – my pastor, my priest – is to put himself in the path of mystery. Collisions between God and man belong to us all, but perhaps they occur more often in the lives of those who lead, those who pray, those who intercede and wait on God day by day. Because that’s their calling.
Administrative skill, charm, and right-thinking are necessary but not sufficient priestly pastoral skills. The gift of entering the sanctuary to find the vision is necessary too. Taking the TIME to enter in.
No doubt God has words prepared for each of us, sometimes carried by Gabriel, sometimes not. All we have to do is enter the sanctuary.
If I don’t make the time for this, I won’t hear the words. If my priest doesn’t make time for this, then he will have nothing to share with me either. He will be speechless, and I will be lost in a world of my own making, filled with my own words, covered over by my own solitary, mostly empty life.
We all belong to what Peter calls the “priesthood of all believers.” Any given day, God might call me to come into the sanctuary, collide with me, and give me words to give away. And that is just as true for you as it is for me.
So we learn to listen, Lord, in the still of night and din of noon, for a whisper. Your silence is louder than my life, if I just lean my ear your way. Keep me on this path of quiet longing; let me wait right now with Zechariah for your words of birth and joy.
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