Shepherd of the Springs
Lutheran Church-Missouri Synod

This evening we begin our midweek Advent meditations to prepare for the festival of the birth of Jesus our Savior. Our theme for this year’s preparation is, The Advent Shadows of Bethlehem. We may look at shadows in general in two different ways. On the one hand. shadows are negative images. . . negative images produced by objects that stand in the light. In another sense, however, shadows render things hard to make out. We may look right at the object, yet not see its true color, texture, or shape. Indeed we may mistake its true identity by making erroneous judgments about what we think we see. Things often look quite different, yes even startlingly different in the light than in the shadows.

With this general truth in mind, you are invited this Advent season to prepare for the coming of Light of the World by first visiting Bethlehem in the shadows . . . a kind of advance visit, as it were . . . on the basis of sections of the prophecy of Zechariah, the priest and father of John the Baptist on the occasion of his birth. If we were to walk the streets of Bethlehem, here a few weeks before the birth of Jesus, we would be visiting a city within the region of Judea which was an occupied land by the might of Rome. The great splendor of the nation in the days of David and Solomon were long past. Indeed for most of the past 300 years, the children of Abraham were a hostage people first under Seleucid domination, then a vassal of Egypt, and finally they came under the rule of Rome.

The Lord God made a unilateral covenant with Abraham to make a great nation by which his seed would be a blessing - indeed a blessing that would go out to all the nations of the world. But, God also spoke through Moses promising that misery and enslavement would come to the covenanting children of Abraham if they forsook the provisions of the Law by which he would rule them. And now, many centuries later, in the shadows of Bethlehem, we see these people under the occupation of a foreign power, and under the effects of sin and faithlessness as a people of God who failed miserably to measure up to their responsibilities of being the chosen people of God. God did not broken his promises but the people did. . . . But in the midst of this darkness comes the prophecy of the priest, Zechariah . . . Blessed be the Lord God of Israel, for he has visited and redeemed his people and has raised up a horn of salvation for us in the house of his servant David . . . the oath which he swore to our father Abraham, to grant us that we, being delivered from the hand of our enemies, might serve him without fear, in holiness and righteousness before him all our days. (Vs.75)

In the shadows of Bethlehem, what we can see, is a wilderness of disappointment. Foreign powers rule the land and that is not all. Foreign powers rule in the heart and lives of God’s people. The life of faithfulness to God and his covenant of Law has never measured up to what it was supposed to be. The power of sin, selfishness, and self-made idols has been too strong. Hope in the darkness of this day and the hour must come from the outside . . . and in the Shadows of Bethlehem, Zechariah pronounces it upon the return of Elijah in the person of his son, John. The Deliverer, the blessed promised seed of Abraham, is poised to make his appearance. Actually, He is already here, but we must still await his appearance in Bethlehem with the birth of Mary’s child a short time up the way from now. The babe we behold now is John. He is the forerunner who will make a ministry in the wilderness of his father’s prophecy. Out of the shadows of Bethlehem will come the light of the world. Jesus has come to bring release to the captives and deliverance for the people of God.

And as we also stand in the shadows of Bethlehem, here two millennia later, we too know what it is like to be an occupied people. We too have been frustrated by the demands of the Law; occupied by the realities of sin, death, and the devil that would enslave us, and from which . . . we too need deliverance. We fit nicely in the darkness of Bethlehem’s shadows needing a light to lighten us, to remove us from our captivity, and enable us to serve our God without fear, in holiness and righteousness before him all our days. This will be made possible not by receiving another chance to get it right, not by firmer resolve, or a more concerted effort to measure up to righteous demands of the Law of Moses. But, rather is will be made possible by the holiness and righteousness of the babe of Bethlehem who will be and do for us what we cannot be and do for ourselves. In the power of his righteousness shining on us, the darkness of our sin will be covered, the bondage of our death overcome, and the captivity of the Devil broken. In him, we too will inherit the promised blessing of the seed of Abraham who will set us free from all the powers of darkness. And the land that will be restored to us will be called the Kingdom of God, a return for us to Paradise. God through the priest, Zechariah said so. And through his newborn son, John, through the return of Elijah, he will say so again. And even angels will say so to a bunch of shepherds, who like all of us, will come to see the Great Light, while living in the shadows of Bethlehem. A-men.