Week One
December 2, 2021
Light is Coming
Luke 1:68-79
By the tender mercy of our God, the dawn from on high will break upon us, to give light to those who sit in darkness and in the shadow of death, to guide our feet into the way of peace. Luke 1:78-79
To be at all cognizant of one’s location in history is to know the moments when blessings have flowed. Or, rather, faithful existence requires that we practice some degree of even-keeled honesty over trying seasons before us, when grief takes the form of future stories lost.
What perhaps makes this honesty most challenging is that it demands as much sobriety in the face of God’s gifts as it does for times when God feels absent. For faith practitioners of a progressive persuasion, the problem often is not our ability to sustain faith during seasons of drought; it is instead the audacity to consider that God actually remembered us. Self-worth is a theological issue prone to overcorrection.
In the opening chapter of Luke’s Gospel, we witness Elizabeth and Zechariah navigate this tension over God’s providence in a disarming fashion. Their hope for a child had long vanished by the time the angel of the Lord visits Zechariah, revealing that Elizabeth would soon give birth to a son named John. To the delight of those of us who resent perfect believers, Zechariah is not without his doubts. Before praising the Lord God of Israel in verse 68, he interrogates the angel of the Lord in verse 18, inquiring into how it is possible for God to remember him in the eleventh hour.
For those of us prone to despair in the darker and colder months of Advent, the closing words of Zechariah’s prophecy in Luke 1 pose a possibility that may take time to accept: “By the tender mercy of our God, the dawn from on high will break upon us, to give light to those who sit in darkness and in the shadow of death, to guide our feet into the way of peace.”
Dr. Peter Capretto
Assistant Professor of Pastoral Care in Religion and Culture
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