Against Cynicism: The Good that Remains
Luke 1:67-79
Then his father Zechariah was filled with the Holy Spirit and spoke this prophecy:
‘Blessed be the Lord God of Israel,
for he has looked favourably on his people and redeemed them.
He has raised up a mighty saviour for us
in the house of his servant David,
as he spoke through the mouth of his holy prophets from of old,
that we would be saved from our enemies and from the hand of all who hate us.
Thus he has shown the mercy promised to our ancestors,
and has remembered his holy covenant,
the oath that he swore to our ancestor Abraham,
to grant us that we, being rescued from the hands of our enemies,
might serve him without fear, in holiness and righteousness
before him all our days.
And you, child, will be called the prophet of the Most High;
for you will go before the Lord to prepare his ways,
to give knowledge of salvation to his people
by the forgiveness of their sins.
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.’
As is often the case with our selected passages, we’re starting in the middle of the story. Just before Zechariah’s joyful song Linda just read for us, Mary, mother of Jesus, fled to her much older and well-to-do cousin Elizabeth’s house, Zechariah’s wife, full of awe and fear that she, an unwed woman was carrying a very special child in her womb. Elizabeth greets her with joy, for she is also carrying a baby that will grow to change the world, and prepare the way for Mary’s child. But before all this song and joy, there was disbelief. In verses 8-20, Gabriel tells Zechariah of the miraculous baby is wife, thought to be long past child-bearing age is carrying—“How will I know that this is so? For I am an old man, and my wife is getting on in years,” Zechariah protests. Gabriel responds, “…because you did not believe my words, which will be fulfilled in their time, you will become mute, unable to speak, until the day these things occur.” So what we heard today are Zechariah’s first words after about nine months of silence.
It's interesting that when Gabriel visits Mary, she also protests—“How can this be?” she asks when Gabriel tells her she is pregnant. But she isn’t punished. Gabriel simply assures her that all is possible with God, and her bold response is “Here am I, the servant of the Lord.” We could speculate on the reasons for this. I like to think that frankly, Zechariah should have known better. He was a high priest from a good household. He was educated, likely very financially stable; he was also a good man— he was righteous and pious, he held the commandments, he did all the right rituals—but when he was really faced with a miracle, when he was face-to-face with a representative of God, he couldn’t bring himself to believe.
I wonder if this man, in spite of his faith in God, in spite of his position as a high priest, had just seen too much in his life to be able to truly believe. Zechariah was obviously an older man—had seen his homeland taken over; though he was able to live a relatively comfortable and fulfilling life, his people were still and occupied people. They were not allowed to fully be themselves. They were vulnerable to the often tyrannical and unpredictable whims of the reign of King Herod. Zechariah had lived his life seeing promises unfulfilled and destinies unmet. And so maybe he was just too jaded to believe something brand new was really going to happen. Maybe he was just too cynical.
One of my favorite current thinkers and writers working right now is Jamelle Bouie. His columns and writing are wonderful, but lately he’s been very active on social media as well, and posting very poignant and thought-provoking videos about the state of the country right now that have been helping me put things in perspective. He recently posted a video against cynicism. “A constant cynical view of everything,” he says, “ends up empowering the people who are out to do harm.” He talks about how having this basis of cynicism, “oh, every politician’s a crook, everyone’s out for themselves, nothing will end up changing for the better” make it so we feel as if we have no choice in the matter, makes it seem as if nothing matter because everyone’s terrible, so what’s the point? It lulls us into this angry complacency, right? I can only wonder if that’s why this country has ended up where we are— divided, resigned, unbelieving that change is possible, that something good and new can really, truly happen. Bouie continues to posit that being that cynical only leads us to being more vulnerable to being conned, to being taken advantage of, vulnerable to giving up, and that we need “to have an open enough mind to realize that the world is not actually…a total hellscape across all dimensions,” he says with a chuckle.
I have to wonder whether Gabriel shut Zechariah up for nine months because he was too cynical to be a true support to Elizabeth and Mary; that because of his cynicism, because of his difficulty believing that good things could actually happen, he could have been, essentially, a bad influence on Mary and Elizabeth, that he could very well have brought them down with his own jadedness, so Gabriel had to protect that peace and that joy Mary and Elizabeth were holding in their hearts and in their wombs by not letting Zechariah’s cynicism bleed through.
In an interview with Vox, the psychologist and professor Jamil Zaki explains cynicism this way:
If you think that things are a certain way, you will pay lots of attention to any information that accords with that perspective and ignore or discount evidence that doesn’t, so you end up through your worldview finding confirmation for it and doubling, tripling, quadrupling down.
Zechariah had seen so much bad in his life—war, violence, occupation, corruption; not to mention personal disappointments in not being able to have children— that even when faced with a glowing representative of God, he could not bring himself to believe.
And so our passage today comes eight days after the birth of Elizabeth’s and Zechariah’s son, the day of circumcision. As is the custom in Jewish tradition, he would not be named until this ritual had taken place. Neighbors and friends, gathered for the ritual, especially excited because of miraculous nature of the birth, assume that the boy will be named after his father. Elizabeth corrects them, “No; he is to be called John.” The neighbors protest to what they see as a strange disregard of tradition. They look to Zechariah, and, still mute, asks for a tablet and writes on it, “His name is John.” It is at this point his voice is freed.
What could have been going through Zechariah’s mind during those months of silence? Listening to Mary and Elizabeth speak with fear, wonder, and awe about their respective pregnancies; presumably unable to do so many of his priestly duties with no voice… he had nine months to think, nine months to wonder, nine months to come to terms with the unbelievable things that were occurring, nine months to silently watch his formerly barren wife’s belly grow bigger and bigger.
That action of writing “His name is John”— that was proof God had wiped away a lifetime of disappointment that led to years of bitterness. It was proof that Zechariah truly believed. He was no longer a discouraged cynic—he was now a believer, prepared to foster his son’s greatness, prepared to raise him in love and in joy, truly understanding, truly believing, that his son would set the stage for a new era.
Today’s passage, Zechariah’s song, is full of Old Testament prophetic references. It’s full of call-backs to psalms of praise and faith that God would indeed come through, that justice would be had, that a reign of peace was indeed possible. This song acts as a bridge between the faith and the promises of the prophets of old, and the prophesy of what is to come in Jesus, preceded by John. Zechariah has his true faith back. He’s finally seeing that promises will be kept, that this new generation will usher in hope, will “…guide our feet into the way of peace.”
Instead of letting the past be a burden and bog him down, Zechariah takes the signs, the prophesies, the songs of the past, of his predecessors—those of Joel and Solomon, of Isaiah and David—and he refashions them with this divinely inspired new prophesy— as a promised set to be fulfilled. “You child,” he says to his newborn son, “will be called a prophet of the Most High; for you will…give light to those who sit in darkness and in the shadow of death, / to guide our feet into the way of peace.”
The theme for the second week of Advent is always peace… but there is just so much joy in this passage. And since next week is the Christmas pageant, and so I won’t be preaching, I figured—this passage is perfect for combining the two. Just imagine, after nine months of silence, and after a lifetime of disappointment and bitterness, after a lifetime of doing everything for your faith and having little to show for it besides a materially comfortable life, imagine the Holy Spirit racing through you with song and prophesy about promises at long last fulfilled, about the power and the glory your child will usher in.
Imagine being able, in a world this broken, to rid ourselves of our cynicism… and instead of be filled with this kind of joy, this kind of deep faith and confidence that something new and good is finally going to happen.
Now… realistically, we probably are only at the point of imagining this. I can’t promise you a divine prophesy of an imminent new era; I can’t promise you peace in our lifetimes. And I certainly can’t promise you that I have a guidebook for ridding ourselves of the cynicism that stops so much good from happening, that stops so much good from even being imagined!
But remember, Advent is a time of waiting. And Advent is a time of quiet contemplation. It is a time of reframing and refreshing. We don’t have to punish ourselves with silence for nine months, but I wonder if we can take some time, especially when we feel that cruel cynicism trying to claw its way to the surface, to stop and be still; and be open-minded enough to see the good that remains. In a different article, that same psychologist I mentioned earlier, Dr. Zaki says, “If a person cuts me off in traffic, my kids will hear about that person all day. But I don’t notice the thousand motorists who are politely obeying traffic laws all around me.”
I wonder if this is kind of Advent practice of peace we can work on—finding peace with the one bad egg, and then finding the joy and the relief in the fact that there are hundreds of other people we walk, drive, or ride by every day who are doing the right thing. I wonder if these are some small ways we can work to beat back that cynicism, ways we can work to beat that defeatism that comes with being that cynical.
Rather than being convinced that one reckless driver means we can trust no one on the roads; rather than convincing ourselves that a few politicians trying to game an already deeply flawed and broken system means it doesn’t matter who’s in charge, or means that anyone vying for that kind of power or influence is bad; rather than letting bad thing after bad thing, act of violence after act of violence convince us that there is no good in the world, let’s stop. Let’s be quiet. Let’s mute ourselves and that angry cynicism creeping up in us and think about the good that remains in this world. We cannot let cynicism trick us into apathy. We cannot let it trick us into believing that great things aren’t possible.
Now, please don’t misunderstand me—I’m not encouraging toxic positivity here. We have to be realistic, we have to be aware of the bad in the world so that we can work to stop it. Burying our heads in the sand and pretending everything is fine is just as bad as assuming everything is so bad that nothing matters. But maybe we can look to the past as Zechariah did with the prophets of old— and we can find the good that still existed even amidst the grief and struggles, and use that to buoy our souls, and keeps us moving forward. And maybe we look to the present and find the flickers of light and the signs of life amidst these darkening Winter days and this barren snowy landscape. And then we look to the future, to the path ahead, and allow ourselves to be guided “into the way of peace.”
Because no matter how bad things get, and things can, indeed, get bad— God’s light in this world is never extinguished. We just have to patient enough and open enough to see it. Amen.
