Were I to attend a meeting of the 12-step support group that would be most personally beneficial, I would walk up to the podium and say, "Good morning. My name is Duane, and I'm a messaholic." Messaholics are known by several designations: slobs, untidy, orderly-impaired, organizationally-challenged. Jesus says of Christians, "By their fruits ye shall know them." He would say of Messaholics, "By the number of empty coffee cups, cookie crumbs and unopened junk mail in their automobiles ye shall know them."
There. I've said it: My name is Duane and I'm a Messaholic. Boy, do I ever feel better.
Surprisingly, many Messaholics are walking contradictions. Although displaying an outward appearance of chaos, Messaholics can be, on the interior, very organized and systematic. Although displaying an outward appearance of accumulated dust, Messaholics can be obsessive about certain aspects of hygiene and appearance.
Unlike alcoholics and other people with problems of substance abuse, you can't always make a direct correlation between Messaholics and their parents. I'm the greatest example in the world of that because my mother is the diametric opposite of her youngest son. Mom is one of the most organized people on the planet, one of those people whose bed is always made and whose car is always vacuumed. In her pantry, the green vegetables are organized distinct from the yellow vegetables. She takes a permanent marker and writes the date of purchase on top of every can. Her freezer is better organized than the floor plan of the Pentagon. And then there's her diary. She can tell you what she had for supper on March 13, 1978 and to what extent my Dad was getting on her nerves that day. In short, she is everything that her youngest son is not.
I've had three jobs that I've totally loved. One is what I'm doing now and hope to be doing until the day I make like a frog and croak. The second job that I truly loved was what I did in my B.S. days, my before-seminary days: a broadcaster. And it may surprise you to no end what my other all-time favorite job was. While in college, I had a work-study job as a janitor. That's right: I, the Messaholic with disinfectic phobia who would not notice a mound of dust unless it made me sneeze, was once a card-carrying member of local 1318 of the Amalgamated Brotherhood of Broom-Pushers.
Here's why I loved being a sanitation technician: I could walk into the same classroom where I sat earlier that day absorbing the nuances of Hermeneutics and Apologetics and totally immersed in the study of Greek papyruses (or papyri as they are properly termed) and the room would be a mess. Chairs would be turned this way and that. The place would be filled with donut crumbs and empty Pepsi cans. Papers would be strewn all over the place. The blackboard would be scribbled with obscure dates in church history. I would enter a room with all those conditions, but when I left the blackboard would have a clean slate. The donut crumbs, Pepsi cans and scraps of paper would be vanquished. The floor would be clean. And the chairs would be lined up neat and orderly.
That's the difference between being a janitor and an educator and/or a pastor: a teacher can stand at the lectern all day and dispense his knowledge to a room full of empty skulls, and never know what kind of progress he's making. True, a teacher gives quizzes and tests and asks questions, but she never really has an immediate barometer of what she's done. Some of it flies over the students' heads; some of it lands in the way of intellectual knowledge; but a teacher never really knows. The same applies to being a pastor. You can preach until you're blue in the face, counsel people with their problems for hours on end, do twelve funerals, eight baptisms, exchange five gold rings and still not see the partridge in a pear tree. But when you're a janitor at a college, you walk into a room that's a mess, and you leave a room that is clean and neat and orderly. When you punch out at the end of the day, you actually have something to show for it. You have concrete, tangible proof that your efforts have made a difference. You've prepared the way for a future of scholars and preachers and educators.
They didn't have janitors, per se, around the time of the first Advent. Have you any idea whose job it was to keep the Temple clean and orderly? It was the priest's job to do that.
The Temple in Jerusalem was a beehive of activity. Its primary function, however, was sacrifices. Animal sacrifices were going on there every day. And like anything, there had to be somebody there to do it. The Temple sacrifice was not like a self-service place where you bought your own animal and sacrificed it the way you bag your own groceries. All sacrifices and the rites and the rituals had to be performed by a priest. It was the epitome of a full-service shop. And every priest went through years of preparation and training and education. There was classroom work. There was observation at the job sight. There were techniques to develop. It was highly intensive, rigorous and very demanding.
Thus after every priest donned a cap and gown and was passed his sheepskin, he was filled with knowledge and training for these important functions. He would show up at the Temple and officiate the rites and administer the programs and perform the sacrifices, all of which were extremely important. Then, at the end of the day when the congregation went home, there was a mess to clean up. Somebody had to clean the splattered blood off the area around the altar. Somebody had to make sure all the curtains were drawn. Somebody had to sweep the mud and the dust off the floor. Somebody had to wash up the knives and all the tools of the trade and put them safely away. And the only person who could do these seemingly mundane, Plain Jane little chores was the Priest. The only person qualified to be the church janitor was none other than the resident clergyman.
Every job has its high and low points. Let's talk about the drawbacks and the unpleasantries inherent in being a Priest. First of all, you couldn't have a weak stomach. Being a priest made the guy who offs the animals at the slaughterhouse look like the guy who sits in a tollbooth and collects tokens all day by comparison. It was a day-long rigmarole of non-rigor mortis, slitting the throats of animals and hurling their blood. And it wasn't just large animals like bulls and oxen the priest had to assassinate: there were sheep and lambs. There were little, tiny, innocent turtledoves. And so you stood at the altar all day shedding the blood of innocent creatures.
And if that wasn't spooky enough, there was the way that you had to kill the animals. It had to be precise. A certain methodology had to be applied not only from a physical aspect but a spiritual one as well. So if a priest was sloppy or his mind was somewhere else, he had to account to a very demanding Boss, whose initials are GOD, by Whom you did NOT want to be called into His office.
Okay, those are the drawbacks. What about the perks? Well, in the first place, the Temple didn't have to send out recruiters to college campi to convince students to consider a career in the priesthood upon matriculation. This was one job where you could not be unless your last name was Levine. The only people considered for the priesthood were from the Tribe of Levi. As a matter of fact, if your name was Levine, you couldn't be an engineer or an air traffic controller or a high school principal, not that those positions were available back then in the first place. If you were a male and had been born into the tribe of Levi, your lot in life was already fenced in. You HAD to become a Priest
.Now, some people would call that a drawback. It's almost like saying you can't be in any other profession than the auto business if your name is Ford or Honda or Saturn. What if your last name was Hitler? Could you aspire to be anything other than a maniacal dictator? But there are some marvelous benefits if your great grandfather is Henry Ford. And if you're great, great grandfather was one of the twelve sons of Jacob whose name was Levi, there were some tremendous perks that came your way just because your last name was Levinson.
In the first place, your housing was provided for you. Your food was provided for you. You didn't have to worry about scratching out a living by farming or worry about economic conditions of running a business. Your job was so important and your function so crucial to the good of society that they wanted you to be able to devote your full attention to the priesthood.
Now, if these perks weren't good enough, the thing that might have clenched the deal was this: by the time that Luke 1:5-24 came to happen, there were a lot more Levites than there were positions to fill. Israel had on its hands the ultimate clergy glut, so much so that the typical priest only had to work a few weeks a year. And we know that teachers only work 25 hours a week for nine months out of the year the same way we know that preachers only work an hour a week.
So here is the subject of this morning's text: Zechariah, a Priest. It's his time to serve in the Temple. Sacrifices have to be made and somebody's got to do it, and in this case it's Zechariah.
Now, being a priest wasn't all blood and gore. One of the more wonderful functions of the priest was to enter the holy place and to burn incense before the Lord. Because the clergy glut was so overwhelming, this was a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity. So as we read this morning's passage, we see that Zechariah, this old, ancient priest, draws the lucky straw and is chosen to go into the holy place.
Have you ever been in a situation where you felt close to God? I'm not talking about a warm fuzzy, I'm talking about an instance where God is so close that you can see the pores on His skin and hear His breath. I'm talking about where you are so caught up in the presence of God that you lose all sense of place, where nothing else matters, and nothing else exists. Zechariah is doing his job, but it's more than just a duty at this point. This is what it's all about, burning incense being totally alone with God, worshipping God, filled with the presence of God in the Holy Place.
When I lived in Maryland, I had a parishioner who volunteered at the White House, but whose services were used only when her political party's candidate was the presiding resident at the White House. Donna told me what it's like to be in the Oval Office, what it's like to stand and shake hands with the most powerful human being in the world, how otherworldly and ethereal it all is. I know from firsthand experience that you just can't walk in through the front porch on Pennsylvania Avenue, ring the doorbell, and walk into the Oval Office like you were trying to get the President to make a contribution to the United Way. To be able to walk in there and to have a conversation with the President is something that very, very, very, very few people in this world ever get to experience.
Now, take that scenario and transfer it to Zechariah, multiple it by about a quadrillion zillion, and you have what this old priest is experiencing. He is caught up in the moment when God, the Creator of all that is, sends His messenger. One second Zechariah is caught up in the presence of God, praying. He blinks his eyes and there standing before him is the Angel Gabriel.
Zechariah has had two whammies now. In the first place he's doing something very, very, very few people will ever have the opportunity to do. Now, in the second place, he's standing face-to-face with God's holy angel in the same room. Now, some of you say that God talks to you. And I believe that. And I believe He talks with me, too. But not like this. Not in God's Oval Office. Not with God's Gender-Neutral Friday. (Angels are neither male nor female, so I have to be politically correct here and not say Man Friday or Gal Friday.)
These two things happen, either one which is enough to floor a person for a lifetime. But then, the kicker. The be-all to end-all. The angel tells this old, decrepit geezer that he and his wife, who have been trying to conceive children, unsuccessfully, for probably well over 50 years, are going to become parents. And not only that, their son will be the person God uses to prepare the way for the Messiah, the Christ, for God-in-the-flesh.
Zechariah is so overwhelmed by these three things, any single one of which would turn you and me into blathering idiots, that he says, "How can this be? Who do you think I AM? Strom Thurmond?"
So Zechariah leaves the holy place, unable to speak, so caught up in the wonder of all these things that he's unable to utter a single word for the next nine months. And this probably would qualify as a fourth miracle on top of everything else: a preacher keeping his yap shut for nine hours, much less nine months.
And so, at the end of the day, everybody goes home, but Zechariah stays. There is wonder to behold. There is wonder all around; somebody's got to behold it. Perhaps that's something we can learn from the church janitor.
There are sacrifices that have to be made. Zechariah knows that all too well as a priest. Now, he'll have to learn it as a parent and as a father. He will sacrifice all sense of being a normal father of a normal child. And this child, Jesus, whose coming we await is even less normal. Maybe it's something we can learn from the church janitor.
And then, there's the mess that's left. Everybody's gone home to Sunday Dinner. There's dust that needs to be swept up; there's a mess on the altar; there are things that need to be cleaned and put away. Somebody's got to do it. Maybe it's something we can learn from the church janitor.
But there is one thing left. There's a world that's every bit as messy as the inside of my Honda; there's a world that is chaotic and desperately in need of redemption. That's something not even the Priest or the church janitor can do. It's going to take a miracle to put things into order. But that's why we're getting things ready, waiting for the appearance of God's Son.
My name's Duane, and I'm a Messaholic. The Messiah, God's Son is coming. Let's get things ready.
© Rev. Duane Brown, 2003
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