David Orendorff, Luke 1:5-25, 57-80

Today’s scripture is usually used to focus on the birth of John the Baptist and his subordinate relationship to Jesus. If this were a movie, Zechariah and Elizabeth would be lost someplace in the credits. Well, I think they deserve more notice. We don’t have time in one sermon to develop all the interesting subplots concerning Zechariah and Elizabeth; Elizabeth’s’ secret pregnancy, Zechariah being struck mute, Luke’s use of punitive miracles, Mary’s song of praise, or Zechariah’s prophecy, to name just a few.

Elizabeth and Zechariah, like Joseph, are humble people. The only reason we occasionally remember them is that they are distant relatives of Jesus and the parents of John the Baptist. It is like when my children were growing up and I would be introduced not as David, but as Erika’s or Johanna’s father.

I begin with some of Elizabeth’s story. We are told in Luke 1:36 that Elizabeth is a relative of Mary. Like all families, the relationship is complicated. The Greek word in Luke 1:36 is συγγενισ which means “of common origin.” In this case it means that Mary and Elizabeth come from the same family. They might be cousins of some sort; they might be aunt and a distant niece, or some other kinship. The exact relationship remains speculation. Whatever the kinship, Elizabeth is a part of Mary’s family.

We are also told in Luke 1:5 that Elizabeth is one of the daughters of Aaron. Aaron’s family is one of the 12 Hebrew tribes. It is the branch of the family specifically assigned priestly duties. Elizabeth is from a family that is deeply involved with the temple and with maintaining faith in God. By inference then, Mary is also one of the daughters of Aaron. In the kinship of Mary and Elizabeth are both Mary’s family of origin and her church family.

Zechariah, Elizabeth’s husband, is family by marriage. And since he is a priest in the temple, Zechariah is also of the church. Zechariah extends the family of Mary to in-laws and reaffirms Mary’s relationship with her church family.

Zechariah also carries with him the history of Israel’s prophets. His name means “God remembers.” His namesake is one of the Minor Prophets who lived in a time of poverty, famine, and political oppression under the Persian King Darius I. Zechariah the prophet had a vision in 592 BCE which centered upon a symbolic representation of the Jewish community revolving around the rebuilt Temple in a land secured and sanctified by God.¹ Remember that the rebuilding of the temple becomes one of the themes of Jesus life, death and resurrection.

It is also significant that Zechariah and Elizabeth are old and childless. Biblically, this makes them like Abraham and Sarah (Genesis 16:1; 17:1-21; 18:9-15; 21:1-8), and like Elkanah and Hannah (I Samuel 1:1-20). Generally it is a disgrace for a woman to be barren, especially of sons. Abraham and Sarah finally give birth to Isaac, who is the first child of the Jewish nation. And Elkanah and Hannah finally give birth to Samuel, who was the first recorded prophet of Judaism and the Jewish people’s first national leader. The child that finally comes to Elizabeth and Zechariah is John the Baptist, yet another major figure in the history of our faith.

This is the complicated family into which Jesus is born. As Mary’s visit to Elizabeth suggests, it is a family of strong ties to each other and their shared history. And it is also a family with strong religious ties, a family deeply committed to faith in God and a prophetic justice.

I, too, come from a complicated family. Much of my identity is tied to being an Orendorff. I have mixed roots of Irish, Scottish, English, German and Native American. We have traced ourselves back to Christian Orndorff who in 1741 arrived in Pennsylvania from Germany. Religiously, the early American Orndorffs were of the German Reform tradition which had close ties to the early Methodist movement. A favorite family story is that the Orendorffs were folks of such deep faith in God that when the ship they were on in crossing to the Colonies was threatened by a storm, they sang to God without fear. It sounds apocryphal to me and something Methodists would want to say, but true or not it is a foundational story of who we Orendorffs are. We sing to God in the face of danger.

Whatever we are doing, we tend to have the mind of an engineer in doing it, whether we are soldiers in the Prussian army, farmers (an Orendorff invented the first mechanical hay stacker), or manufacturing iron. For our careers we are predominantly mathematicians, physicists, and administrators who sometimes morph into teachers and preachers. We value education highly, and both by formal and informal means we seek to expand our knowledge and understanding.

We have sometimes been friends and confidents of great people. Orendorffs love to tell how one of us split rails with Abe Lincoln and later even loaned him some books for his law study. But we have never been one of the great movers and shakers around which history is written. We are always some of the “Oh yeah, they were also there” kind of folks.

I tell you all this to say that the family from which I come, its current influence and its history play a significant role in who I am and have become. I started college in engineering but later chose ordained ministry, just like my grandfather.

You too have a complicated family history. Whether it is your family of origin, a family into which you were adopted, or your church family, it has greatly influenced who you are and who you become. None of us is born into a vacuum. All of us are born into genetic histories, family psychologies, and a complex web of relationships.

Sometimes we are aided by our family history. And sometimes we are frustrated by it. Sometimes our church history is an asset, sometimes it is a detriment. Good or bad, it is ours and has enormous influence on our conscious and unconscious being. We pick life partners in large part due to family history or our struggle against it. We parent, have friendships, chose careers under the powerful influence of family history.

If we understand this, then we understand how very import the devout and just people of our families are to us. We understand how the grandmother that prayed for us when we had gone astray was the tipping point for our return home. We understand how the cousin that remembered us when we thought we were lost mattered. Perhaps we have a favorite aunt or uncle that believed in us, encouraged and inspired us.

Scriptures says that Elizabeth and Zechariah are “both righteous before God, living blamelessly according to all the commandments and regulations of the Lord.” These are the good people every family and church needs to shape the world toward shalom. They are favorite aunts and uncles. They are the forgotten family and church who nurture the child Jesus to become the Christ. They are an important influence that prepares family and faith to receive a messiah. They are the kind of family Jesus and we need to care for us as we grow up.

Like Joseph, who chose to be Jesus’ father and, with little recognition, chose to serve God and us, Zechariah and Elizabeth serve God and serve us with their quiet and often forgotten love. I believe it is the thousand forgotten Zechariahs and Elizabeths of the world that truly make the future of the world.

Walter Russell Bowie in his exposition of Luke 1:5-6 says it this way:

Three names are mentioned here: Herod, Zechariah, and Elizabeth, and the second and third of these are very different from the first. Herod was one of the most evil figures of his age, cruel, sensual, with no standard of judgment higher than his own relentless will for power. It may well be that many in Israel estimated their time by this man who seemed to be its dominant representative. What could it be but an evil time when a man so evil overshadowed it?But meanwhile, in Herod’s time, there was another sort of person, quiet, inconspicuous, and yet more important than Herod, men and women who were the sound core of society and gave it such real wholesomeness as it did possess. Then and always there were and are the lowly and humble men (and women) in whom the strength of the present and the promise of the future lie.²

History is generally written around those whose name has become big before us. Not many write history around the common good men and women that live quiet lives of decency and are the wholesomeness of every time and place. To live lives of quiet decency is so common that it is not news, it is the expected. Like Walter Bowie, I believe it is these “lowly and humble men (and women) in whom the strength of the present and the promise of the future lie.”

It doesn’t matter that my name or your name will be forgotten shortly after we die, because the goodness of our hearts will live on with more power than any name. It doesn’t matter that we won’t have a spot in the history book, because the baby born to us then and now will be loved by us, and that love needs no name.

I thank many generations of Elizabeth and Zechariah for being my family and being my church. Without them I would not know the profound and broad love of God. And without the love of God I would not know joy. And I thank all you who have been family and church to my children and now my grandchild. Because of your faith and because you walk, by the grace of God, in all the commandments and ways of the Lord, I know that Ashlyn will be loved and will herself then know how to love like Jesus, the true joy of living.

Shalom and Amen.

1. Dictionary of the Bible, ed. Paul J. Achtemeier, (HaprerCollins, San Francisco, 1996) page 1239 - [↩]
2. Walter Russell Bowie, The Interpreter’s Bible (Abingdon Press, Nashville, 1952), volume 8, page 30/ [↩]