Advent Calendar – 3 December 2025
Nativity Stories: Gabriel
They’re always afraid. However I appear, and I can seem as ordinary as the man sowing wheat in the field next to you, I always scare them. I understand: their hearts are open to me, and perhaps if I could feel as they can feel, I too would be afraid. A sudden visitor. Unbidden news.
Zechariah was frightened. Strange that he wasn’t ready for he was in the Temple sanctuary, lighting the incense, the very place where heaven and earth meet. If there was anywhere in the world a priest should encounter the angel of the Lord of hosts, this was it. And yet he was not prepared, as people never are, and he trembled and nearly dropped the incense he was sprinkling on the heat.
A good man, unlucky or so he thought until this moment: no offspring as sign of blessing. But a loving home and meaning in his life. It’s often those who feel passed by who end up chosen, as if the joy of promise would be wasted on the young. A child for Elizabeth: Zechariah was not one to take my news for granted. I promised joy and I could see beyond his incredulity pent-up feelings already breaking across his brow. I saw a gleam of hope, that all he’d witnessed in kinfolk’s lives would come now to his home: the fragile, perfect fingers, the gummy smile, suckling and digesting, bumps and tears, wails of pain at hunger, teeth and being left alone.
Perhaps every birth is miracle: a part of life I cannot know as do these creatures of dust and breath. But I had more to share that day with Zechariah in the flickering light of the sanctuary. This child would have a role unique to him. He’d be called John, meaning God is gracious, and would be dedicated to the one who sent me, his mind kept free of the fog which wine can bring, alive instead to God’s spirit within. I promised that his influence would be profound amid a people caught between faith and compromise: he would turn many back to their heavenly Father, and turn earthly fathers and mothers back to the care of their children, no matter how exhausting. More than anything, he’d make the people ready for the Lord.
Was it entirely fair to say so much and yet not say it all? Zechariah might have asked, Ready for what and when? Instead the doubt in him won out. He wanted proof that this answer to his prayers was an answer to his prayers. He felt his age, hearing this message from the eternal; can you blame him for being embarrassed at the thought of dandling his firstborn on his lap when all his friends were greybeards teasing piles of grandchildren?
But what more evidence could he want? He should have known already in that holy place that I was Gabriel, the angel who brings good news of heaven’s calling, that a given life be given up for others. Maybe I should have gone to Elizabeth; it was her womb after all which would give life to John, filled with God’s Spirit before even making his way out into the air. For now the world had heard enough of Zechariah: let his hope grow in silence for nine months, as his son would grow in the silence of his mother’s belly, showing what he could not tell.
William Blake, The Angel Appearing to Zacharias
Yours,
Donald
Revd Dr Donald MacEwan
Chaplain