24 And after these days Elisabeth his wife conceived; and she hid herself five months, saying, 25 Thus hath the Lord done unto me in the days wherein he looked upon _me_, to take away my reproach among men.
Luke is the gospel of gladness, of praise, and of prayer, of tender, human interest, and of heavenly grace. It is fitting, therefore, that the narrative should open with a scene in the Temple at the hour of incense and with a divine promise which fills a heart with rapturous joy. This promise concerns the birth of one who is to prepare the way for the ministry of Christ, and this ministry forms the sum and substance of the gospel story.
The time was “in the days of Herod,” called “the Great,” a monster of cruelty, a vassal of Rome, who ruled the Jews with savage tyranny. The political slavery of the people was only less pitiful than their spiritual decline, for religion had become an empty form, a mere system of ceremonies and rites. However, God is never without his witnesses and his true worshipers. Among these were “a certain priest named Zacharias” and his wife Elisabeth, who lived in the hill country of Judea, south of Jerusalem. They “were both righteous before God,” not sinless but without reproach, carefully observing the moral and also the ritual requirements of the law. Yet godliness is no guarantee against sorrow or against the disappointment of human hopes, and these pious souls were saddened because their home was childless. This trial was peculiarly great among a people who regarded childlessness as a sign of divine displeasure and it was even more distressing to the hearts of the faithful who were yearning for the birth of the promised Messiah.
Twice each year Zacharias went to Jerusalem to perform for a week his sacred tasks. Finally there came to him a privilege which a priest could enjoy only once in his lifetime; the “lot” fell upon him, and he thus was chosen to enter the Holy Place at the hour of prayer and there offer incense upon the golden altar just before the veil in the very presence of God. It was the supreme hour of his life. As the cloud of perfume began to rise, true symbol of accepted petitions, an angel appeared and assured the startled priest that his supplications had been heard. For what had Zacharias then been praying—for a son, or for the salvation of his people? Were not both desires included in that supplication? As the representative of a nation, the priest hardly could have confined his petition to what was purely personal and private. Yet, as he pleaded for the coming of the Messiah, there must have been in his soul the secret yearning of the long years or the memory of that abandoned hope which he had always associated in thought with the salvation of Israel. Many a minister of Christ has a similar experience; in the very performance of his public tasks there rests on his soul the conscious shadow of some private grief.