“Do not be afraid, Zechariah; your prayer has been heard. Your wife Elizabeth will bear you a son, and you are to call him John. He will be a joy and delight to you, and many will rejoice because of his birth.” (Luke 1:13-14 New International. Version)
The Christmas story doesn’t begin in Bethlehem with a manger, the Holy Family, docile animals and adoring shepherds. It begins in Jerusalem’s temple. It’s a story about an old man—an old priest named Zechariah.
Zechariah was visited by the angel Gabriel, who told him that he would have a son named John (known to us as “John the Baptist”).
John would grow up to be a very significant man:
“He will go on before the Lord, in the spirit and power of Elijah, to turn the hearts of the fathers to their children and the disobedient to the wisdom of the righteous—to make ready a people prepared for the Lord” (Luke 1:17).
So the Christmas message begins with a politically incorrect statement for today: Fathers are important!
Not perfect fathers—Zechariah wasn’t perfect.
Not jerks either, but “good enough” dads who are there to nurture their children and be in a positive relationship with them.
The failure of responsible fatherhood is our society’s most consequential evil.
As results, we have teenage girls with babies, teenage boys with guns, educational failure, family poverty, and many other negative consequences.
The California Youth Authority incarcerates teens who have run afoul of the law. One Christmas season my church, Grace Community Church of Seal Beach, took a ministry team to the CYA facility a few miles away to bring these troubled boys the Christmas story in word and song.
Take it from one who shook the hand of almost every young man in that facility (for hundreds—nearly all—chose to come to our two services) and who talked to the chaplains who provide spiritual support to these boys, hardly any have a responsible father role model in their lives. Many of them don’t even know who their biological fathers are.
Our society should be encouraging fathers and reconciliation between fathers and children. Instead, fathers are often treated as superfluous and optional and, in entertainment, men who just don’t get it. The Christmas message stands against this cultural thinking. The Christmas message starts with a good, decent, father-to-be and the son who will be his and bring him joy.
No society can afford the social price of failed fatherhood. The word of the angel Gabriel is drawn from the Prophet Malachi: “He will turn the hearts of fathers to their children and the hearts of the children to their fathers … or else I will come and strike the land with a curse” (Malachi 4:5).
Those are our alternatives—reconciliation between fathers and children, or a curse on our culture.
Which pathway will we follow?
Rev. Donald Shoemaker is pastor emeritus of Grace Community Church in Seal Beach.
