PERSONALLY, I’VE NEVER SEEN an angel. And in all honesty, I’m not sure I want to. It’s one thing to envision the angels of 1980s and 1990s American television: Michael Landon, his eyes empathetically puddling up over your troubles; Roma Downey, dispensing wisdom with an Irish lilt. Or we might picture the angels of pop culture, like cute little Precious Moments figurines and all manner of babies with wings.

But those aren’t the angels of Scripture. In the Bible, angels bring both good news and bad, help and destruction. They may appear when a person is awake or asleep. They may accompany a burning bush or a pillar of cloud. And though they may appear in human form, the response to that appearance is often abject terror.

That’s not usually how I prefer to start my day.

Angels—the messengers and agents of God—figure prominently in the opening chapters of both Matthew’s and Luke’s gospels. In Matthew, an angel appears to Joseph in a dream three times, to announce that he and Mary will have a son, to be named Jesus; to warn him to take their little family and flee to Egypt; and to let him know when it was safe to return. Each time, the angel is described as “an angel of the Lord.” Matthew, it seems, wants us to understand right up front that God is the one orchestrating the action.

Something similar can be said about Luke’s gospel as well as the book of Acts. Angels are mentioned over forty times in the two volumes taken together. In Acts, God directs the action through angelic appearances to the apostles as a group, as well as to Philip, Cornelius, Peter, and of course, Paul.

But the first appearance of an angel in the third gospel is to Zechariah the priest. Here’s how Luke sets up the story:

Once when Zechariah’s division was on duty and he was serving as priest before God, he was chosen by lot, according to the custom of the priesthood, to go into the temple of the Lord and burn incense. And when the time for the burning of incense came, all the assembled worshipers were praying outside. (Luke 1:8-10)

Luke’s description shows that he’s done his homework on the customary practices of Jewish priests. There were so many priests that they had to divide into groups that would take turns serving in the temple for a week at a time. Luke has already mentioned in an earlier verse that Zechariah was of the priestly division of Abijah; here, the story begins with Zechariah’s division being on active temple duty.

Zechariah, moreover, has been given a special duty: he is among a group of five priests who have been chosen by lot to burn incense. Only one of the five would actually conduct the offering while the others helped; from Luke’s description, it’s not clear whether Zechariah was that one. Either way, however, it was an honor to be part of the group, performing their duties in the temple, just outside the Holy of Holies where only the high priest could enter.

That’s the setting. Now, the drama:

Then an angel of the Lord appeared to him, standing at the right side of the altar of incense. When Zechariah saw him, he was startled and was gripped with fear. But the angel said to him: “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…” (vss. 11-13)

There they are, Zechariah and his colleagues, faithfully performing their priestly duties. Suddenly, an angel of the Lord appears on the right side of the altar, the position of honor. Luke doesn’t say how the other four priests reacted, but we should probably imagine that their response was like Zechariah’s: they were startled (who wouldn’t be?) and terrified. That’s why the angel begins with a word of comfort: “Don’t be afraid.”

And why not? Because the angel brings good news for Zechariah: his prayer has been heard. Luke hasn’t mentioned that Zechariah and Elizabeth had been praying for a child. Indeed, I imagine that they had stopped believing that such a prayer could even be answered anymore. Luke’s earlier description of the couple, after all, had an air of finality about it: “Elizabeth was not able to conceive, and they were both very old” (vs. 7). Their prayer for a child, for a son, was no doubt heartfelt and fervent—but it may not have been recent.

And now, what seemed impossible has become possible. “Your wife Elizabeth,” the angel tells Zechariah, “will bear you a son.” Moreover, the child’s name is to be “John,” which in Hebrew suggests the graciousness of God. That grace is not just for Zechariah’s joy, but for the joy of all God’s people:

He will be a joy and delight to you, and many will rejoice because of his birth, for he will be great in the sight of the Lord. He is never to take wine or other fermented drink, and he will be filled with the Holy Spirit even before he is born. He will bring back many of the people of Israel to the Lord their God. And he will go on before the Lord, in the spirit and power of Elijah, to turn the hearts of the parents to their children and the disobedient to the wisdom of the righteous—to make ready a people prepared for the Lord. (vss. 14-17)

The boy will grow up to be the man we know as John the Baptist, the one we often think of as the forerunner of Jesus—and so he is. But this is more than just being the warm-up act before the main attraction. John will preach in the spirit and power of the quintessential prophet of old, Elijah; he will be a prophet of repentance, turning the hearts of the Israelites back to their Lord. His vocation, in other words, is to prepare the people of God for the coming of God.

Zechariah’s prayer for a son will be answered; God will do the impossible. But Zechariah’s prayer is caught up into the prayers of the people, their prayers for a Messiah. The question throughout the gospel will be: when the Messiah comes, when Jesus stands before them in the flesh, will the people believe?

But before we get there, we have to answer another, similar question: will Zechariah believe?