Zechariah had been silenced because he failed to respond to the angel with faith. He represented the voice of all of Israel, which had in some sense reached its limits, and found itself unable to speak a new word of hope or of promise.
they were going to call him Zechariah after his father
In both cases it was because they didn't know how to get beyond the past they were content to repeat it. Zechariah might have been an example only of imperfect faith. Well enough. But they could not imagine anything greater so they were satisfied to perpetuate his partial response and incomplete fidelity.
but his mother said in reply,
“No. He will be called John.”
The silence experienced by Zechariah, and the period of waiting, was not mere punishment, but preparation. It was a space like a womb where a response of faith could grow within him, where the word of the angel could gestate until Zechariah could take hold of that word by his response. He did this together with Elizabeth who nurtured him and helped to speak for him until his own faith was sufficiently clarified that he himself was able to speak. The silence bore fruit that was durable even against the critiques of the world, which was afraid of anything that it couldn't recognize or categorize according to paradigms of the past.
“There is no one among your relatives who has this name.”
Have we too reached the limits of what we know how to say, the words of hope we know how to give? Are we looking for something new, some genuine hope that the world is unable to provide, but find ourselves coming up short? Even if we get angelic hints of it do we doubt like Zechariah, or insist that it doesn't fit any existing models as do his relatives? If we are in this period of silence it can be a sacred silence. It can be the place where a response of faith is nourished within us. For Zechariah, the seed of the word of the angel was planted in the soil of the silence of his heart. For us too the word can bear immense fruit if we ourselves don't rush to speak too soon. Speaking too soon causes us to rely on what we know, to lapse into the doubts with which we are familiar rather than the confront the newness of hope.
He asked for a tablet and wrote, “John is his name,”
and all were amazed.
Immediately his mouth was opened, his tongue freed,
and he spoke blessing God.
It is faith that opens our mouths and frees our tongues to bless God. It is faith that makes a new way appear when all of the old options appear used up, worn out, and hopeless. But it is so very new as to provoke a response of holy fear.
Then fear came upon all their neighbors
This fear is not the fear of doubt that makes us silent. It is rather the fear that is the beginning of wisdom, the reverence in the presence of a living God whom we recognize to be present and acting in our midst.
“What, then, will this child be?”
For surely the hand of the Lord was with him.
John the Baptist himself was sanctified when his inmost being was formed and he was knit together in his mother's womb. Throughout his life he was able to be a voice crying, even from deep in the normally silent desert, because he represented a response of faith to the word of God. It was as though he leaped for joy at the presence of Jesus and then never stopped dancing or rejoicing throughout his life. He knew it wasn't all about him, and for that very reason didn't insist on fitting the mold of any that had gone before him.
‘What do you suppose that I am? I am not he.
Behold, one is coming after me;
I am not worthy to unfasten the sandals of his feet.’
John knew a gift was coming that he himself would not receive, that being the baptism with the Holy Spirit and fire. We who are the least in the Kingdom have received this gift. But do we still put forth the silence of doubt rather than give voice to the assent of faith? The Holy Spirit wants to speak in us an identity that is new, wants to make the reality that we are new creations in Christ manifest in us. May John the Baptist pray that we receive the grace to allow him to do so.
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