Her neighbors and relatives heard
that the Lord had shown his great mercy toward her,
and they rejoiced with her.
Elizabeth, like Sarah and Hannah before her, was given a child although she was considered to be barren. The Lord had plans for all of these children and wanted his involvement to be clear. He was the God of things considered to be humanly impossible, as Gabriel explained to Mary. The child of Elizabeth was a supernatural gift, the fulfillment of a promise. It was in fact a continuation of the fulfillment of the promise first made to Abraham. The whole story of this promise, the story of salvation history, was replete with names being changed to reflect that identity was more truly rooted in God's story than history understood apart from him. But in the case of the son of Elizabeth and Zechariah they preempted the need for God to change the name later by giving him the name given by the angel immediately after his birth, on the eighth day.
“No. He will be called John.”
But they answered her,
“There is no one among your relatives who has this name.”
This obedience to the message of the angel teaches us to ask whether we ourselves are typically willing to call things what God would have us call them, even if that is unprecedented, or whether we insist on sticking to what we know and to the familiar.
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.
When we speak in accord with the word of God we will find our mouths opened, our tongues freedom, and our hearts moved to praise him. But speaking in this way is only possible from a posture of faith. Doubt casts us back on our own understanding, first making us bland and repetitive, and then, eventually, silent, with nothing new to say. But, like Zechariah, we can move from doubt to faith. Even the punishment for doubt is pedagogical, helping to empty us so that we can be filled by God.
All who heard these things took them to heart, saying,
“What, then, will this child be?”
For surely the hand of the Lord was with him.
We, of course, are not John the Baptist. And yet those who hear about Christians should be moved to take what they hear to heart. They too should have the sense that the hand of the Lord is with us. But this will only be true if we learn to speak from a posture of faith. A little time of silence in the desert, free from distractions, allowing the Spirit to fill us and make us strong can help to bring this about.
Since we have the same spirit of faith according to what has been written, "I believed, and so I spoke,” we also believe, and so we also speak" (see Second Corinthians 4:13).
It was to us that this word of salvation, the proclamation of which John the Baptist inaugurated, has been sent. But it was not sent to us to remain sealed within us. That John was unworthy to unfashion the sandals of the Messiah did not prevent him from being utilized by God in a major way. And that we are not won't prevent him either. All it will take for God to use us is for us to offer him our response of faith. It may not yield immediate and obvious success. We may appear to toil in vain and uselessly spend our strength. But let us continue to trust. We will yet find our reward and our recompense in God.
For now the LORD has spoken
who formed me as his servant from the womb,
that Jacob may be brought back to him
and Israel gathered to him;
and I am made glorious in the sight of the LORD,
and my God is now my strength!
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