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When they came on the eighth day to circumcise the child,
they were going to call him Zechariah after his father
The name of the child was important. Yet, if she had succumbed to pressure from her neighbors and relatives, Elizabeth would not have chosen in obedience to the words of the angel. Sometimes we have to push back against even well meaning social pressure in order to be faithful to God.
The friends and neighbors do doubt wanted to honor Zechariah by choosing his name for the child. But what was needed here was not the repetition of something old, but rather, the recognition of something new. The grace God showed in causing Elizabeth to conceive was recognized in the name John, meaning 'God is gracious'.
Zechariah had responded to Gabriel in accord with his doubts, with his understanding of how he thought the world was and would always be. But what was needed now was speech open to and in accord with the new thing that God was doing.
Behold, I am doing a new thing;
now it springs forth, do you not perceive it?
I will make a way in the wilderness
and rivers in the desert (see Isaiah 43:19).
Zechariah had been silenced because he was speaking in a merely human way, in accord with how he understood reality to be. Thus it was that when he resolved instead to agree with God's understanding of the situation the his tongue was freed to speak. Instead of doubts about what God could or would do for he and Elizabeth, he spoke blessings, not only for what he had already done in the gift of John, but also for what he would do through him in the future. He moved from speaking his doubts and ending of with nothing more to say to speaking his belief in the promises of God in a beautiful song of hope and praise.
Lo, I will send you
Elijah, the prophet,
Before the day of the LORD comes,
the great and terrible day
The Lord promised to send Elijah. But if people expected the Lord to cause that great historical figure to literally return himself, in order to play the role prophesied by Malachi, they would have had their expectations frustrated. Even in the way God fulfilled this promise there was an unpredictable newness. In other words, one could not take control of circumstances on the basis of history, or even on the basis of prophecy. Being properly aligned with the action of God required openness. It might seem easier if we simply had the Scriptures like an exact route from the past to the future, one that didn't require any further attention once the gist was learned. But it is actually much more exciting that, even now, God is full of surprises. And these surprises are ultimately better than anything we can ask or even imagine. Our understanding is too constrained and even our imagination is too tame to fully grasp what God has prepared for those who love him.
Matt Maher - Canticle Of Zechariah
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