Saturday in the Third Week of Advent, December 23, 2023

Luke 1, 57-66

When the time arrived for Elizabeth to have her child she gave birth to a son. Her neighbors and relatives heard that the Lord had shown his great mercy toward her, and they rejoiced with her. When they came on the eighth day to circumcise the child, they were going to call him Zechariah after his father, but his mother said in reply, “No. He will be called John.” But they answered her, “There is no one among your relatives who has this name.” So they made signs, asking his father what he wished him to be called. 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. Then fear came upon all their neighbors, and all these matters were discussed throughout the hill country of Judea. 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.”

The attention paid to John the Baptist testifies to his role in the history of salvation as well as to his prominence among his contemporaries.  A measure of this can be seen when the messengers of the high priests in Jerusalem feel compelled to ask him if he is the Messiah, which he denies.  And, again, when the Lord queries his Apostles regarding who the people though he was, one of their replies that some thought that he was John the Baptist come again.  That John had disciples far afield from Judea is clear from Acts of the Apostles 19, 3, in which Paul finds them in Ephesus, in Asia Minor.  This should start us to feel something of the power of his presence and influence felt by these witnesses.

St. Luke’s readers in Antioch, Syria, must have heard of John too, and perhaps some of them had also been baptized by John.  It may be for this reason that Luke spends so much time on John’s origins, as we see in today’s Gospel Reading.  We living today also get a sense from this story of the anticipation of the Messiah at the time.  

Key to today’s Gospel Reading is the naming of the child.  Zechariah could have allowed his son to be named after him or after some relative.  It would have been easy for him to do this since he was deaf and dumb at the time.  But he fought with his family to give him the name that the Angel Gabriel had given him: John.  This name, not belonging to anyone else in the family, sets the child apart just after he is born.  And this pattern continues throughout his life: he does not drink wine or strong drink.  He does not marry.  And then he goes off to a wild spot at the Jordan River and preached and baptizes as no one before him had.  He signifies the Christian, who is markedly distinct from the rest of humanity through baptism and then through his behavior and actions.  And the Christian goes off into the wild places — his particular calling in the world — and draws other to Christ.  Zechariah, for his part, signifies the one who hears the word of the Lord through a disciple of the Lord and doubts it but then later believes.  Elizabeth, his wife, on the other hand, always believed.

“Then fear came upon all their neighbors, and all these matters were discussed throughout the hill country of Judea.”  The Greek word translated here as “fear” is correctly rendered so but it can also mean “reverence”, so we might think of the effect of Zechariah’s healing in this way, that reverence or awe for God came upon all their neighbors.  The fact that Zechariah was a priest gave impetus to the spread of these : the miraculous conception by the barren woman, her disappearance, then the birth of the child his naming, and the healing of Zechariah.  The witnesses “took this to heart” and perhaps they wondered if this child might be the Messiah: “What, then, will this child be? For surely the hand of the Lord was with him.”  

The Lord opens our ears so that we might hear his Holy Gospel and he opens our mouths to proclaim his praise.