Bloomsbury Central Baptist Church
22 December 2019
Luke 1.5-25, 57-80
“What’s in a name?
That which
we call a rose, by any other name would smell as sweet”.
So said the Bard in Romeo and Juliet.
But here’s my question:
Why all
this fuss about whether John the Baptist
should be
called ‘John’, or ‘Zechariah’ like his father?
As the star-crossed lovers of Shakespeare’s play
eventually
discovered, to their tragic cost,
quite a
lot, in fact, hangs on a name.
This is true for us, today, of course.
For example, I find it hard to think of myself as anything
other than a ‘Simon’;
and my
middle name, ‘Patrick’ is important to me
because
it reminds me of my grandfather;
while my
surname roots me within the tradition of my family
- I am a Woodman, for better or for worse.
We also have a tradition of people changing their name
to reflect
some change in their circumstances or identity.
Most common is when two people get married
and one of
them takes the other’s surname
as a symbol
of their new unity as a couple.
It’s usually the wife taking the husband’s name, but not
always;
at the
marriage of one of our members recently
he took his
new wife’s surname.
And of course when my colleague Dawn married her husband
they
decided to combine their surnames and go double-barrelled.
And whilst surname changing is fairly common,
sometimes
we meet people who have changed their first name.
These days, the only people allowed to call my wife
by the long
version of her name are her Dad and her aunt.
To the rest of us, she is very definitely a Liz.
Some people change their first name not so much out of
preference,
but as a
marker of a change of identity.
We had one friend do this a few years back when she got
divorced,
and she
asked people to start using her middle name
rather than
the name her ex-husband had used for her.
It took a bit of getting used to if I’m honest,
but we all
got there eventually.
And here at Bloomsbury we’ve had a couple of name-change
services
for people
who want to mark their transition of gender identity before God.
In these last couple of examples,
we’re
getting closer to the long biblical tradition
of name
changing as a marker of identity.
Abram became Abraham; Sarai became Sarah;
Jacob
became Israel; Simon became Peter;
Saul
became Paul;
and Zak Jr.
became John, a.k.a. ‘The Baptist’.
So what’s going on here?
After all,
Luke’s gospel devotes some considerable wordage
to
telling us the drama surrounding the naming
of
Zechariah and Elizabeth’s untimely-born son.
It’s quite clear that there is a strong expectation in the
community
and
extended family around them
that the
boy will be named after his father;
and the inference is that he will follow in the family firm,
so to speak,
becoming a
priest and taking his turn in the temple in due course,
offering
incense on the alter like the generations before him.
And the name ‘Zechariah’ would have suited this career path
well.
It means,
in Hebrew, ‘God remembered’;
and the task of the priests was precisely this,
to keep the
memory of God alive,
and to keep
the people of Israel within God’s memory.
They were the guardians of the rituals,
the
maintainers of the faith,
and they had kept the faith, faithfully, through centuries
of difficulty.
From invasion to exile, occupation to subjection,
through the
times of the Assyrians, Babylonians,
Persians,
Greeks and Romans,
the priests had reminded the people
that God
had not forgotten them.
From father to son, through generation after generation,
the priests
had kept the rumour of God alive.
Both Zechariah and Elizabeth had impeccable credentials.
Both were
from priestly families:
Elizabeth’s
even more prestigious than Zechariah’s.
He was a
descendant of Abijah,
one
of the priestly families instituted by King David;
whereas
Elizabeth could trace her ancestry back to the time of Moses,
as
a descendant of his brother Aaron, the original priest!
She even
had the same name as Aaron’s wife, for goodness’ sake.
You can just imagine that when Zechariah and Elizabeth were
first married,
they would
have seemed the perfect priestly couple.
Any son of theirs would have been on the fast-track to
priestly superstardom.
So you can also imagine the pain,
as the
years ticked by with no children and no son,
how they
would have felt.
The inability to have children when you long for them is
always painful,
and even in
our time there are many people
who
have to live with the sadness of unfulfilled hopes
for
children and grandchildren.
But for Zechariah and Elizabeth there was another layer to
their disappointment.
It wasn’t
just their personal hopes and dreams
that
were vested in their hope for a child,
it was the
hopes and dreams of their whole family, their whole community.
And then Zechariah had his miraculous moment in the temple
with the Angel Gabriel;
who, let’s
face it, was kind of working overtime that year,
what
with appearances to Mary (once), Joseph (three times),
plus
the Wise Men, and the Shepherds.
So when the supernaturally dumbstruck Zechariah and
Elizabeth finally conceived,
it must
have seemed as if God, truly, had remembered this couple,
just as
Zechariah’s name said that God would.
So the pressure was on to name the child after his father,
‘God remembered’,
and the
expectation was that he would fulfil the priestly calling of his ancestry
by taking
his place in administering the rituals and practices of the Jewish religion,
keeping
the faith alive for another generation.
If ever there was a child born to be a priest,
it was
Zechariah and Elizabeth’s son.
As the angel said, he was a child born to give them joy and
gladness,
and to
bring rejoicing to many (1.14).
But, it begins to emerge, God has other plans about how this
would happen,
a different
vocation for their son,
and the
argument over his name is at the heart of this.
The angel had already told Zechariah that the baby was to be
named ‘John’,
and he’s
clearly already told Elizabeth,
because when the neighbours and relatives turn up
to name the
baby Zechariah she intervenes,
but the nature of patriarchy is such
that it’s
only when Zechariah himself confirms her words with a writing tablet
that they
finally relent.
And so, instead of a priest, we have a baby born to be a
prophet.
John means, in Hebrew, ‘God is gracious’,
and giving
this name to their child
was a symbol that this baby’s life was destined
to mark the
turning point between a God who remembers,
and a God
whose grace takes shape in human history.
It is the move from priesthood to prophecy;
from ritual
to action.
Faith will no longer be based upon the remembrance
of what God
has done in times gone by,
but upon what God is doing by his grace in the present.
Of course, this isn’t the first time God has intervened
within the
story of salvation history.
The author of Luke’s gospel is very well aware
that he is
structuring the Zechariah-Elizabeth-baby-John story
on the
story of Abraham and Sarah in the Hebrew Torah.
The similarities are striking.
There’s an
emphasis on name-changing,
there’s
an elderly couple past childbearing age promised a baby;
there’s an
encounter with an angel,
and
disbelief at the angel’s words.
Clearly, our story for this morning
is echoing
the story of Abraham and Sarah,
and this is because Luke wants his readers to realise
that what
takes place in the birth of John
needs
to be understood within the larger and longer story
of
God’s faithfulness to his faithful people.
Yes, John will be the prophet of the new relationship
between God and humanity
that is
coming into being in Jesus.
But he does so in continuity with, and in fulfilment of,
the ancient
covenant between God and Abraham,
that
God would be his God,
and
that his descendants would be God’s people.
There is no mandate here for any kind of supercessionist
theology
where
Christianity replaces Judaism within God’s promises.
Rather, God’s promise to Abraham,
that through
his descendants
all the
nations of the earth would be blessed (Gen. 22.18),
is fulfilled in God’s gracious action in sending Jesus.
And Zechariah and Elizabeth’s child
is to be
the prophetic herald of these glad tidings of comfort and joy.
And so the baby is named John,
and he
doesn’t grow up to be a priest.
And here Luke leaves his destiny hanging,
after all,
Jesus hasn’t been born yet,
and instead he just tells us t
hat ‘all
who heard [this news] said
“what then
will this child become?” (1.66)
And the answer to that question is for another chapter…
so we too
will leave the rest of the story of John the Baptist for another time.
But something interesting happens
in the
story of Zechariah and Elizabeth at this point.
Luke tells us that Zechariah the priest is ‘filled with the
Holy Spirit’
and ‘spoke
this prophecy’.
And then we get the song of Zechariah, as it is known.
Zechariah
himself moves from priest to prophet.
He changes from being one who keeps the rumour of God alive
through
ritual and observance,
to one who proclaims what God is doing
in the
here-and-now.
God is active again,
and
Zechariah’s restored voice lifts up in song
to
sing of how God has not forgotten his people,
of how God
has remembered them through the years of difficulty,
and
of how God is now acting in the present
to
bring new life and light to a world of darkness.
It is no coincidence that we have this reading today, on the
22nd of December,
which this
year is the autumnal equinox.
You may not notice it,
but
tomorrow will be a slightly brighter day than today.
The light is coming back into the world,
the winter
is ending, slowly, imperceptibly,
and
with many cold days still to come
before we
get to spring and summer,
but the season is changing.
So this is what Zechariah proclaims:
‘By the
tender mercy of our God,
the
dawn from on high will break upon us,
to give
light to those who sit in darkness
and
in the shadow of death,
to guide
our feet into the way of peace.’ (1.78-79).
And there are a few key things that I think we can take from
this story.
Firstly, there is an assurance here that God has not finished with humanity.
However bleak it may seem, God is still at work by the power
of the Spirit,
stirring
faithful hearts to generosity,
Godly
minds to renewal, and devout souls to love.
There is plenty in this world to feel bleak about,
and
sometimes it can seem as if the nights just get longer and longer,
as
the light goes out of the world,
and
sometimes even from our lives.
From those who live with depression,
to those
who feel betrayed by society,
to those
who long for peace and security but find none,
the darkness can seem overwhelming.
And yet… God has not finished with humanity,
God has not
finished with you,
God has not
finished with me.
Sometimes it may be that all we can do is go through the
motions,
as
Zechariah did in the temple,
year after year, hoping desperately that God remembers,
and trying along
the way to keep the rumour of God alive
for
ourselves and those we love.
But Zechariah discovered that God has not yet finished what
has been started,
and so he
proclaimed hope of new light
into the
heart of the darkness of his world.
And this brings me to the second thing I think we can take
from this story today,
which is
that God calls us to move from
priesthood to prophecy.
One of the tendencies before those of us who hang around
churches
is that we
can end up confusing
the
shape our faith takes,
from
the beating heart of divine love
that called
our faith into being in the first place.
There’s nothing wrong with religious observance,
with
patterns of prayer and rituals of worship.
They are important, they may even be necessary.
But they
are not God.
This is what Zechariah had to discover from the mouth of the
angel Gabriel,
that God
comes to the world
not
in response to what we do for God,
but as an
act of grace breaking in upon us from beyond ourselves.
If God is merely an extension of our acts of faith,
then God is
a product of human hands,
and frankly there are enough idols in the world already
vying for our attention
without us
making another one.
Rather, God calls those of us who worship faithfully
to take a
step of faith and to become prophets
who proclaim in our time
what God is
doing in our world.
Because God is always doing something new.
From the intentional welcoming of those
who have
been historically marginalised,
to works of justice and mercy,
to peacemaking
and reconciliation,
to forgiveness and the restoration of broken relationships…
in all
these and in so much more,
God is at
work in lives and hearts bringing transformation to the world.
And so, thirdly, maybe our job is to call that out,
to name the presence of God,
to join our efforts and lives with what God is doing.
This was John’s calling,
just as it
was Zechariah and Elizabeth’s calling,
each playing their faithful part,
in
preparing the way for God who comes to the earth by the Holy Spirit,
embodied in the life of his son Jesus,
speaking
words of salvation and forgiveness of sins.
So if, today, the world feels like a dark wilderness,
there is a
voice crying in the wilderness,
to prepare the way of the Lord,
who comes
to us again, and again, and again.
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