Luke 1:57 - 66
When it was time for Elizabeth to have her baby, she gave birth to a son. Her neighbors and relatives heard that the Lord had shown her great mercy, and they shared her joy.
On the eighth day they came to circumcise the child, and they were going to name him after his father Zechariah, but his mother spoke up and said, “No! He is to be called John.”
They said to her, “There is no one among your relatives who has that name.”
Then they made signs to his father, to find out what he would like to name the child. He asked for a writing tablet, and to everyone’s astonishment he wrote, “His name is John.” Immediately his mouth was opened and his tongue was loosed, and he began to speak, praising God. The neighbors were all filled with awe, and throughout the hill country of Judea people were talking about all these things. Everyone who heard this wondered about it, asking, “What then is this child going to be?” For the Lord’s hand was with him.
I find Christmas joy rivaled by Christmas angst. The difficulties and challenges of relationships the other 364 days of the year are intensified under the spotlight of an expectation of "joy, peace and celebration."
It's hard to be in relationships in a healthy way. Each of us brings old patterns and assumptions into our interactions with others. Sometimes we lock others into old expectations and leave little room for the new or the fresh or the surprising to emerge.
Zechariah and Elizabeth birthed a son. The old pattern, adopted by friends, family members, and towns-people was that the parents would give the baby a family name, so that the family line would be passed on in that naming ritual.
God's invitation to Zechariah and Elizabeth, however, was toward another name, a name representing the new thing God would do with this boy . . . and ultimately with the one this boy would precede.
It takes courage to step out of old patterns, to walk against prevailing opinion, to swim upstream when all expectations run against you like a strong river-current. It is easier to adapt and go along, not breaking with tradition. But tradition alone is rarely the wineskin that contains the fullness and expansiveness of the Gospel.
This is one of the reasons friendships and family life are such challenges. Those closest to us are also those most likely to lock us into old patterns, old ways of naming and being named, old ways of relating. When God stirs a heart and a person begins to change inwardly, living into fresh patterns or new ways of being, all these old patterns are challenged. Other people get uncomfortable . . . threatened . . . confused . . . offended.
This story of Zechariah and Elizabeth naming John helps me to step into my own experience of Christmas with a bit more courage. More than being locked into the old patterns, it invites me to live into the fresh thing God is doing in me, in others, and in the world.
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