- Luke 1:57-66 (67-79) - read this text online here »
There is a story about a mother who was talking to her sons about new babies. Her seven-year-old son asked, “Mom, were you there when I was born?”
Many a mother may well “forget” the pain of labour and childbirth not only when she holds her little one in her arms but also when she is asked a question like that one!
The birth of a child is also the opportunity to express love. I know parents feel love when their children are born. But they will also have many occasions to express their love when their children begin to grow and get a little carried away or, well, even naughty at times. I can see possibilities here when you, Jackie and Jordan, and your children (I am assuming here, aren’t I!) are sitting around the kitchen table one day in the future when they are almost adults and start talking about some of their childhood scrapes.
One of your children looks at you – maybe Kasia -- and says: “Mom, remember when I broke that family heirloom vase when we were playing hide and seek in the house? It was an accident. I felt so bad.”The birth of a child is also cause for reverent awe or admiration. More than one parent has held his or her daughter to their chest, as I did with my son and daughter, and counted the fingers on his hands and the toes on her feet, smoothed down the mop of hair -- or not! -- on the baby’s head and, with a finger, delicately traced a circle around the “innie or outie” belly button. What’s not to admire! But I am also aware of the deep love and joy felt in families with children who are born with less than the requisite 10 toes and 10 fingers or who have cognitive, developmental and other difficulties. Love and awe for our children is not limited to those who may appear perfect.
And you say, “I know, dear.”
“Dad, once we started hockey you almost never got to sleep in on Saturday mornings. I didn’t appreciate that then as much as I do now.”
And you say, “I can understand that.”
“Mom, Dad, remember when you took us places in the car and we used to bug each other in the back seat and end up fighting? We can’t believe how you put up with us kids? How did you do it?”
How might you respond? Well, I can almost hear you thinking: “It was easy because we love you! And you are ours! And we could remember being children and getting into scrapes too!”
The birth of a child also gives rise to great hopes. A tourist once asked a local villager, “Were any great men or women born in this town?” The villager replied, “Nope, only babies.” But we do wonder, don’t we, what kind of a person this little baby we hold in our arms will become? Will she be noteworthy in some way? Will she make a positive mark for good in this world? That’s the kind of question John the Baptist’s family – his elderly father and elderly mother – and their neighbours asked in the Bible reading from the Gospel of Luke 1:66 this morning: “What is this child going to be?” That’s an appropriate question for any parent to wonder about and ask.
It is that kind of question that helps create a healthy climate within which a child may grow and develop into the kind of person she or he is meant to be. And that’s because our children develop opinions and feelings about themselves from the people they live with – in their families, in their churches, in their communities and in their schools. A rabbi, whose name was Zusya, was very insightful when he observed: “In the world to come, I will not be asked, ‘Why were you not Moses?’ I will be asked, ‘Why were you not Zusya?’” That’s the rub, isn’t it? How to be the person we were meant to be.
How do we encourage our children and our grandchildren to become the people they are meant to be? The birth of John the Baptist (that’s the “John” in our Scripture) will help us answer this question.
In the life of John the Baptist, the question had particular interest because of the unusual circumstances surrounding his birth. John’s birth was totally unexpected. His parents, Zechariah and Elizabeth, were old enough to have given up any hope of having a baby. So you can well imagine they welcomed John’s astonishing birth with joy and love and overwhelming thanksgiving. And as we ponder some more about John -- as a baby crawling around on the floor, as a child stumbling over his first steps and as a youth growing up -- the message he must have heard from everyone in his family and his community and also must have felt non-verbally was that people delighted in him. His parents were clearly enthralled with him. The neighbours were in awe of him from the moment of his birth, saying, “What is this child going to be?” John would have sensed deep in his spirit how special a man he was meant to be. Sigmund Freud, who is considered to be the father of psychoanalysis, noted that the details of our birth and early life are powerful determining factors in the person we eventually become.
As a pastor, I have met many families over the years who were expecting a new baby. Freud’s observations remind me of two reactions I experienced in one of my first congregations. One family responded to the news of a baby with: “Oh, isn’t this awful! Pregnant again!” The other couple couldn’t wait to tell me the good news: “We are expecting again! We can’t believe how blessed we are!” Think about those two attitudes into which the children were born. One little life was influenced by a positive and loving atmosphere while the other was influenced by an uncertain if not resentful family climate. Children are emotionally and spiritually affected by whether they feel wanted or unwanted. My hope is that all children will come to learn about God early in their lives and allow God’s compassion and love to tell them that they each belong to God and that each one is God’s wanted child. I am confident John the Baptist realized early on how much he was wanted and loved by his parents. And, consequently, he no doubt heard about and felt God’s love and God’s call on his life earlier and with more clarity than he might have otherwise.
When I baptized Kasia this morning, I asked her parents to tell me their daughter’s name. Our names are significant because they carry a sense of identity for the child. Kasia comes from Katherine and means “Pure” and “Beloved of God.” In many cultures, the naming of the child is very important. Such was the case in the naming of John. Earlier in Luke Chapter 1, the angel Gabriel gave God’s message to Zechariah to name his son to be born John. God was giving John a particular identity. Both Zechariah and Elizabeth understood the significance of names. Their names, like so many others of the Jewish people, were meaningful affirmations of faith in God. Zechariah means “The Lord Remembers.” Elizabeth means “My God Is an Absolutely Faithful One.” They understood the power of new names with positive and spiritual associations. The name John means “Gift of God” and conveyed blessing and power.
For Zechariah and Elizabeth to give the name John to their new son was also a test of their own obedience to God’s call on their lives. It was highly unusual for them to name him John because there was no other John in the family. Normally, he would have been called after his father or someone else in Zechariah’s family tree. But he was given a name that was uniquely his. In the Scripture, Zechariah initially didn’t believe the angel that he and Elizabeth would become parents. So Zechariah’s voice was taken away and he had to communicate using sign language. But when he and Elizabeth named their son John as they were instructed, Zechariah was able to speak again. And his very first response was to praise God! But his neighbours were filled with fear and awe at all of this. The Message Bible – a modern English version of the Bible – put verses 65 and 66 this way:
“A deep, reverential fear settled over the neighborhood and, in all that Judean hill country, people talked about nothing else. Everyone who heard about it took it to heart, wondering, ‘What will become of this child?’ Clearly, God has his hand in this.”You may already sense this but our names influence how others look at us. An intriguing test was once conducted during a beauty pageant. A number of the girls were given fictitious names. Some of the names were unpopular for that generation while the other names were considered more popular. All the girls were considered equally attractive. But, as you can guess, the girls with the unpopular names invariably lost out to those with the names considered more popular.
My surname has always been Miller. But my heritage is Bulgarian. When my grandfather came to Canada in the 1920s, his family name was originally Minoff. At some point, he became a naturalized British subject and his surname was changed to Miller. His given name also changed, probably from Christoff to Chris. I was named after him. In 2010 here in Toronto, I don’t think this kind of change of name has the significance it did in the early 20th century. My grandfather told me his change of name made a difference in the way people approached him. He was no longer considered an outsider or “an ethnic” as he was called then. With the name Miller, he became more acceptable in mainstream Canadian culture.
When John received his name, the people wondered: “‘What is this child going to be?’ For it was plain that the Lord’s power was upon him.” From the very beginning of John’s existence, even before his birth, God had something remarkable for him to do. If I had asked Les to read to the end of Luke Chapter 1, we would have heard Zechariah’s prophesy from God about John. Here it is in the Good News Bible:
“You, my child, will be calledZechariah, the father of John the Baptist, had great hopes for his son because he himself was a person of hope and trust in God.
a prophet of the Most High God.
You will go ahead of the Lord
to prepare his road for him,
to tell his people that they will be saved
by having their sins forgiven.
The good news is God also has great hopes for you and for me! I believe God’s heart is for his people to experience renewed hope in Jesus this Christmas. In fact, that is our theme for this 2010 Christmas season – to experience the hope Jesus was born to give us! Christian thinker Lewis Smedes wrote:
“Hope is an amazing, God-given gift. It fuels your dreams, lightens your spirits, and lifts your despair. When life becomes a battlefield, hope digs in and fights the good fight.”What is your identity or name? Let me ask another question: What is the new spiritual identity God might want to give you now at this time in your life? As with Zechariah and Elizabeth, it is never too late for God to give to you! What do you need? Might your new identity be hopeful? or forgiven? or loved? or wanted? or joy? or peace? or accepted? or pure? Whatever gift or identity God wants to give to each of us in this season when we celebrate Jesus’ birth into the world, we are all identified as beloved of God as is the beloved child, Kasia, who was baptized this morning. God has a gift of spiritual identity that is reserved for you and for me. Let’s accept God’s gracious invitation of hope and love and receive God’s gift for us.
May this be so for you and for me.
Rev. Chris Miller
November 21, 2010
OYM Oriole-York Mills United Church, Toronto
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