Meadowbrook Congregational Church
Unlimited, by the Rev. Joel Boyd
November 28, 2021
The Gospel according to Luke, Chapter 1: 57-66 (RSV):
57 Now the time came for Elizabeth to be delivered, and she gave birth to a son. 58 And her neighbors and kinsfolk heard that the Lord had shown great mercy to her, and they rejoiced with her. 59 And on the eighth day they came to circumcise the child; and they would have named him Zechari′ah after his father, 60 but his mother said, “Not so; he shall be called John.” 61 And they said to her, “None of your kindred is called by this name.” 62 And they made signs to his father, inquiring what he would have him called. 63 And he asked for a writing tablet, and wrote, “His name is John.” And they all marveled. 64 And immediately his mouth was opened and his tongue loosed, and he spoke, blessing God. 65 And fear came on all their neighbors. And all these things were talked about through all the hill country of Judea; 66 and all who heard them laid them up in their hearts, saying, “What then will this child be?” For the hand of the Lord was with him.
Do you ever get really excited about an idea and get so pumped up about it that you somehow completely forget that you don’t know how to do it? I have. And do. All the time.
There’s the time I thought I could fix the garage door opener, no problem. What I neglected to see was that, aside from having bought a couple of new parts that’d seem to do the trick, I had no idea what I was doing. And so the garage door was rendered useless for weeks until we could get a professional to repair it.
Then there was the time I thought I could trim off a portion of a downstairs door in order to make it fit a doorway which, for a reason unbeknownst to me, was slightly off by an odd measurement. Seeing the tools – saw, level, tape measure, pencil, sander – I figured, sure, I could do this. But my relative certainty quickly disintegrated down to I’m-pretty-sure-I- wrecked-it as I looked at the hacked side of the door which was supposed to make it “fit.” Heidi was not amused.
And neither should she have been. What had I been thinking? What was I even doing, trying projects like these? Fix minor things here and there around the house, no problem. But with these jobs? No, with these I met my match. I ran aground. I painfully witnessed my ego melt as I could finally see what appeared to have been invisible before: these things were beyond my abilities. I was limited.
But hey, let’s not just throw me under the bus. How about everyone else? Aren’t we all limited in one way or another? Yeah, of course we are.
Have you ever said to yourself, “Hey, I’m in pretty good shape. I think I’ll just sprint this last leg of my run.” Or, “the TV’s not working. What if I just go on ahead here and remove this chip that’s sticking out and oh! – what is that wire doing there!”? Maybe you’ve even thought, “so what, the exam’s tomorrow. Whatever. I’ll just pull an all-nighter and then knock that test
outta the park tomorrow at 8am”?
You see, aside from busting our collective chops, what I’m getting at here is that we’re all limited. In one way or another, there are things we can do and things we cannot, or perhaps things we cannot do well, or, things we probably just shouldn’t do.
And this is not about being negative, is it? No, I don’t think so. In fact, it can be very helpful, and safe, for us to know our limits. It also has a way of highlighting what are our strengths and underlining where we may have areas which can be improved.
None of us are perfect. And the Bible canon knows that and it tells us that, too, even pointing out how our being gifted in different areas from one another is a part of our identity as the Church; it’s part of how we bless one another.
In his letter to the church in Rome, the Apostle Paul writes, “For as in one body we have many members, and not all the members have the same function, so we, who are many, are one body in Christ, and individually we are members one of another. We have gifts that differ according to the grace given to us: prophecy, in proportion to faith; ministry, in ministering; the teacher, in teaching; the exhorter, in exhortation; the giver, in generosity; the leader, in diligence; the compassionate, in cheerfulness.”
We, not one of us, are perfect. Course, we may delude ourselves as much as we want, but in the end, we will bear witness to our own limitations. But this is us.
In our passage from Luke this morning, we are reconnected with the story of Elizabeth and Zechariah. Earlier in the Gospel, we had learned that Zechariah was a priest and Elizabeth, his wife, was of Aaron’s lineage. They were unable to bear children because Elizabeth was infertile. We also see that they were older.
Soon, we read that Zechariah is met by an angel who tells him that he and Elizabeth will have a son and that they shall call him John. Blinded by fear and unable to grasp these stunning words of the angel, Zechariah questions the angel Gabriel, who then explains the purpose of this visit and also that, due to his perhaps sudden, uncharacteristic disbelief, he was a priest after all, well, Zechariah would not be able to speak until the prophecy comes true.
Then after this, Zechariah is, in fact, mute, and so he looks curious to those at the temple who know something is up, and then Elizabeth, though old and previously thought to be infertile, becomes pregnant; all just as Gabriel had said would happen.
After having spoken to the fore-coming birth of Jesus, and Mary’s visit to her relative Elizabeth, Luke returns back to Zechariah and Elizabeth, who now have a son.
It is worth mentioning here, that for a woman to have been infertile in this period would have been something that was seen as disgraceful or shameful in the eyes of the local community. Fertility was something which was praised; so when Elizabeth was blessed with a child it was a reversal in which God raised up Elizabeth and Zechariah to an esteem which was prominent. This is why others saw this event as an expression of God’s mercy and rejoiced with Elizabeth. They saw it as God raising up those who the world tried to keep low; something, we know, God tends to like doing.
Another thing which was typical at this time was for a newborn boy to be circumcised on the 8th day after being born. This was customary. It was also the case that a child was named on the 8th day as opposed to receiving a name at birth. This would be the case with the baby Jesus and was here the case with John.
Regardless of what we may think of it now, it was also a time where the father made the final decision about a child’s name. It was also common tradition for sons to be named after grandfathers and also fathers. This is all the more important as we witness yet another reversal made by God.
‘On the eighth day they came to circumcise the child, and they were going to name him Zechariah after his father. But his mother said, “No; he is to be called John.” They said to her, “None of your relatives has this name.”’