Gospel: Luke 1: 57-66
His name is John. Elizabeth insists to her family that her son will be given this name. In his imposed silence Zechariah confirms this decision in writing. Everyone is shocked and protests: but no one in your family has this name! It was rare that one broke with the tradition of family names and chose something entirely new. It was something not generally accepted.
Is our faith in God, or in tradition? It is a rather easy thing to follow tradition. It asks very little of us. All that is required is to keep doing the same things again and again. Tradition is the realm of the comfortable; it requires little faith or risk. But to follow God is entirely different, for God always moves us to new place, to the uncomfortable and foreign. It requires deep faith to follow God into the unknown and unfamiliar – into the realm of greater love of God and of our neighbor.
If we are to consult the tradition, it is to discover that time and again God moves his people to the new and uncomfortable continually: from Ur to Canaan; from Canaan to Egypt; from Egypt to Canaan again. God calls us in Jesus to be a people not of one race but of all races, to be a people not of one nation but of all. The tradition continually calls us to faith in God by always embracing the new and challenging that God calls us to do, for it is a call of ever deeper love.
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