"What Will This Child Be?"

By John M. Grondelski Such was the question Elizabeth's and Zechariah's relatives and friends asked the day of John the Baptist's circumcision, recounted in the Gospel we read today on the Nativity of St. John the Baptist. (We are exactly six months away from Christmas Eve). The birth of John has been accompanied by unusual signs. Elizabeth, whom everybody long ago deemed infertile and past childbearing age, was pregnant. Zechariah, her husband, a priest of the Jerusalem Temple, had come back mute to their little Judean village. In Jewish families of Jesus's day, "personal identity" was not a big thing: belonging to a family and clan was. So, how is it that the boy is to be named Johanan - "John" - a name "no one among your relatives. . .has"? And how is it that Zechariah, the father of the family, confirms that name and, in doing so, recovers his voice to sing God's praises? "What will this child be?" We, of course, know. He would be the last and greatest prophet, the herald of his cousin Jesus, the Messiah. But he would also be the man who calls for moral reform of Israel, who demands conversion: both John's and Jesus's first words at the start of their public ministries are identical: "Repent." And John is not just the "social justice" guy, demanding that tax collectors not fleece payers nor soldiers bully civilians. He is also the "culture warrior" guy who makes an issue out of the tetrarch's invalid marriage. His message of "welcome" is "repent," not "I hear you, let's discern your situation." He didn't apologize for branding Pharisees a "brood of vipers." In all those respects, he remains a relevant role model for the Christian (and especially Christian leaders) today. His inclusivity was an inclusion in moral truth, not external niceties. "What will this child be?" was, of course, known to God even before he came into the world. The coming of these children - John and Jesus - are both announced by the Archangel Gabriel in the future tense: "Elizabeth will bear you a son" (Luke 1:13), "you [Mary] will conceive" (1:31). That Mary is asked and consents whereas Zechariah is simply notified of a future child is also relevant to sexual ethics. Mary will conceive out of the natural order of things, by the Holy Spirit, and so is asked to agree. Zechariah and Elizabeth, by "doing what comes naturally" (to which God has attached procreative significance) and praying for parenthood, have already consented. In the cases of both children, "all my days. . .were written in your book before one of them came to be." (Psalm 139:16) "Before I formed you in the womb, I knew you." (Jeremiah 1:5) The question Zechariah's and Elizabeth's curious neighbors pondered was one hardly unique to the hill country of Judea. It is the question every parent - whether the parent of a "planned" or "unplanned" child - asks. "What will this child be?" What the question should make clear is that there are no unplanned children. God quite clearly has plans, irrespective of how they do (or don't) fit into man's. Nor are those plans always what man expects or even finds convenient. Even when you are a young, engaged girl, whose love might think his pregnant fiancée is best "put away quietly." (Matthew 1:19) Even when you are an older couple finally happy to have that bouncing baby boy but - guess what - those knees still hurt when little Johanan wants you to chase him. It's also telling that the term Elizabeth uses in Luke 1:41 for the quickened John when he leaps at the approach of Mary and Jesus - brephos (βρέφος), "baby" - is identical to the term that the angels a half year later told the shepherds to seek as a sign: a postnatal βρέφος "wrapped in swaddling clothes." (Luke 2:12) There doesn't seem to be Scriptural warrant for the claim that one can be Christian and pro-abortion. Two years ago on this very day, the U.S. Supreme Court buried Roe v. Wade, a judicial abomination very much grounded in a very secular and individualistic notion of parenthood. W...