When it was time for Elizabeth to have her baby, she gave birth to a son. 58 Her neighbors and relatives heard that the Lord had shown her great mercy, and they shared her joy.

59 On the eighth day they came to circumcise the child, and they were going to name him after his father Zechariah, 60 but his mother spoke up and said, “No! He is to be called John.”

61 They said to her, “There is no one among your relatives who has that name.”

Tradition!

It isn’t necessarily a bad thing. It is regularly good actually – preserving the best of the past and carrying it into the present. There are many fine and honourable traditions within cultures, societies, and in the church. ‘Tradition is not the worship of ashes, but the preservation of fire’, it’s been said. Certainly it can be.

But it’s been said that the seven last words of a dying church are, ‘We never did it this way before.’

When God is doing a new thing, tradition must not get in the way. But tradition will want to, will try to. Tradition will put on its gloves and fight.

Tradition.

This is what Zechariah and Elizabeth ran up against when they wanted to call their baby ‘John’ (see v.61). It wasn’t the norm – not the done thing. But according to the word of God given by the angel, it was the will of God that Zechariah and Elizabeth’s baby should be so named. So tradition had to bow to God’s purpose.

Tradition can offer a good guide, but it must not become our jailer.