NOTES for Luk 1:57-80
57 Now Elisabeth's full time came that she should be delivered; and she brought forth a son. |
58 And her neighbours and her cousins heard how the Lord had shewed great mercy upon her; and they rejoiced with her. |
59 And it came to pass, that on the eighth day they came to circumcise the child; and they called him Zacharias, after the name of his father. |
60 And his mother answered and said, Not so; but he shall be called John. |
61 And they said unto her, There is none of thy kindred that is called by this name. |
62 And they made signs to his father, how he would have him called. |
63 And he asked for a writing table, and wrote, saying, His name is John. And they marvelled all. |
64 And his mouth was opened immediately, and his tongue loosed, and he spake, and praised God. |
65 And fear came on all that dwelt round about them: and all these sayings were noised abroad throughout all the hill country of Judaea. |
66 And all they that heard them laid them up in their hearts, saying, What manner of child shall this be! And the hand of the Lord was with him. |
67 And his father Zacharias was filled with the Holy Ghost, and prophesied, saying, |
68 Blessed be the Lord God of Israel; for he hath visited and redeemed his people, |
69 And hath raised up an horn of salvation for us in the house of his servant David; |
70 As he spake by the mouth of his holy prophets, which have been since the world began: |
71 That we should be saved from our enemies, and from the hand of all that hate us; |
72 To perform the mercy promised to our fathers, and to remember his holy covenant; |
73 The oath which he sware to our father Abraham, |
74 That he would grant unto us, that we being delivered out of the hand of our enemies might serve him without fear, |
75 In holiness and righteousness before him, all the days of our life. |
76 And thou, child, shalt be called the prophet of the Highest: for thou shalt go before the face of the Lord to prepare his ways; |
77 To give knowledge of salvation unto his people by the remission of their sins, |
78 Through the tender mercy of our God; whereby the dayspring from on high hath visited us, |
79 To give light to them that sit in darkness and in the shadow of death, to guide our feet into the way of peace. |
80 And the child grew, and waxed strong in spirit, and was in the deserts till the day of his shewing unto Israel. |
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Today's reading completes the evangelist's account of the birth of John the Baptist. It is notable that Luke's conclusion of the account of this event follows immediately after the account of the Annunciation, which turns out to be included within the account of John's miraculous conception and birth. This composition of the first chapter of the Gospel is clearly not accidental. Each of the evangelists describes in his own way the reality of what theologians today call the Incarnation. For Luke, as we can see, it has first of all a historical, or more precisely, a philosophy-of-history dimension.
This approach was not something completely new: the sacred texts that existed in early Christian times (the Pentateuch, the Former Prophets, and the Latter Prophets) were likewise works concerned with the meaning of history. They presented the history of the people of God as the history of Revelation. And the history of Revelation was, naturally, above all the history of God's relationship with the human being. It is no surprise that it was chiefly the history of prophets and righteous people: one can learn about revelation only through the testimony of those who hear God and are not afraid to testify to what they have heard.
For Luke, who knew how Jesus evaluated the ministry of John the Baptist (Luke 7:28), this prophet clearly became a symbol of prophetic ministry as such, a kind of quintessence of the entire prophetic tradition. It is no accident that the evangelist describes his miraculous birth in such detail, as if making it clear that God Himself points to John as the one who will complete what the prophets of former times had begun. And Luke describes the birth of the Messiah-Christ as an event that proves to be the center and meaning of the whole history of Revelation.
In this respect the composition of the first chapter partly resembles the composition of an Eastern icon, where what is shown in the center and in the foreground is usually not what three-dimensional perspective requires, but what is the center of meaning in what is depicted. In Luke, this composition has an additional meaning: the Nativity of Christ is woven into the fabric of history, even if it is portrayed symbolically, and yet it is entirely real. In this way Luke expressed the truth of what today is usually called the Incarnation, without which the whole history of Revelation would have remained incomplete.
Readings for 14 February 2026
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