Wednesday, February 22, 2012

Ash Wednesday

Because this is a half week, I thought I would start with a Biblical woman for whom I already have an idea where I want to go. So, Elizabeth, John the Baptist's mother.

I read the first chapter of Luke (skipping the Annunciation), and there were two facts I had not thought about before that struck me. The first is that Luke makes the point of telling us that Elizabeth was also of the House of Aaron. So she was raised, from the start, in the life of a servant of God, the people set aside to the tending of the temple and service of God's house.

The second is that the objection that the people around Elizabeth raise to the name John is that no one in her (or Zechariah's, I assume) family is named John. Considering what I already wrote from her imagined perspective, I think this must have been a statement she was making. This boy will be a different kind of servant. He is not a continuation of the old service that his parents' families have been doing. He is the first sign of a new covenant. Of course, John the Baptist is known as the last of the Old Testament prophets, but he is also the beginning of the New Testament. So the new name from an old family is precisely right.

I'm not as sure how to work this into the monologue without just "When I was a little girl..."

Perhaps I could find names that are in the line of Aaron and start with Elizabeth reciting them? What is her lineage? Do we know it anywhere. And then she could end the litany with, "Zechariah and Elizabeth. Elizabeth, the curst, who bore no child. Who lived righteously with her husband, who served in his turn the Lord with so much will and so little faith - at least in miracles. Elizabeth, who thought she would end her line. But after Elizabeth and Zechariah came John. A new name. A new name in an old family. A miracle, a promise, he was. And the fulfillment of a promise. Not just to us. I am born of priests, and I bore the son of a priest. But I could not have imagined what it took to raise a prophet."

Not a bad start.