The Nativity of St. John the Baptist
“Whereby the day-spring from on high hath visited us;
To give light to them that sit in darkness and in the shadow of death;”
Almost six months ago to the day, I preached a sermon on the Fourth Sunday in Advent that spoke a lot about John the Baptist, about whom we hear in the Gospel for that day, from John 1, when the Scribes and Pharisees ask him who he is and he, quoting Isaiah, says that he is the voice crying in the wilderness, the one telling us to make straight the way of the Lord, and that he is the one who has come before Jesus, whose sandals he isn’t even worthy to bend down and untie.
Now you will no doubt remember in that sermon my saying that this voice in the wilderness is in some sense calling us to remove the barriers that stand as obstacles to a fuller life in and with God, and that the wilderness into which John has come is, at least partly, us – our lives are the wilderness, full of dangers, snares, full of all kinds of things that would make the building of a straight road difficult. John, of course, is just the messenger of this and points to the one who can break down the barriers and obstacles, and who can shatter whatever chains hold us back from living a life of holiness.
But here we are again, six whole months later in a very different time of year – a brighter, warmer, more verdant and alive time of year, and here we are again hearing about John the Baptist. In our church calendar, traditionally, some celebrations are of such importance that they aren’t celebrated for one day but eight, something we call an octave. And so while John’s day, the celebration of his birth, was on the 24th of June, we celebrate it today within those eight days.
And as I love to point out each time John comes up, there is a profound wisdom in the way that our forebears in the faith imagined the structure of our church year, and the way our lectionary, our readings, was put together: for we hear of John late in the calendar year, in Advent, right around the darkest day of the year, the day on which the light begins to return. So here we are days after the longest day of the year, now beginning that slow crawl back to the longest night; John’s purpose was to decrease (in importance) so that Jesus, the one to whom he pointed could increase (in importance).
John was the cousin of Jesus, he was the son of Mary’s much older cousin Elizabeth, at the time well beyond the years of her childbearing, but yet she conceived and had John. When an angel informed John’s father, Zecharias about Elizabeth’s pregnancy he asks something that reminds us very much of Mary’s own question to the Angel Gabriel, he says, “How shall I know this?” while Mary’s question was, “How shall this be?” Two people who were confronted by what to them, and to us, would seem like impossible truths, but with one distinction: Mary asks how this could happen since she is a virgin, Zecharias expresses a doubt – what he asks is, “what sign are you going to give me to show me this is true”, kind of like doubting Thomas. For this the angel makes him mute until John is born.
John the Baptist’s whole ministry, his whole God-given purpose, was to relentlessly point towards the coming Lamb of God, Jesus – a ministry that begins even before he’s born, when he stirs in Elizabeth’s womb when Mary comes to visit her, but which continues even in the days after his birth when, at his circumcision, his Father gives him the name John – at which point John’s mouth opens and he and praises God. From his Father’s lips pours the verses we know as the Benedictus, prayed at Morning Prayer, that proclaims that John is to give knowledge of salvation by the remission of their sins, and to give light to those who sit in darkness and the shadow of death – the light of the knowledge and hope of Jesus.
John knows our temptation to fix our hopes on something less than the fulness of what God desires and so he is always pointing people away from him and reorienting them towards Jesus. We ourselves are always in need of reorientation and need a bit pointing; even if the way, the highway for our God is deadly straight we can somehow still drift from it; even if what is true is right before our eyes we can still mistake it or, like Zecharias, doubt it.
I suspect that part of the problem is that we are bombarded with so many things claim to good or good for us or true that when something true and of God comes along, we struggle to see it. Sometimes like with John it may be that our hope falls short, at other times lesser goods or even evil things masquerade as higher goods. We are all so preoccupied with me and my needs, wants, rights, privileges – missing entirely the thing that we are actually desiring, but is beyond ourselves.
And it’s important because it doesn’t just impact us – is our living, we might ask, producing the fruit of holiness in us? Is it making us more or less like Christ? Do our lives point other people to Jesus? How we respond even to our suffering matters, because our response is seen by others; our living and the holiness of our lives can show others what a life of faith and patience can look like and do for you.
I was struck this week by an example of this in our own church, which just released a series of trial pastoral services – approved for provisional use – in circumstances where people have chosen to end their lives with MAiD. Now, there’s much one could say about MAiD but this isn’t the purpose of my sermon today, but what struck me was a moment within the service that I think sends very mixed messages about faith and hope and what we should be gazing towards.
In this service, the officiant is to offer to the person who is about die the laying on of hands and anointing with oil, both ancient, powerful, and real sacramental acts of hope that ask for and point to a trust in God’s healing power. A portion of the service that says, “receive the gift of Christ’s healing and presence”, with only moments given to allow that healing to materialize before someone ends their life at their request. Is that a service that points to trust and hope in God’s power?
John was sent to point us to hope, to the sacrificial lamb who gives its life for our salvation. And to accomplish this, John also steps aside, he moves out of the way, without reducing at all his commitment to what is greater than himself, knowing that it is not him, but Jesus, who has come, “He must increase,” John says, “but I must decrease”. John comes to direct our gaze towards that lamb, the fulfillment, of God’s promises; a fulfilment that, just as John’s Father said when his speech returned, is the sign that God has visited and redeemed us, that God saved (and saves) us from our enemies, that gives light to us who sit in whatever darkness of suffering we endure and even in the shadow of death. John points to Christ because it is only in Him that we can discover not just the meaning of our lives, but the meaning of our death.
His whole life and his whole ministry is an image of the lives that we are meant to lead, which this yearly journey through the liturgical cycle prepares us: that we are to be those who look always to Christ, always to what is greater than ourselves, always willing to speak the truth into the storm of opinion and the confusion that is this world, and to let our lives and our decrease for the sake of the increase of Christ’s glory, be the witness to who he is.
