The Nativity of St. John the Baptist
“Thou, child, shalt be called the Prophet of the Highest: for thou shalt go before the face of the Lord to prepare His ways.”
We likely all have some weird members of our family. Those odd-ball distant cousins with the uncomfortable stories at thanksgiving, the stranger hobbies, or mysterious lives. They’re odd, they’re maybe not the people you delight in seeing too often but yet – they’re family.
For Jesus, that family member was a cousin named John. A camel-hair wearing, bug eating, desert dwelling guy only a little bit older than Jesus himself, the son of Elizabeth who was likely a first cousin of Mary, but whose experiences mirror so closely that of Mary.
John is a kind of alluring figure – strange, yes, but compelling partly because of his strangeness. John, with his wild and prophet-like appearance, represents the Old Testament, he is the last of the prophets (yet more than a prophet, Jesus says), and falls right between the prophecy and the fulfillment of the prophecy that comes with the birth of Jesus.
But it is his birth, his nativity, that we celebrate today; and it’s no mistake that we celebrate John’s birth so near to the Summer Solstice, the 21st of June, the beginning of Summer. Just as it’s no mistake that we commemorate his beheading by at the end of summer. John’s birth at the beginning of Summer points us to Jesus’ birth at the beginning of winter, in fact John’s whole entire life was to be dedicated to him pointing others towards his cousin, Jesus.
Some of John the Baptist’s weirdness arises, we think, from the fact that he was part of what’s called the Qumran community, the same people who produced the Dead Sea Scrolls – essentially hyper-observant Jews who lived almost like monks in desert caves, devoting their entire lives to prayer, and who waited and watched eagerly for the coming Messiah.
The Scriptures even tell us that John began this work of pointing towards the Messiah when he was still in Elizabeth’s womb: Mary comes to visit Elizabeth, her cousin, and John in Elizabeth’s womb leaps at her arrival, revealing to Elizabeth who and what Mary has been chosen by God to be. There is even a miraculous element to both John and Jesus’ birth – the same angel, Gabriel, who visits Mary also visits Zecharias, John’s Father, and tells him that his wife – who could never bear children and was now too old – would have this son. Even Zecharias’ question to the angel’s announcement about this miracle, “How shall I know this?” sounds an awful lot like Mary’s question to the same angel, “How shall this be?”
John’s life and ministry was all about pointing away from himself because he was a figure whom others sought after, and pointing towards Jesus as the Messiah, the Saviour. John, the Scriptures say, called people to repent – to turn around – but to turn around to see the Messiah, to behold with our own eyes, ears, minds, and heart the fulfillment of everything we’ve ever longed for, witness first hand God’s love and forgiveness in the person of Jesus.
An early philosopher once said that the deepest impulse or desire of our souls is for that which is greater than itself. That is, the thing we all most truly desire and long for, the thing we spend our whole lives looking for is the thing that is greater than our souls, greater than all the things of this life and this world. Nowadays I think, there are many, many people out there who are deeply unsettled and unhappy, who feel lost because they feel that desire within them, their souls thirsting for something more and something larger than itself, but don’t know where to find it. We are so preoccupied with us, our needs, our rights, our wants, and our enjoyments that we only end up digging ourselves deeper into despair, constantly missing or avoiding the only thing that can bring us rest.
In his ministry of pointing others away from themselves and towards Jesus, John proclaimed that he must decreaseso that Jesus could increase. Or, to rephrase that a bit – it must become less about us, and more about Him.
And what a vital but deeply difficult task that is for us. Nobody really wants to be told that they must decrease, have the focus or the spotlight drawn off of them so that it could be put more on Jesus. Imagine if all of the people who dominate our screens and our minds lately, people whom we are perhaps tired of hearing about – Bezos, Markle, Harry, Trudeau, Trump – all suddenly and actually withdrew completely from public life, and used their influence to shift the focus, like John, from themselves to Jesus. What would it be like, what would our own lives be like, much less the world, if all of us sought to make everything less about us and what we want, and more about Him, and what He wants?
This is what the Christian life and way is about. Joy in becoming less, so that we will know him to be great.
Curiously, even the natural world and the church calendar agree about this. I am sorry to have to remind you, just in case you were enjoying it too much, but the longest day is past and the days are getting darker, and it’s only six months until Christmas! John proclaims that he must decrease and Jesus increase, and we commemorate his birth just as the days become darker and darker until at last in six month’s time we again begin to journey back towards longer days at the Winter Solstice, at which time the light that is Jesus comes into the world, and He begins to increase.
We celebrate John the Baptist today so that it might help us to recollect and to know within ourselves that deep desire for that which is greater than us, that which is greater than all of struggles and difficulties, sins, and shames. John points us to Christ, but he points us to Christ in us, at work in us, and calls us to decrease, to let ourselves and our lives and the importance we give them shrink, so that another life might instead grow and be magnified in us. Amen.
“Thou, child, shalt be called the Prophet of the Highest: for thou shalt go before the face of the Lord to prepare His ways.”
