Today we keep the feast of the Nativity of Saint John the Baptist. And its fun to speculate on what the appropriate menu for this feast might be... What sort of food would John the Baptist want? To be sure, it will have to be something very simple, something with very little taste – perhaps a main course of curdled milk and a desert of locusts and wild honey...
The Baptist's notoriously somber food wishes notwithstanding, the importance of John in the Christian story cannot be overstated. He prepares the world for Jesus and is acclaimed as the greatest profit ever known. We’re part of the story too – it is a story of how we prepare our hearts and minds and bodies to receive Jesus. It is the story for much of Advent, but it is really a story for any time and for all time.
There are a number of details in Luke’s account of the birth of John the Baptist that tell us the story is bigger than John. The fact that John is not to be named after his father is a very important detail – he is, after all, the first-born child. But Zecharia is out. He is to be named John – a name which has its roots in the Greek god of water. Is this subtle foreshadowing – after all, John will baptize with water. Water is also essential to all life as we know it. This may be Luke’s way of showing us that this story touches us all, not only the faithful Jews.
In the story of John’s birth, we have one of the most moving passages in scripture - the Song of Zachariah, also known as the Benedictus. “For you, John, will go before the Lord, bringing knowledge of salvation and light to those who are in darkness. You will lead us in the way of peace.” In our monastic worship, this is a hymn we sing at the start of every day.
This is John who we meet today. The forerunner. The profit called to prepare the world for the coming of Jesus. The one who leads us to peace. But the promise of John is a little different than the reality of John. He is a profit. And he does make the way ready for Jesus. But I’m not sure he leads us in the way of peace – at least not as we think of it. And frankly, I think John’s a bit of an extremist.
He wears sack cloth and covers himself with ashes. He has a diet of locust and wild honey. He leads his followers in a life of denial and fasting. His message is a harsh one – a message of judgement. He greets people with statements like “You brood of vipers...” His judgement against Herodias, the wife of Herod, is so severe that it costs him his life. If John were with us today, I wonder if he’d want to be part of the Episcopal Church, or any Church... Given his assessment of the Herod, I wonder what he might have to say about the leaders of our day.
Many of the things that John does are things that Jesus calls us not to do. Jesus doesn’t lead his followers in this extreme way. When asked why his followers are so much less disciplined than John’s, Jesus says that we are at a banquet and so we must celebrate – something that we will do symbolically in just a few moments at the Eucharist. Most importantly, Jesus does not condemn people, not even the wife of Herod. Jesus is building a congregation of sinners, not of saints.
I do believe Jesus looks with great joy at many churches in our time, even as we struggle. For our struggle is how to be greater in our inclusion – how to draw the circle wide and draw it wider still. The inclusion of Jesus, after all, knows no bounds.
But we still need to focus on John’s story and how it applies to us.
One essential element of John’s story is that he seems utterly uninterested, perhaps even incapable of telling anything but the truth – the whole unvarnished truth. He does not have the spirit of a politician. This is one aspect of the prophetic witness of John that we need. Being polite is one of the great virtues in contemporary Christianity. We didn’t get the from John... nor from Jesus...
If we could come to regard sugarcoating the truth as sin, perhaps fewer children would starve... perhaps fewer school children would be shot, perhaps health care would be universally available in the richest country on earth.
When we begin to encounter God as part of our lives – and I think all of us come to a point where we either begin an adult encounter with God, or we walk away from faith – when we encounter God we tend to respond in extreme terms. How could we do otherwise?
We want to get rid of everything
that is ungodly; clean up our lives... And we want others to do the same. We
hear the same call that John heard;
build a straight pathway in the wilderness, smooth out the rough places, fill in the potholes and get rid of the wicked folks. But at some point, we learn that Jesus also calls us to a feast, not a fast. And we learn that our purpose is not to build a perfect road. Our purpose is to travel that road with our brothers and sisters and all of God’s creation.
In other words, we must learn how to have a relationship with God. This is a lifelong process. Any relationship takes time and effort to grow strong and whole. Relationships often have clumsy starts and rough patches, but over time they grow deeper and more complex. John the Baptist helps us start the relationship with God, but Jesus teaches us about the deep and abiding love of God.
That is ultimately what John was doing. Welcoming God into his life, welcoming the incarnation of God into this world, welcoming Jesus, who at that time was a highly expected stranger. There were many sets of expectations for the Savior, but they were mostly seriously off the mark. I would just point out that even these days, many of our expectations of Jesus are way off the mark.
But in our different ways we are working to welcome Jesus into our lives through the increasing of love and justice. John is called a profit of the Most High – a title none of us claim. But we are all called by our baptism to be God’s messengers. The message is God’s love. And we must remember that love and justice are eternally linked.
The call of John the Baptist is a call to all of us through our baptism: Make the world ready, make ourselves ready, shine light in dark places, lead the way to God’s peace. The call doesn’t come from John - it comes through John. That is perhaps the most joyful piece of John’s story - the story of all of us.
God can use us as we are. We can serve as God’s instruments in spite of ourselves.
And if we are a little too harsh, or a bit clumsy, or we muddle the message a bit, it's OK. We can fall down and get back up. Because ultimately, we are messengers, not the message. The message is that God, who is love, is alive and dwells with all creation.
