Prepare a way for me ...

In June the Church urges all its members to recall and celebrate the Birth of St John the Baptist. I guess that for many the birth and life of St John may seem very distant and not altogether relevant to our own life.

So why does the Church place such emphasis on this particular birth, life and person?

John’s birth was something of a miracle: his mother Elizabeth was well past child-bearing age (probably in her 40’s which, in Biblical terms was old) and she did not expect to ever have a baby. However, John’s father Zechariah, who was a very good man and scrupulous in his observance of God’s commandments, was told by the Angel Gabriel that his wife would become pregnant and that she would have a son whom they were to name “John”. The Angel told him that John would be filled with the Holy Spirit and would bring many back to God. Zechariah’s immediate reaction to this news was doubt and, as a punishment, he was struck dumb from that moment until it came to naming his child. The relatives assumed that the child would be named after someone in their family and were aghast that both Elizabeth and Zechariah insisted upon the name “John”, the name explicitly given to the boy by God himself. Zechariah, upon getting his speech back exclaimed: “As for you, little child, you shall be called a prophet of God the Most High, you shall go ahead of the Lord to prepare his ways before him. To make known to his people their healing, through the forgiveness of all their sins, the loving kindness of the heart of our God, who visits us like the dawn from on high. He will give light to those in darkness, those who dwell in the shadow of death, and guide us into the way of peace” Luke 1:76.

These magnificently beautiful words from a father to his new baby son indicate a profound and possibly new understanding of the nature of God and of the role that his own little boy would play in the understanding that the world in the future would have of God: a loving God who wishes for peace, reconciliation and healing for his people; a God who is prepared to send his only Son into the world in the full knowledge that only through his torturous death and subsequent resurrection the world may learn of his love for mankind.

Indeed, when the time came for John to begin his work, he burst out upon the world - as Isaiah had foretold that he would (Is 40:3) - loudly proclaiming to all people the tender love of God and the urgent need for them to REPENT, to SEEK FORGIVENESS and to LIVE A NEW LIFE IN THE POWER OF BAPTISM.

John’s message to humanity both then and now is:

Be reconciled to God and believe in his Son, Jesus Chris …

The greatest longing of the human heart must be for perfect peace, and this can only come about once we are perfectly reconciled to God through our belief in, and imitation of, Jesus. What do we have to do to achieve this? We need to take a greater responsibility for knowing about and confessing before God all those aspects of ourselves which fly in the face of the Christian ideal. People flocked to John, confessed their sins and were baptized into a new way of life. This is his call to us too: confess your sins and live a new life in the power of your Baptism, a life based upon the Gospel values put so beautifully and clearly into practice by Jesus, values of love, mercy, faith, truth, goodness, generosity, kindness, humility and forgiveness.

Take responsibility YOURSELF for preparing a path for Jesus through the world in which you find yourself, for Jesus wishes to use you to call people to himself …

We could never overestimate the value of our own role in preparing others to find and know God. If our thoughts, words and actions have their source in God and in His love, then people will come to associate our loving treatment of them with the love that God has for them. The value of your example, if it is a good and loving one, is priceless.

Don’t be afraid to speak out …

I am sure that most of us can relate to feeling a little embarrassed about talking openly about God and whatever faith we may have. Our faith and belief in God tend to remain private matters which we prefer not to express in public. However, Jesus warns us about not openly declaring for him that others may believe: “If anyone declares himself for me in the presence of men, I will declare myself for him in the presence of my Father in heaven. But the one who disowns me in the presence of men, I will disown in the presence of my Father in heaven” (Matt 10:32).

These are very strong words and ones which we need to heed, take to heart and respond to.

Curiously, the Bible tells us nothing about Jesus’ relationship with John as they were boys growing up. Indeed, it seems unlikely that they had ever met (despite being cousins) prior to Jesus suddenly arriving on the banks of the River Jordon seeking Baptism from John. Jesus, though was very clear about how he felt about John: “I tell you solemnly, of all the children born to women, a greater than John has never been seen. If anyone has ears to hear, let him listen!” (Matthew 11:11, 15). Up until that time, all the prophets had pointed to a time in the future when the Christ would appear. But here, in John, was the prophet who was able to actually point to the Christ, able to say, “Here he is!”

John was a messenger both then and now …

We may think that we are not living in the kind of wilderness that John found himself in and from which he preached. True, we are not living in a Middle Eastern desert, but we ARE living in a moral desert, a wilderness which has been brought about by society’s rejection of Christian values and beliefs, a society which proclaims the pagan gods of the paramount importance of ‘self’ and material possessions, wealth and power. John’s call is as urgent today as it was then.....

- Turn away from sin (Matt 3:2)

- Share what you have with those who have nothing (Luke 3:11)

- Practice truth and honesty (Luke 3:14)

- Treat others well and be content with what God has given to you (Luke 3:14)

- ABOVE ALL, believe in Jesus who was born of Mary, who died and who rose again that we might follow him through death and into life. Jesus who came before and who will come again at a time and moment we do not expect.

John the Baptist led a deeply ascetic life which is why he is the patron saint of monks. His Feast Day is June 24th.

Why did you doubt?

Then Jesus made the disciples get into the boat and go on ahead to the other side of the lake, while he sent the people away. After sending the people away, he went up a hill by himself to pray. When evening came, Jesus was there alone; and by this time the boat was far out in the lake, tossed about by the waves, because the wind was blowing against it. Between three and six o’clock in the morning Jesus came to the disciples, walking on the water. When they saw him walking on the water, they were terrified. “It’s a ghost!” they said, and screamed with fear. Jesus spoke to them at once. “Courage!” he said. “It is I. Don’t be afraid!” Then Peter spoke up. “Lord, if it is really you, order me to come out on the water to you.” “Come!” answered Jesus. So Peter got out of the boat and started walking on the water to Jesus. But when he noticed the strong wind, he was afraid and started to sink down in the water. “Save me, Lord!” he cried. At once Jesus reached out and grabbed hold of him and said, “How little faith you have! Why did you doubt?” They both got into the boat and the wind died down. Matthew 14:22-32

Here we have one of those stories which we have heard so many times that we are in danger of it ceasing to have the sort of impact on us that it really should have. For this story encapsulates the sort of faith to which Jesus is calling us all the time – not just for one or two glorious moments of our lives, but all the time. It is the sort of faith which works miracles, both small and big. This story tells us everything we need to know about how Jesus works – or would like to work! – in our lives.

So, let’s watch this scene in our imaginations. Let us see the disciples clambering into their boat and setting off across the lake and, as it turns out, into troubled water. They have left Jesus behind and are batting against a very strong headwind. They are in absolutely no danger – the waves aren’t overwhelming – but it is extremely heavy and hard-going.

All of a sudden they are aware of the person of Jesus walking near to them on the water. To their secular and mortal minds, this is something which is impossible. To their logic, they must be looking at a ghost for there is no other reasonable explanation. In their alarm, they scream out in fear, and who can blame them for that? Jesus knows that they are frightened by what is going on and, probably feeling a little sorry for them, calls out to them that it really is him and not to be afraid.

It is Peter, so impetuous but always quick to recognise the truth when it is presented to him (wasn’t he the first to declare who Jesus really was? Matt 16:16) who challenges Jesus: if it really is you, Jesus, then tell me to come to you. Well, how could Jesus resist such a direct challenge? Come on, then, Peter, come and join me. To his eternal credit, Peter steps out of the boat.

Now let us just stop for a moment and imagine this scenario. Take yourself in your imagination to that boat. Imagine …

… the dark night
… the strong wind
… the rocking boat
… the inky black rolling waves

Would you step out into that? I doubt that many would! But here we have Peter, recognising the Lord and determined to respond to his call to ‘come’ and join him. We see him actually stepping out of the boat and setting off across the water to be with Jesus. His belief and faith in Jesus, and in divine power to overcome the apparently impossible is, at this point, total. We know that to be true for we hear that he set off, walking across the water. For a few glorious moments, he is living the divine life as Jesus is calling him to live it. The divine power of God, present in each of his followers, has overcome the physical world and the laws of physics, and Peter – a mere mortal – is walking on water.

But what happens next? Peter is suddenly reminded by the wind of his flawed humanity and of his mortality. There must have been a sudden gust of wind which caused him to lose confidence, to lose faith in Jesus and in his power to overcome, and he begins to sink into the waves. Jesus, knowing how deeply flawed his beloved friends and disciples are, reaches out and lifts him up.

This is a fantastic passage with which we have to engage more fully than as mere on-lookers. We need to try and enter into it in order to see how Jesus works for and with us every single day of our lives. Let us put ourselves into that boat …

We are sent ahead of Jesus …

Jesus sends his friends ahead of him, and this is exactly what is demanded of anyone who calls him or herself a Christian in any age: we are asked to go out into the world in which we live, work and move to proclaim the person of Jesus by the way we live. When Zechariah, the father of John the Baptist, gazes at his beautiful new baby son, whom he knows has been given the task of proclaiming Jesus, he says: “As for you, little child, you shall be called a prophet of God, the Most High. You shall go ahead of the Lord to prepare his ways before him.” We are called to do no less: to bring people to the Lord by the way we live. However, we know how hard this can be on two counts. Firstly, it is hard to live permanently at one with God and his will, for we are so flawed and are always failing. Secondly, it is hard because we live in a very secular world in which the message of Jesus is not always welcomed.

Therefore, our journey is never going to be straight forward and there will be times when, like the disciples struggling in their boat against a strong headwind and rough seas, we will feel exhausted.

Where is the Lord when I need him?

In all our troubles and challenges, it is easy to feel that we are on our own, for direct experiences of the presence of Jesus can seem, in our ordinary day-to-day secular lives, to be few and far between. But this passage points us to the reality of Jesus present now. Just as he walked into the difficult situation in which his friends in the boat had found themselves, he walks quietly and calmly into our difficult moments and, quite simply, demands faith. Don’t be frightened … I am with you … come! … you can do it … have courage … have faith …

Faith! What a hard thing that is when one is sincerely frightened. In this passage we get a glimpse of what ‘faith’ means as far as Jesus is concerned. It means confidence, trust, reliance, assurance, conviction and belief. We also, thankfully, get a glimpse of what happens when humanity is able to put its trust in the Lord: a miracle of mammoth proportions.

What if I can’t quite live up to Peter’s faith?

This passage is crying out to us to at least try to live up to the sort of faith displayed by Peter. We are called out to seek Jesus at all times and to have faith in him to carry out his work on this earth through us, and sometimes that will require faith to overcome apparently impossible obstacles. We are urged to have such faith. I love to imagine the possibilities and potential of having such faith: all the things it should be possible for us to do in the name of Him who calls us.

But then, like Peter, how easily we are reminded of our flawed humanity and we are held back from our full potential. However, we should take heart, for we are reminded of Jesus’ unfailing love for flawed humanity when we hear that he reaches out in the deepest possible love and compassion to the sinking Peter and lifts him up. That act of ‘lifting up’ can take all forms in our lives – we can be lifted up in so many ways. How often we are lifted up by those moments of prayer when Jesus talks to us and encourages us in our own particular journey. How often we are lifted up by those around us who are kind to us and affirm us. We are lifted up by the wonder of creation around us – and that includes the cold wind and the rain – for we are reminded of the eternal Creator God for whom nothing is impossible and who calls us to a closer union with him in order that his glory may be made known to the world. May Peter pray for us that, like him, we can step out of our boat and find the sort of faith which will set us free.