As for you, little child ...

On 24th June the Church will be urging all its members to recall and celebrate the Birth of St John the Baptist. I guess that for many of us the birth and life of St John may seem very distant and not altogether relevant to our own lives.

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 family 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 beautiful words from a father to his new 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 glorious resurrection the world may learn of his love. Indeed, when the time came for him to begin his work, John 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 find it in baptism.

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

Be reconciled to God through his Son ... believe in Jesus!

The greatest longing of the human heart must be 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 apologising for all those aspects of ourselves which fly in the face of the Christian ideal. People flocked to John, confessed their sins and were baptised into a new way of life: this is his call to us too: confess our sins and live a new life in the power of your baptism, a life based upon the Gospel values put so beautifully into practice by Jesus: values of love, mercy, forgiveness, faith, truth, goodness, generosity, kindness and humility.

Take responsibility yourself for making a path through the world in which you find yourself for Jesus, the One who wishes to use you to call people to himself.

We must never underestimate 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, people with slowly come to associate our loving treatment of them with the love that God has for them. The value of our 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 openly talking about God and whatever faith we may have. Our faith and belief in God tend to remain private and which we prefer not to express in public. But Jesus warns us about not opening 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).

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 arriving on the banks of the River Jordon seeking baptism from John. Jesus, though, is 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)

John was a messenger

We may think that we are not living in the kind of wilderness that John found himself in. 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 deeply pagan gods of money, fame, beauty, material possessions, power, etc. John’s call is as urgent today as it was then......

... turn away from sin and shame (Matt 3:2)
... share what you have with those who have nothing (Luke 3:11)
... practice truth and honesty (3:14)
... treat others well and be content with what God has given to you (Luke 3:14)
... believe in Jesus, the Christ, the Messiah, the One who was and is to come (Matt 3:11, Mark 1:7, John 1:29-34)