The Fourth Sunday After Pentecost -- The Nativity of Saint John The Baptist

The Gospel according to Luke
Chapter 1:57-80

Once again we meet John, this man nicknamed “the Baptist” because of something he invited people to do if they wished to associate themselves with his movement.

John is convinced that the world as he knows it is on the verge of massive change. He can only gropingly describe the terms in which he sees this change coming, but he reaches for an ancient image in his culture that he knows will be familiar to everyone.

Change, John declares, will come through a person, someone who will be known as the Messiah. Some of John’s contemporaries thought the change would be political. Others thought it would be in radical social reforms. John seems to have been in this latter camp.

Significantly John does not go to Jerusalem. He would have had a large audience, but I suspect he did not wish to work within the existing structures. Instead he decides to get the urbanites of Jerusalem to come to him. He begins with those few people who happen to be in the southern reaches of the country, trusting that word of mouth will reach the city. Eventually he succeeds in luring people into a desert environment so that they may look at their society from the outside and realize what a moral wasteland it has become.

If we listen to John we realize he is not merely shouting out condemnation of his generation. There is an element of that, but he is also offering a blueprint for a better society. We see this in the very precise and focused responses he makes to different people.

John realizes that something more than the nodding of heads in agreement is needed. If there is any truth in his intuition that a different kind of future is ahead, then it follows that a different kind of human being is needed for that future. That’s why John calls for a gesture of radical trust and commitment to his vision for the future.

First, one has to step out from among others, itself a commitment. To remove one’s outer garments was itself a gesture of self-revelation and renunciation. This response, that we know as baptism, was powerful on many levels.

John’s greatness shows in his refusal to make himself the centre of his own movement. Always he points beyond himself. And one day his cousin from Galilee steps from the crowd, slips off his outer robe, and asks John for baptism.

Much more happens in the following months as Jesus’ movement grows. John does not forsake his ministry. He may even have intensified his efforts and accepted a higher degree of risk. Certainly he must have realized what he was risking when he challenged Herod’s marriage to Herodias, his brother Philip’s wife.

There follow months in the dungeons of Herod’s Dead Sea fortress at Machaerus. From there one more echo of John’s voice comes to us before it is silenced by the executioner’s axe.