by CCW | 23 June 2016 21:00
He catches our attention. We are even drawn to him, attracted by something strange and yet compelling. “What went ye out for to see?” Jesus asks, highlighting the strange and yet compelling character of John the Baptist whose nativity we celebrate in the week of the summer solstice, the week of the longest day of nature’s year. His feast prepares us for our being with the one who comes to be with us everlastingly.
The figure of John the Baptist frames our summer sojourning; his nativity marks the beginning of summer, and his death, “The Beheading of John the Baptist”, coming at the end of August, marks the end of summer, at least in Maritime terms!
Birth and death. Summer and winter. This summer’s birth points us to the winter’s birth of Christ, whose greater nativity signals all the summer of our lives in the grace of God towards us. That is the point of John the Baptist. He points not to himself but to Christ. The Nativity of John the Baptist signals the preparations which God makes for his coming into our midst as the Incarnate Lord in the Nativity of Jesus Christ.
But beyond the reminder of God’s coming to us, there is the purpose of his coming in us – the motions of his grace taking shape in our lives. From that standpoint, the strange and compelling message of John the Baptist is constant and necessary; he points us to Christ, yes, but as well to Christ in us.
The Scriptures highlight the strange and compelling character of John the Baptist. They awaken us to the greater wonder of God’s being with us in Christ in the greater wonder of Christ’s holy birth and death. There is a kind of miracle of nature in the conception and birth of John the Baptist to the elderly and skeptical Zechariah and Elizabeth. Indeed, Zechariah’s scoffing will be rebuked by his being silenced and unable to speak until the birth of John. His challenge to the angel, “how shall I know this?” contrasts with Mary’s question, “how shall this be?” It is the difference between a doubting that is a denial of possibilities and the intellectual inquiry that is open to them.
The birth and ministry of the one prepares us for the coming of the other, a miracle of nature preparing us for the miracle of grace. Everything is preparatory for the coming of Christ.
But what is that preparation? Simply this. John the Baptist is the instrument of God’s grace sent to “prepare the way of the Lord” by “preaching a baptism of repentance for the forgiveness of sins”; in other words, awakening us to our need for repentance and salvation. He is not the forgiveness of sins but the instrument of God preparing us for the coming one whom, he says, “is mightier than I, the thong of whose sandals,” he says, “I am not worthy to stoop down and unloose.”
It is, I fear, not quite what we always want to hear. We have an altogether too negative a view of repentance and forget that it belongs to the positive possibilities of transformation and renewal. In looking at John the Baptist, no doubt, we see a moral rigour and an ascetic demand that seems judgemental and restrictive, forgetting that he is pointing not to himself but to Christ. But repentance is about the hope of change for the better and about the triumph of truth over the falsity of our lives. You don’t need to be stuck in a rut. You don’t need to be defined by the circumstances and happenstances of your lives, or even by sins and follies, both past and present. There is a grace that is given in the midst of things. John the Baptist would awaken us to the possibilities of change, a change of attitude, of mind, a metanoia of the spirit within us that simply makes all the difference. There is forgiveness. It is the meaning of Christ’s death and sacrifice and it is given to be realized in us, in our lives of service and sacrifice. Such things stand in a strange and compelling contrast to the easy indulgence and destructive narcissisms of our lives. Is this not the compelling message of the Confessing Church?
There is a necessary unease about John the Baptist. His birth necessarily awakens us to death as well. That necessary unease is the meaning of his preaching about repentance. It means the dying to sin and self that leads to resurrection and life. That necessary unease is about the pattern of praise and worship. It always seeks to awaken us to the something more of God’s grace and forgiveness signaled and realized in Christ.
The Scriptures are read and proclaimed in the hope of awakening us to the hope of our redemption and transformation into “something rich and strange,” into the shape of glory in Christ. For we can be “no longer at ease” in our own ways, but only in the way of Christ, only by his grace in us. Such are the possibilities of change and renewal spiritually for us all, the possibilities so eloquently hinted at by T.S. Eliot in his poem, The Journey of the Magi.
All this was a long time ago, I remember,
And I would do it again, but set down
This set down
This:
Birth or Death? There was a Birth, certainly,
We had evidence and no doubt. I had seen birth and death,
But had thought they were different; this Birth was
Hard and bitter agony for us, like Death, our death,
We returned to our places, these Kingdoms,
But no longer at ease here, in the old dispensation,
With an alien people clutching their gods.
I should be glad of another death.
John the Baptist alerts us to birth and death, the birth and death of Christ for the redemption and salvation of our lives. Strange and yet compelling, we are challenged about “what we went out for to see”. Suddenly we are made aware of the desire within us for what only God can give us. That is the ministry of John the Baptist, signaled already in his nativity.
Fr. David Curry
Eve of the Nativity of St. John the Baptist
June 23rd, 2016
Source URL: https://christchurchwindsor.ca/2016/06/23/sermon-for-the-eve-of-the-nativity-of-st-john-the-baptist/
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