by CCW | 24 June 2018 15:00
“What manner of child shall this be?”the neighbours of Zacharias and Elizabeth ask, highlighting the strange and yet compelling character of John the Baptist whose nativity we celebrate today and whose feast day marks the anniversary of the landing of Giovanni Caboto, englished as John Cabot, perhaps, though by no means for certain, in Newfoundland in 1497. Thus he has become the patron saint of what later became Canada.
To state this obvious fact of history is regarded by some as politically incorrect; regardless, it is a feature of this country of displaced peoples which is about more than just the encounter between various European cultures and the so-called indigenous peoples, a term which historically would be utterly meaningless to those whom it is meant to describe. That history is about more than just economic and cultural exploitation though that is inescapably part of the story. That is hardly new as one can see from Bartholomew de Las Casas 16th century work, A Short Account of the Destruction of the Indies, or Voltaire’s classic critique of his own 18th century European culture in Candide. There is no right side of history which is not to say that there aren’t lessons to be learned about good and evil and about right and wrong. History as an intellectual discipline is inherently revisionist which requires, I think, a recognition of the complexities and the vagaries of the contingent world of human actions and motives rather than forcing history into some sort of ideological strait-jacket such as the idea of progress. Such things on all sides are really a kind of blindness, a lack of awareness and a failure of the ethical imagination. It is invariably a kind of judgmentalism.
There are the ups and downs of history but there are also those moments of the breakthrough of the understanding into “the fullness of time”, an awakening to the truth of our lives in God. There are profound and providential things that happen in the course of history even in and through our follies and sins, despite all our certainties.
Thus the conjunction of this feast with the Gospel for The Fourth Sunday after Trinity about the parable of “the blind leading the blind” is particularly compelling. It concerns our awareness, our vision of the mercy of God, which alone counters our self-certainties and self-assurances, our judgmentalism. This is our blindness. Instead, we are called to Christ who, theologically speaking, is not simply the icon of any one particular culture as the native peoples of Canada themselves amply show; they are, after all, largely Christian. Abusus non tollit usum is an older medieval principle; the abuse of something does not take away from its proper use. Therein lies the real question with respect to the historical interaction of cultures past and present, something articulated very well in Chinua Achebe’s No Longer at Ease about the clash between British Imperial culture and the Igbo tribal culture in parts of Nigeria in the twentieth century.
At any rate, the figure of John the Baptist frames our summer sojourning in a Christian understanding of things. His nativity marks the beginning of summer, so close to the summer solstice, while his death in the commemoration of “The Beheading of John the Baptist”, coming at the end of August, marks the end of summer, being so close to the end of cottage season. We are talking the Maritimes here!
Birth and death. Summer and winter. This 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. In a way, 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 Christ’s Nativity. The summer solstice has just past; the long summer’s march to winter has begun!
This summer’s feast signals something more. Beyond the reminder of God’s coming to us in the intimate wonder of the Incarnation, there is the purpose of his coming in us; in short, 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 and to Christ in us, something which transcends cultures even as it transforms and shapes them. Our post-Christian culture is about our forgetting or denying such teachings but that is the context for us: how to be Christian in a post-Christian age.
The Scripture readings for this feast highlight the strange and compelling character of John the Baptist to awaken us to the greater wonder of God made man in Christ, 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. The story recalls Sarah’s mocking laughter about conceiving a child, Isaac, the promised son, in her and Abraham’s old age. Here Zechariah’s scoffing at such possibilities 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 an intellectual inquiry that is open to their realization. It is a critique of all our self-certainties that ultimately render us blind and dumb.
What is wanted to be grasped is how 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. About John the Baptist, it is said that “he will turn many to the Lord”, literally going before him “in the spirit and power” of the figure of the prophet Elijah, an important Old Testament figure. Everything is preparatory for the coming of Christ, the one in whom history has its fulflillment and meaning.
But what is that preparation? Simply this. John the Baptist is the instrument of God’s grace sent to “go before the face of the Lord to prepare his ways”. How? By “preaching a baptism of repentance for the forgiveness of sins”; in other words, by awakening us to our need for repentance and salvation. He is not the forgiveness of sins but he is the instrument of God preparing us for the coming of the one who is the forgiveness of sins. He, John says, “is mightier than I, the thong of whose sandals I am not worthy to stoop down and unloose.”
Repentance. Not quite what we want to hear. We have too negative a view of repentance as we saw last week and forget that it belongs to the positive possibilities of transformation and renewal. In looking at John the Baptist, we see a moral rigour and an ascetic demand that may seem judgemental and restrictive, forgetting that he is pointing not to himself but to Christ. Repentance is about the hope of change for the better in us and about the triumph of truth over the lies of our lives. 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 as well as to a kind of fatalism.
The changes are within. They recall us to the truth of our humanity against all that separates us from that truth in God. It doesn’t mean that we won’t grow old, but it suggests something about how we grow old. Graciously or complainingly? Lovingly or in bitter resentment?
There is a necessary unease about John the Baptist; a birth that necessarily awakens us to death as well. That necessary unease is the meaning of his preaching about repentance for such is 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. Such is the radical nature of repentance proclaimed in the witness of John the Baptist. It is about death and life in us. We can, in T.S. Eliot’s words, be “no longer at ease” in our old ways but only in the way of Christ to whom John the Baptist points us. Christ’s grace in us is the beginning and the end of all things, the very thing to which the Nativity of John the Baptist points us. Even as an unspeaking babe he points us to the Word made Flesh whose life in us is grace and glory; whose word is life and joy.
John the Baptist awakens a desire within us for what only God can give. That ministry is signaled already in the wonder of his nativity.
Fr. David Curry
The Nativity of St. John the Baptist & Trinity 4,
Christ Church, June 24th, 2018
Source URL: https://christchurchwindsor.ca/2018/06/24/sermon-for-the-nativity-of-john-the-baptist/
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