Birth of John the Baptist - Homily 1

Homily 1 - 2012

For Luke, some names were important since they summed up the essential uniqueness of those who bore them. Two such names that we are familiar with are John and Jesus. The name John means "God is gracious" – a wonderful name! At the occasion of his conception, the angel announced to Zechariah: "… even before his birth he will be filled with the Holy Spirit. He will turn many of the people of Israel to the Lord their God." The name Jesus means "God saves"; and, particularly in this context, indicates the particular shape that God's graciousness needed to adopt in a world confused and messed up by the ever-accumulating sins of humanity. In Luke's mind both John and Jesus embodied in their unique personal identities complementary facets of the inexpressible mystery of God. 

Their life task was to become what they already were. Luke said of John: "The child grew and became strong in spirit, and he was in the wilderness until the day he appeared publicly to Israel." Later he said of the young Jesus: " The child grew and became strong, filled with wisdom; and the favour of God was upon him."

The wonderful thing is that each of us, too, is a unique and special expression of that infinitely rich mystery of God. The task facing us all, as it faced both Jesus and John, is to allow that divine likeness that each of us is to be set free from deep within us and to develop and consolidate ever more.

That raises the question: How do you and I discover and release from within our depths the distinctive imprint of God special to each of us? The problem we face is that we are so fragmented. Which is the true me? the me when I am at my best, or when I am at my worst, or somewhere in-between? The me that quietly sits in the background and judges me when I am all of these? The me that makes resolutions to reform, or the me that breaks the resolutions? And so on…

A repeated comment of Jesus occurring throughout the Gospel may hold the key. How often Jesus said: "Your faith has healed you"; or "Your faith has made you whole". Effectively he was saying: "Your faith has brought together that incomplete, disfigured, and otherwise fragmented self." Your faith has allowed that to happen. The faith that Jesus was talking about is not so much what you believe about Jesus [though in some way that is necessarily in the background], but your trust in Jesus, your entrusting yourself to him and your whole-hearted commitment to him.

Commitment is something of an unfashionable word these days – commitment to anyone or to any value – much less commitment to the person of Jesus and to the vision that fired him. Yet I think that there lies to key to wholeness, to discovering who we really are.

I wonder what led people to commit themselves to Jesus and enabled them to have faith in him. I suspect that it might have lain in the way that he looked at them, and in what they experienced as his eyes met and engaged with theirs.

For each of us, the journey to becoming whole begins, I believe, as we let our gaze engage with the loving gaze of Jesus. The loving gaze of Jesus sees through the accretions accumulated over the years, right from our infancy. It sees to our purest depths that touch into and draw from the mystery that is God. The fearless gaze of Jesus penetrates to the deepest truth of each of us. He knows our name, not the one given us by mum and dad, but the name given to us by the creating God. It is a name impossible to express in human language. It is too unique for that but it is ours. But through our persistent commitment to Jesus, we begin to discover who we truly are. We learn our name.