Birth of John the Baptist

See Commentary on Luke 1:57-80

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.

Homily 2 - 2018

In shaping his Infancy Narratives, Luke gave a lot of space to John the Baptist. Matthew gave none. Mark and John did not even bother about Infancy Narratives. Luke presented John and Jesus as cousins, through their mothers, whom Luke said were cousins, indeed caring and affectionate cousins, despite a considerable age difference. Luke wrote of the conception of each of the boys as quite extraordinary, though different.

He said that the circumstances surrounding John’s birth had set the whole district buzzing. He wrote, “All their neighbours were filled with awe, and the whole affair was talked about throughout the hill country of Judaea. All who heard of it treasured it in their hearts. ‘What will this child turn out to be?’ they wondered.”

How important was John in the later life of Jesus, in his public life and mission? It seems that during his lifetime, John was in fact better known than Jesus, more famous. Herod believed him to be more dangerous, and had him imprisoned and later beheaded. [As an aside, while I was working in Mildura about twenty years ago, I met a migrant doctor from Iraq who belonged to a religious sect, called Mandaeans, who are disciples of John the Baptist. Check them out on Google.]

Though Luke’s was the only Gospel that included John in the Infancy Narrative of Jesus, all four Gospels devote space to the adult John and his relationship to Jesus. The Gospel writers saw it important for the Christian communities for whom they were writing to make clear that the two were not rivals, indeed, to show that John quite clearly saw Jesus as more significant than he, and publicly witnessed to his unique and indispensable importance. His role was to prepare people for the coming of Jesus. Jesus was the stronger one; Jesus would baptise with the Holy Spirit and with fire. Indeed, John insisted that his disciples realise that, as he put it himself, “He must increase; I must decrease.”

In some ways, their message was similar. Both preached “repentance for the forgiveness of sins”. And both saw the practical application of repentance in what we refer to these days as “Social Justice”. Luke wrote of John preaching, “If anyone has two tunics, he must share with the one who has none, and the one with something to eat must do the same.” He accepted the need for taxation, but warned the tax collectors working for the Roman occupiers, “Exact no more than your rate”. To the military, he said, “No intimidation! No extortion!” And we are familiar with Jesus’ teaching in his “Sermon on the Mount”.

Their sense of God was similar. John’s name, given him by Elizabeth and Zechariah, on instruction from the “angel of the Lord”, means in fact, “God is gracious [or merciful]”. It sums up his mission quite beautifully. He indeed testified to God as the forgiving God.

Yet, on one occasion Jesus said of John, “No one born of women has appeared greater than John the Baptist. Yet the least in the kingdom of heaven is greater than he”. Certainly John had insisted, “Already the axe is laid to the roots of the trees. Every tree that does not produce suitable fruit will be cut out and thrown on the fire”; and “The winnowing fork is in his hand to clean his threshing floor, to gather the wheat into the silo and to burn the chaff in unquenchable fire". Could it be that John was so impatient, even disappointed, with Jesus’ emphasis on non-violence that he sent disciples to him to ask, "Are you the one who is coming? or do we wait for another?" Or was he simply puzzled? Then, on his part, was Jesus merely saying that John’s unparalleled human integrity, commitment, courage and self-sacrifice were as nothing compared to his opening to the values of the Kingdom of God, that plainly he warmly embraced?

One way or other, we celebrate today the birthday of this incomparable human being, trusting that he also belongs well and truly in the kingdom of heaven.