Sunday 24th June 2007NATIVITY OF S. JOHN THE BAPTIST
Fr David Cherry
Isaiah 40 : 1 – 11 ; Galatians 3 : 23 – 29 ; Luke 1 : 57 – 66 & 80
Words from the Benedictus, the Canticle of Zechariah: “You
shall be called the Prophet of the Highest : for you will go before the
face of the Lord to prepare his ways….” (Luke 1 : 68ff)
What he is about, is not himself.
I was saying to a friend yesterday that, for me, St John the Baptist raised
the question : What is it like to be part of a story greater than
one’s own? His reply: What, is there a bigger story
than mine?
I’m not that comfortable talking about the Baptist. I
don’t find him an appealing saint. Deserts don’t
appeal; and I’m not sure about camel hair.
He has been accorded great honour in the church since the beginning;
and I suppose this is because our Lord himself so honoured him:
‘of all children born of women, a greater than John the Baptist
has never been seen….’ (Matt 11 : 11; Luke 7:
28)
So today we celebrate his birth, 6 months before commemorating the
Lord’s birth. Like his Lord, his conception is by divine
intention: the lesson at Morning Prayer was from Jeremiah : Before I
formed you in the womb I knew you.
Before you came to birth I consecrated you …. (Jer 1: 4)
He is the last and greatest of the prophets and yet we have very few
words of his. There is something about his hiddenness that is
disturbing and also compelling. What he is about, is not
himself. And I suppose this is what brings us up short – he
is a sign of contradiction; he is counter-cultural.
His is a voice that will give way to the eternal Word of Truth; his is
a life which will give way to the Author of all life. He is
content to decrease while Jesus increases. He is a man of
detachment, freedom, living in the wilds, free of reputation, free of
being owned; a native of somewhere else, attuned to something more;
someone who points beyond himself to Another. He will say –
“I am not the Christ, it is not me you seek, you seek the one
whose sandals I am not fit to unloose.” He makes no claim
for himself. What might this be like? Perhaps Saint Paul
can help us here.
What gives us our sense of self, our identity and belonging?
Gender, race, religion, culture, class, habits, dress, nationality,
where we are in the family, language, accent, profession. None of
this matters, says St Paul: Your true identity is as a son
– a son, by which he means an heir – someone in familial
relationship with God.
To a world, in the recent words of Fr McDade SJ,
‘hyperventilating with religion’; fulminating with
religious identities, this has something to say to us. What we are
about is not ourselves, but about God, the One who is unknowable and
who makes himself known as we divest ourselves of chatter and opinion;
if we present ourselves, in the words of RS Thomnas, with our
‘faith, green as a leaf.’
You may have already seen the film about the Carthusian monastery in
France, called : Into Great Silence. Filmed without music, it
follows the lives of the monks over seasons without commentary except
for the odd text: “unless give up everything and follow me
you cannot be my disciples” – unless you begin to find that
your identity is in me and discover that you need nothing more –
you will never know what it is like to be God’s friend.
And “You have seduced me and I allowed myself to be
seduced.”
Only one monk speaks to us – old and blind - he has spent
his life waiting on God, relishing the presence of God. No, he
says, he is not afraid of death. How could he be? He is
already a native of heaven.
‘Of all children born of women, a greater than John the Baptist
has never been seen’; and Jesus goes on to say : ‘yet the
least in the kingdom of heaven is greater than he’
In contemplating the Baptist we discover our vocation as a People,
God’s Church. We discover what we are about. Perhaps
our Lady can be seen as God-bearer, Theotokos, the one who bears God
towards us and the world. One model for the People of God.
And in St John the Baptist, we discover the prophetic vocation of the
Church to point beyond ourselves, to the Other: the unknowable, the
ungraspable One by whom all persons are held in being and all creation
kept going.
And we find ourselves in a greater story, greater than our own,
something beyond our estimations, cynicism or certainty, where we must
be attentive to a surprising God and find ourselves co-operators in his
project.
Oscar Romero, whose cause for beatification is at last proceeding, captures the spirituality of the Baptist. He writes:
It helps now and then, to step back and take the long view.
The kingdom is not only beyond our efforts, it is even beyond our vision.
We accomplish in our lifetime only a tiny fraction of the magnificent enterprise that is God’s work.
Nothing we do is complete, which is another way of saying that the kingdom always lies beyond us.
No statement says all that could be said.
No prayer fully expresses our faith.
…..
It may be incomplete, but it is a
beginning, a step along the way, an opportunity for the Lord’s
grace to enter and do the rest.
We may never see the end results, but that is the difference between the master builder and the worker.
We are workers, not master builders; ministers, not messiahs.
We are prophets of a future not our own.
We give praise for St John the Baptist for his hidden life; and for
recognising the Lord when at last he came. We ask his prayers
that we may be content to give way to the God who communes with us here
in his Sacrament; and addresses us, his beloved:
“You shall be called the Prophet of the Highest : for you will go before the face of the Lord to prepare his ways.”