The Nativity of St. John the Baptist, Wednesday, June 24, 2020

Luke 1:57–66, 80

When the time arrived for Elizabeth to have her child she gave birth to a son. Her neighbors and relatives heard that the Lord had shown his great mercy toward her, and they rejoiced with her. When they came on the eighth day to circumcise the child, they were going to call him Zechariah after his father, but his mother said in reply, “No. He will be called John.” But they answered her, “There is no one among your relatives who has this name.” So they made signs, asking his father what he wished him to be called. He asked for a tablet and wrote, “John is his name,” and all were amazed. Immediately his mouth was opened, his tongue freed, and he spoke blessing God. Then fear came upon all their neighbors, and all these matters were discussed throughout the hill country of Judea. All who heard these things took them to heart, saying, “What, then, will this child be?” For surely the hand of the Lord was with him. The child grew and became strong in spirit, and he was in the desert until the day of his manifestation to Israel.

Looking back from two thousand years and considering how little is actually said about St. John the Baptist in the Gospels, it is hard for us to understand his importance at the time the Lord Jesus walked the earth.  For evidence of this, we need to recall the fact that all four Gospels deal with him, and that he is mentioned in the Acts of the Apostles.  We should also note that the Gospels tell us more about him than about any of the Apostles.  And if we read the accounts about John closely, we see that the Gospel writers are at pains to show that not only was John not the Messiah, but that he did not claim to be him, and even pointed out Jesus rather emphatically as the Messiah when he came.  There is also the case of Jesus going to John for baptism. St. Matthew, who wrote the first Gospel for the Jews at a time when many of John’s adherents were still alive, felt compelled to make clear that John was submitting to the will of Jesus rather than Jesus to John’s.  The Evangelists also tell of how, after his arrest by Herod, John sent his disciples to Jesus, and of how Jesus praises John.  All of this seems to indicate that even years after his death, John’s followers kept his memory alive and continued to play an important part in 

Jewish life for some time.  As a measure of his significance, St. Luke, writing for Gentile Christians for whom John the Baptist would have been an asterisk in the story of Jesus, spends much time rendering an account of his conception and birth.  In Acts 18, 24 - 19, 6, Luke writes of the eloquent Apollos, an Alexandrian who did not know the Baptism of Jesus but only that of Christ.  Luke then tells us of a group of believers in Ephesus who had received only the baptism of John.  This would have been perhaps twenty years after John’s death.  That there were still followers of John this late and this far afield from Judea helps us to see the range of his influence.  The attention paid to him by the Apostle John is such that the question must be raised as to whether one of the reasons for the writing of this Gospel was to convince the remaining followers of the preeminence of Jesus.  The birth of John the Baptist has been celebrated since at least the 500’s, and it is notable that he shares the distinction with the Blessed Virgin Mary as the only saints whose birthdays are celebrated by the Church.

“They were going to call him Zechariah after his father.” The idea of relatives or synagogue officials believing that they, not the mother, should name her child might seem outrageous to us.  However, we see this all the time in modern society, that people are expected to follow certain prescribed paths.  One of these “paths” these days is the norm of premarital or even extramarital sex.  Another is that a young person must get into a certain level of college immediately after high school.  Many other pressures or expectations exist within society and families, such as the expectation many parents have that their children will produce “their” grandchildren.  However, as Christians, we must ignore all coercion, even when kindly meant, so that the only voice we follow is that of Almighty God.

“No. He will be called John.” Elizabeth remains steadfast, obeying the injunction of the angel who gave her child’s name as John.  Luke does not tell us directly, but leads us to assume that Zechariah had not communicated the Angel Gabriel’s words to his wife.  Zechariah’s written confirmation of their son’s name as “John” is regarded by the crowd of relatives as miraculous.  Her resistance to social pressure is a sign of her son’s later flouting of social convention in deference to the will of God.  As believers, you and I “go before the Lord to prepare his way”, as Zechariah says to his newborn son in Luke 1, 76, with our words and works, unafraid of social pressure to conform to the way of the world, resolute in doing the will of God.

“Then fear came upon all their neighbors.”  The sudden realization that the divine is present among us frightens the worldly, the ungodly, because they feel threatened.  They go through life in denial about the reality of God, even claiming to be atheists and agnostics, but his existence is plain to anyone with eyes.  The thought that he is “down here” rather than “out there” disturbs even some believers, although only those of the lukewarm sort.  We see this on a grand scale with the Pharisees and the Sanhedrin, when Jesus walks among them, curing the sick, expelling demons, and raising the dead.  They would go to any extreme to keep from admitting the truth of his divinity to themselves.

When those around us see that we practice a different way of life than what they expect, they say to themselves the modern equivalent of, “What then, shall this child be?”  But let it be said of us, as was said of St. John the Baptist, that “the hand of the Lord was with him. The child grew and became strong in spirit, and he was in the desert” — the world — “until the day of his manifestation to Israel”, until the Lord Jesus comes again.