TRINITY · 24 JUNE
The Nativity of Saint John the Baptist
Forerunner & Prophet · The Voice in the Wilderness · The Greatest Born of Women
Zechariah — zek-ah-RY-ah · Elizabeth — ih-LIZ-ah-beth · Benedictus — ben-eh-DIK-tus · Elijah — ih-LY-jah · Machaerus — mah-KEER-us · Herodias — heh-ROH-dee-as · Salome — SAL-oh-may
Almighty God, by whose providence thy servant John Baptist was wonderfully born, and sent to prepare the way of thy Son our Saviour by preaching of repentance; Make us so to follow his doctrine and holy life, that we may truly repent according to his preaching; and after his example constantly speak the truth, boldly rebuke vice, and patiently suffer for the truth’s sake; through Jesus Christ our Lord.
John the Baptist is the only saint besides the Blessed Virgin Mary and Our Lord himself whose birth is commemorated in the Calendar. His feast on 24 June falls exactly six months before Christmas — six months because the angel Gabriel told Mary that her cousin Elizabeth (ih-LIZ-ah-beth) was then six months with child, and the Church has maintained that arithmetic with theological precision ever since. John is born at the summer solstice, when the light begins to decrease; Jesus is born at the winter solstice, when the light begins to increase — and John’s own words provide the commentary: He must increase, but I must decrease. The calendar year encodes the theology of the Forerunner in the movement of the sun itself. He is the waning light that points to the growing light; the voice that points away from itself to the Word; the greatest born of women who called himself unworthy to carry the sandals of the one who came after him.
His birth was itself miraculous: his father Zechariah (zek-ah-RY-ah), a priest of the Temple, was struck dumb by the angel Gabriel for his disbelief when told that his aged and barren wife Elizabeth would conceive. When the child was born and Zechariah wrote on the tablet his name is John, his tongue was loosed and he spoke the Benedictus (ben-eh-DIK-tus) — the canticle that the BCP places at Morning Prayer, the canticle of the dawn, the great prophecy of the Forerunner’s vocation. And thou, child, shalt be called the Prophet of the Highest: for thou shalt go before the face of the Lord to prepare his ways. This is the Benedictus we sang in the Lauds service — Zechariah’s song over the newborn child who leapt in Elizabeth’s womb when Mary’s greeting reached her ears. The unborn John recognised the unborn Jesus, and the first act of prophetic witness in the Gospel is performed in utero, by an infant not yet arrived in the world.
John’s ministry was the ministry of the hinge — standing between the old dispensation and the new, the last prophet in the tradition of Elijah (ih-LY-jah) and the first witness to the Lamb of God. Behold the Lamb of God, which taketh away the sin of the world — his finger pointing to Jesus at the Jordan is the axis on which all of salvation history turns. He baptised Jesus, and then announced his own eclipse. He rebuked Herod Antipas for his unlawful marriage to Herodias (heh-ROH-dee-as), and was imprisoned in the fortress of Machaerus (mah-KEER-us) beside the Dead Sea, and beheaded at the request of Salome (SAL-oh-may) and the vengeance of Herodias. He died for speaking the truth about an unlawful marriage — a martyrdom that echoes through every subsequent confrontation between prophetic truth and political power, and which is remembered at his Decollation on 29 August.
The feast of the Nativity of John Baptist is among the oldest in the Calendar — older than most of the Apostolic feasts, established in the Western Church certainly by the fourth century. It falls in mid-Trinity, in the long green season of ordinary faithful witness, which is exactly where the Forerunner belongs: not at a dramatic liturgical moment but in the middle of the Church’s ordinary life, calling it as he always called Israel to repentance, to truth, to the preparation of a way for the Lord in the wilderness of the heart. He stands now in the cloud of witnesses — the greatest born of women, the one whom Jesus himself declared to be more than a prophet — and his voice, which was stilled by a dancing girl’s request and a petty tyrant’s oath, has never actually been silenced. Every act of prophetic speech in every age of the Church is his voice continuing, the Forerunner still pointing to the one who stands among us whom we do not know.
Almighty God, who by the birth of thy servant John didst prepare the way of thy Son and give to the Church its first prophet of the new dispensation; Grant that we may hear his voice still calling us to repentance and to recognition, and that we may point, as he pointed, away from ourselves and toward the one who is the Lamb of God; through Jesus Christ our Lord, who liveth and reigneth with thee and the Holy Ghost, one God, world without end.
Amen.