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John
the Baptist
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John
the Baptist
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With John the Baptist
Sunday we have a wonderful Advent story in June. Cousin
John is born and all the friends and relatives are ready to party.
The tradition was that eight days after the birth a naming ceremony
accompanied the circumcision. The
guests had arrived and of course, they assumed the baby would be named after his
father, Zechariah.
This is where the drama
began at our Celebration Bible Study on Tuesday.
It dawned on Julio for the first time that his home town in Puerto Rico
might have been called San Zechariah instead of
But it’s not San
Zechariah because, as today’s Gospel says, Elizabeth, John’s mother, said,
“His name is John.” And all the guests were in shock and hoped Zechariah
would correct her. But he didn’t.
He confirmed her word by writing, “His name is John.”
It was the father’s
prerogative to name the child. In
the moment of writing “His name is John,” Zechariah steps aside from that
prerogative and enters the mystery of faith. This
could have been Zechariah’s chance to assert his own way.
The angel Gabriel, who had told Zechariah the baby would be born and
would be named John, wasn’t there. Zechariah
would have had the crowd’s support to go against the angel, but instead, a
story of faith unfolds. Faith
overcomes the resistance of self and family and friends.
Zechariah, like
This summer Faith
Lutheran is in a visioning process – a process that will undoubtedly include
surprise. So, as Kelly Fryer says,
we do well to expect surprise.
We have asked all to daily pray that God will “bless
us with the joy of recognizing and participating in what God is doing in our own
lives and in the mission of Faith Lutheran.”
Recognizing what God is
doing isn’t necessarily automatic. Recognition
has to do with seeing, but seeing has also to do with believing that what we see
has something to do with God. Zechariah
saw the angel Gabriel when he first told him
In today’s reading,
Zechariah rises to faith. He sees
that the child isn’t just their child. The
child belongs to God who has a purpose for his life.
In the moment Zechariah relinquishes control, what had gripped his voice
is also relinquished, and he praises God.
Now we might not like
remembering on a celebration of John’s birth that, like Jesus, John died
young, but God’s wide purposes for John, as for Jesus, and us doesn’t mean
we will not have trial and tribulations or that our lives might not sometimes
seem cut short. But what is clear,
is that our lives are not our own. We
belong to God.
That is a statement of
faith – that we are not put here on earth just for our parent’s pleasure –
or even our own, but for God’s joy and purposes.
When the angel Gabriel spoke to Zechariah in the temple he said, “Your
wife Elizabeth will bear you a son, and you will name him John.
You will have joy and gladness, and many will rejoice at his birth, for
he will be great in the sight of the Lord.” He
didn’t live long, but his short life was lived well, pointing to Jesus, and
that was enough.
When I think of our
corporate purpose here at Faith Lutheran, might it not be enough if we spend our
lives pointing to the living presence of God?
Might it not be enough if we too are gifted with the faith to recognize
what God is doing want to participate in it?
And the corporate nature
of this vision matters. God works
within community. Jesus didn’t
relate to God without relating to a community of God’s people.
John the Baptist wasn’t born in isolation, but in a community that
experienced gladness at his birth.
Zechariah responds to
John’s birth by singing of how Jesus and John have been called for God’s
community-wide purposes. This song
is called the Benedictus, the Song of Zechariah, and it is beautiful and
powerful. “Blessed
be the Lord God of
To be redeemed is a
meaningful word. The Benedictus
helps us understand it. It has a
similar meaning to being saved or rescued. The
Benedictus says we will be saved and rescued us from our enemies – set free
from them. And for a purpose!
The Benedictus is clear about purpose.
“To grant, that we, being rescued from the hands of our enemies, might
serve him without fear, in holiness and righteousness before him all our
days.”
Lukan scholar Eduard
Schweizer is perceptive when he writes that “The
ultimate purpose of [redemption assumes] deliverance from the enemy, but, [the
ultimate purpose] is, in fact,
freedom for undisturbed worship.” (43)
Deliverance means that unhindered worship is made possible, true worship
in peace and freedom. Freeing us to
worship undisturbed and whole heartedly is the purpose of salvation, redemption,
deliverance.
In this light, enemies
are whatever keeps us from our true purpose of praising God with our lives in
whatever way we are gifted to do that. Our
purpose is, as scripture says, to live for the praise of God’s glory.
What keeps us from that, is the enemy.
So if we think we don’t have enemies, we may have to look again.
I have enemies, things that get in the way of my praise of God – things
like my wandering thoughts, my fears and doubts about God’s tender mercies.
Appetites can be enemies
for people, or jealousies, or anxiety over the past or future, or apathy or
self-absorption, or perfectionism. There
can also be enemies outside ourselves; people who do us harm because of their
jealousies or self-absorption or fear. Fearful
thinking can create all kinds of havoc. We
do not live in a perfect world. But
we do live in a redeemed world.
That is the message of
the Gospel. John points to Jesus who
comes to redeem us – to save us from what keeps us from living for God.
God is not stopped by our enemies, even when the enemy is us.
God is greater than all that would keep us from living for God.
We may feel crippled by all sorts of things, but we can take another look
– like Zechariah and Elizabeth did.
They thought age and
barrenness were impossible barriers. They
could never have gotten around them on their own, but God did.
The only real barrier would have been had they failed to accept the
surprise. But they did accept it,
illogical as it was. And because
they accepted it, their story lives on to call us to do the same – to trust
that no matter how big our barriers seem – God is greater. The
call is to follow
As we pray for clarity of
vision this summer, may we rejoice that God’s tender mercies will break upon
us with light for our path! The
Benedictus ends with this moving promise “By
the tender mercy of our God, the dawn from on high will break upon us, to give
light to those who sit in darkness and in the shadow of death, to guide our feet
into the way of peace.”