There’s
nothing “common” about the life of Saint John the Forerunner. He stands as the single most important man in
the history of humanity. What about
Christ? He stands as the God-man. What about the Mother of God? She is the Queen of Heaven. Our Lord said of Saint John, “Assuredly, I
say to you, among those born of women there has not risen one greater than John
the Baptist; but he who is least in the kingdom of heaven is greater than he.”
(Mat 11:11) “None greater” is qualified
in our Lord’s praise for the Baptist by adding “the least in the kingdom of
heaven is greater.” Who is this
“least”? It is the Mother of God. And even here we find harmony with our Lord’s
other words, “So the last will be first, and the first last.” (Mat
20:16)
When
we refer to St. John, we give him three titles – Prophet, Forerunner, and
Baptist. He fulfilled all three.
As
a prophet as he foretold the coming of the Son of God.
As
Forerunner he called Israel to repentance before the Lord’s mission began, a
mission which the Lord Himself began by echoing St. John’s call, “Repent,
for the Kingdom of Heaven is at hand.” (Mat 3:2 with St. John, 4:17 for the
Lord) St. John even pointed to Christ
before this day of his nativity, as he leapt in the womb of his mother Elizabeth
when he found his Savior before him within the womb of the Theotokos as she
visited her relative.
As
Baptist, he in obedience laid his hands upon the Master to give us, and
Christians for all time, the example of dying to this life to be reborn into life
in the Kingdom of Heaven.
St.
John was born in a miraculous way, being a gift to his aged parents Zacharias and Elizabeth. Being announced by the
Archangel Gabriel, Zacharias disbelieved that he could father a child being as
old as he and his wife were, and for his disbelief he was struck dumb, only to
regain his voice when, on the day of the circumcision of his son (eight days
hence), he would confirm his name to be John by writing on a tablet, upon which
he sprung into verbal praise for God.
There
is also a ‘miracle’ within what this birth means to Israel. At this time in the land of Israel, there had
been no prophet for hundreds of years.
The Prophet Malachi was the last prophet, roughly 350BC. Now Zacharias, the priest, has no voice. And the evil king Herod was not really Jewish
and ruled in collaboration with the Romans.
Thus the three offices of the Savior, Prophet, Priest, and King, we
vacant, silent, or illegitimate. Seven hundred years earlier, the Prophet Isaiah foretold of this child: "The voice of one crying in the wilderness: 'Prepare the way of the Lord; make straight in the desert a highway for our God.'" (Isa 40:3) God in
His wisdom “prepared the way” for His Savior by bringing the greatest of prophets, one who could change the hearts
of the people and give them a path and a desire to return to the Lord.
Who
is Saint John, then? As a child, he was
within the age group which Herod would attempt to snuff out with his decree to
slaughter young boys when he learned about the birth of Jesus. Tradition holds that soldiers came to
Zacharias in the temple and asked him to give them his son. When the Saint told them he did not know
where Elizabeth and the child were, they murdered Zacharias in the Temple.
Elizabeth
took the child into the wilderness to hide from those who sought his death,
hiding herself and St. John in a cave. Again,
tradition holds that she died 40 days later, and the boy grew up alone in the
wilderness, fed and cared for by angels, and protected by God.
Here,
he learned the ascetic way of life, living on only what God would provide for
that very day. He ate locusts and wild
honey. In his asceticism, he became
fearless in preaching God’s truth to all who needed to hear. He called both the lowly and the powerful to
the same repentance. Ultimately, his
renouncing of the immorality of the King led to his beheading, killed because
those in power loved that power and authority more than they loved God and
truth and right.
As
we can see, there is nothing about the saint that we would consider in any way
to be “normal”. His conception, his
parents, his upbringing, his ministry, his death – all are abnormal by any
worldly standard. And within this
observation is perhaps the most salient point about what we should take from
this Feast. “For My thoughts are not
your thoughts, nor are your ways My ways, says the Lord.” (Isa 55:8) Again, our Lord’s own commandments to us
highlight this concept, as He teaches us, “Be perfect, just as your Father
in heaven is perfect.” (Mat 5:48) We
are called to something beyond this world.
Heaven is not of this world, and yet it is the place we call
“home”! None would call this world a place where barren old women give birth, where prophets are born as a
result, where a virgin carries God the Son in her womb, where governments and
nations are toppled by the actions of babies, and where confused old men speak
God’s own words with boldness and clarity!
This world is not a place where a person who leads an austere life, clad
in camel’s hair, paves the way for the One Who is King of Creation! And yet, this IS what happened, because these ARE God’s plans. He accomplished EXACTLY this, with EXACTLY
these people and these conditions.
This
is not the God of “just” Zacharias and Elizabeth. He is our God. And He calls us to the same outrageous faith
– in our hearts, in our lives, in our churches, in our world.
He calls us to see HIS authority over all things. He calls us to believe (as Zacharias didn’t at first)
that whatever may seem to be impossible for men is totally possible with God. In the world, it’s not possible to forgive
your enemies. With God, this is
possible. In the world, it is frowned
upon to love the downtrodden, the poor, the needy, the destitute. With God, this is a requirement. In the world, it is impossible to be
“perfect.” With God, this is our
calling!
Those
things in this world which bring people (including ourselves) to places of
weakness, despair, sorrow, hatred, putting self above others, and every
mentionable human failing, all of these human conditions will continue unabated
or even grow in magnitude within us unless we submit to God’s call to “radical
change” in our own lives. A small seed
of “religion” allowed to exist in the margins of our lives may give us the
appearance to others of some degree of caring and respectability, but this seed will
not bear the desired fruit - to aid our attempt to take the Kingdom of Heaven by force. We are part of the “Church Militant.” Our Lord Himself said, “From the days of
John the Baptist until now the Kingdom of Heaven suffers violence, and the
violent take it by force.” (Mat 11:12)
In explaining this verse, the Orthodox Study Bible says, “The Kingdom of Heaven belongs not to the
sleeping or lazy.”
In
the time of our Lord’s ministry, the people of Israel needed “a wake-up call”. St. John was God’s gift to them to do just
that.
His
message has even more relevance in today’s world. Who can look at the world around us today and
say that we are in any less of a position of needing a spiritual
awakening?
God’s
plan for mankind’s salvation is integrally tied to the life and ministry of St.
John the Forerunner. It was true in the
time of our Lord’s ministry. It has been
true for 2000 years. It is even more
true in 2020. If we can find in St.
John’s words, in his call to repentance, and in his living a pure life
conforming to God’s will an example with which we are willing to conform, even
if “imperfectly” at first, then we will honor his memory as is fitting for the
Prophet, Forerunner and Baptist, and we will have gone a long way toward
attempting - as best we can - to conform to our Lord’s call to “be perfect”
ourselves.