Nativity of the Forerunner

Luke 1-25, 57-68, 76, 80

It often seems impossible to review the content of Divine Services for a day like today as a stand-alone kind of event.  It seems that nothing in Holy Orthodoxy can be viewed without its relationship with something else of import.

So it is today.  In the Prophecy of Isaiah that was just read, we heard, “The glory of the Lord shall be revealed, And all flesh shall see it together; For the mouth of the Lord has spoken.” 

The prophecy points not to today’s event of the Nativity of the Forerunner, but to his Divine mission.  At Jordan, where John will establish a center for his preparing the way for the Lord, there when Christ comes to initiate His mission, there the glory of the Lord will be revealed.  And what is that glory except that which we together witnessed this past Sunday at the Descent of the Holy Spirit?  What is that glory except that which constitutes the unity of the Trinity, Father, Son and Holy Spirit.  At Jordan, on that day, “all flesh”, all of humanity for all time have seen this unity of the God-head together.  And “the voice of the Father bore witness”, fulfilling Isaiah’s words that the Lord has indeed spoken.

St. John stands alone in the history of humanity as one ‘special’ person.  He carries three titles:  Prophet, Forerunner, and Baptist, and he indeed fulfilled all three of these roles in preparing the way for the coming of Jesus, speaking of our Lord’s imminent coming and prophesizing while still in Elizabeth’s womb as he leapt for joy when the Mother of God arrived, preparing the people by calling them to repentance, and baptizing not only those repentant people, but even our Lord Himself.

Prior to his appearance, Israel had been without a prophet since the time of Malachi, about four centuries earlier.  Israel’s prophetic voice had gone silent.  At the time, King Herod was not really Jewish, and he ruled at the pleasure of the pagan Romans.  Zacharias the priest, John’s father, has lost HIS voice as judgment for not believing the message of the angel that Elizabeth in her old age would conceive.  And so the three offices fulfilled by Jesus, that of prophet, of priest, and of king, were all vacant, silent, or illegitimate.  God had appointed exactly this time for one as bold as John to turn the hearts of the people back to the Lord!

And John was bold!  His preaching was fearless, calling all, from the most influential leaders of the temple to the most common of the population, and even King Herod himself to repentance.

In his capacity as Forerunner, every aspect of his life was ordered to put Christ first.  Even St. Elizabeth hid herself for the first five months of her pregnancy until our Lord was conceived.  When she was visited by the Mother of God, Elizabeth shared in the prophetic mission of the child she was carrying, prophesying “Blessed are you among women, and blessed is the fruit of your womb.” 

For his part, Zacharias had his speech restored after verifying that the child was to be named John.  He would die a martyr’s death when Herod’s troops killed him as they failed to find the child John (when all the innocents were slaughtered).  It was his mother, Elizabeth, who miraculously hid herself and her infant son John in a cave, shielding them from being found by the murders.  Tradition holds that she died forth days later, and that the infant John grew up in the wilderness, fed by angels, protected by God.

And so as we began, noting that John was ‘special’ in so very many ways, his life calls us to emulate those attributes.  His voice still calls to us, who still live in a wilderness, to conform ourselves not to this world, but to the Word of God and His instructions for life.  We come to see that when God can use an elderly woman to bear a child such as John, when He can cause a virgin to conceive a child, we must hold no preconceived notions of limits our feeble minds choose to impose on God, lest our voices be silenced like that of Zacharias for our unbelief.  Note that in his (John’s) ministry he promises no life of ease to any of us, nothing pointing toward comfort, and certainly nothing to describe as ‘conventional’.  St. John shows us that our God, Who worked such inconceivable things in the time of St. John, calls us to find Him in our lives, in our church, in all aspects of the world around us.  His call to us goes further to speak to our hearts so that we, too, call others to repentance, to faith in Christ, for He is coming again, and we are left as those whom God has given grace to prepare the way for His return.

This won’t happen by our living “normal lives”, conforming to the expectations of those who surround us.  “Normal” for us is that which conforms us to the Word of God, to living Christ-like in an anti-Christ world.  St. John said some things that offended and shocked the people around him.  He leaves us that example – not to purposely offend, but rather to speak to the truth, and to encourage through the truth all (especially me first) to repentance, to becoming “perfect, as our Father in heaven is perfect.” 

Through the prayers and intercessions of St. John the Prophet, Forerunner, and Baptist, may our Lord have mercy on us and save us!

Glory to Jesus Christ!