June 24, 2001
© 2001 Grant M. Gallup
"All Sundays are Feasts of our Lord Jesus Christ. . . all other Feasts of our Lord. . . when they occur on a Sunday, are normally tansferred to the first convenient open day within the week. . . When desired, however, the Collect, Preface, and one or more of the Lessons appointed for the Feast may be substituted for those of the Sunday."-- BCP Pages 16-17. {The Nativity of St. John Baptist is a Feast of our Lord.} These propers therefore may be thus used on Pentecost 4 or on the next convenient day.
[Propers for The Nativity of St. JOHN BAPTIST]
Isaiah 40:1-11 Uneven ground shall become level
Ps.85. Benedixisti, Domine
Acts 13:14b-26 God has brought to Israel a Liberator, Jesus
Luke 1:57-80 Elizabeth bore a son; he is to be called John
Do you know why this is a unique saint's day? No, it's not that most of the other saints are Catholics and this one is a Baptist. After all, Martin Luther King Jr. was a Baptist. And besides, the Masons all claim John the Baptist, too, as one of their own. John's birthday is celebrated six months before that of his primo, his cousin Jesus. Like Jesus' birthday, John's is a feast of lights--as we keep Jesus' birthday at the winter solstice, the beginning of winter in the northern hemisphere, so we keep John's at the summer solstice, in the northern hemisphere. It is a kind of Christmas in June, at the beginning of our "invierno", our winter in the tropics. We are appropriately baptized with las lluvias, the rains, after six dry months.
We know a lot about the Immerser John from the Scriptures, that he was kinfolk to Jesus, and that his father Zecharias was performing the priestly duty of offering incense at the altar when an angel appeared to him and told him he was to have a son, even though his wife Elizabeth had been infertile all of their married life. We know of the strange way in which John got his name, how he preached in the desert, lived on a diet of locusts (quite kosher, in fact) and wild honey. We have heard these stories from our Sunday School days. Jesus is quoted as saying of him that no one greater than he had ever been born, yet the least of us in the Reign of God has an edge on him. Some people, moved by his preaching, identified him as a Messiah himself, others thought he might be a prophet, or even Elijah, come back from his stony tomb to preface the One who should Come. But he said he was only a Voice. Today we might have said, a Mouthpiece. Or a Mouth. As we say in Managua, a Voceador, a newsboy. His mouth got him into trouble, for he began by calling his audience "a generation of vipers." Jules Moreau, one of my seminary professors, aptly identified them as "ass vipers." Fleeing from a burning field. He denounced the political and religious establishment. He was "the man goin' round takin' names," as the Spiritual sang about it. When Herod Antipas, the Tetrarch, married his own niece, who had been his half-brother's wife, John put his business in the street, exposed and denounced him publicly. As the collect for today prays, he "constantly spoke the truth, boldly rebuked vice, and patiently suffered for the truth's sake".
John is a saint for our time--he took nothing for granted, and he was an Asker of Questions that Dear Abby would pass along politely to others. We have in our time been so much the victims of the lies of our governments, the multinational corporations that have even more power and influence than our elected officials that they pop them around like puppets, and appoint our presidents. Even in the Churches we have endorsed the pornography of politeness, so that what our government and Israel are doing in Palestine is called a "peace process". Piece? John didn't even take Jesus for granted--even after he was arrested, he sent some of his disciples to see Jesus and ask some vital questions. Even after Jesus' execution, some of them continued to ask, "are we to wait for another?" Some still do.
The Church went down the wrong road to supercessionism for a while--the idea that an imperial Church rightly succeeded the Chosen People of God and that there is no need for Mother Israel at all. Hitler the baptized Aryan thought so, and made matricide a virtue, and with the help of Christians orchestrated the Holocaust. The Church again chose to ignore the Messenger of God sent to Medina and to Mecca--and mounted crusades to murder the Muslim and the Moor. John Baptist urgently reminds us that the Kingdom of heaven would suffer this violence, and the violent bear it away. We will miss the gospel if we miss John's urgent cry, "Repent! The Reign of God is near!" The chariots of God swing perilously low to our steeples.
John lived simply. If we were alive today, he would get his clothes from the Good Will store--his food from throwaways. It was a deliberate embracing of prophetic life-style: he wanted to look like Elijah, indeed. Our lesson from him is that dignity cannot be bought, is not a commodity in trade. Dignity is not the same as status, for John was a Nobody except the greatest person ever born of a woman. Jesus thought so. Muhammad Ali used to say he was The Greatest (I met him once in Chicago, and thought so too, and gladly posed for pictures with him) and we all came to see that vis-a-vis Vietnam he was indeed greater than all the lying Presidents who now seem like cents-off Herods to us. Declassified clowns.
Neither John Baptist nor Muhammad Ali got their dignity by conforming to the status-quo, or imperial expectations. They lived publicly what they believed privately. These are the ones of whom the Bible speaks when it says, "Look, I am sending my messengers to talk right into your face. They are getting the road ready."
John gave the Church through Jesus and the Apostles the cleansing Bath we call a Sacrament. Folks practiced sacred bathing before John; he found it a traditional rite, and made it a revoutionary commitment. But mostly at first it was for converts to Judahistic faith--and most people don't think they need conversion, just as most of us are glad that it was recited ritually for us, before we were old enough to actually have to show some evidence of Change-of-Heart before the Bath. "We're already Sons and Daugters, we're already in the Family," it enabled us to say. But John pointed to the little slippery pebbles at the river's edge, and said, "Don't think you can say to yourselves, We are already Abraham's tribe. God can use these stones to raise up a tribe for Abraham."
And: "The axe is already laid to the root of your society, and the Tree that fails to give fruit is going to be cut down and used for a bonfire of these vanities."
For John, Baptism means lots of water--opening up the symbols--a bath, going under. (Sprinkling, by the way, has never been allowed: the reductionists can go no slimmer than pouring.) A bath cannot be submitted by Title. But more than lots of water, it means lots of repentance, enough to turn your lives around: drowning the old life, splashing around in a new one. I used to say that John was more a Stokely Carmichael than a Cardinal Spellman. Nowadays I'd say he was more Osma bin Laden than Robert Schuller. But John has one more aspect of character that escapes us now--humility. "Celebrity" now has become a compliment, and John knew better than to grasp for it or think it of value. He had a sense of proportion about who he was, and the Church, at least, heard him say "I must decrease, and He must increase." Alarmed and amazed at his preaching, the crowds urgently asked, "What are we to do then?" And John told them--"The one with two shirts must share with the one who has none, and the one with food must do the same." When was the last time you divvied up your clothes? Some tax agents, then as now extorting money from the poor to give to the rich, came to John and asked, "What are we supposed to do, for heaven's sake?" And John said, "No graft, no grease, no gravy." Some soldiers (actually policing occupied territory, like Israeli soldiers in Hebron, in the West Bank) came to him and asked, "What are we to do?" And John said, "Don't bully people; no police brutality, no rubber bullets, no false charges, no bribes allowed." Luke says that "with these and many other things John addressed the people as he urged them on and announced good news." Luke calls this good news--but for many of John's listeners it was bad news indeed. As for those today who do not share, who have more clothes than they can possibly wear, more saved up than they will ever use, John is your Man at the mike. But he doesn't have good news for consumer capitalism.
John is telling us what's on the way for us.
Crazy Christopher Smart prays in poetry to him nevertheless:
"Great and bounteous Benefactor,
We thy generous aid adjure,
Shield us from the foul exactor,
And his sons, that grind the poor."
+ + +
Our calendars tell us that Thursday the 21st was the first day of summer,
and our rubrics tell us that today is St John the Baptist's day, or
Midsummer's Day, as it has also always been known. That's crazy, I know,
but Midsummer's Eve has always been associated with craziness, so it's OK
to have summer start on Thursday and arrive at Midsummer by Sunday. People
who are inclined to be bonkers we now say are flaky, or that their cheese
is slipping off their cracker, or that they are not
all there, but formerly they were said to "have but a mile to Midsummer."
Shakespeare's "A Midsummer Night's Dream" was occasioned by this Midsummer
week. It's been associated with
the full moon, and sometimes the pericope of the Gadarene shizophrenic
conveniently pops up today. But John Baptist is enough to make us crazy.
It's a day associated with unpredictable change, and the moon howls back at
tame yard dogs and sics them on their owners. Deacons are therefore often
ordained at Midsummer, as I was, and there's probably a connection. The
first blast of summer heat in Chicago sends us running to the beach, and
anciently Baptisms were held on John's Day. In Nicaragua it is still a
custom to run to seaside and in Puerto Rico, whose capital is named for the
Baptist, there's a contest to see who can get first into the water after
midnight on the Eve. It's the only day in the Prayer Book calendar besides
Christmas which celebrates a birthday--because it is connected even in
Nature to Jesus Day in December, for from today on the days decrease (yes
it's true!) in length until Christmas, when (as John prophesied) the days
of Jesus must increase. St. Augustine pointed out that what John meant,
more than the shortening of his days, was the shortening of the time of
preparation for the Coming of the Liberator. As our Liberation comes, the
time for turning ourselves around grows short. The chance for change
narrows and focuses, and we must act quickly, and run to the ocean of God's
love and beg forgiveness. Liberation cannot come until the former ways
have been diminished and put in their place. The gospel says that the
coming of Elizabeth's (In Latin America, Isabel's) new baby was the
occasion for a huge change in her life. A woman learned to talk back to
her husband, Zechariah, and he was a priest besides. One would think that
was not to be encouraged, from the pulpit, but there it is at the beginning
of Luke's "orderly account." Zeke's family and all the men folks had
decided the baby would be named Zechariah, after him, but Zeke was struck
deaf and mute by a feminist angel, for his failure of faith, and the
patriarchy he represented was hushed until we all could learn to sing a
song of Liberation, Benedictus Dominus Deus, of the new Dawn, dayspringing
and cart-wheeling and splashing its way down the river to us, to give us
light and guide our wet feet into the way of peace.
`"We shall name him Juan" Isabel insisted. But "Zechariah" means "God remembers!" they argued. Good, but that's not enough any more, for "John" means God is gracious NOW. A new name for a new child in a new epoch, a time for the New Alianza, the New Testament, a new way of Naming. It is only when the venerable patriarch agrees to a new name for the New Age, that he regains his eloquence, finds his Voice, is filled with the Spirit, and can sing "Blessed is the Liberator who comes"--and we have song his song daily ever since. Thank you, Zeke.
Liberation is not possible for any of us until the past has been gladly accepted, included, celebrated, but put in its place, in the perspective of a new Way. The Past is Prologue, and the Future can't come until we gracefully let go of the past, and keep it forever for our footnotes--indeed, our FEET- NOTES, for we stand firmly on our past as on our feet. When Paul was invited to "say a few words" in the synagogue that morning in Antioch of Pisidia, he recounted to them a précis of the Past as Prologue, and it's a delightful read, as he recounts how it is that finally, as the poet said, "the darling of the world is come."
He said, "Yes it's true, God made our forebears great and led them out of Egypt, and put up with them in the wilderness, defeated their enemies, captured land for them, and gave them the judges and the prophets, until Samuel. Then they wanted one-man rule, and God even gave them that! And then God found David, a man after his own heart, and now of David's posterity God has brought to Israel a Liberator, Jesus, as he promised. Even before his arrival, God sent John, who preached a Baptism of Change-of-Heart.
John came to shift the gears of the engine that drives the world, to shout Repentance, a churchy word for Change-of-Heart. "Who do you relly suppose I am?", John asked. What is your name for what's happening here? What is your name for your future? John says that although we think we are unfit to untie the shoes of liberation and let it walk barefoot amongst us, the task has nevertheless been assigned to us, as it was to John, to announce Jesus as our Future.
So Elizabeth says that the new baby's name is GOD IS GRACIOUS. And St Paul said that day at Antioch in the synagouge that all of history has prepared us for this hour. Sisters and brothers of the family of Abraham--all of you Jews and Christians and Muslims--hear this: it is to us that the message of liberation has been sent. The prophet Isaiah finds in this comfort for the people, a strengthening and fortifying message for us all. The valleys of poverty shall be lifted up, the mountains of privilege made low, and the uneven ground of social injustice shall be levelled, and the rough places made a plain, and the glory of God shall be revealed, and all flesh shall see it together.
GRANT GALLUP
CASA AVE MARIA
MANAGUA, NICARAGUA C.A.
gallup@tmx.com.ni
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