The Feast of the Birth of John the Baptist 24 th June 2012 Canon Simon Butler We re here today to celebrate the gift of three children: Serai, Thomas and John. One was born recently, another was born five years ago and the third was born two thousand years ago. Although I don t have children myself, I ve known enough parents to know that the promise and arrival of a child is a pretty awesome thing. Everything changes, doesn t it. From the mundane things like the amount of time it needs to get from A to B and the amount of things you have to take with you every time you leave the house, to the priorities you have in life and the hopes and dreams for the future you share. In the reading I ve just read, the people who heard about the birth of John the Baptist ask a very important question, What will this child become? At one level this is the question that every parent asks. What will be the future for my child? What is it that lies before Thomas? What will Serai become in the years ahead? What can I do, what can we do as parents to ensure the best possible outcomes for our child? Part of what we commit to as fellow members of the church which these two children are joining today is to play our part in ensuring those positive results. Every parent wonders about the future for their child. But that question What will this child become? is one that has particular power in the case of the third child whose birth we celebrate today: John the Baptist. The circumstances of his birth are, according to the New Testament, rather unusual. His father is struck dumb from the time of John s conception to his birth, when his tongue is freed to praise God; his pregnant mother has an encounter with a distant relative called Mary and both Mary s unborn child
and baby John in the womb, leap in mutual recognition; and, against all custom, the child is named an unusual name, a name which points to his divine calling. John s birth is special. What he will become is the forerunner to the child in Mary s womb. What he will become is the one who will prepare the way for Jesus the Messiah. Let me explain a little about the significance of John the Baptist because it is very appropriate that we re thinking about his birth on this day of Serai and Thomas s baptisms. His significance has something to tell us about what we are invited to want and desire for them for all of us who call ourselves Christians. John the Baptist marks the end of something and the beginning of something else. John marks the end of something. When he appears on the scene in the Gospels, he appears dressed like and sounding like someone from the Old Testament, from the story of God and the people of Israel. One of the most important groups of people in the Old Testament were the prophets. Prophets weren t fortune-tellers but men and women who spoke God s word into difficult and challenging situations in the history of the Jewish people. It was there job to encourage and warn God s people about how best to live and the consequences if they didn t. They often dressed strangely, they often did odd things in odd places to get people s attention, and the things they said and the way they said them could be pretty bizarre too. The people saw the prophets as God s mouthpieces. But there hadn t been any prophets for hundreds of years. Things had all gone quiet. Instead, what had begun to bubble up among God s people was a persistent hope that God was going to do something ultimate and decisive. That ultimate and decisive thing was to send a leader who would bring them
back to God and give to God s people the freedom from tyranny that would show them that God was in charge. That leader, that person, was called The Messiah. The later prophets, including Isaiah who we ve heard from this morning, spoke of someone who would come to prepare the way for the Messiah, a final prophetic figure who would begin to lead the people back to God. Enter John the Baptist. Wearing funny clothes, living in a funny place and doing funny things, denouncing injustice just like the other prophets. Above all, John speaks of someone coming after him who is even greater than him. John is the last of the prophets. He stands right at the end of the Old Testament an Old Testament figure in the New Testament if you like, telling the people that the old ways were coming to an end, that all that God had promised was about to come true and that they should prepare for a new sort of life. John marks the end of the Old Testament. But he also marks the beginning of the New. Because, as I ve said, John s task is to point God s people towards what they are about to become as the longawaited and promised Messiah takes centre stage. When he baptises people, John is asking the people to let go of the past, to let go of all that has held them back, because God is about to do something brand new. That s what he recognised in the womb when Mary came to visit. The coming of Jesus Messiah, Jesus Christ, God s long-awaited leader who would set people free and offer a new way of living in a new kind of relationship with God. So John s job is to point away from himself and to point people towards Jesus Christ and to invite the people of God, who had waited for a long time for the Messiah and for all that the Messiah would bring: justice, freedom from oppression, a new way of living with God and with other people based on all that God had to give the world: love, forgiveness, everlasting life. This is the future John points forward to. That is what Jesus offers.
For us, then, for Serai & Thomas being baptised today, for those who make Christian vows on their behalf and for us all, this is a day to look back and to look forward. Baptism is, if you like, a threshold moment when we are invited to look in both directions. We look back today. We look back at the story that has brought us to this moment. For most of us there will be a lot of love in that story, for others there will be more to regret than to celebrate in our journey to this point. But that story shapes us, for good or for ill. It s really important to acknowledge the contribution of those who have gone before us, who have prepared the way for this moment. It is a modern myth to imagine that we can live our lives unaffected or unshaped by the stories of those whose living has shaped our own, however much we might like to. We give thanks today for all the love and care that have made us who we are, recognising that both within the family into which we were born and the church family into which we were baptised, we inherit a series of stories, customs, traditions and values that will (and, in general, should) affect our own. It makes no sense to deny this, although there always remains the difficult task of shedding the things from our past that will diminish our living. We all seek to lay those things aside, just as we seek to distill the best from our family and faith traditions. John the Baptist looks back with us as a sign that our past is a vital factor in what we pass on to those who come after us. But baptism is, more than it is anything else, a forward-looking moment in anyone s life. For it is in baptism that we associate ourselves with Jesus Christ. In our tradition, it is through baptism which we associate our children with Jesus Christ. This is, from God s perspective I would dare to say, the most important moment in Serai and Thomas s lives. This is the most important thing you will ever do for them as parents. It may surprise you that
I should make that claim. But, if you have given thought to the vows that parents and godparents make, you will at least have begun to glimpse the significance of turning to Christ, for it is Jesus who, as the Messiah, brings all of the riches of the past and all the divine potential of the future into play in the life of these children. Before you as parents and godparents, before we as the wider church, do anything for them, Jesus Christ claims these children as his for ever. He offers them all that he as Messiah has promised: his love, his forgiveness, his everlasting life, not just today but for as long as they (and we) want it. And what he asks is that they use all that he has to give to make the future all that he longs for it to be: a future of justice, a future of living in harmony with the rest of creation, including other people, a future based on the values he brings into their lives in this moment. All of that comes to them today through their baptism, just as for all of us who are baptised, that has already been given to us. That is what turning to Christ is all about: the presence of Jesus in the lives of his people for a better world and an eternal future. And one of the wonderful things about living in such a forward-looking relationship with Jesus Christ, as promised by John the Baptist, is that however many times we forget who we are, what we have become through baptism, and what we can be with Jesus Christ, however many times we forget this, we can start again. New every morning is the love. So let s look back with John the Baptist today. Let s be thankful for all that he was and all that we have been. Let s look forward with John today, as well, to all that, through baptism each of us can become, including Serai and Thomas. And let s each and every one of us remember that we can start afresh every day, forgiven, loved and free, because the Jesus who welcomes these children today and offers them a new start, offers us each that start however many times we need it.
What will this child become?, said John s crowd. They will become Christ s we say today of Serai and Thomas. For ever. Amen.