The Birth of St John the Baptist: What will this child become?

Isaiah 49.1-6 ‘I will make you as a light for the nations, that my salvation may reach to the end of the earth’

Acts 13.22-26 ‘Before the coming of Christ, John had proclaimed a baptism of repentance.’

Luke 1.57-66,80 ‘His name is John’

 

“What then will this child be?”

 

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“What then will this child be?”

 

I suspect every parent, grandparent, aunt or uncle asks that question when they hear that a woman is pregnant.

 

And, as we know from the Gospel, it was asked of John the Baptist too, our special patron saint, whose birth we celebrate today.

 

John picks the question up later in life, as we read in the Acts of the Apostles, our second reading: ‘“What do you suppose that I am? I am not he.”’

 

In other words, define me not by who I am, but by who I proclaim, Jesus Christ: ‘after me one is coming, the sandals of whose feet I am not worthy to untie.’ (Acts 13.35)

 

So, the time came for Elizabeth to give birth.

 

Let’s scroll back a little to how we got to this point.

 

St Luke tells us about Zechariah, one of the temple priests, who was married to Elizabeth from the priestly line of Aaron. (Luke 1.5)

 

You could say that John the Baptist came from an impeccable religious pedigree, but as we’ll see his name, John, will mark a change of direction, bringing the temple – the holy presence of God - to the wilderness as it was originally during the Exodus. (cf Exodus 25–31 and 35–40)

 

So both Elizabeth and Zechariah, we read, were ‘righteous before God, walking blamelessly in all the commandments and statutes of the Lord’ (Luke 1.6)

 

One of their great sadnesses in life was that they had not had children and now were ‘advanced in years’ and so that possibility seemed to have past.

 

That mattered in a society where married women without children would, in many peoples’ minds, appear cursed somehow, or must have done something wrong.

 

The Bible doesn’t see it like that.

 

Not to have children is not a sign of God’s displeasure, but the other way round: to have children is to be a recipient and bearer of God’s fruitfulness.

 

Children are always a gift from God, as the psalm puts it: ‘Children are a heritage from the Lord and the fruit of the womb is his gift’. (Psalm 127.4)

 

Even so, like Abraham and Sarah before them, Zechariah and Elizabeth thought they would not have a child (Genesis 18.11-14).

 

Sarah thought it a comical suggestion that she would have a baby at her age, which is why her son is called Isaac, a name which means ‘one who laughs’ because as Sarah said:

 

“God has made laughter for me; everyone who hears will laugh over me… Who would have said to Abraham that Sarah would nurse children? Yet I have borne him a son in his old age.” (Genesis 21.6-7)

 

It’s telling us, ‘nothing will be impossible with God’. (Luke 1.37)

 

So, it was that Zechariah was in the temple performing his priestly duties, at the ‘hour of incense’ that an angel appeared to him.

 

There are echoes here of the annunciation to Mary when Gabriel comes and tells her she will bear a child.

 

But it doesn’t go well for Zechariah.

 

Unlike like Mary’s acceptance of God’s will for her life, Zechariah doesn’t say ‘be it to me according to thy word’ (Luke 1.38) but starts querying the angelic message.

 

That earns Zechariah the temporary loss of the ability to speak; ironic given that his son will be one of the Gospels’ great speakers and proclaimers. (Luke 1.22-23)

 

There’s a deeper message in all this.

 

Israel, the covenant people of God, had lost its voice of praise, become fruitless, a barren wilderness: the very place John the Baptist will go to begin his call to repentance and prepare the way for the Way, the Truth and the Life, Jesus Christ (John 14.6).

 

John picks up this theme in later life: you can’t say we’re Abraham’s children and do nothing with that, even stones have more capacity for life than those whose fruitfulness has dried up. (Luke 3.8)

 

Yet God is on the move, and this child is a signal of that.

 

Elizabeth conceived and not only had the shame she felt around other people gone, but she was bearing an unborn child with all the potential that an unborn, yet fully alive, child has.

 

The gospel gives us details about John’s unborn life.

 

When the pregnant Mary visited the still pregnant Elizabeth and greeted her, the unborn John danced with delight in his mother’s womb, and Elizabeth says:

 

For behold, when the sound of your greeting came to my ears, the baby in my womb leaped for joy. (Luke 1.44)

 

The vibrancy of unborn life is picked up in our first reading from the prophecy of Isaiah (Isaiah 49):

 

The LORD called me from the womb,

    from the body of my mother he named my name. (v1)

 

And now the LORD says,

    he who formed me from the womb to be his servant, (v5)

 

It’s not just about John, it’s about you and me and the unborn too.

 

What then will this child become? Someone asked that about you once!

 

God forms a purpose in every child conceived before ever we take our first breath.

 

Psalm 139 reminds us of this:

 

For you yourself created my inmost parts;

you knit me together in my mother’s womb.

I thank you, for I am fearfully and wonderfully made;

marvellous are your works, my soul knows well. (Psalm 139.12,13)

 

In the light of this beautiful vision of the giftedness and potential of a child it is so sad that we live in a world that disposes of the unborn, those who have no decision, agency or choice, and yet who are ‘fearfully and wonderfully made’ before they’re born.

 

Today children only seem to matter if they are wanted.

 

What a dreadful message: you only matter if you’re wanted by others.

 

The logical conclusion of that is very dark: if you’re not perfect, too weak or too expensive or a burden to others - you’re not wanted.

 

But to Christians everyone is wanted because everyone - even before they’re conceived - belongs first to God: not to a mother, not to a community or nation.

 

All people, without exception, are created in the image and likeness of God called, in many and various ways, to reflect God’s life and glory: ‘before I formed you in the womb, I called you’ as the Lord said to Jeremiah (Jeremiah 1.5)

 

John the Baptist’s life didn’t matter because Elizabeth and Zechariah wanted him: his life mattered because there was a purpose for him, formed and called by God.

 

Abortion with limits is always fatal to an unwanted child; last week MPs lifted the limits.

 

Last week MPs voted to allow medics to assist people, who lack the means or capacity, to die, with some limits. How long will it be before those limits lift?

 

In places where assisted suicide is legal the door has opened to abuses, and those who feel unwanted feeling compelled to die.

 

The Gospel of Jesus Christ is about life: life in all its abundance.

 

That’s why from earliest days his followers have rejected abortion, infanticide and ending life before it’s natural end.

 

This is from a place of compassion and valuing of every life - over which none of us is God – so that we are called to care and alleviate suffering for life.

 

Compassion and life are not in competition; and for life to flourish there needs to be compassion and care: compassionate care for frightened and confused mothers; for those living with disabilities; for those terminally ill: for every life matters.

 

Contemplating John’s call and birth is about him, yes: but also about who we are; what God calls us to be; and what life is all about.

 

“What then will this child be?”

 

Zechariah answers question about John, in the text we know as the Benedictus, said daily in church at Morning Prayer:

 

And you, child, shall be called the prophet of the Most High, 

for you will go before the Lord to prepare his way,

To give his people knowledge of salvation

by the forgiveness of all their sins. (Luke 1.76,77)

 

What then will you be?