In the Tucson area the feast day of Saint John the Baptist is the beginning of the summer monsoon season. The National Weather Service would tell you differently, and so sometimes would the sky. Traditionally however this is the day to celebrate the relief from the dry days that came before. And as we might note, it is six months before Christmas. The Nativity of John the Baptist comes six months before the Nativity of Jesus. And so we have a little time to prepare. Half a year? Is that enough? Enough to have before you as your world threatens to come apart? We got a little more notice before climate change really struck us between the eyes. And this is monumental. Give ourselves a break: it doesn’t look like much does it? Two kids born far away and long ago, their births barely recorded except that their parents seemed to know what was going on. Listen to the song of Zechariah, as we do so often in morning prayer and in the Eucharistic celebration of John’s feast, and we begin to realize something big is happening. The song itself seems most happy about vindication and freedom from Israel’s earthly enemies. But there is more going on. This child, even this child that is not worthy to untie the shoestring of the next, is powerful. He dresses strangely, like a prophet come out of old, the pages worn and tattered in the holy books: here he is in the flesh. He proclaims the coming of the one that was to come, the one awaited, the one anticipated, the one feared. Herod the Great and his boys knew what was going on. A big threat to the way things were. The way we are now, he seemed to say, is the way things should stay. Are going to stay. If he has anything to say about it. But of course he does not. That privilege goes to an obscure priest, a father, who finds himself saying, “His name is John” - and his tongue is loosened and he is not afraid to give the news. A change is coming: be ready. And his son said it again. A change is coming: be ready.
We get here through the words of the prophet Isaiah, best known on Christmas, in Handel’s Messiah: Comfort, comfort ye my people… It is a plea, a proclamation, a promise. The one to come is on his way. And we remember it, six months away, the other end of the year, here in the desert on a hot night.
We remember also something from the Psalms, that the prophecy is real throughout Scripture. It is a plea for light in a time of darkness. I still remember vividly singing a setting of this Psalm (85:10) in choir at my home church: Mercy and truth have met together; righteousness and peace have kissed each other. The composer Armand Russell wrote it in anticipation of the beginning of a conflict, as the US troops began to move into Iraq. I know those tanks rolled more than once. And I know the mourning in the voice of the psalm, that even now and always, there was a better way than armies moving into position.
We need to celebrate, we need to remember, that with the voice of John in the wilderness the good news, the hard news, the true story, is coming into the light.
In the tender compassion of our God *
the dawn from on high shall break upon us,
To shine on those who dwell in darkness and the
shadow of death, *
and to guide our feet into the way of peace.
(Luke 1:78-79)
A version of this meditation was printed in the Keeping the Faith feature in the Home + Section of the Arizona Daily Star, Sunday June 25th 2023, page E3, under the title “Beyond Saint John the Baptist.” and online on the same day under the headline “The feast day of Saint John the Baptist and what's to come” at https://tucson.com/lifestyles/faith-and-values/the-feast-day-of-saint-john-the-baptist-and-whats-to-come/article_7a109462-0ec1-11ee-82be-0b5d309a997c.html
