Journal

BIRTH OF JOHN THE BAPTIST

24 June 2010

24TH JUNE

‘Why is this granted to me’., says St. Elizabeth, ‘that the mother of my Lord should come to me’; and the child in her womb, as if the spirit of the mother’s salutation had passed into him, had only one thought all his life, to make way for another who was greater than himself. ‘I am the voice of one crying in the wilderness’ - that is his account of himself: don’t listen to the voice, then; listen to what it says.  ‘he was a burning and shining light’, our Lord says of him; dont’t look at the light, then, look at him on whom its rays are cast.  Always we see St. John is pointing, always away from himself. ‘Behold the Lamb of God, who takes away the sins of the world’ - there, don’t look at me, look at him; don’t ask who I am, ask who he is.  There comes one after me, who is greater than I, tne latchet of whose shoe I am not worthy to loose.  Everyone is crowded round St. John, everyone wanting to know who he is, and he will let them see nothing but the finger that points to a greater than himself, let them hear nothing but the voice of the fore-runner who preaches a gospel not his own.

Gradually, as our Lord more and more allowed this attention to be directed towards himself, he, instead of his fore-runner, became the centre of interest. ‘The pupil is outstripping the master’, people will have said; for I think it’s fairly certain that our Lord, at the opening of his ministry, was regarded as the disciple of St. John, the man who had baptised him.  And one by one the little groups that listened to the Baptist on the rocky hills by Jordan melted away, and he knew that they had gone off to follow the new teacher, who, travelling from village to village, was more easy of access.  Perhaps they even thought that in so transferring their allegiance from the stern prophet of the desert with his wild clothes and rough manner to the friend of publicans and sinners, they were takiing an easier yoke upon themselves.  Anyhow, the followers of John became fewer, the audiences of the Galilean prophet more numerous.  And I want you to see that if St. John had been a smaller man, if he had looked upon his winning popularity in the way in which you and I would look upon such a thing if it were to happen to ourselves, it would have been impossible for him not to feel a pang of jealousy at having been obeyed so well, at having been so successful in diverting attention from himself to his Master.  ‘He might have left me just a little work to do, just a few souls to deal with; he might have given me some part to play in him mission’; it’s not difficult to imagine St. John feeling like that.  But that was not St. John’s way.  ‘He must ncrease, and I must decrease’, so he assures the little band that still remain faithful to him, as if it were the most natural thing in the world.  And again, ‘The bridegroom’s friend, who stands by and listend to him rejoices too, rejoices at hearing the bridegroom’s voice. ‘Our Lord has come to claim his promised Bride, the Church, and St. John is content with the humble, the almost undignified role of what we call the ‘best man’.  And it’s easy to see what St. John is thinking of when he makes this comparison.

Ronals A. Knox. University and Anglican Sermons, Addtiional Sermons 9

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