John Baptist

[Grant Morris Gallup <grant73@turbonett.com.ni>]

       H O M I L Y
    G R I T S
 The Nativity of St John Baptist
                                                                      
  June 24, 2007
                                                                               
   
 Almighty God, by whose providence your servant John the Baptist
was
wonderfully born, and sent to prepare the way of your Son our Savior by
preaching repentance:  Make us so to follow his teaching and holy
life,
that we may truly repent according to his preaching; and, following his
example, constantly speak the truth, boldly rebuke vice, and patiently
suffer for the truth's sake; through Jesus Christ your Son our Lord, 
who
lives and reigns with you and the Holy spirit, one God, for ever and
ever.  Amen.

"All Sundays are Feasts of our Lord Jesus Christ. . . all other
Feasts of
our Lord. . . when they occur on a Sunday, are normally transferred 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.

Isaiah 40:1-11 Uneven ground shall become level
Ps.85. or 85:7-13 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

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,
Isabel in Nicaragua,  had been apparently  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 the awaited  Elijah, come
back from his stony
tomb to preface the One who should Come. But he said he was only a
Vocero, a Speaker. 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 at Seabury-Western, 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 Black 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, someone we should have now as Speaker of
the House--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. Everyone knows they are not elected by us. 
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". 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 contentious but vital questions. Even
after Jesus'
execution, some  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.  A proud Christian name in Nicaragua
is
still "Matamorios" -- Moor Killer.   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. He was like my friend
Charles Grey who gave away his million,  a "bottom feeder"
-- living in
solidarity with the street people. 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 went to the
Windy City gymnasium with him and watched awestruck while he showered)
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 revolutionary commitment. We 
have
reduced it to a teacup ablution, a fingerbowl faith.  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
Daughters,
we're already in the Family," it enabled us to say. But John pointed
to
the little slippery pebbles that can still be found 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. "Affusion"is the
irreducible minimum: "aspersion"is not allowed.)  A bath
cannot be submitted
by Title. But more than lots of water, it means a flood 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,someone who is famous for being famous,  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?"As Lenin asked, "What is to be done?"  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 shooting up Gaza, like Israeli
soldiers in the West Bank, in occupied Palestine) came to him
and asked, "What are we to do?" And John said, "Don't
bully people; no
police brutality, no rocket propelled grenades,no napalm,  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 June  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 schizophrenic 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 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, San Juan,  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
skinny dip 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 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. Some men  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 at the daily office. 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
really
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 synagogue 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 M. GALLUP
CASA AVE MARIA
Apartado RP-10, Managua, Nicaragua C.A.
Tel. 011-505-2662165
grant73@turbonett.com.ni
http://newark.rutgers.edu/~lcrew/homilygrits