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The Baptist, the Gentiles, and the good olive tree

Comfort ye, comfort ye my people, saith your God. Speak ye comfortably to Jerusalem, and cry unto her, that her warfare is accomplished, that her iniquity is pardoned ... O Zion, that bringest good tidings, get thee up into the high mountain: O Jerusalem, that bringest good tidings, lift up thy voice with strength; lift it up, be not afraid: say unto the cities of Judah, Behold your God - from the reading appointed for the Epistle on Saint John Baptist's Day, Isaiah 40:1-11.

And it came to pass, that on the eighth day they came to circumcise the child ...And fear came on all that dwelt round about them; and all these sayings were noised abroad throughout all the hill-country of Judaea ... And his father Zacharias was filled with the Holy Ghost, and prophesied, saying, Blessed be the Lord God of Israel: for he hath visited and redeemed his people, and hath raised up an horn of salvation for us in the house of his servant David ... to perform the mercy promised to our fathers, and to remember his holy covenant; the oath which he sware to our father Abraham - from the Gospel appointed for the feast, Luke 1:57-end.

The readings at Holy Communion on today's feast of the Nativity of S. John Baptist exemplify how commemoration of the Baptist draws us to behold the Church as "grafted contrary to nature into a good olive tree" (Romans 11:24).  From being "aliens from the commonwealth of Israel, and strangers from the covenants of promise", we "are no more strangers and foreigners" (Ephesians 2:12, 19).  And so, the proclamation of the Prophet Isaiah to Jerusalem addresses us, the praise of Zacharias in the Benedictus is our canticle of praise.  

Our celebration of the Nativity of John, son of Zacharias and Elisabeth, whose birth was foretold in Temple and greeted with wonderings in "the hill-country of Judaea", sets before us that we have been grafted into the good olive tree of Israel.  In this feast, we are taken into the precincts of the Temple, we behold the priestly ministry before the altar of incense; we hear the domestic and communal conversations in the Judaean hill country about this child, asking with them "what manner of child shall this be?"; and we realize that the answer to this question is found in the ancient words of the prophets of Israel, "as it is written in the prophets" (Mark 1:2).  

"In those days came John the Baptist preaching in the wilderness of Judea" (Matthew 3:1).  We are celebrating the birth of the last of the prophets of Israel, "for this is he that was spoken of by the prophet Esaias".  Like the prophets of old, he confronts a King of Judaea in the name of Yahweh. "And if ye will receive it, this is Elias, which was for to come" (Matthew 11:14).

It was Israelites, including those of the diaspora, who received the baptism of John, such as Apollos of Alexandria (Acts 18:24-25), and those whom the Apostle Paul encountered in Ephesus (Acts 19:4). The baptism of John, then, was part of the story of Israel. This makes the appearance of John in the opening of each of the Gospels - documents written for the Church's mission to the Gentiles - a profound statement of how the confession that Jesus Christ is the Son of God stands in continuity with Israel's law and prophets. Here the Gospels echo the Apostle Peter's first proclamation of the Gospel to the Gentiles, in which the Lord's ministry is placed in the context of the witness of the Baptist, "after the baptism which John preached" (Acts 10:37): to proclaim the Gospel is necessarily to tell of John because he is a sign that the Gentiles are being grafted into the good olive tree.  

Yesterday at first Evensong for Saint John Baptist's Day, the second lesson (in the 1922 lectionary) was Luke's account of the annunciation to Zacharias.  Gabriel says to Zacharias of the son to be born this priest of the temple, "and many shall rejoice at his birth".  Many indeed celebrate the birth of this Prophet of Yahweh, son of a priest of the Temple; this second Elijah; foretold by Isaiah, son of Amoz, who prophesied during the days of the ancient kings of Judah.  Many celebrate his birth across the nations because we have been "grafted contrary to nature into a good olive tree", and so his words and witness address us as much as those who "went out to him" from "Jerusalem, and all Judaea, and all the region round about Jordan".

Today's feast proclaims what Saint Paul describes as "the mystery", that "the Gentiles should be fellow heirs, and of the same body" as Israel (Ephesians 3:3, 6).  Little wonder, then, that the church's daily prayer shares in the words of Zacharias, heralding the last and greatest (cf. Matthew 11:11) prophet of Israel:

And thou, child, shalt be called the Prophet of the Highest: for thou shalt go before the face of the Lord to prepare his ways;

To give knowledge of salvation unto his people: for the remission of their sins.

(The painting is Pieter Bruegel the Elder, 'The Sermon of Saint John the Baptist, 1566.)

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