16th Sunday after Pentecost – Homily for the Conception of St. John the Forerunner – 2012 September 23

Fr. Robert Miclean
Holy Archangels Orthodox Church
16^th Sunday after Pentecost
Conception of St. John the Baptist
 
Epistle: Gal 4:22-31 (conception); II Cor. 6:1-10
Gospel:  Luke 1:5-25 (conception); Luke 5:1-11
 
Today, we celebrate the conception of St. John the Forerunner, whom the prophets foretold would come before the Messiah (the Christ) to prepare the people to receive Him.  The Prophet Isaiah foretold that he would be: “the voice of one crying in the wilderness: ‘prepare the way of the Lord…’” (Is. 40:3), as did the Prophet Malachi as well.
 
St. John the Forerunner is declared by Christ to be a second Elijah, the greatest of the prophets of the Lord in the Old Testament who declared the truth of God in an age of idolatry and hedonism.  St. John is, in this sense, the last of the Old Testament prophets, and like many of his forebears among the prophets of the Old Testament, he too was beheaded for his testimony to the truth.
 
St. John the Forerunner did not fear death at the hands of sinful men.  He fearlessly proclaimed the truth of God, the way of God, the way of life, calling all people to the baptism of repentance in the waters of the Jordan, saying, “Repent, for the kingdom of heaven is at hand” (Matt. 3:2).  In this sense, St. John is the last evangelist of the Old Covenant and the first evangelist of the New Covenant: he proclaims the way of salvation through repentance, which leads through Christ to the Father.
 
To repent means to turn from the way we are going away from God and His life back to God and His life.  And we know that He alone is Life—He’s the Author and Giver of Life, the One who created all life in the first place.  Christ God as the Word (Logos) of God is also the sustainer of all life—in Him alone is eternal life, which means life with Him.  Thus Jesus declares, “I am the Way, the Truth, and the Life, no one comes to the Father except by Me” (John 14:6).
 
There are some today—even in the Orthodox Church among the laity—who don’t understand or wilfully ignore Christ’s proclamation, that of the Prophets, Apostles, Confessors, all the Saints, and the Faith through all time—that in Christ alone is salvation because He is the Life—as we sing Great and Holy Thursday.  The fullness of the life in Christ is found in His Church.
 
Does it matter what we believe about Jesus?  St. John the Forerunner thought so: He declared Jesus to be the Christ, the Son of God, God incarnate, the long-awaited Messiah.  The Apostles thought so too and proclaimed this Truth and Christ’s power over death and the new life in Him to all the known world and beyond.  The Holy Church, following in their footsteps thought so and still thinks so to this day, soundly condemning the Gnostics, the Arians, the Nestorians, the Calvinists, and all those who would distort the fullness of the Truth of Christ.
 
If we create Jesus in our own image and likeness, or in the likeness of our culture, any culture, any age, our healing and salvation is put at risk, because we cannot then come to know the true Christ, Who was, and is, and is to come, Who became incarnate for our sake, and continues to be present in His Church, whose head He alone is.
 
The beauty of Orthodox Christianity, the truth of Orthodoxy, is the fact that it supersedes any place and time.  We believe in that which has been believed about Christ “at all times, by all people, everywhere” (the 5^th century Vincentian Canon).  Think about it for a second, if every generation, each culture conformed Christ into their image and likeness, how would we be able to know the true Jesus Christ?  There are not different ‘orthodoxies’ around the world; that would be an oxymoron; there is one Orthodox Church through which we come to know Christ.
 
Believing in Him is eternal life. Christ Himself proclaims this truth in the all-familiar verse, “For God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son that whoever believes in Him should have eternal life” (John 3:16).  Belief in Him cannot be just ‘head-knowledge’, for as we discussed in Bible study this week, “even the demons believe and shutter” Jms. 2:19).  Rather, belief entails relationship, communion, koinonia, as we declare it in the Church, with the living God—not on our terms, but as recipients and inheritors of the faith “once delivered to the Saints” (Jude 1:3).  For this reason, Christ declares that unless we are baptized, and unless we eat His flesh and drink His blood in the Eucharist, we cannot inherit the Kingdom of God.
 
The Good News of salvation is that God desires all to come to the knowledge and love of Him.  He says to all, “come and see,” “taste and see that the Lord is good.”  All of us are called to repentance and all of us, likewise, through repentance, turning from our way, our will, to God’s way, God’s will, have the opportunity to humble ourselves, and learn what it means to follow Christ, to become a true believer as we live out our baptism day by day, struggling and striving to continue to die to the old man and live to the new.
 
It’s not enough though for us to simply look out for ourselves, our own salvation.  The Gospel is full of references that we too must follow in the way of the prophets, the Forerunner, the Apostles, and all the Saints who have come before us in striving to live out our faith in such a way that others may come to repentance and belief in Him as well.  Christ proclaims us to be the  “salt (the preservers) of the earth,” the “light of the world.” St. Paul declares us, “ambassadors for Christ.”  Jesus reminds us in today’s Gospel that ultimately to follow and believe in Him means that we become like those before us, “fishers of men.”
 
If we follow the trajectory of secular culture, of those forces that would keep religion private and out of the public square of discourse, none of us would ever share with anyone our faith in public, the fact that we’re Orthodox, the good news of hope, healing, and life with God that we’ve experienced.  We’ll keep ourselves from crossing ourselves or praying in public for fear of being seen as “one of those religious people, one of those… Christians.”  Brothers and sisters, wear any such criticisms or looks as a badge of honor: in a small way, you’ve privileged to carry a tiny cross for Christ, to be a small ‘martyr’ for Christ as countless Saints have on a much grander scale throughout the history of the Church.
 
Our life-saving faith in Christ can never be faithfully seen as a strictly ‘private affair.’  Doing so hinders us from sharing openly about our reason for hope in this life and beyond this life.  Christ God calls on us to “let your light so shine before men, that they may see your good works and glorify your Father in heaven.”  We are told to be ready “in season and out of season,” (II Tim. 4:2), to give a defense for what we believe, “a reason for the hope that is in you” (I Pet. 3:15).
 
What motivated St. John the Forerunner in his witness to Christ, which eventually cost him his life?  What can compel us to be so bold, so transparent so as to witness to Him in our own day, in our culture?  There’s only one thing: our love of God, which, as it grows in us also grows a much needed and increasingly rare love in this world for our fellow man and woman.  The closer we are to Christ, the more we come to share what He desires, which is that all may come to share in the knowledge and love of Him.  The more you and I value what we have in Christ, the more thankful we are for His grace and mercy, His forgiveness and love for us, His healing through the sacramental life, the more we’ll want to share that experience and hope with those around us.
 
May we too share in the love of God that St. John the Forerunner had, fearing God more than men, willing to love to such an extent that we, through our witness, our words, and our deeds, glorify and openly proclaim our faith in Christ, pointing the way for others to Him who alone is “the Way, the Truth, and the Life” and modeling repentance and healing in our own lives.