Today is a feast-day in the Christian Church, remembering the birth of John the Baptizer. The story of John's birth is a dramatic one, involving angelic proclamations, doubt, forced silence, and a climactic naming - "He shall be called John!"
The reading from the Hebrew Scriptures appointed for today is more general in nature, involving a telling forth of the birth of a messenger. This is one of those passages that Handel used in his great oratorio, Messiah. I hear it as music more than I do as spoken word. "Who shall abide the day of his coming", "For he is like a refiner's fire" - phrases that speak of the one called to proclaim.
John's vocation was to prepare the way for the ministry and message of Jesus. John functioned in a time when people longed for a new era, a new beginning - freedom from oppression, a time of renewal. John proclaimed that the one who was to come would bring that new life.
We, too, are called to be messengers - proclaimers of the good news we find in the gospel of Jesus, the Christ. How do you make that proclamation? What is the good news you feel called to share?
- Rev'd Paul Kett
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