The Nativity of John the Baptist

The Nativity of John the Baptist celebrates the birth of the forerunner of Christ, the son promised to the aged priest Zechariah and his wife Elizabeth, who would go before the Lord to prepare his way. It is one of only three birthdays the church keeps, alongside those of Christ and the Virgin Mary, and it falls on June 24, six months before Christmas, because the angel told Mary that Elizabeth was already in her sixth month. The man whose birth it marks would spend his life pointing away from himself to Christ.

John the Baptist was born to an old man and an old woman who had given up hope of a child. His father, Zechariah, was a priest, and his mother, Elizabeth, was of the priestly line, and both were righteous and blameless, but they were childless and well past the years of bearing, and in their world that was a quiet, lifelong grief. Then one day, while Zechariah was burning incense in the temple, the angel Gabriel stood beside the altar and told him that his prayer had been heard: Elizabeth would bear a son, and they were to name him John, and he would go before the Lord in the spirit and power of Elijah, to turn the hearts of the fathers to the children. Zechariah could not believe it, and asked how he could be sure, an old man with an old wife, and for his doubt he was struck silent until the promise came true.

Elizabeth conceived. And when the baby was born and the neighbors and relatives gathered on the eighth day to circumcise him, they assumed he would be named Zechariah after his father. But Elizabeth said no, he is to be called John. They protested that no one in the family had that name, and they turned to the silent father to settle it. He asked for a writing tablet, and wrote four words that broke his nine months of silence: His name is John. At once his mouth was opened and his tongue was loosed, and the first thing he did with his restored voice was bless God, pouring out the prophecy the church still sings every morning as the Benedictus, in which he turned to the cradle and said, And you, child, will be called the prophet of the Most High; for you will go before the Lord to prepare his ways.

The child grew, and went out into the wilderness of Judea, and there he stayed, in the wild country east of the hills, until the day God sent him out to Israel. He came preaching repentance and baptizing in the Jordan, and crowds streamed to him, and some began to wonder whether he himself might be the Messiah. He would not have it. When Jesus came to the river, John pointed to him and said, Behold, the Lamb of God, who takes away the sin of the world. And when his own followers grew jealous that the crowds were leaving him for Jesus, John gave the answer that is the whole meaning of his life: He must increase, but I must decrease.

That is why the church keeps his birthday, and keeps it when it does. Christ's nativity falls at midwinter, when the light begins to grow; John's falls at midsummer, when the days begin to shorten, so that the very turning of the year preaches his sermon. He was the dawn before the Sun, the voice before the Word, the last and greatest of the prophets, whose joy was to grow smaller as Christ grew greater. To be born for that, to spend a whole life pointing away from yourself to another, is no small thing, and the church gives thanks for the man who did it, and asks for the grace to do the same.

How we know John the Baptist is from the Gospels and, remarkably, from outside them as well. The story of his birth, the annunciation to Zechariah, the silence and the naming, and the Benedictus, is told in full in the first chapter of Luke; his adult witness, the pointing to the Lamb of God and the words about increase and decrease, comes from the Gospel of John. But John the Baptist is also one of the very few Gospel figures attested by a non-Christian source: the Jewish historian Josephus, writing around the year 93 with no Christian motive, records that Herod put to death "John, that was called the Baptist," describing him as a good man who called the Jews to righteousness and to baptism, and explaining that Herod feared his influence over the crowds. The two witnesses are complementary, the Gospels giving the inner meaning and Josephus the outside confirmation, so that John stands on unusually firm historical ground. The traditional birthplace of John, the village of Ein Karem in the hills southwest of Jerusalem, is a memory of later centuries; Luke names only "a town in the hill country of Judea."

The Nativity of John the Baptist is one of the oldest feasts of the Christian year, kept on June 24 and counted among the principal festivals of the church by the early sixth century. It is one of only three nativities the church celebrates, the births of Christ, of the Virgin Mary, and of John, a sign of how highly John was honored as the hinge between the old covenant and the new. The Fathers, Augustine chief among them, loved the providence of the date: John born as the summer light begins to fail and Christ born as the winter light begins to return, the seasons themselves saying "he must increase, but I must decrease." John has a second feast as well, on August 29, the Beheading, which keeps the day of his death; this June feast keeps the day of his birth, and with it the whole shape of a life given over to preparing the way of the Lord.