Friday, December 19, 2025
(click here to listen to or read today’s scriptures)
We are going to talk about John today
John. That is to say, Yohanan, “Yahweh has been gracious.” That would be Juan, Jean, Giovanni, Ivan, Johann, Hans, Seán, Ian … John Doe. Wikipedia calls it a “theophoric” name, a name “bearing or carrying a god,” and … well, just listen … Yahweh Yohanan, Yahweh, Yohanan. Hear it? There it is!
Do not be afraid, Zechariah,
because your prayer has been heard.
Your wife Elizabeth will bear you a son,
and you shall name him John.
And it came to pass as it was said. Elizabeth conceived, rejoiced, and her child grew. When she was six months pregnant, Mary came to visit her, and “the baby leaped in her womb.” That would be John, right? as yet unnamed. Elizabeth’s inner life had come alive, and she knew Mary too was carrying a child. God prophesied through her about Mary’s baby, and the words ring even now every moment of every day throughout the world. Hail Mary, full of grace, the Lord is with you! Blessed art thou among women, and blessed is the fruit of thy womb. Jesus!
Can you imagine the joy those women felt as they sipped their Hebrew tea and ate cucumbers and olives sitting in Elizabeth’s kitchen, while Zechariah puttered nearby, eavesdropping, smiling as he remembered his experience in the sanctuary?
You will have joy and gladness,
and many will rejoice at his birth,
for he will be great in the sight of the Lord.
Having waited alone, now these women waited together. Henri Nouwen noticed others waiting, too:
It impresses me to recognize that all the figures appearing in the first pages of Luke’s Gospel are waiting. Zechariah and Elizabeth are waiting. Mary is waiting. Simeon and Anna, who were there at the Temple when Jesus was brought in, are waiting. The whole opening scene of the good news is filled with waiting people. And right from the beginning all these waiting people in some way or another hear the words, “Do not be afraid. I have something good to say to you.” These words indicate that Zechariah, Elizabeth, Mary, Simeon, and Anna are waiting for something new and good to happen to them.
Pastor Matt, in a reprise of what he called the most important teaching he heard during seminary, spoke last week about angels, who spend their angelic lives waiting and watching for the restoration of God’s perfect world, waiting and watching for the King, the Messiah, the Christ, for Jesus. And we humans too, we wait and watch for the “already” (Jesus is born, Jesus has died and risen) and “not-yet” (Jesus will come again).
In Christ the Lord: The Road to Cana, Anne Rice imagines Jesus hearing of the beginning of his cousin John’s baptismal ministry. John has come out of the desert. He is calling for everyone in Israel to “repent and be baptized.” And he asserts his baptismal authority in this context: “I am the voice of one crying in the wilderness, ‘make straight the way of the Lord.’”
The Lord? The King, the Messiah, the Christ? There is joy in heaven, and there is joy in Nazareth. John’s word burn in everyone’s breasts. “One mightier than I will baptize you with the Holy Spirit and with fire! He is among you …”
Jesus stood up, “I’m going.”
“We’re all going with you.” Immediately my mother (Jesus is telling this) said the same. All my brothers nodded. “We will all make this journey,” said James. The rabbi spoke up, agreeing, “It’s as if we were going to the Temple for a festival.”
They didn’t sleep that night full of anticipation, preparing for the journey. Except Mary, who sat quietly, pondering, remembering, reciting:
And he will be filled with the Holy Spirit even from his mother’s womb. He will go before him in the spirit and power of Elijah … to prepare a people fit for the Lord.
“Whose words are those?” asked little Joseph.
“They were spoken by another,” said my mother, “but by one who also came to me.”
The families departed. Jesus does not participate fully in their “weary exultation.”
I moved slowly toward what was at last going to separate me from all around me. I knew this. I knew without knowing how or what would actually happen. And the only place I saw this same awareness – and some measure of this same acceptance – was in mother’s soft, habitual gaze.
As Anne’s story continues John baptizes Jesus, and Jesus walks alone into the desert. The story imagines forty days of temptations, the difficulties and Jesus’ determination, lifted away from evil by his Father. At last Jesus returns to John beside the river.
John stopped and pointed his finger at me. “The Lamb of God!” he cried. “The Lamb of God who takes away the sins of the world.”
It was a trumpet blast turning every head.
O Root of Jesse’s stem,
sign of God’s love for all his people:
come to save us without delay!
John’s voice in the wilderness had been heard.
(posted at www.davesandel.net)
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