Justin Appel
Dear Friends,
Today we read a brief portrait of John the Baptist from Mark’s gospel (read the lesson here).
Alongside the description of this prophetic character, we may use John’s icon as an additional way to discuss his attributes and his importance to the Christian tradition.
(See the icon here.)
In the East, John is called ‘The Forerunner’, since his identity was bound up in announcing Christ’s arrival. This particular example represents the Greek type of icon, though written for an English-speaking congregation.
John wears a garment of coarse fabric to match his rustic appearance. His beard and hair show tangles and his face appears bronzed from sunlight. John was a true ascetic. He lived in the desert and ate food he found in the wild, ‘locusts and wild honey.’ Perhaps John’s most ascetic characteristic was his ability to speak decisively, shockingly, cutting to the heart of his hearers. His green outer garment associates John with the ‘Green Martyres’ – those who were ‘martyrs’ for their close association with the natural world their ascetic struggle in it, rather than through actual martyrdom.
As if to show John’s earnest approach to life, the icon shows a tree with an ax, recalling John’s own words about repentance. Whatever tree doesn’t bear fruit is ‘cut down and thrown into the fire.’
John is often depicted holding his head in his hands, suggesting his actual status as a martyr. The severed head contrasts with the tree and ax, suggesting that John lived an exemplary life of repentance.
Often, icons show John with wings, drawing a similarity between himself and angels – who are often written with symbolic wings. Rather than suggesting an ability to pass through the heavens, these wings identify John as a messenger from God.
Jesus appears in the river at the top of the icon. John’s identity seems also to be caught up in the activity of Jesus' baptism, and in the mystery that John was considered worthy to perform this action.
Not surprisingly, John’s head and hands (even the right palm) were objects of veneration in the early church, and a complex of feasts, discoveries, and distributions of relics fill the calendar and the hagiography.
John appears to be the only human who has received a similar kind of respect, devotion, and affection as Mary the Mother of Christ. Eastern iconostasis constructions (the wall of icons that separate the altar from the rest of the church) always place John’s icon next to those of Mary and Jesus, in addition to the church’s patron saint. Both John and Mary were ultimate examples of humility – as individuals who became translucent witnesses of the divine presence.
Justin