Dcn Susan Erickson

And thou, child, shalt be called the prophet of the Highest, *
for thou shalt go before the face of the Lord to prepare his ways;
To give knowledge of salvation unto his people *
for the remission of their sins …

Dear Siblings in Christ,

These lines are from the Song of Zechariah, a canticle in the Book of Common Prayer that uses verses from the first chapter of Luke. Luke recounts the birth of John the Baptist to elderly parents, Zechariah and Elizabeth, who in Luke’s telling is the cousin of Jesus’ mother.

The canticle is particularly appropriate today as the Church celebrates John’s birth.

In today’s Old Testament reading the prophet Malachi seems to anticipate John’s prophetic role when he writes: “See, I am sending my messenger to prepare the way before me, and the Lord whom you seek will suddenly come to his temple. The messenger of the covenant in whom you delight—indeed, he is coming, says the Lord of hosts.”

But Malachi then asks a discomforting question: “But who can endure the day of his coming, and who can stand when he appears?” The appearance of God’s messenger demands something—from us. “For he is like a refiner's fire and like fullers' soap; he will sit as a refiner and purifier of silver, and he will purify the descendants of Levi and refine them like gold and silver, until they present offerings to the Lord in righteousness.”

Along with the promise of the coming of God’s Kingdom, John, too, uttered words that might have discomforted his hearers: he told people to repent. Baptism was, in a paradoxical sense, John’s “refiner’s fire.” It symbolized a person’s willingness to prepare for the Kingdom by turning towards, and striving for, the purity of right relationships with God and other people:  “righteousness.”

Who do you think the messengers of God’s Kingdom are in our own day? Maybe they are the people who demand we repent of injustice and indifference. Maybe they are the aid workers, social workers, doctors, public interest lawyers and others who plea for us to “defend the poor and fatherless”, “see that such as are in need and necessity have right,” “[d]eliver the out-cast and poor” and “save them from the hand of the ungodly.” (Ps 82).

May we ask for the grace to embody such “knowledge of salvation” in our own day.

In Christ,

—Dcn Susan