"My name is John."

My name is John. It is a name given to me by my father Zechariah and my mother, Elizabeth. It is a name which means, in my language, "Gifted of God". I don't know. Sometimes I feel more like "Burdened by God". Certainly, God has given me a gift. God has given me a nimble tongue, the ability to speak, to use words, in ways which can touch the hearts of those who choose to listen. But when God gives gifts to His people, He expects the people to use those gifts, and to use them according to His design, not their own. When God gives a gift, He also gives a mission, a calling. I've known my mission from the very beginning. I was set on it from my mother's womb. The story of my birth is a strange one, and in later years, as I grew, and my mother and father told the story to me, it became more and more clear to me what I must do.

My mother was old when I was born, too old, it was believed, to bear a child. As none had been born before me, all of our friends and relatives believed that she and my father were meant by God to die childless. In my country, that was almost considered a curse, a punishment, by God. So the surprise in my village was great when the news was given that Elizabeth was carrying a child, carrying me. Even my father, who was serving as high priest in the temple that year, refused to believe it, even when he was told by the angel that it was so. My father was a good man, but a proud one, and for that moment he chose to believe what his mind told him was reasonable rather than what his heart told him was true. For that pride the angel struck him dumb, unable to speak till the day I was born. For a long time, as I grew, and thought about that story, it seemed so cruel, such a harsh punishment for so slight a failing. But then, slowly, over years, as I thought and prayed about what it all meant, what my mission was to be, I realized that it was not cruel at all. I realized that even in his affliction, God was using my father to teach His people. And the lesson was a starkly simple one, one that has been etched into my memory all of my life. If you cannot speak the truth, then do not speak at all.

My mother told me once, many years ago, that a few months before I was born, she was visited by her cousin, Mary, from the low country village of Nazareth. My mother said that as soon as she laid eyes on Mary coming toward her, far down the road, I stirred in her womb. "Leapt for joy", she called it. Even before they spoke, my mother said, she knew that Mary, too was carrying a child, and that the child was conceived of the Spirit of God. My mother told me that she welcomed Mary joyfully, "Blessed are you among women" , and "the mother of the Lord" she called her. From the beginning the hand of God was laid on all of this.

I was born a few months later. When our neighbors asked my mother what I was to be called, she told them, "John." They thought that was a peculiar choice, as none of our relatives had that name. In my country it was the custom to repeat certain names down through the generations as a way of maintaining family identity. It was unusual to introduce a completely new name. So the neighbors went to ask my father, who was in the temple offering sacrifice. When they asked him what my name was to be, as he was still unable to speak, he wrote on a tablet, "His name is John." And at that moment he regained his voice. The power of the truth had set him free.

And how powerfully I learned that lesson. Gradually, it became so clear to me. My mission was to use the gift that God had given me, the gift of which my father had been deprived for a while, the ability to speak. My mission, in the eyes of God, was nothing more complicated than to speak the truth.

And so I grew. My village was a small one in the remote Judean hill country. But it was not so remote that we did not hear the news from other villages and even from the city of Jerusalem. I heard what was happening, I saw it with my own eyes in the attitude and actions of travelers passing through, even in my own neighbors. More and more, it seemed to me, the people of Israel were losing their vision, their sense of identity, their sense of being the chosen people of God. They were abandoning the laws of God, and instead of following His way, they were more and more following the way of the pagans, the way of the world. Marriage was no longer held as sacred as it once was. Families, once so strong among my people, were dissolving. As oppressive as the rule of the Romans was, it offered many more opportunities for profitable trade with other parts of the empire, and many of the Israelites had taken advantage of those opportunities. A few had grown very wealthy. And it seemed that the more money they had, the less they cared for their own people, their own ways. As wealth grew in the hands of a few, poverty and need grew in the lives of many. The suffering of the poor was great. Those who were defenseless, weak, ill, those who had nothing, were left to live and die in their misery. They were given no help by their own people. This may have been the way of the Romans, but it was never meant to be our way. Justice for all the people, care for the poor, for those in need, that is the law God handed down to our forefathers, to Abraham and Moses.

One of the reasons why the people were turning away from this law is that they were being led away, by their own king, Herod. Herod was a weak and dissolute man. He was one of us, a Judean, but he was a man with no moral principles, no moral courage at all. He admired the Romans, admired their power and their wealth, and he wanted that for himself. In his greed he betrayed his family, his people, and his God. He destroyed the marriage of his brother Philip, and took his wife Herodias for himself. She was as greedy and hungry for power as was he, and every bit as willing to cheat, steal, even kill in order to satisfy that greed.

This, then, is the Israel in which I grew from childhood to adulthood. And as I grew and became more and more aware, there grew in me an anger at what we had become, and a terrible sense of urgency, a need to begin to call the people away from their sin, and back to the honesty, integrity and compassion of their ancestors. And so I did. I began to use the gift that God had given me. I began to speak out. I went out to the desert, where the faith of our people was born and I lived there on whatever God would send my way. My clothes were the skins of wild animals, and my food was honey, river water, even insects.

And as I spoke, God's power began to work through me on the hearts of the people. Slowly they began to listen. A few, at first only a few, would gather with me on the bank of the river Jordan. There I would call them back to righteousness, and as a sign of answering that call they would step into the river, and I would pour water on their heads, a reminder of how through water God saved us from the power of the Egyptians, and called us to be a holy people.

But then the few became many. Soon enough, large crowds would gather at the side of the river, to listen, to pray, and to be baptized, renewed. Some began to call me John the Baptizer. But more than that some began to question whether or not I was the Messiah, the Promised One, Who would come as the savior of His people. That kind of talk worried me. It even made me angry. I am not the Messiah, but I know Who is, and I must do nothing at all to stand in His way, or to draw attention away from Him to myself.

He came to me one day, at the river, and asked that He too be baptized. I recognized Him at once. He was Jesus, the son of my mother's cousin, Mary. When I saw Him, I remembered all that had been said about Him, all that my mother had told me about her vision. I knew in my heart that He was the Christ, the Messiah, and I wanted to shout it out to all who were gathered there. But He told me no, for now, He said, just do as I ask of you. So I did, I baptized Him, and as I poured the water over His head, I swear there was a voice, a voice in heaven confirming what I already knew, "This is My Son," the voice said, "Listen to Him."

When Jesus left the river, I saw that some of those who came to listen to me went with Him. That left me feeling both happy and sad at the same time. My time was coming to an end, but His was beginning, and that is how it must be. I had to be absolutely sure, though, that He was the One for whom we were waiting. So, after a few months, I sent a few of my followers to join the crowds that were gathering now for Him. I told them to ask Him directly, "Are You the One who is to come, or should we look for another?" His answer erased all my doubts. "Tell John", He said, "what you see happening. The blind see, the deaf hear, the lame walk, and the poor are reassured of God's love for them." All of the hardness of heart, all of the injustice that had so angered me was being healed, by Him, with a power that went far far beyond my skill with words. God's power was truly at work among His people. Our wait had been fruitful, and the time was now. I told all of my followers that they must no more come to the river to listen to me. They must now turn their ears and their hearts to Him.

And so they did. Jesus' fame and following grew steadily, and I went back to the desert, that vast empty place where God has always touched the emptiness in human hearts. I've even heard some talk of a movement to make Jesus king, so powerful are His words and His wondrous deeds. What nonsense that is. He is already King, The Father has made Him so. But He did not come to rule us from a palace, or from a judge's bench. He came to lead us from within, from our hearts, our minds, our souls. It is not for me to say how He will do that, but when He does, It will be in a wonderful way.

And so my mission is almost over. And that is good. I grow tired. But there is one thing yet I must do, one great wrong that must be set right, and until it is, I must speak, more clearly than ever before. The king. Herod. The nation will never be truly made clean and new with such a leader Better we be a poor and struggling nation under God than a rich and comfortable one under such a man. Jesus once called Herod a fox . I call him far worse than that. I call him a liar, a vain and selfish man, who will sink to any depth to maintain his hold on power. God's people can never be well and rightly led by such as that. So I will speak once more. I will tell the people of Herod's sin, I will speak of it openly, on the hillsides, in the marketplace. I will tell him of God's judgement on him, that his throne is doomed to fall unless he sends away that cruel woman, and turns back to his people, his God.

I have no doubt that I will pay a price for doing so. Perhaps the price will be my life. Herod himself will not kill me, but Herodias would, in an instant, if she is given the opportunity. But no matter I have done what God has sent me to do I have used my gift I have pricked the conscience of the people, opened their ears, stirred their hearts, and turned them towards the truth, towards the One Who is truth, Jesus, the Messiah. Let Herod do what he will, I will not be silent.

And if there is one lesson I would hope that all of you might learn from my life, it is just that Open yourselves to the truth. Be confident that it is God's world and that He is here in it with us. Trust in the goodness of the people around you, trust in your own goodness, your own ability to judge what is right, and never, never be silent in the face of what is not.

I wish for each of you the gift of moral courage. Just as goodness in those around us must be recognized and honored, so must sin must be recognized, and named for what it is. Not a mistake, not a cultural phenomenon, not a psychological problem, but sin. Moral courage means a willingness to firmly and clearly judge between right and wrong, and to do so without compromise, and without concern for personal consequences. It is to say simply that this act, whatever it may be, is wrong. I will not do it, and neither should anyone else. And that means that moral courage is in part at least, a willingness to be different. To stand out, to do morally what I had to do literally, to move away from the crowd. There is a great moral value in being different when to be the same means to be wrong. Look around you, at your own time, your own people. What do you see that is good and Godly, and what do you see that is sin and must be named as such? It takes a great deal of moral courage, in a situation where illegal drugs or alcohol are being used, to say no. I won't do that, and you shouldn't. Not just because it is unhealthy and foolish and ugly, which it is, but because it is sinful, which it is. It takes a great deal of moral courage to insist that sexual relationships be governed by a Christian chastity, and to unhesitatingly condemn the abuse of that virtue, not just because that abuse is foolish and ugly, but because it is sinful. It takes a great deal of moral courage to demand of oneself, and of one's companions, obedience to the legitimate authority of civil law, Church law, of parents, of teachers. It takes a great deal of moral courage to insist that disobedience in such situations, without an overridingly good reason, is sinful. It takes a great deal of moral courage for parents to insist that such authority be recognized, and obeyed.

In the midst of endless debate on issues such as abortion, the arms race, welfare, racial equality, poverty programs, on and on, it takes a great deal of moral courage to insist that what is practical, profitable, safe and comfortable doesn't really matter. All that matters is what is right. And in each of us in each such situation, there is always the same reluctance, the same objection. If I make that judgement, and act on it, people will laugh at me. I will lose this or that friend. I will be ridiculed, I won't fit in with the crowd. I might even be harmed. Well, yes. All of that may indeed happen. But it doesn't matter. The judgement must be made anyway.

So. Use the gifts God has given you, and if you do, you will sanctify your world. And even if from time to time there be in that use some doubt, some uncertainty, even some fear, there should never be desperation, never despair. It is indeed God's world, not Herod's. There have been a thousand Herods since the Father first sent His creative spirit out over the earth, and there will be a thousand more before He does so again. But they will never win. The Christ, the One for Whom we wait has come, and He will return. Be utterly confident of this. Victory will be with those who seek the truth, who cherish it, and who speak it.

Advent Reflection, 1998, Church of the Nativity, Fargo, North Dakota Fargo, ND.