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| John the Baptist Hans Holbein |
Advent II this year is one of those relatively rare Sundays when the Psalm
is replaced by a Canticle – a Bible passage whose beauty and power makes it the
equivalent of poetry. The three most famous and widely used canticles all come
from Luke’s Gospel, and they occur in the first two chapters, just before and
after the birth of Jesus. The
Magnificat -- the song of the Virgin Mary as she
realizes the significance of the burden that God has given her – is the most
famous, but the
Benedictus -- assigned for this Sunday -- is no less
powerful.
The context is dramatic. Zechariah is taking his turn as a
priest in the temple when he is struck dumb by a powerful vision. It tells him
that the son about to be born to him should have a name – John. This unusual choice of name
marks him out from the family into which he will be born. When the child
arrives, Zechariah’s regains his speech, and he breaks into this wonderful hymn
of praise – a canticle that Christ Church uses at morning prayer every weekday.
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| John the Baptist -- Alexander Ivanov |
Zechariah’s insight is that he is living at a time when the historic
promises God has made to Israel are about to be fulfilled, and he sees that the child born to him in old age will have a key role in this fulfillment. The third
of Luke’s canticles, however, –– the
Nunc Dimittis, Simeon’s acclamation when Mary presents Jesus in the temple --
corrects a possible misunderstanding. Though Zechariah's hymn of
praise predicts that "the dawn from on high will break upon us", it is not his son John, but Jesus, yet to be born, who will "give light to those who sit in darkness
and in
the shadow of death".
Nevertheless, both the lesson from Malachi and the accompanying Gospel make it clear that Zechariah is right to think of his son as having a very special place in God's plan of salvation. John is Malachi's "messenger who will prepare
the way". He truly is a "prophet of the Most High", and his appointed task is to proclaim, in his
fiery way, that an
essential first step is repentance. We cannot be rescued from "darkness
and the
shadow of death", in other words, unless first we recognize our need to be rescued, and deeply
long for
light instead.
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