September 23 · Conception of the Forerunner

Eighteen days ago the Church remembered the Holy Prophet Zachariah and the Righteous Elizabeth — the old priest and his wife, the house that waited, the son God gave them.

Today is not that day again.

Today she keeps the Conception of the Honorable Glorious Prophet, Forerunner and Baptist John. Not the whole life. The promise. The beginning of his life.

The Church remembers more than one name on the twenty-third of September. She remembers Saints Xanthippi and Polyxeni of Spain. She remembers the Virgin Martyr Irais of Alexandria. She remembers the Martyrs Andrew and John, and John's children Peter and Antonius. She remembers the Slovenka Icon of the Mother of God. Those are true days. We will not tell those whole lives this morning.

This morning she keeps a beginning.

Long before Bethlehem, the holy Prophet Malachi said that before the Messiah was born, His Forerunner would appear, and would show that He was coming. The Jews, waiting for the Messiah, were waiting for that Forerunner too. A people cannot meet the Lord if no one has gone first to make them ready.

Do you hear what she is already singing for this morning? "Be glad, O barren one who has not given birth until now, for behold, you have conceived the lamp of the Sun." "The Prophet of the Most High is about to be born."

That is today's word. Not the naming. Not the wilderness. A child promised. A lamp prepared.

In a city of the hills of Judea, in the land of Palestine, lived the righteous priest Saint Zachariah and his wife Saint Elizabeth. They kept the commandments of the Lord. They prayed. And they had no child. They were old. Among their people a house without a child felt like a house God had forgotten. They had not forgotten Him. They prayed unceasingly that He would grant them a child.

Then it was Zachariah's turn to serve.

His lot was to burn incense in the Temple of the Lord. He went behind the veil of the Sanctuary. The people stood outside, praying. And there appeared unto him an angel of the Lord, standing on the right side of the altar of incense.

When Zachariah saw him, he was troubled, and fear fell upon him.

"Fear not, Zacharias," the angel said, "for thy prayer is heard; and thy wife Elisabeth shall bear thee a son, and thou shalt call his name John."

He would be great in the sight of the Lord. He would be filled with the Holy Ghost from his mother's womb. Many of the children of Israel would he turn to the Lord their God. He would go before Him in the spirit and power of Elias, to make ready a people prepared for the Lord.

Zachariah looked at the angel. He looked at his own old age.

"Whereby shall I know this?" he said. "For I am an old man, and my wife well stricken in years."

Those are Luke's words. We will not invent others.

"I am Gabriel," the angel said, "that stand in the presence of God; and am sent to speak unto thee, and to shew thee these glad tidings. And, behold, thou shalt be dumb, and not able to speak, until the day that these things shall be performed, because thou believest not my words, which shall be fulfilled in their season."

The people waited. They marvelled that he tarried so long. When he came out he was supposed to bless them. He could not speak. He beckoned to them, and remained speechless. They understood he had seen a vision.

When the days of his service were finished, he went home.

After those days Elizabeth conceived. God gave her a child. The barren one was not forgotten. She hid herself five months, saying, "Thus hath the Lord dealt with me in the days wherein he looked on me, to take away my reproach among men."

That is as far as this morning goes.

The Church already kept the rest of that house — the greeting, the writing of the name, the hiding in the hills — on the fifth of September. We will not tell that life again this morning. We will stay where the feast stays. A prayer was heard. A son was promised. His name would be John. The lamp of the Sun had been conceived, and the Prophet of the Most High was about to be born.

The word we heard this morning is the feast's own word, appointed for this Wednesday. "Rejoice, thou barren that bearest not… Now we, brethren, as Isaac was, are the children of promise." Elizabeth had waited past the years when a house expects a child. God kept the word anyway. The son He gave was a child of promise, the way Isaac was — given, not earned.

And the Gospel is the story itself. Luke tells the incense, the angel, the silence, and the beginning. We do not have to look somewhere else for today's reading. The Church set the beginning of John's life in our ears this morning, and then she sang it.

The psalm we held in the hand is not a lectionary appointment. It is a word that already knows a lamp prepared: "There will I cause to spring up a horn to David: I have prepared a lamp for mine anointed." The troparion calls John the lamp of the Sun. He does not shine instead of Christ. He goes first, so the people can see the Light when the Light comes.

That is why the Church will not let this Wednesday stand without this Conception. She names the Forerunner at the first moment of his life, because the world had been waiting for someone to go before the Lord.

And today, so many hundreds of years later, we say his name once more, out loud, together — Holy Glorious Prophet, Forerunner and Baptist John — and he is praying for us still.