Memorial of the Passion of Saint John the Baptist

Lectionary: 426/634

You yourselves know, brothers and sisters,
that our reception among you was not without effect.
Rather, after we had suffered and been insolently treated,
as you know, in Philippi,
we drew courage through our God
to speak to you the Gospel of God with much struggle.

Saint Paul's description of himself and his mission might well apply to the Baptist's life and death. Both suffered opposition and humiliation; both died in ignominious obscurity. We find inspiration and a pattern for our own lives in their stories.

Struggle is the key word for Paul, John, and Jesus as they announced the Good News to a resistant world. The nations are not second graders eager to make their First Communion; they are suspicious from the outset. Whether the missionaries speak the same language with the same accent, or come from a distant place with a story of an executed criminal, this "news" is supposed to change everything and we don't like it. 

For Herod, John's message meant the king could not do anything he could get away with so long as the Roman overlords didn't care. If everyone knew he had plotted his brother's death and taken the widow for his wife, that was nobody's business but his. He couldn't be bothered with God's law when Roman indulgence gave him free rein to do as he pleased. Why should the holy clown in the Jordan River object? 

Saint Paul also met resistance from Jewish synagogues and from those Christian missionaries he sarcastically called super apostles. He doubted their outlandish claims of ecstatic experience and disputed their insistence that every gentile Christian should be circumcised. He would not have his disciples surrender their newfound freedom to observe the Jewish dietary laws. Unfortunate converts of his opponents had been misled from one kind of oppression into another, and Paul protested loudly. It cost him, of course as it cost John the Baptist and Jesus. 

The 21st century also discovers the challenge of the Gospel as consumers recklessly exploit the poor and the Earth. They might want to hear that Jesus has come to save everyone and forgive everything  but they are not so willing to be merciful as God is merciful. Nor are they eager to live sacrificially because God has sacrificed his only begotten son. Why shouldn't they emulate the super-rich? Isn't God super-rich? 

Fearful of enemies, aliens, and others in general, they are not willing to trust in God's providence or sit at the Lord's table and dine with strangers in the sight of their foes. They would call their way of life spiritual without regard for the faith and traditions of their ancestors. And when they hear the Gospel of all things new, they suppose it began when they were born.

Especially because he died defending the Sacrament of Marriage, the Passion of Saint John the Baptist reminds us that the Gospel is no more welcome today than it was then. And God's People will always be strangers and aliens in a foreign land.