Sunday Sermon - 14 December
John the Baptist has been commandeering most of my life this past month or so. We’ve been reading about him since November 30, the beginning of Advent and throughout the season. Advent is indeed the season of John the Baptist and his apocalyptic message of preparation for the arrival of Jesus and the judgement of humankind.
But that’s really not the main reason our Saint John has been preoccupying my thoughts. For the past month I’ve been coming into the church quite a few times a day and staring at that back wall and especially at that window, the window of our patron Saint, St John the Baptist.
Today we are going to take a deeper look at this window. I am captivated by the window’s image and the depth of symbolism and story this piece of art tells, especially as we listen to the words of John the Baptist throughout Advent.
First, you may have heard or seen on our Facebook page that I toured the Heritage Committee around the church last week. They have requested that St John’s become a heritage designated building so we are in the early stages of that process. While touring, a member of the committee who many of you know, and is also my neighbour, Tom McAllister, told me about the history of this window.
It was originally our centrepiece window from the early 1880’s - up there in the middle of the sanctuary. Which makes sense. I always wondered why it was at the back of the church and not in a more prominent place, him being our patron Saint after all. According to Tom’s wife Patti, who wrote an article on the matter , people didn’t like this window because they thought that St. John’s knees were too knobbly! In 1903, they built the reredos (the wooden screen behind the altar) to cover up his ‘unsightly’ legs but apparently, that wasn’t good enough.
As a result, John the Baptist got replaced and relegated to the back of the church and our centrepiece window, The Good Shepherd, was dedicated to a former beloved Rector, J. Creighton and his wife Helen in 1964. I’ll talk more about this window at a later time but let’s get back to the poor knobbly kneed St. John the Baptist, because whether we appreciate his bodily image or not, this window tells the story of both this parish and our Christian faith.
The symbols in the window form a unified theological message:
Christ Church (it the top panel) harkens us back to our origin story. This is the window that reminds us of our story, from being Christ Church, North Douro, to becoming St. John the Baptist, Lakefield.
The apples above St John’s head symbolise humanity’s fall and need for redemption
“Ecce Agnus Dei” on St John’s cross-staff translate as, “Behold the Lamb of God”: John 1:29 - words of John when he saw Jesus coming toward him to receive his own baptism - immediately recognizing Jesus as Messiah, the Saviour and Redeemer of the world.
The cross-staff itself represents the mission and martyrdom of John, and the coming passion - the crucifixion - of Christ
The Lily to St John’s left is the promise of resurrection and new life. The Easter Lily is an ancient Christian symbol of hope and renewal. As an emblem of spring, the lily represents hope, rebirth, and the triumph of life over death, which is the core message of Easter.
The window of our Patron Saint tells the entirety of our parish story from our time as Christ Church to St. John the Baptist and our entire Christian story from the painful Fall to the joyous Hope of the Resurrection, all foretold by the prophet in the wilderness on this window.
Today as we get ever closer to Christmas and the joy that comes with celebrating the miraculous birth of our saviour Jesus, I invite you to focus less on the trimming, on the noise that has come with the secularization of Christmas, and dig deeper, lean into the fullness of our beautiful, painful, passionate, self-sacrificing, loving, joyous Easter story that comes alive not at Christmas but through Christmas. Through Good Friday and to Easter. I encourage you to listen hard to the proclamation of John the Baptist, “prepare the way for his return.” He’s not talking about the birth of the Jesus baby, Jesus has already been born. He’s talking about the power of the Messiah, the resurrection and the need for us to actively prepare for our salvation when our time comes.
The real power of that window is not in the presentation of the knobbly kneed Baptist, but in that little Lily that sits in the bottom right hand corner of the window, reminding us all of Jesus’ sacrifice for us, Jesus’ Resurrection for us and of God’s love for us.
Amen.