Feast of the Birth of St. John the Baptist, June 24. 2018

     This weekend we celebrate the Feast of the Birth of John the Baptist. What practical significance does this have for us? Well, it means that we have exactly 6 months to shop for Christmas. What is more important is the hiddenness of not only John's birth but also that of Jesus.

Given the fact that the church has declared this day a feast day in honor of John the Baptist, given all of the art over the centuries that have depicted this event and all the events surrounding the birth of John and Jesus; each time the artists put their own spin on the events, their own ideas of what it might have looked like, and the desire to make something impressive, to say nothing of inspirational; all this distances us from who Joseph and Mary, Elizabeth and Zachariah really were. To put it mildly, they were nobodies. They almost didn't count except for their ability to pay taxes. They came not from Jerusalem but the tiny backwaters of no account Nazareth and Bethlehem. They were for the most part living on the fringes of society and no one paid that much attention, except of course other family members a few neighbors and some shepherds. Oh yes, and three wise sages from the east who pondered the stars.

According to the Scriptures Jesus and John, or I should say, John and Jesus, were born about six months apart. John was the elder cousin of Jesus. Except for a few hints about Jesus at age 12 in the temple in Jerusalem, a moment when Mary and Joseph lost track of Him and we hear about their ensuing panic searching for him for three days, we know nothing of their lives until around the age of 30.

Other things that we can assume about Mary and Joseph, Elizabeth and Zachariah, and of course Jesus and John is that they were all good and prayerful, Jews pondering the action of God in their ancestor's lives, and likely wondering what their roles might be as God continues to act in their present day.

John the Baptist, as they say in the entertainment industry, is the warm-up act. He prepares the way for Jesus. Jesus enters the gospel story, not in a grandiose fashion, but quietly asking John for baptism, coming out from amidst the crowds that are going out to see John. John then disappears and Jesus takes center stage.

The pattern of our prayer and spiritual lives are found in these events. The call to prayer. The need to ponder. Most especially the need to see the treasures god places in our path each and every day. Right now our attention is focused on God's treasures are found all along our southern border, and they are found in all the faces of the homeless that we see here In San Francisco each and every day. These are God's treasures, not nameless numbers but human beings, individuals, babies, little children, moms, and dads.

Our government sees them as a problem to be gotten rid of, as an "infestation", as people taking up space that belongs to us. But they are not hordes, groups, an infestation, they are individual persons as unconditionally loved as we are by our God. The prime directive of the Catholic Church in terms of social justice is to care for the least among us. We are asked to look, maybe even to live, at the very edges of our society, for our church proclaims a fundamental option for the poor, the outcast, the stranger and alien. These terms are written all across all of our scriptures.

I have been very distracted this week, by my own feelings of insignificance, by my own powerlessness, and maybe even at times hopelessness. But we as faith communities do not have the luxury of wallowing in those emotions. We may not be able to travel to our southern borders to assist those sisters and brothers of ours, but we can treat kindly the homeless at our feet here in San Francisco, or the estranged and isolated family member or coworker; we have the power to identify and embrace God's treasures all around us each and every day.