December 19: Christ’s Cousin: The Forerunner
♫ Music:
Day 18 - Wednesday, December 19
Christ’s Cousin: The Forerunner
Scripture: Luke 3:15-17
As the people were in expectation, and all were questioning in their hearts concerning John, whether he might be the Christ, John answered them all, saying, “I baptize you with water, but he who is mightier than I is coming, the strap of whose sandals I am not worthy to untie. He will baptize you with the Holy Spirit and fire. His winnowing fork is in his hand, to clear his threshing floor and to gather the wheat into his barn, but the chaff he will burn with unquenchable fire.”
Poetry:
John
by Lucille Clifton
somebody coming in blackness
like a star
and the world be a great bush
on his head
and his eyes be fire
in the city
and his mouth be true as time
he be calling the people brother
even in the prison
even in the jail
i’m just only a baptist preacher
somebody bigger than me coming
in blackness like a star
CHRIST'S COUSIN, THE FORERUNNER
In traditional images depicting the Christmas story, we see a humble manger scene with a tired Mary, a comforting Joseph, curious shepherds, seeking wise men, and the ever-innocent newborn baby Jesus. All is calm. All is bright.
Today, we use a bit of our imagination as we reflect on John Everett Millais’ painting which takes place several years later, in Jesus’ boyhood. An oddly calm, rather bright scene, features young Jesus in Joseph’s workshop with a fresh wound. This image directly forecasts Jesus’ sacrifice on the cross. So what does this have to do with the season of Advent, as we prepare our hearts in remembering the celebration of the birth of our Savior?
While the immediate attention of this painting is focused in the glowing center with a statuesque Mary tending to a still Jesus, the momentum of the scene comes from the left, with Jesus’ cousin, John. John is in mid-step bringing water to cleanse Jesus’ fresh wound. He is a young John the Baptist, Christ’s forerunner. To me, John’s face appears the most clearly expressive of all the faces in this scene. While empathy and expectancy flood John’s eyes, he moves forward with a hopefully hurried, yet possibly apprehensive step as he brings the cleansing water to aid his cousin.
Reflecting on today’s Scripture reading in Luke 3, we flash forward many years to another expectant scene with Jesus and John the Baptist at the Jordan River. John proclaims Jesus’ arrival and soon after baptizes him, announcing the commencement of Jesus’ public ministry.
John was a simple man who lived in the wilderness, but God used him before he was even born to be a messenger of the Good News. We can recognize the vital role John plays in announcing the coming of Jesus as he prepares the path before the King. From the Biblical account of John’s leap in Elizabeth’s womb to an imaginative artistic depiction of his familial role in Jesus’ boyhood, John holds a special role in each long season of expectation. In an unsettled and distracted world, John actively points us home toward Jesus, directing our unfocused attention toward our intervening Savior.
What greater role than to announce the coming of the King? John describes himself as “unworthy," and “not fit." Yet, God appointed him to hold a formative role in Jesus’ coming. At the cusp of Jesus’ entrance into the world and public arrival for ministry, John is present, preparing the way, “fulfilling all righteousness," as the Father had ordained (Matthew 3:15).
When we are tempted to qualify our roles in God’s Kingdom with “just’s” and “only’s," may we remember the active role to which God has called us: to point others to their soul’s home in Jesus. Like John, we are Christ’s forerunners in this season “in between." We are in between Jesus’ first coming and His second. And again we find ourselves in a world that is deeply prone to distraction, ironically, especially in this season of celebration. May we remain alert, and actively prepare the way as we remember Jesus’ birth and anticipate his second coming.
Prayer:
Dear Lord,
Help us to be good stewards of the roles You have given us to point our lives and others’ eyes toward You in this season of waiting. May You keep us attentive and strengthen us. Keep our wander-prone eyes locked into Your gaze as we reflect on Your Son’s birth and eagerly await His return.
Amen.
Mairin McCuistion
Alumni and Public Relations Specialist
Torrey Honors Institute
Biola University
About the Artwork:
Christ in the House of His Parents, 1849-50
John Everett Millais
Oil on canvas
34 in x 55 in
Tate Britain, London
The theme of this painting is God’s providence. It depicts Jesus as a young boy in Joseph’s carpentry workshop. Joseph is making a door, a prefiguration of Christ as the doorway to heaven. Jesus has cut his hand on an exposed nail and some blood has dropped onto his foot foreshadowing his crucifixion. A dove representing the Holy Spirit perched on a ladder recalling Jacob’s ladder watches intently. While Joseph examines the wound in Jesus’ hand, his mother Mary offers her cheek for a kiss. Meanwhile Jesus’ slightly older cousin, John, hair disheveled and wearing a fur loincloth, approaches with a bowl of water to wash the wound, prefiguring his later baptism of Christ. He was there from the beginning, the first apart from Jesus’ mother Mary to recognize just who Jesus was, the one Isaiah called “the voice…crying in the wilderness” who would “prepare the way of the Lord." Behind the young man assisting Joseph, representing Jesus' future Apostles, the sheep in the sheepfold look on as Christ’s flock.
About the Artist:
Sir John Everett Millais (1829-96) was an English painter, portraitist, and illustrator who was one of founders of the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood a group of artists intent on reintroducing moral purpose into British art. His early work was characterized the sharp detail, bright color, and poetic feeling shared by the Pre-Raphaelites. His later work moved in a broad realist style, which made him one of the most successful and wealthy artists of his time. Millais was an artistic prodigy who earned a place in the Royal Academy schools at the age of eleven. In 1896 he was elected President of the Royal Academy. He married his wife Effie, with whom he had eight children, after the annulment of her marriage to art critic John Ruskin.
About the Music:
“Fire in the Hearth” from the album Merrily Greet the Time
About the Composer:
Traditional
About the Performers:
Sue Richards and Maggie Sansone
Sue Richards is a leading American player of Celtic harp. She has been the American National Scottish Harp Competition Champion four times, and is also a leading figure among American harpers as a group. Richards is a member of the Celtic group Ceoltoiri (meaning "Musicians") and the Ensemble Galilei. The latter group is a sextet that plays traditional Celtic and Irish music, folk music, plus Renaissance and Baroque music. Her repertory includes music from all Celtic lands and Ireland, including fruits from her own 20 years of collecting folk music. She composes music in the Scots harp tradition, particularly for special occasions, a function that is traditional for Scottish harpers.
Maggie Sansone (b. 1949) is an American hammered dulcimer player and recording artist. Sansone started recording her music in 1984 and since then, she has made over a dozen recordings, both solo and as a guest artist or in collaboration with numerous recording artists such as Bonnie Rideout, Al Petteway, and Ensemble Galilei. Although she is perhaps best known for her hammered dulcimer recordings, she also plays the piano, guitar, mandolin, and Northumbrian small-pipes. Sansone has performed at the Maryland Renaissance Festival for more than twenty years. Sansone operates her own music label, Maggie's Music. The label features over fifty recordings of Celtic and contemporary acoustic music including recording artists Al Petteway, Amy White, Bonnie Rideout, Robin Bullock, Karen Ashbrook, Paul Oorts, Ensemble Galilei, Sue Richards, and the Hesperus Early Music Ensemble.
About the Poet:
Lucille Clifton (1936-2010) was one of the most distinguished, decorated, and beloved poets of her time. She won the National Book Award for Poetry for Blessing the Boats: New and Selected Poems 1988-2000 and was the first African-American female recipient of the Ruth Lilly Poetry Prize for lifetime achievement from the Poetry Foundation. Ms. Clifton received many additional honors throughout her career, including the Discovery Award from the New York YW/YMHA Poetry Center, a 1976 Emmy Award for Outstanding Writing for the television special Free to Be You and Me, a Lannan Literary Award in 1994, and the Robert Frost Medal from the Poetry Society of America in 2010. Her honors and awards give testament to the universality of her unique and resonant voice. In 1987, she became the first author to have two books of poetry – Good Woman and Next – chosen as finalists for the Pulitzer Prize in the same year. She was also the author of eighteen children’s books and in 1984 received the Coretta Scott King Award from the American Library Association for her book Everett Anderson’s Good-bye.
About the Devotional Writer:
Mairin McCuistion is a Minnesota native who proudly and lovingly holds on to her northern roots, while also quite enjoys California’s mountains, ocean, and LA’s sunny city life. She is an alumna of Torrey Honors and Biola University with B.A. in Public Relations. Currently she works for Torrey Honors Institute as a Public Relations Specialist. She will be marrying her fiancé, Parous, in January 2019, and they will gladly be moving even closer to the ocean.