The mission

Luke 1:57-80

          Disclaimer right up front, I am nothing in comparison to John the Baptist whom the passage today is about. I will however claim some similarities to him and to other prophets as well.

          A prophet is one who communicates with God and who relays a message. I will be bold enough only to say I might be a minor prophet. I do not speak to God in any kind of conversation outside of prayer, reading his written words and looking at His created world.  Yet I hear his messages loud and clear and feel compelled to speak of them. I dare not think that I have all, if any real answers for the world but I am compelled to speak the truth as it is revealed to me. I am called to serve God and one was is to write this blog, a modern prophets venue.

        A prophet often gives unsettling news to the temple elite, upsets the status quo and gives messages of repentance. Along with celebration, praise and thanks, this is what I do. I speak for any of the disenfranchised, marginalized and people who are supposedly left off God's list of those worth saving. My focus is on those whom I have the greatest knowledge of, the gay community and that includes any of the myriad letters of the LGBTQIAA (and growing) community. That would be, Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender, Queer (or questioning), Intersex, Asexual, allies and more. Further, I speak to the church of my upbringing and anyone who is need of liberation.  

       In a nutshell, I try to convey the intense and unlimited love that God has for each one of us on an individual basis, by our names as he created us.  There are no limits to God's love for us, not time nor space can contain it. He loved us so much that he sent the Word into the world, His son, Jesus Christ to live among us and eventually and quite willingly, die for each one of us. Greater love hath no man - ever. Lastly, as John called the Jewish people to repent and return to God's ways, the ways of the Covenant, I call His church to return to the roots and message of the Gospel.

      I too may be a voice in the wilderness but I am committed to the call and mission.

Now the time came for Elizabeth to give birth, and she bore a son. Her neighbours and relatives heard that the Lord had shown his great mercy to her, and they rejoiced with her.

On the eighth day they came to circumcise the child, and they were going to name him Zechariah after his father. But his mother said, ‘No; he is to be called John.’ They said to her, ‘None of your relatives has this name.’ Then they began motioning to his father to find out what name he wanted to give him. He asked for a writing-tablet and wrote, ‘His name is John.’ And all of them were amazed. Immediately his mouth was opened and his tongue freed, and he began to speak, praising God. Fear came over all their neighbours, and all these things were talked about throughout the entire hill country of Judea. All who heard them pondered them and said, ‘What then will this child become?’ For, indeed, the hand of the Lord was with him.

Then his father Zechariah was filled with the Holy Spirit and spoke this prophecy:
‘Blessed be the Lord God of Israel,
   for he has looked favourably on his people and redeemed them.
He has raised up a mighty saviour for us
   in the house of his servant David,
as he spoke through the mouth of his holy prophets from of old,
that we would be saved from our enemies and from the hand of all who hate us.
Thus he has shown the mercy promised to our ancestors,
   and has remembered his holy covenant,
the oath that he swore to our ancestor Abraham,
   to grant us that we, being rescued from the hands of our enemies,
might serve him without fear, in holiness and righteousness
   before him all our days.
And you, child, will be called the prophet of the Most High;
   for you will go before the Lord to prepare his ways,
to give knowledge of salvation to his people
   by the forgiveness of their sins.
By the tender mercy of our God,
   the dawn from on high will break upon us,
to give light to those who sit in darkness and in the shadow of death,
   to guide our feet into the way of peace.’

The child grew and became strong in spirit, and he was in the wilderness until the day he appeared publicly to Israel.