The Nativity of Saint John the Baptist: An Anglican Perspective

Feast Day: June 24

The Anglican calendar is ordered by a hierarchy of holy days, each carrying a different weight of observance. At the top stand the seven Principal Feasts, the highest-ranking days of the liturgical year. Below them are the Red-Letter Holy Days appointed in the BCP 2019 with their own Collects and propers. The Nativity of Saint John the Baptist, observed on June 24, is one of these Red-Letter Holy Days. The BCP appoints its Collect on page 629 and provides its readings in the Holy Day lectionary on page 731.

The feast is unusual because the Church ordinarily commemorates saints in connection with their witness and death rather than celebrating their birthdays. John’s birth, however, belongs directly to the Gospel story. Luke devotes most of the first chapter of his Gospel to the conception and birth of John and the conception of Jesus, and John’s entire existence is ordered toward the coming of Christ. His birth is therefore celebrated not because Christianity has a special interest in birthdays, but because God gave this child a unique place in the history of salvation: he would be the prophet of the Most High, the voice preparing the way of the Lord, and the forerunner who would point Israel toward the Lamb of God.

June 24 also stands roughly six months before Christmas Day. That arrangement reflects Luke’s statement that Elizabeth was in the sixth month of her pregnancy when Gabriel announced the conception of Jesus to Mary. (Luke 1:26, 36) The liturgical dates should not be mistaken for a claim that the Church can historically establish June 24 and December 25 as the actual birthdays of John and Jesus. The calendar instead gives visible expression to Luke’s relative chronology, placing the birth of the forerunner roughly six months before the Nativity of the Lord he came to announce.

A Birth Promised by God

The story begins not with John but with God. Zechariah and Elizabeth are righteous before God, yet they are childless and advanced in years. While Zechariah is serving as a priest in the Temple and offering incense, the angel Gabriel appears and tells him that his prayer has been heard. Elizabeth will bear a son, and his name is to be John.

Gabriel describes the child before he has been conceived: “He will be great before the Lord,” he will be filled with the Holy Spirit “even from his mother’s womb,” and “he will turn many of the children of Israel to the Lord their God.”(Luke 1:15–16, ESV) His vocation therefore does not originate in an adult decision to pursue religious ministry. God names, calls, and appoints him before his birth.

Zechariah asks how he can know that the promise will occur, pointing to his own age and Elizabeth’s. Because he does not believe Gabriel’s words, he becomes unable to speak until they are fulfilled. The silence continues through Elizabeth’s pregnancy and through the birth of the child until the day of his circumcision and naming.

The story therefore begins with divine initiative at every point. Elizabeth does not overcome barrenness by effort. Zechariah does not design a prophetic future for his son. John does not create his vocation. God acts first, graciously giving what this family could not give itself and preparing the messenger who will announce the greater gift still to come.

His Name Is John

Luke 1:57–80, the appointed Gospel, begins with Elizabeth giving birth. Her neighbors and relatives rejoice with her because the Lord has shown her great mercy. Eight days later they gather for the child’s circumcision and assume that he will be named after his father. Elizabeth insists that “he shall be called John.” When they appeal to Zechariah, he asks for a writing tablet and writes, “His name is John.” Immediately his mouth is opened, his tongue is loosed, and he begins blessing God. (Luke 1:60, 63–64, ESV)

The name John, from the Hebrew Yohanan (yo-HAH-nahn), means “the LORD has been gracious” or “the LORD is gracious.” The name is particularly fitting, although Luke’s point is deeper than its etymology. John receives the name because God commanded it. The child belongs first to the purpose of the Lord rather than to family expectation or human custom.

Zechariah’s restored speech becomes praise. The man who had failed to believe Gabriel’s promise now blesses the God who has fulfilled it. His first recorded words after months of silence are not centered upon himself or even principally upon his newborn son. They are a song about what God has done for Israel. That song is the Benedictus.

The Benedictus

The name Benedictus (ben-eh-DIK-tus) comes from the opening word of the canticle in Latin: “Blessed.” Zechariah, filled with the Holy Spirit, begins, “Blessed be the Lord God of Israel, for he has visited and redeemed his people.” (Luke 1:68, ESV) He praises God for raising up “a horn of salvation” in the house of David, remembering his covenant and the oath sworn to Abraham, and delivering his people so that they may serve him “in holiness and righteousness before him all our days.” (Luke 1:69, 72–75, ESV)

Only then does Zechariah turn toward his son: “And you, child, will be called the prophet of the Most High; for you will go before the Lord to prepare his ways.” (Luke 1:76, ESV) John will give God’s people knowledge of salvation “in the forgiveness of their sins,” because of the tender mercy of God by which the dawn will visit them from on high. (Luke 1:77–78, ESV)

The order matters. John can be understood only within what God is doing in Christ. He is not the horn of salvation. He prepares the way for the one who is. He does not provide forgiveness by his own power. He prepares a people to receive the salvation God is bringing. His greatness is entirely relational: he is great because of the Lord before whom he goes.

The Benedictus has a particularly deep place in Anglican worship because it is one of the principal Gospel canticles of Morning Prayer. Anglicans therefore sing or pray Zechariah’s prophecy throughout the year, not merely on June 24. The feast allows the Church to hear the canticle once again in its original setting, spoken by a father over the child who will become the forerunner of Christ.

The Voice in the Wilderness

The appointed Old Testament reading is Isaiah 40:1–11, the passage all four Gospels draw upon in describing John’s ministry. Isaiah announces comfort to God’s people and declares, “A voice cries: ‘In the wilderness prepare the way of the LORD; make straight in the desert a highway for our God.’” (Isaiah 40:3, ESV)

The Evangelists identify John as that voice. He appears in the wilderness proclaiming repentance and preparing Israel for the arrival of Jesus. The connection carries enormous Christological significance because Isaiah is speaking of the coming of the LORD. The one whose way John prepares is Jesus Christ.

John therefore does not merely announce a new teacher or religious movement. His ministry belongs to the fulfillment of Israel’s expectation that God himself would come to save his people. Isaiah continues by declaring, “Behold your God!”and describing the Lord coming with might while also tending his flock like a shepherd and gathering the lambs in his arms. (Isaiah 40:9–11, ESV) John stands at the point where that ancient promise is coming into historical focus.

The Collect captures the same truth when it says that John was sent to prepare the way of God’s Son by preaching repentance. John’s ministry cannot be separated from repentance because preparation for the Lord means turning from sin toward the one who comes to save.

The Last of the Old Covenant Prophets

John stands at a remarkable threshold in salvation history. Jesus says, “Among those born of women there has arisen no one greater than John the Baptist. Yet the one who is least in the kingdom of heaven is greater than he.” (Matthew 11:11, ESV) He also says that “all the Prophets and the Law prophesied until John.” (Matthew 11:13, ESV) John therefore belongs fully to Israel’s prophetic tradition while standing at its climactic edge.

Calling John the last of the Old Covenant prophets is useful if the phrase is understood carefully. It does not mean that prophetic speech disappears immediately after him or that no one else in the New Testament is ever called a prophet. Rather, John stands at the culmination of the long prophetic movement that prepared Israel for the Messiah. Earlier prophets looked forward toward the coming one. John sees him, baptizes him, and points him out.

Jesus even says that John is “more than a prophet.” (Matthew 11:9, ESV) He is himself the messenger promised in Scripture who goes before the Lord. His unique privilege is not that he speaks a better message than Isaiah or Jeremiah, but that the promise toward which the prophets looked has come near enough for John to point at its fulfillment. The second half of Matthew 11:11 does not diminish John. It points beyond his unique prophetic office to the surpassing privilege of the Kingdom and the age of fulfillment. John stands at the threshold; the Church lives from the accomplished death and Resurrection of the Christ whom he announced.

This is why John belongs to both expectation and arrival. His voice comes from Israel’s prophetic world, but the object of his preaching stands before him in the Jordan.

He Is Not the Christ

John’s greatness is inseparable from his refusal to make himself the center. In Acts 13:14b–26, the appointed New Testament reading, Paul traces the history of God’s promises from Israel through David to Jesus. Immediately before Jesus’ coming, Paul says, John proclaimed a baptism of repentance. As John was completing his course, he said, “What do you suppose that I am? I am not he. No, but behold, after me one is coming, the sandals of whose feet I am not worthy to untie.” (Acts 13:25, ESV)

John’s ministry contains an extraordinary willingness to say I am not he. When priests and Levites ask him whether he is the Christ, he confesses plainly that he is not. John’s Gospel describes him as a man sent from God to bear witness to the light and then immediately adds, “He was not the light, but came to bear witness about the light.” (John 1:8, ESV) Jesus later calls John “a burning and shining lamp.” (John 5:35, ESV) A lamp truly gives light, but only because it has received something to bear.

John eventually expresses his vocation in the sentence that has come to summarize his life: “He must increase, but I must decrease.” (John 3:30, ESV) This is not self-hatred or false humility. John knows who he is precisely because he knows who Jesus is. His joy is fulfilled when the Bridegroom arrives.

Christian humility has the same Christ-centered shape. It is not pretending that God has given us no gifts or calling. John possesses both in extraordinary measure. Humility is receiving those gifts without mistaking ourselves for the one to whom they are meant to point.

The Visitation and the Unborn Forerunner

The Visitation links John and Jesus before either is born. Gabriel tells Mary that Elizabeth is already in the sixth month of her pregnancy, and Mary goes to visit her relative. At Mary’s greeting, the unborn John leaps in Elizabeth’s womb, and Elizabeth, filled with the Holy Spirit, says that the child leaped “for joy.” (Luke 1:44, ESV)

The scene is consistent with Gabriel’s earlier promise that John would be filled with the Holy Spirit from his mother’s womb. Yet we should not add details Luke does not give. The text does not say that the unborn John consciously understands every implication of the encounter, nor does Luke explicitly describe the event using later doctrines concerning John’s sanctification. What he tells us is remarkable enough: the unborn forerunner leaps for joy in the presence of the unborn Lord.

The episode also demonstrates the continuity of John’s personal identity before and after birth. The child who leaps in Elizabeth’s womb is the same John whose birth is celebrated, whose naming is commanded by God, and whose ministry will prepare Israel for Jesus. Scripture presents his life as already encompassed by God’s calling before he emerges from the womb. John’s ministry therefore does not become meaningful only when he begins preaching; his whole life rests within the providence and purpose of God.

The Appointed Readings

The BCP 2019 appoints Isaiah 40:1–11; Psalm 85:7–13; Acts 13:14b–26; and Luke 1:57–80 for the Nativity of Saint John the Baptist. These readings are found on page 731 and remain the same across the three-year cycle.

Isaiah supplies the prophetic voice and the command to prepare the LORD’s way. Luke narrates John’s birth and gives the Church the Benedictus. Acts interprets John from within apostolic preaching, placing him immediately before Jesus and recording his insistence that he himself is not the Christ.

Psalm 85 provides a broader covenantal setting. It celebrates God’s mercy toward his people and declares that “steadfast love and faithfulness meet; righteousness and peace kiss each other.” (Psalm 85:10, ESV) It would be too specific to make that image itself an allegory of John pointing to Jesus. The stronger connection is that the Psalm celebrates the saving faithfulness of God whose promises are reaching fulfillment in the Gospel John announces.

Its concluding picture is especially fitting: “Righteousness will go before him and make his footsteps a way.” (Psalm 85:13, ESV) Read on John’s feast, that language naturally resonates with the forerunner sent to prepare the way of the Lord, while retaining the Psalm’s own larger celebration of God’s saving presence.

The BCP 2019 Collect

The Collect on page 629 prays: “Almighty God, by whose providence your servant John the Baptist was wonderfully born, and sent to prepare the way of your Son our Savior by preaching repentance: Make us so to follow his teaching and holy life, that we may truly repent, boldly rebuke vice, patiently suffer for the sake of truth, and proclaim the coming of Jesus Christ our Lord; who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, for ever and ever. Amen.”

The Collect begins with providence. John is wonderfully born and sent because God acts. His birth, calling, preaching, and place in salvation history arise from divine initiative. Only after confessing what God has done does the prayer ask that John’s pattern be reproduced in the Church.

Its four petitions deserve careful attention. The Church asks to truly repent, because one cannot faithfully preach repentance while exempting oneself from it. We ask to boldly rebuke vice, because love does not remain silent when sin destroys people. We ask to patiently suffer for the sake of truth, because fidelity may carry a cost. Finally, we ask to proclaim the coming of Jesus Christ, because Christian moral courage has no proper center apart from him.

The prayer does not encourage Christians to become habitually combative. John’s boldness is not valued because confrontation itself is holy. He rebukes sin as part of preparing people for the Lord. Christian courage must therefore remain governed by truth, love, repentance, and the Gospel.

The third petition also points beyond the Nativity itself toward John’s later martyrdom. He rebuked Herod Antipas for taking Herodias, his brother’s wife, and that faithful witness eventually contributed to his imprisonment and execution. The BCP calendar separately remembers The Beheading of John the Baptist on August 29 as an optional commemoration. June 24 celebrates his birth, but the Collect rightly sees the whole life that followed from it.

The Preface of Advent

The BCP appoints the Preface of Advent, found on page 153, for the Nativity of Saint John the Baptist. At first this may seem unexpected on a feast observed in June, but the choice is theologically apt.

The Advent Preface gives thanks for the Son whom God sent to redeem his people and directs the Church toward his coming again in glory. John’s entire vocation is shaped by coming. He prepares Israel for the coming of Christ, identifies the one who has come, and calls the people to repentance in readiness for the Lord.

John is therefore an Advent figure even outside Advent. His June feast briefly recovers the Church’s posture of preparation without pretending that the Incarnation has not already occurred. Christians know the one John announced, yet his message remains necessary because the Christ who came in humility will come again in glory. The Preface is therefore more than a historical reminiscence. John’s command to prepare the way remains an eschatological word to the Church.

The Liturgical Character

White is customarily used for the Nativity of Saint John the Baptist in Anglican worship. It fittingly expresses the joy surrounding his miraculous birth and the saving work of God toward which his entire life points.

Red is naturally associated with martyrdom and may fittingly accompany commemorations centered upon those who shed their blood for Christ, but June 24 is explicitly John’s Nativity. The feast is filled with gladness. Elizabeth’s neighbors rejoice at God’s mercy, Zechariah blesses God, and a child is born whose vocation is to announce that salvation is drawing near.

John’s martyrdom is not forgotten. The Collect itself asks the Church patiently to suffer for truth, and August 29 separately commemorates his beheading. But June 24 is fundamentally a feast of birth, promise, mercy, and fulfillment.

Why June 24?

Luke tells us that Elizabeth was in her sixth month when Gabriel came to Mary. The Church’s calendar eventually expressed that relationship by placing John’s Nativity roughly six months before Christmas.

We should distinguish this liturgical chronology from historical certainty. Scripture does not tell us that John was born on June 24 or that Jesus was born on December 25. The calendar gives visible expression to Luke’s relative chronology rather than claiming to recover exact dates from the first century.

There is also an old calendrical reason for June 24 rather than June 25. In Roman inclusive reckoning, March 25 and June 24 could each be described in relation to the eighth day before the Kalends of the following month, which helped establish the three-month relation between the Annunciation and John’s Nativity within the old calendar system.

The feast itself is ancient. Augustine knew and preached the Nativity of John the Baptist, showing that the observance was well established in the Western Church by late antiquity. Medieval Western Christianity gave the day exceptional prominence, and the observance continued within the English Prayer Book tradition. The BCP 2019 therefore stands within a very old Christian inheritance when it marks June 24 as the Nativity of Saint John the Baptist.

The Lamb of God

Although John 1 is not among the appointed readings for the Nativity, the Gospel’s portrayal of John gives perhaps the clearest mature expression of his vocation. When Jesus approaches him, John says, “Behold, the Lamb of God, who takes away the sin of the world!” (John 1:29, ESV)

Everything in John’s life has been moving toward that moment. The miraculous birth, prophetic calling, wilderness preaching, baptism of repentance, and insistence that someone greater is coming all converge upon a person. John does not finally point toward a moral program, a political restoration, or his own religious movement. He points to Jesus.

The Church honors John in exactly the same way. His feast should never terminate in admiration for a strong personality, an austere lifestyle, or fearless preaching. Those qualities matter because they belong to the man whose vocation was to direct attention elsewhere. The Baptist’s great gift to the Church is the pointing finger.

Repentance and Grace

Because John is the preacher of repentance, his feast could easily be misheard as a celebration of human resolve. His preaching certainly demands action. People must repent, bear fruit in keeping with repentance, abandon injustice, and prepare for the Lord.

Yet even John’s existence announces that grace comes first. His name declares God’s graciousness. His conception is God’s gift. His vocation is God’s appointment. His filling with the Spirit is God’s action. The Lord whose way he prepares is himself God’s saving gift to sinners.

Repentance is therefore not humanity’s contribution that persuades God to become gracious. God’s grace confronts sinners and turns them toward the Savior. John is sent because God is coming to save. His summons is urgent precisely because mercy has drawn near.

The Benedictus makes the order unmistakable. Zechariah does not sing that Israel has finally prepared itself sufficiently for redemption. He sings that God “has visited and redeemed his people” and has remembered his holy covenant. (Luke 1:68, 72, ESV) God acts first, and John is sent to prepare people to receive what God is doing.

John and the Truth

The Collect’s petition that Christians may “boldly rebuke vice” deserves to retain its full force. John did not restrict religious speech to truths that could be heard without offense. When Herod’s conduct violated God’s law, John said plainly, “It is not lawful for you to have your brother’s wife.” (Mark 6:18, ESV)

That does not authorize Christians to cultivate outrage or speak harshly for its own sake. The same Collect first asks us truly to repent. The one who rebukes sin must remain a sinner living under the same Word of judgment and mercy. Christian truth-telling is not moral superiority.

Neither, however, may love be used as an excuse for silence about what God has called sin. John’s ministry reminds the Church that truth may be unwelcome, socially costly, and even dangerous. Faithfulness cannot be defined by whether the surrounding culture finds Christian teaching agreeable.

This applies not only to dramatic public controversies but to the ordinary ministry of the Church. Preaching repentance, teaching the historic Christian understanding of marriage and sexual holiness, defending the vulnerable, exposing greed and injustice, calling people to forgiveness, and maintaining the faith once delivered to the saints may all place Christians against prevailing assumptions.

John reminds the Church that preparing the Lord’s way includes speaking truth when truth has a cost. Yet his message never ends with the rebuke. The purpose of clearing the road is that people may receive Christ.

Observing This Feast

The Nativity of Saint John the Baptist is observed on June 24. The Collect is found on page 629, the Preface of Advent is appointed, and the readings are Isaiah 40:1–11; Psalm 85:7–13; Acts 13:14b–26; and Luke 1:57–80.

Begin with Luke 1 and read enough of the chapter to recover the whole story: Gabriel’s announcement to Zechariah, Elizabeth’s conception, the Visitation, John’s birth and naming, and the Benedictus. The feast becomes richer when the birth narrative is heard as the fulfillment of promises already unfolding through the chapter.

Pray the Collect slowly and allow its four petitions to become an examination of Christian discipleship. Ask whether repentance is genuine, whether fear makes you silent when truth should be spoken, whether suffering for fidelity is borne patiently rather than resentfully, and whether your witness actually points people toward Jesus Christ.

Pray or sing the Benedictus at Morning Prayer and hear again the immense claim made over the newborn child: “You, child, will be called the prophet of the Most High; for you will go before the Lord to prepare his ways.” (Luke 1:76, ESV)Then read Isaiah 40 and notice who is coming on the road John prepares. The deepest glory of the Baptist is that he prepared the way for God incarnate.

Finally, consider John’s own self-understanding. The Church does not honor him best by staring at John indefinitely. We honor him by looking where he points.

Conclusion

The Nativity of Saint John the Baptist celebrates a birth because this birth belongs to the arrival of the Gospel. An elderly, childless couple receives a son by the gracious providence of God. The child is named by divine command, filled with the Holy Spirit from his mother’s womb, and appointed before birth to prepare the way of the Lord.

John grows into the man Jesus calls greater than any born of women, yet his greatness never consists in becoming the center. He is the voice rather than the Word, the lamp rather than the Light, the friend of the Bridegroom rather than the Bridegroom. He prepares, announces, baptizes, rebukes, suffers, and then willingly recedes as the one he proclaimed comes into view.

The Church’s Collect therefore asks for something much deeper than admiration. It asks that the same grace produce in us a life shaped by repentance, courage, patience, truth, and proclamation. Those qualities do not originate in spiritual heroism. John’s own story begins before he can do anything for God. God gives, calls, fills, sends, and prepares him. Even the name chosen for him bears that testimony: the LORD is gracious.

John’s life becomes a response to that grace. He spends it preparing others for the one whose sandals he is unworthy to untie and whose glory he has no desire to steal. In the end, the Baptist’s vocation can be heard in two of his simplest sentences: “I am not the Christ,” and “Behold, the Lamb of God.” (John 1:20, 29, ESV)

That is why the Church celebrates his birth. John enters the world so that, when the Lord appears, someone will be standing there to point and say: There he is.