John the Baptist
Posted on Jun 24, 2025 by Shari Van Baale
I am sure that you have heard of John the Baptist, but did you know that Tuesday was the Feast of the Nativity of St. John the Baptist, a significant day in the Christian calendar, particularly within the Catholic Church, Eastern Orthodox Church, Anglicanism, and Lutheranism. Unlike some holidays, it is observed annually on the same date — June 24.
This feast day is celebrated to commemorate the birth of John the Baptist. Along with Jesus and Mary, John the Baptist is the only figure whose birthday is celebrated by the church as an official feast day. John is important because he prepared the way for Jesus. In Luke 3:15-17, it says, “As the people were filled with expectation and all were questioning in their hearts concerning John, whether he might be the Messiah, John answered all of them by saying, ‘I baptize you with water, but one who is more powerful than I is coming; I am not worthy to untie the strap of his sandals. 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 granary, but the chaff he will burn with unquenchable fire.’ ”
For those who don’t know, a winnowing fork is used in agriculture to separate grain. It removes the inedible chaff from the part that is usable. (Chaff is the dry, inedible outer covering of grains, like husks and other plant matter that are separated from the edible seeds during threshing.) This separates the good from the bad, just as Jesus separates in the Luke passage.
John’s coming as a messenger before Jesus is prophesized in the Old Testament reading for June 24. “See, I am sending my messenger to prepare the way before me … For he is like a refiner’s fire and like washers’ soap; he will sit as a refiner and purifier of silver, and he will purify the descendants of Levi and refine them like gold and silver, until they present offerings to the Lord in righteousness.” (Malachi 3:1-3)
A refiner’s fire melts metal to purify it. According to biblestudytools.com, “God spoke this analogy through the prophet Malachi to describe how he purifies our hearts. Just as a refiner’s fire, God will draw out our dross — our broken, sinful ways — so that we will stand pure and righteous before him. A refiner’s fire does not destroy the metal, rather it allows the junk within to come up so that it can be removed. A refiner’s fire does not consume, it makes the metal better and more valuable. This comparison helps makes sense of what God’s redemptive work may look like and accomplish in each of us.”
To me, this sounds a lot like the baptisms that John did. He washed people clean, “like washers’ soap,” and purified “the descendants of Levi and refine(d) them like gold and silver.” John baptized people in the Jordan River as a symbolic act of repentance and cleansing.
According to butterflyliving.org, “John the Baptist proclaimed a life-changing message, calling everyone to have a change of heart and live a life that reflected faith in God. John knew the coming of the Messiah was imminent, and his mission was to prepare people for the arrival of Christ.”
His purpose was not to be the Messiah, but to announce the Messiah, the coming of Jesus and his sacrificial love that saved us all.
Shari Van Baale
Salem Communications Coordinator