St John – witness to the Incarnation of Christ

St John – witness to the Incarnation of Christ by Rev. Michaël Merle

Reported by John-Peter Gernaat

We start by reading from the Prologue of the Gospel of John from the rendition by John Madsen of the translated by Emil Bock.

​In the very beginning was the Word,
And the Word was with God,
And the Word was a Divine Being.
He was in the very beginning with God.
All things came into being through him,
and nothing of all that has come into being was made except through Him.
In Him was life,
and the life was the light of human beings.
And the light shines in the darkness
and the darkness has not accepted it.
There came a human being,
sent from God,
his name was John.
He came to bear witness,
to witness to the light
and so, to awaken faith in all hearts.

​John is described here as a witness to the light, and he is described as a messenger of that light (see the article St John – The messenger of Light by Rev. Michaël Merle). In the talk on St John as the messenger of Light this was considered at hand of the word that can be translated as ‘messenger’ or as ‘angel’. This word is used by Mark in chapter 1 of his Gospel which echoes the Prophet Isaiah, Exodus and the Prophet Malachi.

Now we shall consider St John as the witness to the Incarnation. The Greek word for witness comes into the English language with a different meaning. We use this word to mean someone who has died while proclaiming their Christian faith. The word is ‘martyr’. This word means witness and, originally, had no connection with death or dying as a result of the witnessing. A true martyr will keep witnessing even at the cost of their life. In other words, they will continue testifying to the truth. Anyone willing to witness to what they know to be true is a martyr. A witness must be able to speak to the truth; by remaining silent they cannot be a witness. In this sense St John is the great witness of the incarnation. Mark writes it in his Gospel, that it is John who hears the words spoken from the Heavens when he can see the Spirit descending like a dove. This means that many who gathered were not able to perceive the Spirit descending like a dove. They may have sensed that something quite remarkable was happening, but they did not have the soul-organ of perception to see the Spirit descending like a dove, and they wouldn’t have had the soul organ of perception to hear the words spoken from the Heavens. They may have heard it as rolling thunder. But John can hear it: “This is my beloved Son in whom I will reveal myself fully”. That is a very important witnessing, that, from the very beginning of reading the Gospel we know that the very fullness of the Divine is revealed in Christ. This is something the disciples do not even grasp while they are following Christ. At the Last Supper, just before the great Mystery of Death and Resurrection, after three years of being with the Christ in Jesus of Nazareth, having come to know him, live with him, experience him, and he is speaking about the Father, Phillip still turns to Him and says: “Show us the Father”. The response: “How long have I been with you? If you have seen me, you have seen the Father!” It is an extraordinary statement of response. Because, in Christ the fullness and the complexity of the Divine is revealed.

We are a lot like Phillip, even though we have the Gospels and have had them for centuries and people have internalised them and have prayed and have come to a realisation of exactly what John was witnessing and have written some beautiful works of theology to impart this insight, we still struggle to comprehend, fully, the complexity of the Divine.

We are still not able to grasp the fullness of this revelation. This means that the revelation is ongoing. It is not a revelation of words, but a revelation of experience. As we are experiencing the nature of the Divine around us, within us and within the community at large, the revelation is alive, it is happening. Christ is revealing Himself, in us to each other. This means that we experience the witnessing of the incarnation and the revealing of the incarnation, the expression of it, in the way in which we can interact with each other. We are still a part of that whole picture.

What John does is bring this witnessing to the fore, and the Gospel of John expresses this very beautifully. There is a reason for that. The full soul experience of John the Baptist pours into the being who writes the Gospel of John. After John the Baptist is beheaded, his soul constitution pours itself into this disciple who writes the Gospel of John. He bears in himself this witnessing of John the Baptist. It strengthens him. It means that he is able to undergo another stage in his initiation and development because he can stand at the foot of the cross and hear the words: “Son, this is your mother. Mother, this is your son.” This is an extraordinary initiation for the community of being. One can say that this ‘marriage’ of mother and son, this uniting of forces of care, love and creativity – a mother gives birth to a son – and here the son is asked to take into himself that quality, to take her. And we hear in the gospel that from that moment he took her into his home, into himself, into his being. He takes her in with him into community. This is possible because the John who stands at the foot of the cross is a witness to the incarnation. That is why the other disciples are not there, because they have not yet reached that level of witness. That comes for them when they feel the power of the Holy Spirit at Whitsun. Then they too can become witnesses.

What is this witnessing? We hear some of it in the Prologue of John: when we hear:​

“And the Word became flesh
and lived among us.
And we have beheld his revelation,
The revelation of the only Son of the Father,
full of grace and truth.
John bears witness to him
and proclaims loudly:
After me come he who was before me,
for he is greater than I.”

We shall return to the theme “he who was before me, for he is greater than I” later.

This is the witness of John: that he bears witness to the revelation of the only Son of the Father. This is what it says later in chapter 1 of John’s Gospel: verse 32: “And John testified (witnessed): ‘I saw how the Spirit descended like a dove from heaven upon him and remained united with him. … He who sent me to baptize with water said to me, ‘He on whom you see the Spirit descend, so that it remains united with him, he it is who baptizes with the Holy Spirit.’ And I saw this, and so I testify (witness) that this is the Son of God.” This is an extremely powerful witnessing of the incarnation.

“He who sent me”, the idea that John is sent, like the prophets of old, by the Father God; sent as a messenger, an angel-messenger (as a messenger, like an angel, before the countenance of the people) to proclaim. He is really and truly the last prophet of the Old Testament and the first, and only, prophet of the New Testament. We do not need another messenger after the message arrives. This incarnation of Christ into Jesus of Nazareth in the River Jordan is that arrival. The powerful descent of the Spirit, that is what the Gospels tell us.

If we have any theology as members of the Community of Christians, it must come from the Gospels and from our sacraments. That is what informs us how we can imagine and construct our thinking. The Gospels are clear: Jesus, from Nazareth, very well prepared through generations, prepared in a way that a human being can be prepared, so that in this human being the fulness of the Divine can live. Jesus comes as a human being into the water of the River Jordan, and he is plunged under the surface (that is baptism) and rises. This baptism of plunging beneath the surface must now happen internally for us and no longer physically. The ability to rise up to a new consciousness, a new awareness, a renewal of mind and heart must live in me. That is the message: metanoia – change your entire soul disposition of knowing. We do not need to be plunged into water. We can experience this within ourselves. This is where the experience must be: in our renewed soul constitution.

The baptism of water, John tells us, will be followed by a baptism of fire, a baptism of the Holy Spirit – also an internal baptism. We will not have to walk through fire, literally. And he witnesses that the Spirit, the essential Spirit of God, the full, true Spirit of God descends and unites Itself/Himself with this human being and into this human being. This is the great witness of John.

Later we have in John’s Gospel (3: 27) his last witnessing: “No human being can grasp for himself anything which is not given to him from the higher worlds. You yourselves can testify (witness) that I have said: I am not the Christ, but I have been sent before him. He who has the bride is the bridegroom. But the friend of the bridegroom, who stands by and listens to him, is filled with great joy at the bridegroom’s voice. This joy of mine is now fulfilled. He must increase, but I must decrease. He who comes from above, towers above all. He who is of the earth, his being is earthly and his words are earthbound. The One who comes from the heavenly world exceeds all others. What he has seen and heard, to that he testifies; but no one accepts his testimony. But whoever receives his testimony (witnessing) sets his seal to this: that God is Truth. For he who has been sent by God speaks words which are spirit-filled. He does not bestow the spirit in sparing measure. The Father loves the Son and has given all existence into his hand. Whoever places his faith in the Son will have timeless existence.”

This is a very powerful recognition, realisation, experience, of sight and sound. This is powerful witnessing.

John the Baptist describing himself as the friend of the bridegroom, the one who stands by. John is the only prophet in all of our scripture that gets to see the message he is proclaiming. His joy is fulfilled. All the other prophets proclaim a message of what is to come; John proclaims a message of what arrives. He does not have to live in the hope of its fulfilment, he lives in the joy of its fulfilment. This is the reality of the extraordinary witness of the Incarnation.

What was the baptism of John? John’s baptism was a baptism in preparation for Christ. We may be familiar with Christian baptisms. In The Christian Community we only baptise children and it is not an emersion into water. Our baptism is an emersion into a community. There is the baptism that we read about in the Act of the Apostles of the Holy Spirit at Pentecost.

Was John’s baptism important and is it still important?

It is our task to make the baptism a reality every day of our lives. When we wake up each morning, we must turn our souls so that it is disposed to the working of the Spirit. It is within our human ability to wake up each morning and to choose the type of day we will have. It comes down to soul disposition. A good soul disposition will not improve the day, but it will make the day more manageable in the way that we engage with what comes towards us. This is the baptism of John: an awakening to a new reality, each morning.

“This is he of whom I said, after me comes he who was before me, for he is greater than I.” John 1: 30

We understand that the Father and the Son and the Spirit pre-exist the rest of Creation. Therefore, we understand that if John is human and a creation of the Divine, he comes after the Son. However, John is sent before the Christ is sent.

Rudolf Steiner gives an interesting indication of this. The ancients had a very clear understanding of the significance of the Zodiac. If one can accept that this was meaningful one can look for an ordering in events that relate to the ordering of the Zodiac. However, it is necessary to understand which sign begins the ordering and in which direction the ordering moves. The ordering can move in either direction because we follow the Zodiac in one direction in the course of a year as the sun moves through the signs, but the precession of the axis of the earth moves through the signs of the Zodiac in the opposite direction. Today we consider Aries as the first sign of the Zodiac, while the ancient Sumerians considered Cancer to be the gateway of birth and therefore the first sign. When Rudolf Steiner links the evolution of plants and animals to the twelve stages that unfold in the plan of the Divine he begins with the sign of Cancer. He links to the ancient picture of how things come into birth. He then follows the order of the precession of the earth. This precession takes the earth about 2 500 years to move from one sign of the Zodiac to its neighbour. The order from Cancer moves into Gemini.

What we see in the baptism of John is what the ancient world would have understood as an initiation in the sign of Aquarius. Aquarius was understood to be the sign that represented the aspect of divinity which is the bearer of the Water of Life. This is a mighty angelic being who is the bearer of the Water of Life. The great Lord (which is also a picture of the future human being in the likeness of the Divine) had the Water of Life flow through and in him. The Water of Life flows in through his left hand and out through his right hand. To be initiated into the Aquarian initiation meant that one then had an understanding of the Water of Life and about the importance of it.

The baptism of John is not just the emersion into water to the point of death and rising out of the water, gasping for air, with a new awareness of life, awakened to the reality of the present; John knew that this physical baptism is accompanied by an inner experience in which the person awakened to the realisation that the Water of Life is in us and has potential to bring us into a new consciousness of life. This has everything to do with the early formative forces in the human being. The formative forces in the human being are often aligned with the element of water; just as the soul forces are aligned with the element of air, and the spirit forces with the element of fire.

One can therefore say that John the Baptist represents an Aquarian initiation in preparation for a Piscean initiation, which is the Christ-initiation for us. We know from scripture the association of Christ and his disciples with fish and fishers of men.

What is important is for us to know something about the sign of Pisces. The sign is represented by two fish facing in opposite directions. A lot of the ancient ideas of the power of the Divine that this sign reveals are carried in two stories of ancient mythology that connect to the sign of Pisces. The signs of the Zodiac were a revelation of the powers of the Heavens; the powers of the Divine are revealed in the way that human beings understood their connection to these signs through which the sun travelled in the course of a year.

The first is a Zarathustran picture from that part of the world where the Ancient Sumerians first understood the heavens in the way in which we are still the inheritors. This is a picture of a Tree of Life that is rooted, not in earth, but in water – it is a Tree of Life that is constantly renewed in its baptism. This Tree of Life is susceptible to attack from dark, evil forces. To protect the Tree there are two Kar-fish that swim around the roots of the Tree in opposite directions. This is a heavenly picture, not a picture imagined as being an earthly manifestation. We have no idea what a Kar-fish is, but this is the writings of the Avestin Scriptures inherited from the Zarathustran religious traditions. These fish constantly circle the Tree of Life to protect it. This is the idea that comes with the sign of Pisces, the idea of protection. It is a gift of sacrifice to swim around the Tree in this way to protect it.

Secondly, there is an early Greek myth of the birth of the goddess Aphrodite. She is born out of the sea, out of the waters onto the land. She is borne out of the water by two ichthyocentaurs – mythical creatures that are part human, part horse and part fish – named Aphros (Sea-foam) and Bythos (Sea-depth), sons of Poseidon. This allows her to take her first steps on land as the goddess of love. Aphros and Bythos are the sign of Pisces for the Ancient Greeks – the bearers of love.

There is something about Pisces which has to do with magnanimity, openness, generosity and protection that transforms into love. There is something about Aquarius to do with the power of discernment and discretion that leads to the power of meditative reality where we can really grasp something with our thinking and feeling. These are the soul processes and virtues that Rudolf Steiner shared in these two signs of the Zodiac.

We have the Aquarian experience in the baptism of John to prepare for the Piscean love experience of the Christ initiation, the sending of the Holy Spirit, the descent of the Holy Spirit, the fire in us. Now that we have lived through the Age of Pisces, we have to take up the Aquarian mantle for ourselves and become the bearers of live. We have the switch of an Aquarian experience leading to the Piscean experience and now the Piscean Age leading into the Aquarian Age. He who comes after me actually comes before me, but I come to prepare something so that what He beings can be received. John is the witness of the incarnation, because he is the messenger of the soul change necessary in order to experience the spirit in us, which comes at Whitsun.

Hopefully this provides something to work with, and also explains why after Christmas, Easter, Ascension and Whitsun, we celebrate St John’s. Because it is the consciousness shift that we must take up and make our own: the consciousness shift that John introduced two thousand years ago and the one that is relevant for our times today.

We celebrate St John’s as the festival of the birth of John the Baptist which, according to the tradition in Luke’s Gospel, is six months before the birth of Jesus. Therefore, while the birth of Jesus is celebrated on 24 December (at midnight) the birth of John is celebrated on 24 June. The festival of the baptism on 6 January, Epiphany, is celebrated in some Christian traditions as a festival of St John.

It is usual in Christian tradition to celebrate the death of a saint, the day of their birth back into the heavenly worlds. In the case of the two individualities who were sent from the heavens to bring about great changes on the earth, John and Jesus, we celebrate the day of their birth onto the earth.