John the Baptist – a Listening Approach

The first session in the Media and Communications course this last week was an exploration of the story of John the Baptist’s death, using only our bodies. The course had 15 participants, most of whom were training for some kind of ministry in the Uniting Church in Australia. My challenge, in this session, was to form a new community for the week, building an expectation of participation and vulnerability, while modelling a base approach to worship and life which could be enhanced by the use of media. I had chosen a different reading for each of the four days, each from the lectionary readings for Sunday July 12. The first, from Mark 6:14-29, I had chosen because of its narrative style.

The Beheading of John the Baptist, by Caravaggio

We moved the desks away and sat in a circle, face to face, changing from a classroom mode into an encounter group mode.

I invited participants to share what we knew of John the Baptist before reflecting on the significance John’s community had for the followers of Jesus. John would have been seen as a mentor, the leader of a formational community. We then gave thanks in prayer for people and communities that had mentored and formed us. A responsive prayer was used, “We give you thanks, in life and in death”.

We then shared in the narration of the story of John’s death, from memory, without the support of written text. Questions and answers helped us explore the perspectives of characters in the story, from Herod and Salome through to John. We moved on to wonder about the people who take the role of prophet today, and the cost of integrity. We finished with open prayer.

We didn’t sing. There are not a lot of songs that can be sung from memory, that relate well to the gravity of this reading. Maybe Kumbaya, the Creole spiritual. If we’d had access to words on screen or paper (which we deliberately did not) we could have sung “God of Freedom” by Shirley Murray, a hymn written for Amnesty International, or “Jesus Christ is waiting”, by John Bell of Iona Community. Or “Freedom is Coming”, or other tracks from the Wild Goose collection, “Songs of protest and praise from South Africa : performed by Fjedur”. Maybe we could have put together our own song, tying together the themes of gratitude for mentors and prophets and the search for integrity.