In most families I would have been the miracle baby. But then he came along. It did not matter that for our families and friends my birth was celebrated more than his. That was not strange. The gift of a son to a tired couple who had given up hope made more people smile than of rumours of a different sort of conception and birth. Apparently when I heard my aunt’s voice when she greeted my mother, I leapt enthusiastically. Even then it is said that I knew I was in the presence of my Lord.

I suppose being special, different was something that united us. I was expected, destined to serve, like my father, in the Temple, as a priest. That was the way of things. That said, I should have been called Zechariah like him if we had followed the way of things. I wonder what he or my mother would have thought if they had been alive when I wandered off into the wilderness. I hope they would have had a wry smile for the knew the writings, the law, and the prophets; and the hopes and dreams contained within them that had sustained and shaped our peoples.

Of course, I remember him coming to be baptised. We had played together as children, and sometimes as teenagers wondered where we would go and what we would become. I knew of course that the reason for my birth was to prepare the way for him. I had quite a following. Disciples of my own. I was challenged too by the religious leaders who wanted to know who and what I was. I had my own vocation. My own voice. We heard together the voice as he came up out of the waters. I knew I would prepare the way for him.

In many ways that is what we all do, isn’t it? We are ones who prepare the way for him. It was a few months after his baptism that we heard that he was in the region, and his disciples were baptising on his behalf. My followers wanted to put a stop to it. That was not the way it was going to be. Apparently, I said something like. He must increase. I must decrease. That was not easy for my followers to hear, but it was also not easy for me to say. I was the older. I was the one whose lineage was without question, and yet I have never been more comfortable than when I fully embrace my own role as the voice, the one who calls, who yearns for people to see who he really is.

The thing is he exceeds our expectations and at the same time does not quite fit them. You must be in his presence for it to begin to make sense. My job was to invite people to follow him, and to those wondering, he asks them to come and see. I only ever invited people to prepare to follow him, even though I might have wanted people to take preparing seriously.

I am now in chains in Herod’s dungeon. Whatever else happens. The truth is simple. He must always increase, and I must learn to step aside to allow him the freedom to call people in his way. I still leap enthusiastically at some of the things he has done.