Sermon on December 27, 2020: Christmas 1
Christmastide martyrs, from My Book of the Church’s Year, by Enid Chadwick (1948)
St. Stephen, St. John, & The Holy Innocents
A sermon for the first Sunday after Christmas Day, by the Rev. Dcn. Matthew Simpson
We now find ourselves in the midst of Christmastide: the 12 days between The Feast of the Nativity and The Epiphany. In both our culture and in The Church this is usually a time of collapse and rest from our post-Christmas exhaustion from attempting to make yet another Christmas perfect and happy. So easily, we can fall into the deception that if we can make Christmas perfect, then we are okay. The gifts have been given, the pounds are accumulating around some waistlines; To the church and world the party is over; we have done our best to be joyous and cheery, which to be honest can feel more like an emotional vice, then an authentic ecstatic joy. My observation too is that most of the joy from this holiday comes from the squeals of joy from children opening presents rather than from The Gospel itself. And while I don’t want to knock that joy from children, indeed it is fun to watch, Christ did not come into the world so children could open gifts under a Christmas tree. As a Deacon in Christ’s Church, I reject emphatically the forced cheeriness and glibness associated with Christmas, I protest the consumerism of this holiday in the name of Christ, and I affirm and give space to the brokenness and broken of the world; the despairing the victims of violence and exploitation that made so much of our consumer goods this holiday season possible; and I lift up the abandoned and lonely in this world during this Christmastide.
I am not convinced the Church today knows what to do with Christmas: on the one hand we want to make it meaningful and beautiful…we want to feel it is still important. And we often do so while buying into the deceits of the world, that if we buy the right gift, prepare the right meal, have the right Christmas card, do the right liturgy, impress the right people…that the true meaning of Christmas will somehow come through; and it usually fails. Or at least witnessing the rise in mental health hospitalizations and suicide attempts after Christmas lead me to believe we fail.
So what do we do with Christmas? How can we embrace a true and transformative meaning to Christmas? Actually, we The Church, have three feast days that occur right after The Nativity, that bring meaning and depth to Christmastide, and remind us what it is we are actually celebrating. We have St. Stephen’s Day on December 26th, St. John the Evangelist on December 27th, and The Holy Innocents on the 28th.
Yesterday was the Feast of St. Stephen, Deacon and Martyr. It is odd, that the Church should have a martyr day right after The Nativity, but it is for a good Gospel reason. St. Stephen, was one of the original deacons ordained by the Apostles in Jerusalem. The Deacons were assigned the task of serving at the tables and ensuring the widows and the outcast were fed and cared for…but it was not for this that Deacon Stephen was martyred. Deacon Stephen declared boldly the Gospel of Jesus Christ with great wisdom and power. For this he was accused of blasphemy and brought before the Sanhedrin, the political and religious authority. Before them he would not back down and he continued to proclaim the truth to power. This went over then like it usually goes over now and so as a result of his witness he was dragged out of Jerusalem and stoned to death becoming the first Christian martyr. As he was murdered with stones, his last prayer was that his murderers be forgiven by God. On this feast day, as we celebrate God being born into the world, we celebrate the first Christian being born into heaven. We are reminded what this birth of Christ will bring to us, and also what it will ask of us…it will ask us to give our very lives over, and in return we will receive a life that is full and eternal. We learn that in this Kingdom that this Christmas baby will establish the cloak of servanthood brings with it a crown of authority and glory. The one ordained to be the servant of all, received the highest honor in becoming the first to give his life for the Gospel. And not only give his life, but also to declare mercy to his killers. This Christmas Child we celebrate will bring an entirely new way of being…a life of truth, of service, of forgiveness.
On December 27th we remember St. John, the author of the 4th Gospel, the Letters of John and the Revelation. St. John was the youngest of the disciples, the only apostle not martyred though he did die in exile on Patmos, and he is the disciple whom Jesus loved, and the one who rested on Jesus’s chest after meals in the Gospel of John. Actually, this was not an unfamiliar practice at the time. If you are sitting on the floor eating a big meal, after the meal, a good slump over is an expected outcome. But John was the young one, and precious in Jesus’ sight. He is the only man to follow Jesus all the way to the cross, the rest of the men, as we know abandoned Jesus. At the Crucifixion, only the women and John remained. And as remember, as Jesus is dying on the cross he binds St. John and Mother Mary together to ensure they are cared for: Mary will now have a man to anchor her in a patriarchal society, and John will be cared for too. Mother Mary is no pushover, and any man with a mother will quickly understand who will really be taking care of who in this relationship: Jesus wants John cared for, and he knows is his mother is up for the task.
In this Christmas season, what does St. John have to say to us? In John’s recollection of Jesus the Christmas story is not even mentioned; John instead tells what is really happening at the Nativity, “The Word became Flesh and dwelt among us.” In his Gospel, John also recalls the awkward encounter of Jesus washing his disciples’ feet, and unique to his Gospel is the transcription of the Great Commandment Jesus gives to us, the Mandatum: “A new commandment I give to you, that you love one another; just as I have loved you, you shall love one another. By this all will know that you are my disciples, if you have love for one another.” In his letters St. John gives us the treasured lines: “God is love, and they who abide in love abide in God, and God abides in them.” Christmas begins to make more sense with St. John’s words: “We love, because he first loved us. If anyone says, ‘I love God,’ and hates his brother, he is a liar; for he who does not love his brother whom he has seen, cannot love God whom he has not seen. And this commandment we have from Jesus, that he who loves God should love his brother also.”
While not directly mentioning the Nativity, St. John reminds us of what Christmas, God and this Savior are all about: Love. Even from exile, St. John brings us in Christmas both joy and depth in revealing who Christ is, and what he commands us to be.
Lastly, we have The Holy Innocents, commemorating those babies who died during King Herod’s slaughter of the innocents. King Herod, who hears that the Messiah is born in Bethlehem, and fear for losing his crown, orders the execution of all male babies under two. The Holy Family escapes and become refugees and flee to Egypt; but the babies in Bethlehem are slaughtered by the sword from the madness of a corrupt and cruel King who wants to hold to power. The Holy Innocents is by far the most distressing feast day of Christmas. It is brutal reminder that God is born into a world of violence and corruption…it is a reminder of the absolute depravity of humanity. And even today we know we still have our corrupt kings: whether it be world leaders in China, Russia, Iran, Belarus, North Korea or the United States who give themselves over to the demons of corruption and madness so that they might maintain power. Or whether it be the slaughter of innocents in our own country from the death of children to gun violence, innocent lives which we willingly sacrifice on the altar of our gun rights; or the caging of children at our border in the name of national security; or the slaughter of innocents around the world from humanity’s wars. In our power grabbing and state-sanctioned murder we see we are no more deserving of redemption than King Herod or the Roman Empire. In this story, we see that we don’t deserve redemption at all…and yet God comes to us still to save us. From the Holy Innocents, we have a sacred space to grieve for our sins against God and the innocent, and we see the absolute shocking grace of God: You see who we are…and yet you still came to us in vulnerability to save us. We don’t deserve you, and yet you still came to us as a helpless babe to love us and redeem us.
In the light of the Gospel and the feasts of the Church, during this season, as your Deacon, I do not wish you a Merry Christmas at all; but in the name of Jesus Christ, I wish you a troubling and transformative Christmas.Through the contemplation of The Nativity and the Feasts of St. Stephen, St. John, and The Holy Innocents; through an honest and reflective view of the world around us, and by the grace of God, may we experience the Incarnation of our Lord in such a way we will never be the same. Advent and the time of waiting is over; Christmas has come, the shock of grace is upon us; the mission and call of discipleship has begun anew. By the power of the Holy Spirit and in the spirit of Christmas may we go into this world to seek Christ out, and to be Christ to the broken and outcast. Joy to the world, Christ has come, God’s mission to save the world begins anew.
Amen.