Sermon for 12/28/14 First Sunday after Christmas Day
Preached at St. Christopher’s
Isaiah 61:10-62:3
Galatians 3:23-25; 4:4-7
John 1:1-18
The Witness Days
“There was a man sent from God,
whose name was John. He came as a witness
to testify to the light,
so that all might believe through him.”
In our Gospel reading for this morning,
we are given
a very different version
of Jesus’ infancy narrative
then we have some to expect
at Christmas time.
We hear not about
Mary and Joseph,
or angels and wise men.
The shepherds never make an appearance,
And Jesus isn’t even presented
in the form
of a little baby
warped in bands of cloth and laid in a manger.
We are still very much
in the 12 days of Christmastide
which lasts until the fest of Epiphany—
so what gives with this?
Why are we reading
about the Word of God?
Well, to answer that question,
I am going to call on
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a couple of Saints
and some innocent by standards
who are very tide
to this time of year
because of their witness to the Word.
The days following Christmas are
filled with some of the most interesting
Feasts days
that our church calendar
has to offer in rapid succession.
There are some many important Feasts
in this period
that they have been coined
“Witness Days.”
According to my favorite hagiographer
(which is a fancy word for
“saint biographer—
and yes I realize that it is geeky to have a favorite
hagiographer),
according to my favorite hagiographer James Kiefer,
“On the six days between Christmas Day
and its Octave on 1 January,
we remember five persons who have in various ways,
by martyrdom or otherwise,
born witness to the truth of the Christian faith.
(Note that the word martyros
in pre-Christian Greek means simply "witness,"
and that it is not always clear whether
early Christian uses of it
(as in Revelation 2:13) ought to be translated broadly,
as "witness",
or in the narrow technical sense as "martyr",
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that is, someone who has
explicitly chosen to die
rather than to deny Christ as Lord.)
On December 26th, we remember St. Stephen,
first member of the early Christian church
to be put to death for his faith.
The early Christian congregations,
like the Jewish synagogues,
had a program of assistance for needy widows,
and some of the Greek-speaking Jews
in the Jerusalem congregation complained
that their widows were being neglected.
The apostles replied:
"We cannot both preach and administer financial matters. Choose seven men from among
yourselves,
respected, Spirit-filled, and of sound judgment,
and let them be in charge of the accounts,
and we will devote ourselves
to prayer and the ministry of the word."
The people accordingly chose seven men,
including Stephen,
and the apostles laid their hands on them.
They are traditionally considered to be the first deacons.
Stephen was an eloquent and fiery speaker,
and a provocative one.
(Some readers have speculated that
some of his fellow Christians wanted
to put him in charge of alms
in the hope that he would administer more
and talk less.)
His blunt declarations that the Temple service
was no longer the means
by which penitent sinners
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should seek reconciliation with God
enraged the Temple leaders,
who caused him to be stoned to death.
As he died, he said,
"Lord, do not hold this sin against them."
One of those who saw the stoning and approved
of it was Saul (or Paul) of Tarsus,
who took an active part in the general persecution
of Christians that followed the death
of Stephen,
but who was later led to become a Christian himself.
Stephen was "a martyr in will and deed."
On December 27th, we remember St. John the Evangelist,
one of the Twelve Apostles.
John, son of Zebedee,
together with his brother James
and with Simon Peter,
formed a kind of inner circle of Three
among the Twelve,
in that those three were privileged to behold
the miracle of the Great Catch of Fish,
the healing of Peter's mother-in-law,
the raising of the daughter of Jairus (P 5:37 = L 8:51),
the Transfiguration (M 17:1 = P 9:2 = L 9:28),
and the Agony in Gethsemane (M 26:37 = P 14:33).
He expressed a willingness to undergo
as did the other apostles -- and is accordingly called a martyr in intention.
However,
we have ancient testimony that,
although imprisoned and exiled
for his testimony to the Gospel,
he was eventually released and died
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a natural death in Ephesus:
"a martyr in will but not in deed."
John is credited with the authorship
of three epistles
and one Gospel,
although many scholars believe that
the final editing of the Gospel
was done by others
shortly after his death.
He is also supposed by many to be
the author of the book of Revelation,
also called the Apocalypse,
although this identification is less certain.
On December 28, we remember the Holy Innocents,
the children of Bethlehem who were slaughtered
by command of King Herod
lest one of them prove a danger to his throne.
[This is the part of the Christmas story
that we do not often think about—
but is yet a part of the story.
When the wise men cam to tell Harod
that they were looking for the king,
he found out the age of the child
and had all children in Bethlehem of that age killed.
Augustine called them
"buds, killed by the frost of persecution
the moment they showed themselves."
This terrible moment,
of course,
harkens back to the Moses story
when Pharos was trying to kill all the Israelite
little boys in his service
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in order to keep the Hebrew nation from getting
to strong.
It is a call to notice
that—like Moses—
Jesus is here to free his people.
But unlike Moses,
in Jesus we have a savior for all people.
They were "martyrs in deed, though not in will,"
and their deaths are a
disquieting reminder that suffering
on behalf of a good cause
is not always restricted to those
who have a choice in the matter.
The witnesses commemorated on these first three days are all from New Testament times.
On the two days following,
we commemorate witnesses from a later period
in Christian history. Taking them in reverse order of days -On December 31 we commemorate Sylvester,
bishop of Rome from 313 to 335 –
that is, roughly from
the Edict of Toleration
issued by the Emperor Constantine
to the death of the said Emperor,
and thus the first bishop of Rome
in the days after Christianity
ceased to be an illegal
and persecuted religion.
With his term of office,
we enter an era when to become
a Christian is no longer to place oneself
in automatic danger of being put
to death by the government.
However...
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On December 29,
we remember Thomas a Becket,
Archbishop of Canterbury,
slain in his own cathedral in 1170,
for his defiance of King Henry II.
The death of Thomas reminds us that a Christian,
even when safe from pagans,
can be in danger from his fellow-Christians.
Two recent additions to the Calendar are John Wylcif (31 Dec), a pioneer of Bible translation;
and Josephine Butler (30 Dec),
who came to the assistance and defense
of women whom society had,
in effect, declared outside its protection.
Neither was (in the technical sense) a martyr.
Both are witnesses.”
And of course,
with today’s Gospel,
we have the witness
of John the Baptiste to add into the mix—
not only was the prophet
who baptized Jesus,
but also called people
to see him as the messiah
and became a martyr in the process.
So what do all these stories
have to do with the Word of God
that our Gospel calls our attention to today?
In the prolog of John,
as this passage is always referred to,
we hear the true majesty
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of who Jesus is.
He is none other
then the Word of God.
He was there in the Begging of the world,
he was with God,
and the Word was God.
All things came into being through him
and without him,
not one thing came into being.
What has come into being in him was life,
and the life was the light of all people.”
Many people take that to mean
that when God spoke,
life came forth.
That it was his very word
that gave us life and light and love.
And that that very Word
to human form in Jesus.
It is indeed an infancy narrative—
the infancy narrative
of Jesus—God in human form—
Emmanuel—
and it is our infancy narrative—
the story of how we were formed as well.
It is the story not of a God
who is so remote
that we will never hear him speak.
In fact,
it is just the opposite,
God spoke,
so we would never be far from him.
Thus, the stories that we here
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in these Witness days
are not just stories of people
who are likewise remote
in their examples or love of God—
they are not somehow
holier then thou
in their witness.
They are people
who let their words,
and the actions and their lives
show the witness
of the Word
that they had heard and seen and experience.
That is the great gift and call
of this Christmastide for us.
We are called
to witness
the joy and love
of the Words dwelling with us.
We are called to see it,
to hear it,
to behold it,
to bask in the light of it all.
Indeed,
if the Word
was in the beginning
and all life and light
has come through him—
then there should be no shortage
of ways to see Christ.
Christmas give us the lenses
to witness all this again and again.
There are our
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witness days.
Our days to not only witness
the Glory of God
but to shine it,
speak it,
give it to the world
as well.
We are to be like
John The Baptists,
Stephen the Deacon and Protomartyr,
John the Apostle and Evangelist,
the Holy Innocents,
Thomas Becket,
Sylvester of Rome,
John Wycliffe
and all those great Witnesses to the glory of God
and make these days
filled with the light
that was from the Beginning of all time.
The light of the word of God,
the light of Jesus Christ.
The light of Christmas.
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