The Next Three Days
Merry Christmas! Many of us travel during the holidays, so I do not always get the chance to wish you a merry Christmas in person. Whether you are in northwest Arkansas or somewhere else, I hope and pray that you experience the love, joy, peace, and warmth of this season.
As you know, Christmas lasts twelve days. For the sake of turtledoves and French hens, I hope you find a better way to mark all twelve of them than by giving your true love those gifts enumerated in the Christmas carol. One way you can celebrate the season of Christmas is by going to church on Sunday.
Although our focus naturally centers on Christmas Eve and Christmas Day, this year there are two Sundays that fall during the twelve days. Whether you come to St. Paul’s or go to another liturgical church, you will hear lessons, prayers, and hymns that are full of the Christmas spirit. In our church, the nativity crèche, greenery, and poinsettias will still be on display. This Sunday, our 8:45 and 11:00 services are festivals of lessons and carols, giving us the chance to sing those beloved Christmas hymns we otherwise might not hear.
Another way to mark the twelve days of Christmas is to pay attention to the three major feasts that begin today and that often get overlooked. December 26, 27, and 28 are the feasts of St. Stephen, St. John, and the Holy Innocents, respectively. According to the rules of our liturgical calendar, none of those celebrations is deemed important enough to take the place of a Sunday, so, in those years in which one of those dates falls on a Sunday, that feast and any that come after it get bumped forward by a day. In other words, you might go your whole life without realizing that, when “good King Wenceslas went out on the feast of [Saint] Stephen,” he was busy doing good on December 26.
Stepehen is celebrated by Christians as the first martyr. His story is told in the Acts of the Apostles. Chosen as one of the first seven deacons, who were appointed to make sure that the Greek-speaking widows in the Christian community were able to receive their allotment of daily bread, Stephen did much more than serving tables. Full of the Holy Spirit, he performed several miracles and spoke boldly about Jesus, even confronting the authorities without fear.
Eventually, Stephen was arrested and put on trial. During that trial, he continued to share the good news of Jesus, and, as he looked up into heaven, he told his accusers that he saw the Son of Man sitting at the right hand of God. With that, the opponents stopped their ears and rushed upon him, hurling stones until he was dead. We are told in the Book of Acts that a young zealot named Saul looked on with approval, unaware that, before long, he would encounter the risen Christ and become the apostle for whom our church is named.
On December 27, we remember Saint John, the apostle. Along with his brother James, John is reckoned as one of the first disciples who followed Jesus. Whenever Jesus stepped aside with a small group of his closest followers, John is usually named among them, along with Peter and James. Traditionally, the Gospel according to John is credited to this disciple, and we will hear its majestic prologue in church on Sunday.
Although we cannot be sure that “the disciple whom Jesus loved” is the same John of Zebedee, we do know that John was beloved by Jesus and one of his closest friends. There are three letters in the New Testament that are attributed to John, but in none of them is the author actually identified. Still, the images used in all three letters are similar to those in the gospel account that bears John’s name, so, whether written by the same man or penned by someone else, we know that the author of the letters was formed by the same school that took its name from the beloved disciple. We also are not sure how John died—whether he was, as tradition holds, exiled to Patmos, where the Book of Revelation is said to have been written—but John is the only disciple who is thought to have lived to old age.
The Holy Innocents are those nameless boys who were slaughtered in and around Bethlehem upon the orders of Herod the Great. As Matthew recalls in his gospel account, after the magi came to Herod to ask where the king of the Jews was supposed to be born, he sent them to Bethlehem to find the child. Before they left, Herod asked them to return to let him know where he, too, could find the newborn kind, but, as the story continues, we see that Herod had no intention of worshipping the savior.
Determined to maintain his grip on power, Herod intended to have the child killed. The magi were warned in a dream to return home by another road, and, when Herod realized that he had been tricked by them, he ordered that all male children in the region of Bethlehem who were under two years old be massacred. Before the slaughter of the innocents took place, Joseph and Mary fled to Egypt, having been told in a dream about Herod’s plan, but the boys back in Judea were not spared. We do not know how many children were killed by the wicked tyrant, but we remember their sacrifice as those whose lives were taken by evil forces opposed to God.
The twelve days of Christmas are a prolonged opportunity to celebrate the birth of our savior. Some good things require more than a day’s rejoicing. Jesus’ coming into the world is more than a nativity story. In fact, Luke and Matthew are the only gospel writers who pay any attention to the birth or childhood of Jesus. It is appropriate, therefore, that we find ways to celebrate beyond remembering the story of the shepherds and the manger.
At Christmas, we celebrate those who, like Stephen, were so filled with the Holy Spirit that they would be united with Christ in both his death and resurrection. We remember John, whose words about the Word becoming flesh and dwelling among us, inspire us to pursue the incarnation with our whole hearts, minds, and souls. We mourn the deaths of those innocents whose lives have been taken by those who stand opposed to God’s way of unconditional love, and we recommit ourselves to standing up for justice and truth.
I can think of nothing better this Christmas season than to celebrate the birth of Jesus in ways that shape our lives beyond these twelve wonderful days. We should pack every bit of Christmas spirit we can muster into this short season, but we should not be afraid to let the power of the incarnation spill over into the rest of the year. Some things are too good to put back into storage.
Yours faithfully,
Evan D. Garner
