Audio file of 8:00am Holy Communion service
Click here to listen to an audio recording of the 8:00am service of Holy Communion at Christ Church on the Feast of St. John the Evangelist on the Sunday after Christmas.
Day: December 27, 2020
Sermon for the Feast of St. John the Evangelist
“The world itself could not contain the books that should be written”
The three holy days of Christmas illuminate our understanding of the Christmas mystery in wonderful ways. The Feast of St. Stephen on the day after Christmas reminds us that love is sacrificial and nothing less than the love which is God moves in us even in and through the sad realities of human suffering and evil. The Feast of the Holy Innocents tomorrow teaches us about innocence and purity as properties which ultimately belong to the Incarnate Christ and to the forms of our participation in his holy life, even by way of anticipation such as in the disturbing yet profound story of the slaughter of the little ones of Bethlehem. It is a hard but deep and radical saying that “thou madest infants to glory thee by their deaths” – yet how else to think about human life without its ground in God? How else to conceive the radical nature of the goodness of God who alone can make something good out of our evil?
But in between the martyrdom of Stephen and the slaughter of the Holy Innocents there is the Feast of St. John the Evangelist. With it we have the divine ground of human lives in all of their complexity. With it we are returned to the wonder of Christmas Eve in the pageant of God’s Word and Son in the Letter to the Hebrews and in John’s Prologue. With it we contemplate the radical mystery of the Incarnation by way of John’s first letter and the ending of the very last chapter of his Gospel. These endings and beginnings are nothing more than the ways in which we are enfolded in eternity, enfolded and embraced in the love of God toward us.
Our Parish tradition on the Sunday after Christmas at the 10:30am service is to have the Christmas Service of Nine Lessons. It is a glorious parade of words, of words written and proclaimed. It complements the Feast of St. John the Evangelist with its emphasis on the witness of John by way of his Gospel and letters, and perhaps his Revelation. Certainly the life of the Church and the doctrine of the Christian Faith is greatly influenced and shaped by “the doctrine of thy blessed Apostle and Evangelist Saint John”. Once again, the Divine Word signals life and light communicated to us through what has been seen, looked upon, touched and handled concerning the Word of life, and heard and declared, but importantly, “these things write we unto you, that your joy may be full.”
The Sunday After Christmas Day
The collect for today, the Sunday after Christmas Day, from The Book of Common Prayer (Canadian, 1962):
ALMIGHTY God, who hast given us thy only begotten Son to take our nature upon him, and as at this time to be born of a pure Virgin: Grant that we being regenerate, and made thy children by adoption and grace, may daily be renewed by thy Holy Spirit; through the same our Lord Jesus Christ, who liveth and reigneth with thee and the same Spirit, ever one God, world without end. Amen.
The Epistle: Galatians 4:1-7
The Gospel: St Matthew 1:18-25
Artwork: Vicente López Portaña, Saint Joseph’s Dream, 1791-92. Oil on paper attached to cardboard, Prado, Madrid.
Saint John the Evangelist
The collect for today, the Feast of St. John the Evangelist, from The Book of Common Prayer (Canadian, 1962):
MERCIFUL Lord, we beseech thee to cast thy bright beams of light upon thy Church, that it being enlightened by the doctrine of thy blessed Apostle and Evangelist Saint John may so walk in the light of thy truth, that it may at length attain to the light of everlasting life; through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.
The Epistle: 1 St. John 1:1-5
The Gospel: St. John 21:19-25
John and his brother James (St. James the Greater) were Galilean fishermen and sons of Zebedee. Jesus called the two brothers Boanerges (“sons of thunder”), apparently because of their zealous character; for example, they wanted to call down fire from heaven on the inhospitable Samaritans. John and James, together with Peter, belonged to the inner group of the apostles who witnessed the Transfiguration and the agony in Gethsemane. It was John and Peter whom Jesus sent to prepare the final Passover meal.
In the lists of disciples, John always appears among the first four, but usually after his brother, which may indicate that John was the younger of the two.
According to ancient church tradition, St. John the Evangelist was the author of the New Testament documents that bear his name: the fourth gospel, the three epistles of John, and Revelation. John’s name is not mentioned in the fourth gospel (but 21:2 refers to “the sons of Zebedee”), but he is usually if not always identified as the beloved disciple. It is also generally believed that John was the “other disciple” who, with Peter, followed Jesus after his arrest. John was the only disciple at the foot of the cross and was entrusted by Christ with the care of his mother Mary.
After Christ’s resurrection and ascension, John, together with Peter, took a leading role in the formation and guidance of the early church. John was present when Peter healed the lame beggar, following which both apostles were arrested. After reports reached Jerusalem that Samaria was receiving the word of God, the apostles sent Peter and John to visit the new Samaritan converts. Presumably, John was at the Jerusalem Council (Acts 15). He is not mentioned later in the Acts of the Apostles, so he appears to have left Palestine.