Still Christmas - Rector's Rambling for December 30, 2018

I hope that as you read this you are not all Christmassed out.  Today is the 6th day of the 12 days of Christmas, and we continue to celebrate with joy the birth of the Son of God.

Today’s readings reinforce our understanding of this marvelous act of God.  The accounts of the birth in St. Luke’s Gospel records for us that familiar story read on Christmas Eve of angels, shepherds, and the manger.  St. John’s Gospel is a theological explanation of WHY the Word of God became Flesh.  Today we hear St. Matthew’s account through the story of her betrothed, St. Joseph.  And of course St. Mark has no birth narrative – he starts with the public ministry of Jesus at age 30.

This past week several important feast days were also celebrated by the Church.  The day after Christmas we remembered St. Stephen, the first deacon and first martyr to be put to death for his faith in Jesus Christ.  On December 27, we commemorated the Feast of St. John the Evangelist, the beloved disciple of Jesus, and namesake of our parish church.  In fact, that day was also the 160th anniversary of the incorporation of the parish in the home of our founder, Henry Porter Baldwin.  Then the next day the Church commemorated the Holy Innocents, those young children who were slaughtered by King Herod in his zeal to keep the throne from any usurping “King” as the wise men foretold in the appearing of the star.  Yesterday the church remembered St. Thomas Becket, an Archbishop of Canterbury, who was murdered at the command of the King of England for objecting to his unrighteousness.  That is a lot of celebration during the first five days of Christmas!

The celebration continues this week on January 1, being the Feast of the Holy Name, also known as the Feast of the Circumcision.  On the eight day of a Jewish male’s life, he becomes a member of the original Covenant between God and descendants of Abraham, the Hebrew people.  This covenant is sealed in the blood of circumcision, at which time the boy also officially receives his name.  Jesus is a Jew, and in order to fulfill the promise to the Jews to send a messiah, he is a member of that first Covenant.  And that day he also receives his name, the only one by which we are saved!