Christmas 1 – 2021
Marian Free
In the name of God who gave everything for us. Amen.
“Good King Wenceslas looked out
on the Feast of Stephen
when the snow lay round about,
deep and crips and even
brightly shone the moon that night
though the frost was cruel
when a poor man came in sight,
gathering winter fuuu-u-u-el.”
I wonder how many of us have sung this popular carol without giving much thought to King Wenceslas or to the feast of Stephen. Apart from the snow (which even in the southern hemisphere signifies Christmas) there is nothing remotely Christmasy about the words of the song. So why is it associated with Christmas and why does it reference the Feast of Stephen? The answer is simple – today (the day following Christmas Day) – is the Feast of Stephen. We often overlook this as we mark Boxing Day or, as is the case this year, we celebrate the first Sunday after Christmas.
Today’s preacher then has a wealth of themes on which to focus – the secular celebration of Boxing Day, the first Sunday of Christmas or the Feast of St Stephen. (One could even stretch to focusing on Wenceslas who was a Duke and not a King and who lived in Bohemia from 907-935. The Duke was known for his piety and his support of the poor and as a consequence was made a saint.)
Because the first Sunday of Christmas follows immediately after Christmas Day it seems too much of a jump to focus on the readings for that day which take us forward 12 years to the account of Jesus -on the verge of adulthood – frightening his parents by staying behind in Jerusalem. So let us instead consider Stephen, the first person to be martyred on account of the emerging faith in the crucified Jesus.
What we know about Stephen comes from the Book of Acts in which Luke provides us with a stylised view of the emerging church. From Acts 1:8 we can see that Luke structures his account in concentric circles. He imagines the gospel spreading from Jerusalem, to Judea, to Samaria to the ends of the earth. The movement is not only geographic, but ethnic – from the centre of Judaism, to the Jews, to the Samaritans (who have something in common with the Jews) and finally to the Gentiles. According to Luke’s telling of the story it is Stephen’s martyrdom that sets this movement in train and which presages the spread of the faith beyond Jerusalem to ‘the ends of the earth.’
Stephen’s story begins in Acts 6 and concludes at the end of Acts 7. According to Luke, the earliest community of believers was led by the Twelve. It becomes clear that they cannot do everything and that the widows of Hellenist (Greek or gentile) believers were being neglected in the daily distribution of food. The Twelve make the decision that they should not be distracted from preaching by waiting on tables and they direct the Hellenists to choose seven men of ‘good standing full of the Spirit and wisdom’ to fulfill this task. Seven were chosen and were formally ‘ordained’ by the laying on of hands and with prayer. Among the seven was Stephen.
As I said, Luke. Uses the appointment of another tier of leadership (the beginnings of the diaconate) to introduce a new period of growth in the church – many come to ‘the obedience of faith’, even priests. Unfortunately, as is often the case, with success came conflict. Members of the synagogue of Freedmen (who themselves appear to have been Hellenists) argued with Stephen and, being unable to compete with Stephen’s wisdom and spirituality, they stirred up others against him and brought false charges of blasphemy against him.
Stephen is brought before the high priest and in response to the accusations gives a long speech (a typical Lucan device) in which he recites the history of the Jews from Abraham to Jesus, recounting the ‘typical’ rejection of the prophets by the people of God. This, as you might imagine, only further enraged his opponents. When Stephen concluded his speech by saying that he saw the heavens opened and Jesus standing at the right hand of God Stephan’s opponents had had enough. They dragged him out of the city and stoned him. Hence Stephen became the first person to be martyred for his faith, to sacrifice his life for Jesus.
In a recent podcast Alexander John Shaia suggests that it is possible to link Boxing Day and the Feast of St Stephen to each other. I share it with you, not because I am convinced, but because it is a novel idea worth pondering. In the northern hemisphere Christmas falls near the winter solstice. It is the depths of winter a time when earth was often covered with snow. Snow or not, it is impossible to grow crops and for the poor there was nowhere to forage for food. On the day after the winter solstice, the Celts had a tradition of teaching boys on the verge of adulthood something about the value of sacrifice – giving of themselves that others might live.
The ritual (which seems barbaric to us) involved killing a wren and letting its blood run into the earth in order that the earth might regenerate after the long hard winter. Shaia argues that the early Celtic Christians saw in this tradition a resonance with their newfound faith. Stephen the first Christian martyr had given his life for the life of others. As was the case with many Celtic traditions, they kept the day but gave it a new meaning. They no longer sacrificed a wren, but adopted the spiritual practice for men and boys to gather and give food and money and clothing to poor and shut ins.
Here Shaia brings us back to the carol which ends:
“In his master’s step he trod,
where the snow lay dented.
heat was in the very sod
which the saint had printed.
therefore, Christian men, be sure,
wealth or rank possessing,
ye who now will bless the poor
shall yourselves find blessing”
Having asked his page who the poor man is and where he lives, the king and page set out in the bitter weather with food and wine and fuel to ease the suffering of the poor man. When the page’s strength fails, the king urges boldness to combat the cold and the carol ends – as we see with a blessing for those who are generous.
Whether we link gift giving and generosity to the wise ones or the tradition of Stephen, it is important that in the midst of our own celebrations, our self-indulgence and our (often) over eating, that we remember those for whom every day is a struggle – the refugee, the poor, the hungry, the lonely, those suffering from the effects of war, civil strife or natural disaster and that we give – not what we can spare – but generously and openly so that our small sacrifice might make the world a better place and ourselves better for the gift.
Swallowsrest 