December 28, 2025
Christmas 1/Feast of St. John
The Rev. Dr. Elaine Ellis Thomas
St. John’s Episcopal Church, Essex, CT
Exodus 33:18-23; Psalm 92:1-4, 11-14; 1 John 1:1-9; John 21:19b-24
Today, there will be 9 hours, 13 minutes, and 12 seconds of daylight here in Essex. That’s 23 seconds more daylight than there was yesterday and 35 fewer seconds of daylight than we will have tomorrow.
When we read “The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness did not overcome it” (John 1:5) on Christmas Day, we may not have been talking about the movement of the earth during the seasons, but the connection is unavoidable. In the darkest nights of winter (at least here in the northern hemisphere), the Light of the World was born. And John the Evangelist spent his long life telling everyone who would listen that he was witness to the extraordinary ministry of this man who was God, that he was the beloved disciple.
Whoever it was who came up with the calendar of commemorations for the Church year certainly had a pointed message for those of us who would like to cuddle up with a cozy manger scene along with sheep and lowing cattle and a babe in swaddling cloths, singing carols and drinking hot chocolate in front of a roaring fire. The day after Christmas is the day dedicated to St. Stephen, the first martyr of the Church who died by stoning. That’s a cheery image. The next day, the 27th, is St. John’s day, and while he lived a long life and was the only apostle who was not martyred, tradition tells us that he was exiled on the island of Patmos and was supposedly tortured by being boiled in oil. So yeah, a long life, but not exactly a bed of roses. Today, the 28th, is Holy Innocents which remembers the baby boys under the age of two that Herod had slaughtered in a rage out of fear that what the magi had told him – that a newborn king was in Bethlehem – was actually true. Tomorrow is the commemoration of Thomas Becket, murdered in Canterbury Cathedral in 1170 allegedly on the instructions of Henry II, because Becket dared to say the king had no authority over the Church.
So, no, we can’t just rest in the comforts of the Christmas scenes we have conjured in our minds and memories, and that’s really a fiction anyway. I mean, the idea of riding on the back of a donkey for 90 miles while 9 months pregnant and then giving birth in a stable or a barn or a cave or just a room where the animals are milling about does not sound very warm and fuzzy to me. But beyond that, the martyrdom of Stephen, the killing of the Innocents, and the long, persecuted life of John let us in on what it will mean to follow this babe born in Bethlehem. Take up your cross, Jesus will tell his followers, and that cross may take you all the way to crucifixion.
And yet the coming of the Light into the world is Good News. It is good news for those for whom life has always been bad news, on the bottom of the heap at the mercy of those with more money and more power. This would have included Jesus as well as those he called to follow him, including our patron, John.
John and his brother James were fishermen, called from their nets to follow Jesus. Along with another fisherman, Peter, they were closest to Jesus, present for the great catch of fish (Luke 5:10), the raising of Jairus’s daughter (Mark 5:27/Luke 8:51), the healing of Peter’s mother-in-law (Mark 1:29), at the Transfiguration (Matthew 17:1/Mark 9:2/Luke 9:28), and in the Garden of Gethsemane (Matthew 26:37/Mark 14:33). In the gospel attributed to John, he and Peter race to the tomb when they learn that Jesus’s body is no longer there (John 20:3). And John is there on the beach when Jesus prepares some fish for them after a long night on the Sea of Galilee, the last recorded appearance in John’s gospel.
You may recall that, even though these three were closest to Jesus, that does not mean that they really understood what he was all about any better than anyone else did. But in the end, that did not matter so much. Peter took the Good News to Rome where he was martyred. James was the first to be martyred, in Jerusalem, about a decade after the resurrection. John took the gospel to what we now know as Turkey, settling in Ephesus both before and after his exile on Patmos. It was there, during his exile, that he supposedly wrote the Book of Revelation. The gospel in his name was written late enough in the 1st century for it to demonstrate the development of high Christological understanding of Jesus as the son of God. John’s Jesus has little of the earthiness of Mark, Matthew, and Luke. He is mystical, in control, and a far cry from the carpenter’s son from Nazareth.
Yet John is the only one who gives us Jesus as the Good Shepherd, as the wedding guest who turned water into wine, who spoke with the Samaritan woman at the well and raised Lazarus from the dead. His is the only gospel that had Jesus humble himself to wash the disciples’ feet and to serve them fish on the shore. He is the only one who has Mary Magdalene as the first to tell the Good News of the resurrection.
So, no, John may not be as easy to embrace as Luke, but he is the one who makes a compelling case that Jesus is the Light of the World, that he has the power to save us from ourselves. In his first letter, John wrote, “This is the message we have heard from him and proclaim to you, that God is light and in him there is no darkness at all” (1 John 1:5). It is from John that we hear that “the light shines in the darkness and the darkness has not overcome it” (John 1:5). John is all about pointing to the Light and telling us to pay attention to that.
I would love to know what the deliberations were in establishing this congregation as St. John’s. I imagine it has something to do with our location on the water with boating and fishing as such a natural part of our environment. Whatever the reasons, what this place has become is one that points to the Light, a place that, even in the darkest moments of the past 235 years, has shone our light into the world through feeding and visiting and caring and serving our neighbors here and even across the globe.
If there is anything that we might learn from the martyrs and saints who came before us is that shining that light can be risky, but for the sake of Christ and the reign of God that he proclaimed, it is worth dedicating our lives to it, just has we have done in this place for so many generations past.
Yes, the light continues to shine into the darkest corners of the world, inviting others to step into its path, joining with Christians of every time and every place in leaving our nets and following the way of love that Jesus walked.
Merry Christmas, and happy St. John’s day to all of you.