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| The 12th day of Christmas |
As I walk up Beverley Road, the wind is gusting so strong it almost takes my hat off. I stop at El Panaderia JPM so I can pick up a fresh rosca de reyes (Kings' bread) for after the service at Beverley.
They are stacked high filling the bakery in preparation for the celebration of Three Kings Day: El dia de los tres reyes magos. As I near the church, I'm happy to see Christmas decorations are still up. Inside, Preparations for worship are underway with Geraldine and Irina reviewing the service
and Evgeny as always doing any and everything needed. He feels a personal call to do what he can for this small faithful community.
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| Los roscas are ready |
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| Irina and Geraldine |
The table is all prepared for communion.
The service begins and I am ready to preach.
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| ready to preach |
This was my reflection:
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| The table is ready |
When I was growing up, Christmas was over on January 1st. We’d get up and watch the Mummers’ Parade from Philadelphia and later the the Tournament of Roses Parade from Pasadena. There were of course college football bowl games games, there were only 4 back in those days. We’d have dinner with my aunt…the last of the holiday cycle of meals fro my family. It was alway a pork roast and Latvian sauerkraut and applesauce. Then around halftime of the Rose Bowl, my dad would start taking down the tree and that would be it. Thats a wrap, as they say. A week or so later the local paper would share its annual brief op ed reminding us of “Russian Christmas.” (Irina and Evgeny seem to enjoy that reference.)But January 1st, that was it for us.
In my life, I’ve tried to encourage others to celebrate all 12 days of Christmas. The frantic build up of what goes on in the world around us, the secular Christmas season, we might call it, has finally passed and I like the idea that we can hold on to the church’s celebration even as the stores are already moving on to Valentine's Day hearts.
My world was pretty crazy the December. I usually have a tree trimming party the last week before Christmas. But not this year, I’d just about given up. But Christmas Eve I picked up a small tree and last night I had friends over for a “11th night of Christmas Party.”
So that makes today the 12th day of Christmas, as the song says the for true loves to be giving and receiving "12 drummers drumming" and you know the rest…winding up with a "Partridge in a Pear Tree". And of course there's the the famous Shakespeare play…12th night used to be a major event in England. It used to be a big night for parties…with servants honored and masters serving...So today, maybe there’s one gift left for us to open.
First…what’s going on? Well a President who’s just been impeached has decided to up the ante with Iran by taking out the second most important political figure, Sort of the Iranian VicePresident and military chief of staff all rolled into one. And we sit, holding our breath, not sure what is going to happen next and praying for peace. During the Hanukah season on three occasions there were deadly Anti-semitic incidents as people feel now freed to say and do the acts of open hatred they could not before. (Today at this very hour there’s a solidarity march across the Brooklyn Bridge…and Monday night there’s a rolling candlelight boil for peace beginning at 5 PM.) And of course we each have our own challenges in our own lives and families.
And so we have this opportunity to begin. Again. You know the whole idea of NewYears’ resolutions has come under criticism as raising false expectations, etc., but I kind of like it. It's not a bad thing to review your life and decide to change some things, it might actually work. We should write our list down and bring ft to church with us a year later and see how we did.
So I mentioned one more gift to unwrap. I’m talking about out gospel this morning,. The first chapter of John. And if you think about it, it’s John’s version of the Christmas story. John’s Jesus origin story as it were. And it starts not with a little baby, but with a Christ who is there and has been there since the beginning of time and will be there until the end of tine. The very source and content of the light that started shining at creation and continues to shine with, for and in us, even in the darkest times…for the darkness has not overcome it.
So Christ’s time on earth is an interlude, for us a critically important time, but for him, just part of his reality. But there is this….And the Word became flesh and lived among us,….and from him we receive grace upon grace and grace and truth. Grace, because as it says... who were born, not of blood or of the will of the flesh or of the will of man, but of God. Not our will, not our actions, not any decision, we are saved by God’s grace….
And he is truth. We live in a time when truth is an elusive quality that seems to change depending on who’s saying it and what they want. So if we want to know what is true, it has to come as seen through the lens of Christ. What would he see? What would he do?
That last is important. We don’t do what is right to try and save ourselves. We do what is right because it is right. Because it is true. And just, as John tells us, we know God by what we see in Jesus, others will know Jesus by what the see in us.
So let us make our resolutions. Let us continue to shine the Christmas light every day. Let us see the face of God in others and seek to show the face of Jesus to those who see us. Let us take this opportunity for a new beginning,
All the blessings of Christmas ..and a happy new year to you….
We share our communion together. There are announcements. the woman who we were going to visit with communion has died. We have two visitors from the nearby shelter. They'd like to have a Bible Study to come to.
The service concludes and its time to go downstairs for another breaking of bread. I will share the Rosca.
And it turns out it's me who gets the baby Jesus in my piece, which I am happy to give to Geraldine. Christmas continues. Soon I will be back in the cold blustery wind again heading back to Manhattan.
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| Cutting the rosca and looking for Baby Jesus |
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| Christmas continues |
Gospel John 1:(1-9) 10-18
1In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. 2He was in the beginning with God. 3All things came into being through him, and without him not one thing came into being. What has come into being 4in him was life, and the life was the light of all people. 5The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness did not overcome it.
6There was a man sent from God, whose name was John. 7He came as a witness to testify to the light, so that all might believe through him. 8He himself was not the light, but he came to testify to the light. 9The true light, which enlightens everyone, was coming into the world.
10He was in the world, and the world came into being through him; yet the world did not know him. 11He came to what was his own, and his own people did not accept him. 12But to all who received him, who believed in his name, he gave power to become children of God, 1314And the Word became flesh and lived among us, and we have seen his glory, the glory as of a father’s only son, full of grace and truth. 15(John testified to him and cried out, “This was he of whom I said, ‘He who comes after me ranks ahead of me because he was before me.’”) 16From his fullness we have all received, grace upon grace. 17The law indeed was given through Moses; grace and truth came through Jesus Christ. 18No one has ever seen God. It is God the only Son, who is close to the Father’s heart, who has made him known.
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