My scrapbook from Christmas Eve at St. John’s Cathedral, where the interim dean and priest in charge, the Very Rev. Anne Sawyer, unveiled magnificent vestments chosen by her, the Rev. Margaret Hudley McCauley, and the senior warden, Canon Lurelean Gaines (working with the good folks at Chagall, if you’re into vestments).
For the 7 p.m. service, Margaret was deacon of the mass. The St. John’s Choir was magnificent, as always, under the directorship of Dr. Christopher Gravis, canon for music and cathedral arts. Canons Bob Williams and Andy Tomat were aboard and sat with Kathy and daughter Lindsay.
I was along to preside and preach, speculating that Mary’s testimony was the source of some details about Christ’s birth. The Nativity is absent from Mark and John, and some details are in conflict in Matthew and Luke. But the modern scholarly assumption that gospel compilers made up the Christmas story requires us to believe that Christ’s mother never discussed it with others in the movement or that no one remembered or cared what she said.
“There is so much energy still being spent in the global church marginalizing women, keeping them out of the pulpit and the priesthood,” I said. “Now we have this fashionable skepticism about the first Christmas muffling the words that Luke says Mary remembered and pondered in her heart. The very first Christmas present may well have been Mary’s gift of the Christmas story to us. We’re still close enough to Bethlehem, still grasping for the peace and justice of Christ. I’m glad we can still hear her voice in the night, encouraging and comforting us just as she did her beloved and most tender and holy child.”
