Time out of Time

“For me, Christmas starts in earnest on Boxing Day,” Jessica Furseth wrote for The Guardian newspaper in a 2023 article headlined, “Boxing week, that blissful period when nothing happens, is the real gift of Christmas.” For those who aren’t aware, in Britian, Canada, and others in the British Commonwealth, Boxing Day is on December 26th, and is traditionally for gift-giving beyond one’s family, for instance your local proprieter or employees. Boxing Day itself is a holiday in those countries, but Furseth expands it to a week, “the only time of year when we can legitimately forget what day it is…The real joy of Boxing week is a feeling that no one is doing anything ‘important’, creating a break from a relentless push for productivity that dominates pretty much every other time of year.”

In Norway, Furseth writes, it’s called romjul, “space Christmas.” But secular in her outlook, Furseth only mentions in passing that romjul ends on January 6th. For the Church, the twelve days from Christmas to Epiphany, from Jesus’s birth to the Wise Men’s gift giving, is a time of timelessness. We have nowhere else to go but the manger, where eternity has entered into time and become incarnate. We don’t need to know what day it is. We can rest where there is no past, present or future, in the timelessness of God.

  “The still point of the turning world” is how T.S. Eliot put it, that place, for lack of a better word, where like a whirlpool, the world has turned and turned and turned to the point of no turning: “The point of intersection of the timeless / With time is an occupation for the saint— / No occupation either, but something given / And taken, in a lifetime's death in love, / Ardour and selflessness and self-surrender.”

And so here we are, in the same place and same time as Christians centuries before us, having celebrated with Joseph and Mary for twelve days starting on December 25th. And here we are tonight, on the eve of January 6th, in the same place and time as Christians centuries before us, celebrating as Jesus becomes a part of our time as his birth becomes a public event with the arrival of those Wise Men who represent the whole human race that Jesus came to reconcile to God and each other.

Hopefully, your Christmas celebration was a time where you found what T.S. Eliot called the still point of the turning world. Hopefully in that 12-day time out of time, you found a still point — a revived memory somehow made more meaningful in the present, a new beginning of some kind, a new hope, some moment in which you were re-convinced that there is more to your life than time. Perhaps, with Christians centuries before us, you might yet find that still point.

We the Church, the Body of Christ, hold within ourselves time and timelessness, just as Jesus the incarnate Son of God grew in time, yet always timeless. This feast, this celebration of Epiphany is the last “fixed” major celebration of the Church year, or at least until All Saints Day on November 1st. Since the Council of Nicaea in 325, the Church has set the date of Easter in relation to the Jewish Passover, which has been set to the times of the full moon. That makes Easter a moveable feast, and also those great feasts of the Church that are tied to the date of Easter.

It was once the practice of the ancient Church to announce the dates of Easter, as well as the other moveable feasts and fasts, on the last fixed feast of Epiphany. It’s a tradition that has become retro. But this Epiphany Proclamation of 2025 is also a still point, a time out of time to proclaim the reality that our time is to be lived mindful of the timelessness in which we also live.

People of God, Christ’s splendor has shone upon us, and shall ever be manifest among us, until the final day of his triumphant glory. Through the rhythms of times and seasons let us celebrate the mysteries of salvation. Let us recall the year’s culmination, the Easter Triduum of the Lord: his last supper, his crucifixion and burial, and his rising, celebrated between the evening of the seventeenth day of April and the evening of the nineteenth day of April, Easter Day being on the twentieth day of April.

Each Easter — as on each Sunday — the Holy Church makes present the great and saving deed by which Christ has for ever conquered sin and death. From Easter are reckoned all the days we keep holy. Ash Wednesday, the beginning of Lent, will occur on the fifth day of March. The Ascension of the Lord will be commemorated on the twenty-ninth day of May. Pentecost, joyful conclusion of the season of Easter, will be celebrated on the eighth day of June. And this year the First Sunday of Advent will be on the thirtieth day of November.

Likewise, the pilgrim Church proclaims the Passover of Christ in the feasts of the holy Mother of God, in the feasts of the Apostles and Saints, and in the commemoration of the faithful departed. To Jesus Christ, who was, who is, and who is to come, Lord of time and history, be endless praise, for ever and ever. Amen.

The Rev. David Kendrick

Twelfth Night

The Epiphany of our Lord Jesus Christ

January 5th, 2025