Feast Day: December 27

The Anglican calendar is ordered by a hierarchy of holy days, each carrying a different weight of observance. At the top sit the seven Principal Feasts — the highest days of the liturgical year. Below them are the Red-Letter Holy Days, appointed in the BCP 2019 with their own collects, propers, and lectionary readings, listed on page 688. They are called Red-Letter Days because, in the tradition of printing church calendars, these days appear in red ink, distinguished from the Optional Commemorations which appear in ordinary type. The Feast of John, Apostle and Evangelist, observed on December 27, is one of these Red-Letter Holy Days.

December 27 is the third day of Christmas. Stephen was honored on the 26th as the first martyr — the one who chose death for the faith. John is honored on the 27th as the one who suffered for the faith and was not killed, who outlived every other apostle and died in old age at Ephesus, still bearing witness to what he had seen and heard and touched. The Holy Innocents will be remembered on the 28th as those who died without any choice at all. These three days present the Church with three types of witness to the child born on December 25: the willing martyr, the suffering confessor, and the innocent victim. John’s place in the middle of this triad is fitting: he is the apostle of witness sustained over the longest arc, the one who saw the beginning and the end, the one to whom the risen Christ appeared and through whose pen the Word made flesh was given the Church’s most theologically profound account of itself.

The Biblical Portrait

John son of Zebedee is called alongside his brother James from the fishing boats on the Sea of Galilee in the same passage that calls Peter and Andrew. With Peter and James he forms the inner circle of the disciples — present at the Transfiguration, present at Gethsemane, present when Jairus’s daughter is raised. He and James are given the name Boanerges by Jesus in Mark 3:17: “Sons of Thunder.” The name suggests a temperament that will be gradually shaped by the years of discipleship — the same man who asks Jesus to call down fire on the Samaritan village will write “God is love,” and mean it with the full weight of a life lived in that knowledge.

In the Fourth Gospel, John is never named directly. He appears as the Beloved Disciple — the one who reclines next to Jesus at the Last Supper and to whom Peter signals when he wants to ask Jesus a question, the one who stands at the foot of the cross with the women while the other disciples have fled, the one to whom Jesus entrusts his mother with the words “Behold, your mother” (John 19:27, ESV), the one who runs to the tomb with Peter and sees the burial cloths lying there and believes before any appearance of the risen Lord, and the one who recognizes Jesus on the shore of the Sea of Galilee from a boat and says to Peter: “It is the Lord!” (John 21:7, ESV) The Beloved Disciple’s Gospel is not a detached theological treatise. It is the testimony of one who was there — at the table, at the cross, at the tomb, at the breakfast fire on the shore — and who has spent a long life pondering what he saw.

The appointed Gospel for this feast is John 21:9–25 or John 1:1–18. John 21 is the post-resurrection breakfast scene: Jesus has made a fire on the beach, there are fish and bread, and the disciples come ashore to eat with him. It is the most domestic and intimate resurrection appearance in any Gospel. And it is in this setting that Jesus restores Peter three times — do you love me? — reversing the three denials by the charcoal fire. The Beloved Disciple is present throughout. The Gospel ends with the question about his fate and the evangelist’s quiet clarification: “It is this disciple who is bearing witness about these things, and who has written these things, and we know that his testimony is true.” (John 21:24, ESV) The feast of John is the feast of this witness — sustained, personal, and still bearing fruit in the Church that reads his Gospel.

The Theological Significance

Exodus 33:18–23, the appointed Old Testament reading from the propers on page 730 of the BCP 2019, is Moses’ request to see the glory of God. God’s answer is that no one can see his face and live; he will hide Moses in the cleft of the rock and cover him with his hand as his glory passes by. Moses will see God’s back, not his face. John 1:14, the opening of the alternate Gospel reading, is the New Testament answer to Moses’ request: “And the Word became flesh and dwelt among us, and we have seen his glory, glory as of the only Son from the Father, full of grace and truth.” (John 1:14, ESV) What Moses was denied — the full sight of God’s glory — John received. The Word made flesh is the face of God made visible. On the feast of John within the Christmas season, Exodus 33 and John 1 read together say: what Israel’s greatest prophet could only glimpse from the cleft of the rock, the beloved disciple saw reclining next to Jesus at supper.

1 John 1, the appointed Epistle, is among the most personally charged openings of any New Testament letter: “That which was from the beginning, which we have heard, which we have seen with our eyes, which we looked upon and have touched with our hands, concerning the word of life — the life was made manifest, and we have seen it, and testify to it and proclaim to you the eternal life, which was with the Father and was made manifest to us.” (1 John 1:1–2, ESV) Heard. Seen. Looked upon. Touched. John accumulates the verbs of physical witness to insist on the bodily reality of what he is testifying to. This is not mystical vision or theological speculation. It is the testimony of a man who heard the voice, saw the face, and touched the hands of the one who is from the beginning. The feast of the evangelist is the feast of this testimony — and 1 John 1 is its personal declaration.

Psalm 92:1–4, the appointed psalm, opens with praise for the steadfast love and faithfulness of God: “It is good to give thanks to the Lord, to sing praises to your name, O Most High; to declare your steadfast love in the morning, and your faithfulness by night.” (Psalm 92:1–2, ESV) The psalm of the one who has lived long and seen much, who has grounds for gratitude that stretch across a lifetime — it is the psalm of John’s old age, the song of the confessor who survived what the martyrs did not survive and used the long years to write down what he had seen.

The BCP 2019 Collect and Preface

The BCP 2019 appoints the following collect for the feast on page 625: “Shed upon your Church, O Lord, the brightness of your light; that we, being illumined by the teaching of your apostle and evangelist John, may so walk in the light of your truth, that at length we may attain to the fullness of eternal life; through Jesus Christ our Lord, who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, for ever and ever. Amen.” The collect is concentrated on light: the brightness of God’s light shed upon the Church, the illumination that comes through John’s teaching, the walking in the light of God’s truth, and the attainment of eternal life at the end of the journey. This is the language of John’s own Gospel and letters: “God is light, and in him is no darkness at all.” (1 John 1:5, ESV) The collect asks that the light John testified to would illumine the Church that reads his testimony. The feast of the apostle and evangelist is not primarily about honoring a historical figure. It is about receiving the light he carried.

The Preface of Christmas, found on page 152 of the BCP 2019, is appointed for this feast — the same preface used on Christmas Day itself and on Stephen’s feast: “Because you gave Jesus Christ, your only Son, to be born for us; who, by the Holy Spirit and the Virgin Mary his mother, was made truly man, yet without the stain of sin, that we might be cleansed from sin and given the right to become your children.” (BCP 2019, p. 152) The Christmas preface governs John’s feast because John’s entire apostolate is a commentary on the Incarnation. His Gospel begins where Christmas begins — in the beginning was the Word — and his first letter begins with the bodily reality of what he saw and heard and touched. The Word made flesh is the subject of everything John wrote. The preface of the cradle is the right preface for the feast of the one who understood the cradle most deeply.

John in Anglican Worship

The Feast of Saint John has been observed on December 27 since antiquity and was retained in the Church of England at the Reformation as a Red-Letter Holy Day. White vestments are worn, as throughout the Christmas season, since John is honored not as a martyr but as a confessor and evangelist — one who suffered for the faith without being killed for it. The warmth of the Christmas season surrounds his feast.

John is the patron of theologians, writers, and friendship — the last because of the tradition of the beloved disciple and the intimacy of his relationship with Jesus. His feast falls in the season when friendship and family are most celebrated, and there is a fittingness to this: the one who understood divine love most profoundly is honored in the season when human love is most warmly expressed. The love that John wrote about — “we love because he first loved us” (1 John 4:19, ESV) — is the love from which all Christmas celebration draws its deepest meaning.

John’s long life and peaceful death at Ephesus, surrounded by the community he had built, stand as a testimony of a different kind from Stephen’s martyrdom the day before. Both are witnesses to the same Lord. Stephen’s witness was sudden, violent, and immediately glorified. John’s witness was slow, sustained, and expressed in writing that the Church has read for two millennia. The Church needs both kinds of witness, and the calendar honors both — one on the 26th, one on the 27th, the blood-red of the martyr followed by the Christmas-white of the confessor.

Observing This Feast

December 27 falls within the Christmas season. When it falls on a Sunday, the feast may be observed on that Sunday or transferred to the nearest following weekday, per the rubrics on page 689 of the BCP 2019.

To observe the feast: pray the collect from BCP 2019, p. 625. Read 1 John 1 — all of it, slowly — and notice the accumulation of physical verbs: heard, seen, looked upon, touched. This is the testimony of a witness, not a theologian writing in the abstract. Read John 21:9–25 and sit with the breakfast fire on the beach — the risen Christ, the fish, the bread, the threefold question to Peter, and the Beloved Disciple following. Read Exodus 33:18–23 and hear Moses asking to see God’s glory, then read John 1:14 as the answer: we have seen his glory. Let the collect’s petition frame the day: shed upon us the brightness of your light, that illumined by John’s teaching, we may walk in the light of your truth.

Conclusion

John, Apostle and Evangelist, is the witness who outlasted everyone. He was at the table, at the cross, at the tomb, at the breakfast fire, and at the end of a long life in Ephesus still writing: that which we have seen and heard we proclaim to you. His Gospel begins with the eternal Word and ends with the confession that the world could not contain the books that might be written about Jesus. His life is the longest sustained act of witness in the New Testament, and his feast on December 27 is the Church’s annual gratitude for the light he carried into the world.

“That which was from the beginning, which we have heard, which we have seen with our eyes, which we looked upon and have touched with our hands, concerning the word of life — this we proclaim also to you.” (1 John 1:1, 3, ESV)