Emmanuel Episcopal Church

Service Bulletin for the Christmas Festival of Lessons and Carols

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29 December 2013                                                                                 11 a.m.

Homily for Christmas Eve 2013

Isaiah 52:7-10 
Hebrews 1:1-4, (5-12) 
John 1:1-14 
Psalm 98

Homily by Fr R Christopher Heying

How beautiful on the mountains are the feet. . . .         

From the incomparable beauty of that powerful echo of Genesis in the opening words of John’s gospel—in the beginning was the Word and the Word was with God and the Word was God–from such words to words about feet, even beautiful ones, may seem counterintuitive.

Yet ordination can yield surprising insights, and one such insight for me has been about feet.  Prior to being ordained, beyond noting splashes of color here and there or the occasional toe bling, I am not sure I paid that much attention to feet. 

But as a newly minted priest I discovered just how terribly self-conscious many, if not most, people are about their feet, especially that first Holy Week when I tried to coax them out of their shoes so they would come forward and allow me to wash their feet on that night we remember Jesus not only took bread and wine but water and a towel and bid us follow his example.

There may be no more tender moment in the church year than when we remove our socks and our shoes and bare our feet before God and everyone else, and allow another person to take them into his hands, pour water over them, dry them with a towel.

Among the most poignant images of 2013 may be that of Francis, the new pope, kissing the feet of a young Muslim woman at just such a Holy Week service at a juvenile prison in Rome. 

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