32nd Sunday after Pentecost / Sunday before Theophany; Circumcision of our Lord; St. Basil the Great / 2 Tim. 4.5-8; Mark 1.1-8
F/S/HS. Brothers and sisters, this entire last week we celebrated the Nativity of our Lord. This coming Thursday evening and Friday morning we celebrate what mother church says is the second greatest Feast—the Feast of Theophany and the events on Mount Tabor—second only to Holy Pascha. Sandwiched between Nativity and Theophany—this morning—we honor and remember the Circumcision of our Lord.
And our Gospel reading this morning has as well John the Baptist bursting onto the scene, baptizing people in the Jordon and proclaiming after the prophets to Prepare the way of the Lord; there comes One mightier than I, whose sandal straps I am not worthy to stoop down and loose. I baptize you with water, but He will baptize you with the Holy Spirit (Mk. 1.3, 7-8).
St. Basil the Great, who we also honor this morning, says that this sweeping narrative of events taking place over this two week span—Nativity to Theophany, including our Lord’s Circumcision and John the Baptist—beautifully renders the history of our salvation, the arc of our salvation.
How so? How do these two weeks—from last Sunday through Theophany—represent the history or arc of our salvation?
Why did God come to us as the Christ-Child? Why did He humble Himself and assume our human form? Simply put, because He loves us! More comprehensively, He came to free us from something, in order to free us for something.
Freedom from! Quoting the prophet Isaiah about Nativity, the Evangelist Matthew says The people who sat in darkness have seen a great light. And upon those who sat in the region and shadow of death, Light has dawned.
What darkness, what shadow of death? What Light? The darkness and curse bequeathed by our ancestors in the Garden, Adam and Eve. All have gone astray … all have sinned, the Apostle Paul concludes about the whole of humanity, since Adam and Eve. Prior to our Lord coming as the Christ-Child, there existed no mediatory power great enough to free us from sin and it’s ultimate consequence—death.
But then the Light dawned in the person of the Christ-Child—Prepare ye the way of the Lord—ushering in the mysterious and beautiful and grace-filled trampling down of death by His death. Light burst into and torn asunder the darkness of death. For those who would accept the Baptist’s call to repent of their sin, Light would come to reside within each of us.
Which is what Mount Tabor and the Feast of Theophany is all about. Our Lord shining radiantly before Peter, James, and John on Mount Tabor is not only a revelation of His Divinity, but is Christ’s way of inviting the humanity of Peter, James, and John to its truest destiny—become light as I am Light. Radiant before them as Jesus was, it is as if He is saying: You are free from death! You are free from darkness and sin! Come dear ones, come into the Light and become this light! This is your truest destiny dear ones!
Only a few days ago, one of you sent me a most remarkable quote which beautifully captures this span of Nativity to Theophany. It is from none other than our Saint Silouan. I’d never read these words before. Open your ears dear ones and commit them to your heart: The Lord greatly loves the repenting sinner and mercifully presses him to His bosom: “Where were you, My child? I was waiting a long time for you.” The Lord calls all to Himself with the voice of the Gospel, and His voice is heard in all of the world: “Come to me, my sheep. I created you, and I love you. My love for you brought Me to earth, and I suffered all things for the sake of your salvation, and I want you all to know my love, and to say, like the Apostles on Mount Tabor: Lord, it is good for us to be with You.
Prepare ye the way of the Lord, the Baptist cried out. Repent you sinners and be baptized? And then the nearly shocking narrative of Jesus submitting to baptism in the river Jordon, by His cousin John the Baptist.
Jesus’ baptism is directly related to His circumcision some thirty years earlier, eight days following His birth. Why did God-Incarnate submit to being circumcised? Why so honor the occasion of the Christ-Child being circumcised? And why did our Lord consent to be baptized? These two—His circumcision and His baptism—are richly connected. But how?
And when the eight days were completed for the circumcision of the Child, says the Apostle Luke, His name was called Jesus. Jesus, of Jewish patrimony, was circumcised according to the precepts of the Mosaic Law, which He followed and fulfilled during His earthly life and ministry. But as we well know, by the time of our Lord’s birth as the Christ-Child, this law had grown so onerous, a juggernaut of juridical legalism that was anything but liberating. Rather, it smothered the human spirit, and still smothers the spirit for those who strive to live a juridical and legalistic Christianity.
Christ’s consent to be circumcised, His fulfilling the Law, was His way of freeing us from the juridical bondage of the Law. After His Resurrection, Baptism—patterned after our Lord’s own Baptism—replaced circumcision as the universal sacrament of salvation and initiation into the Church. Which is why we name a child on their eighth day of life, the same day that baby boys of old would be circumcised. Which is why, at that first church council in Jerusalem (Acts 15), James the brother of our Lord—the first Bishop of Jerusalem—stands up to decree that Gentile males need not be circumcised in order to be a Christian.
Freedom from to freedom for! Freedom from legalistic bondage; freedom from spirit-stifling rules and regulations. John the Baptist came preaching a baptism of repentance for the remission of sins. That phrase for a remission of sins literally means to let go of sins. In Christian baptism God not only forgives our sins, letting them go, but He also brings us into union with Christ, just as Christ on Mount Tabor invited Peter, James, and John to come into union with Him, to become the light that is their truest destiny.
This, dear brothers and sisters—this past week, this morning, and this coming week—is the panoramic sweep of salvation history; the arc of our salvation: a journey from darkness to an invitation to come into the light, to become that light. “Come to me, my sheep, St. Silouan said. I created you, and I love you. My love for you brought Me to earth, and I suffered all things for the sake of your salvation, and I want you all to know my love, and to say, like the Apostles on Mount Tabor: Lord, it is good for us to be with You.
As the early church wrestled to comprehend this new arc of salvation history, they slowly began to modify old teachings in light of the liberating message of God’s love for all. And so I want to close this morning with but one of these teachings—the teaching of what happens to a young child who reposes.
Why am I focusing on this particular teaching, you might ask? Because there is yet another special occasion that we honor during these two weeks between Nativity and Theophany—namely the 14,000 Holy Innocents, who we remembered this past Wednesday evening and all day Thursday; 14,000 baby boys under the age of two, massacred by a raving mad Herod who was entirely threatened by the Christ-Child’s birth.
Standing before the altar this past Wednesday evening, hearing the hymnology about these 14,000 baby boys, my mind and heart flooded with memories of baby Alexander, but two months old, lying here in the center of our nave during his funeral, his grieving parents Cornelia and Ron, and family and friends, surrounding baby Alexander with love and deep groans of sorrow.
Prior to Christ’s birth, the prevailing teachings of what happened to a child’s soul following his or her death was at best ambiguous and conflicted, while at worst abusive and devoid of loving empathy. From Christ’s birth forward, as the decades and centuries unfolded, the church slowly crafted a theology and teaching which viewed a young child as utterly full of God’s love, utterly sinless, and therefore, if he or she reposed, the recipient of a one-way ticket to heaven and the bosom of Abraham.
During vespers Wednesday evening, while the kliros chanted, I grabbed to take home The Book of Needs that had the section on the funeral of a young child. Reading that section later that night, I was so consoled with the balm that jumped out page after page, sentence after sentence. Here is some of that phraseology: Thou hast accepted this undefiled infant, O Christ the Savior / the uncorrupted infant … who has not transgressed Thy divine command / Abraham’s bosom now receives thee as an infant that had no part in any defilement … who has committed no deeds worthy of tears … who is like a pure bird unto the heavenly nest, O Master.
Such liberating and life-giving words dear ones, dear brothers and sisters, words that arise out of mother church’s understanding of our Lord’s Nativity and Theophany, God Who is for us; God Who loves us; God’s mercy a fountain of balm; God calling all of us to become light; God naming young children as light, without sin and defilement. This dear ones is the Lord we love and Who loves us. Thanks be to God that we have such a Lord—Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. Amen!
