Gospel: Matt. 3:13-17 (§6)
In the Name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit.
Dear Father, brothers and sisters: S Prazdnekom! Happy Feast!
Dear ones, normally on Great Feasts when these fall during the week I tend not to preach a full sermon, but as it is a Sunday I am afraid you will have to put up with me preaching on this beautiful feast of the Church. In the Early Medieval West, even in Orthodox times, the Feast of Theophany or as it was more commonly termed, the Epiphany involved three commemorations the Journey of the Magi, the Baptism of Christ and Christ’s first Miracle at the Wedding of Cana. And in general in the Orthodox West it was the Journey and Gifts of the Magi that received the more central liturgical attention. In the Orthodox East, after the clear separation of Christmas and Theophany which took some centuries as they were originally a combined feast, the Theophany became exclusively associated with the Baptism of Christ in the River Jordan. For both East and West, however, the Theophany or Epiphany was as its name implies a feast of Revelation of Manifestation and Illumination. Let us then interpret our short reading today from St Matthew Gospel with the aid of our holy Father, St Gregory Palamas the 14th century Archbishop of Thessaloniki.
Within the Gospel narrative, the Baptism of Christ marks an important and decisive start of Christ’s whole saving ministry. For the years since his Nativity, His whole presence on the earth was enshrouded in secrecy and in silence. Last week we were hearing the Gospel which spoke of the Flight of the Holy Family to Egypt and their peaceful return after the death of Herod into Galilee. The Gospel itself is fairly silent about these years of Christ’s childhood and adolescence other than the time when we hear he discoursed with the Scribes and Elders in the Temple. But from that time we simply hear that he grew in wisdom but also in breathtaking obedience to His human parents, parents that He had Himself created and known before He was born. Nazareth – the little village where our Lord grew up – was a quiet and obscure place leading to Nathaniel’s quip at the start of St John’s Gospel –
“Can anything good come out of Nazareth?”
Today, our Saviour decisively turns from this quiet, peaceful backwater and comes to the banks of the Jordan which marks the start of his emergence onto the public stage, the beginning of his three intense years of Ministry, preaching and healing.
In the Divine Liturgy we can see this same change between secrecy and manifestation. The first rite of the Divine Liturgy is the Proskomedia where the priest prepares the Holy Gifts ready for the Eucharist and makes commemoration of all the saints as well as many, many individual names of the living and the departed. This rite, however, is always performed behind the closed doors and curtains of the ikonostasis and normally there are only just the Priest and deacon in the whole church. However, the liturgical representation of the Theophany occurs during the singing of the Beatitudes or the Third Antiphon, when the priest and Deacon emerge from behind the ikonostasis and come forth into the centre of the church led by the acolytes holding candles which represent St John the Forerunner. Our Saviour is represented by the closed book of the Holy Gospel which is held aloft by the deacon who then proclaims “Wisdom” drawing the attention of the faithful to increased diligence and watchfulness for the readings from the Holy Scriptures and the Divine Word.
In his beautiful homily on this Feast, St Gregory centers his thoughts on this central passage from our Gospel reading today.
And Jesus, when he was baptized, went up straightway out of the water: and, lo, the heavens were opened unto him,
Again the true, inspired wisdom of our holy Fathers can be found in the greater depths of meaning they can find and understand within the Sacred words of the Divine Scriptures. For as St Gregory teases out this phrase –
and, lo, the heavens were opened unto him,
is not just a dull meteorological observation, it is not just talking about a gap in the clouds but something much more significant, much more extraordinary and fundamentally theological. For so many thousands of years the heavens, that is the Way to Paradise had been closed because of our forefather’s sin. With Christ’s descent into those muddy waters of the River Jordan, the Cherubim who had guarded the doors stand clear, and the Way is open once again.
The Gospel made it clear that the heavens had been closed to us previously on account of sin and our disobedience to God … it was fitting that the heavens were opened to Christ, who was shown to be obedient in every respect and, as He said to John, fulfilled all righteousness.
This descent into the waters and ascent out of them also point forward to their fulfilment in the death and descent of Christ into the Underworld and His ascent out of Hades through His Glorious Resurrection.
For Christ’s going down into the water and His being underneath it, at the time of His baptism, foreshadowed His descent into Hades; and, accordingly, His coming up from under the water prefigured His resurrection from the dead.
In entering into the waters, Christ sanctifies water itself as a medium of Divine presence and Grace. For so long water had been partly associated with punishment and danger. We can think supremely of God’s sending of the Flood that destroyed all the peoples of the earth. Yet in today’s Feast and Mystery, water itself becomes the portal to Paradise through the institution of Holy Baptism.
But today’s Mystery is also more than the re-opening of the Gates of Paradise, it is a Theophany, a revelation of the Godhead. As St Gregory explains –
Not merely the heavens, but the bosom of the heavenly Father was opened to Him … making quite clear not just to the angels in heaven but to all men on earth that in essence, power and dominion over all, the Son of God is equal in honour to the heavenly Father and to the Spirit who has His origin from the Father by procession.
We hear the voice of the Father, the First Person of the Holy Trinity, we see the Second Person of the Holy Trinity Incarnate in the Form of a Man, united to human nature immersed in the waters of the Jordan, and finally we see the Third Person of the Holy Trinity descending upon the Son in the form of a dove. Why does the Holy Spirit descend as a dove specifically? Again recalling the catastrophic Flood of Noah we hear that it was a dove that he sent to see if the water had receded and the land had appeared. Isn’t it appropriate at this moment in Salvation history when we were all drowning in sin, estranged from our Heavenly homeland, that God appears to us in the form of a dove indicating that the Way back is open once again?
The form of the dove testifies to the purity of Him upon whom it descended, for this creature does not fly anywhere dirty or evil-smelling, and therefore joins the Father’s voice from above in bearing witness.
In a further sublime passage, St Gregory sees the Holy Spirit in the form of a dove acting as God’s Finger –
crying out and pointing from heaven, openly declared and proclaimed to all that the one then being baptized by John in Jordan was His beloved Son, while at the same time manifesting His unity with Him.
We can thus perceive in today’s feast a most perfect Ikon of the Mystery of the Holy Trinity, of Oneness and Threeness, unity and distinction –
They testify to their divinity, Their shared nature with one another and to Their distinctiveness.
Yet what is also so extraordinary about today’s Feast is the way in which it again reveals our God as a God Who humbles Himself, Who empties Himself, Who gives Himself for our salvation fully, completely without reservation.
Through Christ the heavens opened to us and He cleansed us through Himself, for He needed neither cleansing nor the opening of the heavens.
Christ is literally the Only Sinless one in the whole history of mankind. He is the Only One that does not need cleansing, does not need a baptism for the remission of sins. Rather it is He Who cleanses the Waters. It is He, as God, Who grants Forgiveness from sins. And yet, here we see Him asking to be baptized by His creature.
But John forbad him, saying, I have need to be baptized of thee, and comest thou to me?
And Jesus answering said unto him, Suffer it to be so now: for thus it becometh us to fulfil all righteousness. Then he suffered him.
Dear Father, brothers and sisters: let us join chorus with all the heavenly host in gazing in wonder at this Divine Mystery which appears before our eyes today, this most wondrous day when the Gates of Paradise are opened, the Waters of Baptism are blessed and our God in Humility consents not only to be Incarnate, to take human flesh, but to descend into the waters of the Jordan for our Salvation. Glory to Thee, O God, Glory to Thee!
Amen.