Theophany
The Beginning of Baptism
Sunday after Theophany, January 12, 2014
Rev. Fr. Andrew Stephen Damick
A recording of this sermon can be heard via Ancient Faith Radio.
In the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, one God. Amen.
Today is the Sunday after the Great Feast of Theophany, and even though the feast is now past, we are still within the afterfeast of Theophany, which is completed on January 14th. The content of this feast is of course the baptism of Jesus Christ in the Jordan at the hand of John the Forerunner, and it is taught by the Church that this baptism was not for the forgiveness of any sins committed by Jesus—God forbid!—but rather to make Christian baptism possible and indeed to begin the sanctification of the whole world.
As we contemplate these themes, I would like to focus in on one of them, and that is that Christ’s baptism inaugurates Christian baptism.
We think of baptism as a quintessentially Christian practice nowadays, but there are other religions that baptize, and first-century Judaism was one of them. Before Jesus Himself was baptized, His cousin John was out in the wilderness baptizing people. Certainly John was not baptizing anyone into the Church with Christian baptism, because it hadn’t been established yet by Christ. So what is John’s baptism about? The baptism of John was a Jewish ritual that was associated with repentance and the remission of sins.
Now, this was not an invention of John’s but was already an established part of Jewish tradition. Ancient Judaism had a number of different kinds of ritual washings for various purposes, and a few of them included full-body immersion as in Christian baptism. The Scriptures tell us in this case that John was baptizing people as part of repentance and forgiveness of sins, doing his job as the “voice crying in the wilderness” prophesied in the fortieth chapter of Isaiah, preparing people for the coming of Jesus. And there is also a traditional Jewish use of full-immersion washing that is required in order to convert to Judaism.
So we see here three elements of Jewish baptism that are familiar to us—repentance, forgiveness and conversion. All three of these aspects to baptism are retained in Christian baptism. We may not think too much about repentance and forgiveness or even conversion when a baby is being baptized, but these things are still operative. Even a newborn infant who has not committed any personal sins still bears the inheritance of the infection of sin from Adam and Eve that needs baptism in order to begin its cure. This aspect is a bit clearer when we baptize an adult, which is always preceded by confession, because adults have indeed committed personal sins.
Yet when Jesus is baptized, He is not merely co-opting the Jewish ritual cleansing for Christian purposes. He is adding something to it. When people are baptized into the Church, they are not only repenting, being forgiven and converting. They are also putting on Christ, as St. Paul says in Galatians 3:27 and as we sing at the baptismal service and on certain feast days: “As many of you as have been baptized into Christ have put on Christ.”
“Putting on Christ” is not just a metaphor. When someone is baptized, Christ comes to dwell in him and His identity begins to work on the newly-baptized person’s identity. The image of God in that person can begin to grow that person into God’s likeness, as well. That potential is activated. Someone who is baptized begins to become like Christ. The union of the divine and human that is Christ’s by nature can become ours by grace. He is both God and man, and we can become human beings in union with God.
But what is activated by baptism is not absolute and perfect for all time. It has to be cultivated and built upon over time for it to become truly effective. Baptism is not a magic spell that guarantees the recipient a place in the resurrection of the righteous at the end of time. It is rather a preparation for the synergistic working together of God and man that is the spiritual life, which has the potential to lead to everlasting life, but only if worked out, as St. Paul says, “with fear and trembling.” If it is not worked out throughout life, then the result is not everlasting life but rather everlasting dying.
So we can put on Christ, but we can also put off Christ. Even though baptism would never be repeated for someone who throws off its power, and even though he will always have that great grace of baptism, it is only effective for him if he keeps it and nurtures it and helps it to grow by cooperating with it.
And that is part of what Christian baptism retains from Jewish baptism, that characteristic of repentance and the forgiveness of sins. In order for baptism to continue its work in us, we have to continue to repent. It is not a one-time event that permanently seals our eternal destiny. It is the beginning of a journey.
And as we journey with Christ to become more like Christ, we will also see that the sanctification given in baptism begins to work on what is around us, as well. It works on other people, in that the hope and grace within us also draw other people to Christ. When they see that love of God genuinely within us, that humble spirit of kindness and compassion, then they are also attracted to God’s love and may also become filled with God’s grace, which is His real presence within.
But the sanctification which baptism gives us also works on even the world around us on a cosmic scale. Many of the saints saw the natural world begin to work differently around them, no longer bound by the curse that was laid when Adam and Eve sinned. Wild animals became tame. The earth and the elements of water and so forth became more easily fertile and helpful to them rather than as obstacles that have to be overcome. And someday, that harmony of creation that is seen in a small amount around the saints will grow to encompass the whole cosmos at the end of all things.
For when Christ comes to be baptized in the Jordan, He does so to begin His reclamation of all creation, with mankind at the very center of it all. His love and power and glory and healing flow into that water and from there flow into the world. And it can flow through us, as well, if we will open ourselves up to it.
I know that life often can be complicated, confusing, painful and even tragic. What makes it possible for Orthodox Christians not only to endure all this but actually to thrive and to progress in holiness and love is knowing that someday this will all pass away. Someday, the disharmony will again become harmony. Someday, all the tears will be wiped from every eye. Someday, what began there in the Jordan 2,000 years ago will finally be complete and will reach into every place.
In the meantime, we muddle forward. And we do so with hope and love, because God has called us not only to endure the suffering of this world, but actually to participate in His sanctification and transformation of it. He has called us to be blessed with His holiness by means, among other things, of the purification and operation holy water. And He has also called us to bless those around us with that same holy water, to bless the world with it, as well, to bring His power everywhere.
Holy water is one of the many means of blessing that God has given us, but of all those means, it is perhaps the most primal and the most universal. It is sprinkled everywhere without hesitation. There is nothing that cannot be touched by it and changed by it, given the possibility for revealing God’s goodness in everything. Sometimes, that revelation is invisible to us, but sometimes, it also becomes visible.
And the greatest of all the blessings of holy water is that great mystery of holy baptism, which was given to us so many centuries ago and yet remains new as today for all who would come and receive its cleansing power.
To our Lord Jesus Christ therefore be all glory, honor, power and worship, with the Father and the Holy Spirit, now and ever, and unto ages of ages. Amen.
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Consumption, the Ascension and the Dignity of Man
In the Name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, one God. Amen.
If you follow the news about our nation’s economic woes, there is a word that is used over and over again to describe us as human beings. This word is based on something that we’re supposed to be doing. It really says nothing about who we are or what we are supposed to be. This word says nothing about the inherent dignity or nobility of mankind, but rather says something only about his appetites. What is this word that is used by the media to give us our identity? Consumers.
Most of us probably don’t think of ourselves as “consumers.” That’s a word that means “everyone else” in that faceless economic mass that makes up the rest of our nation. “Consumers” are those people who buy things and use them up, those people who are supposed to make the economy go. When there is a loss of “consumer confidence,” then people lose their jobs and investors pull their money back. When someone has an ingenious idea, they appeal to “consumers” to turn it into a big pay-off. Yes, “consumers” are “those people” who shuffle the money around and keep the economy going, right?
If most of us looked into our own hearts, I think we would find that “consumers” are not only “those people out there.” Rather, as an identity, most of us have really bought into what the media is telling us we are. We’re supposed to acquire things, use them up, and then acquire some more. Buy, buy, buy! Spend, spend, spend! Eat, eat, eat! This very word consume means “to eat up.” In order to see the problem with this way of life, we do not need to look at the destruction that is being wreaked in the rest of the world for our nation’s unending appetites. Rather, we need only look into our hearts.
What are the fruits of this endless appetite for something else to eat, something else to consume, something new and interesting? For one thing, we are often bored. We spend so much of our time voraciously consuming the latest bit of entertainment, gossip, information, politics, and possessions that when we encounter things like beauty, permanence, or—dare I say it?—eternity, our response is “I’m bored.” As consumers, our attention spans get more and more childish.
Our appetite as consumers is such that we don’t just use up entertainment and information, but we also use up people. We see other people primarily in terms of what they can provide us rather than for who they are and the communion we can have with them. This corrupts not only friendships, but also marriages and families. Children and parents use each other up and then reject each other when their appetites are not filled. We expect this from kids, but from adults, too?
The consumer approach to relationships also leads to sexuality without the context of lifelong commitment to family. We want to play by our own rules and use what God created for our appetites rather than for our salvation. Sexuality becomes about what I want, what feels good to me, what I think I should get. This approach can lead to all sorts of delusions which fall short of God’s plan for sexuality—one man and one woman committed for life in marriage.
Anything else—whether it is same-sex activity, pre-marital or extra-marital sex, or pornography and other forms of private self-pleasure—all of these things are based on our appetites and not on the beautiful and perfect balance of complementarity created and designed by God. There are even whole subcultures designed to promote these destructive patterns, to make them appear “normal” and “wholesome,” even to give them the veneer of human “rights.” But how can we say we are the “chief of sinners” and demand “rights”? That is really just delusion.
And none of these things, by the way, is somehow a “better” sin than another. It is not “better” to fornicate with the opposite sex than it is to do it with the same sex. All fall short of the relationship created by God to His glory and for our salvation. If we look into our hearts with true honesty, we will see that such desires come out of our fallen appetites, not out of God’s perfect creation, which has been broken since the Fall of Adam and Eve. So if we see brokenness in our desires, it is because of the Fall, not because God created us that way.
So if we are not to be “consumers,” then what is our real calling? What is this higher, nobler way of living that truly befits human dignity? St. Paul in today’s epistle reading says that “to each one of us grace was given according to the measure of Christ’s gift.” By virtue of our baptism, Christ has given each of us grace as a gift. What are we to do with this gift? What is this grace for? Paul goes on to say that “He Himself gave some to be apostles, some prophets, some evangelists and some pastors and teachers.” Notice that nowhere is there given the grace to be a “consumer.” Rather, this grace given to each of us is for active ministry.
Elsewhere in the Scripture, St. Paul talks about other kinds of spiritual gifts that Christ gives to us. All such gifts are for getting out of our seats, standing up and doing something. This is why, for instance, the traditional posture for Orthodox worship is standing, not sitting. Someone who sits is passive, expecting to get something. The person who stands is active, expecting to give something, to do something.
Indeed, because even our church architecture is made to correspond to elements of the Jewish Temple, we see that where we are right now mirrors the holy place of the Temple, the place reserved for priests! Whether we are ordained to sacramental ministry or not, we are all priests of the Most High God. We are all here to participate in and offer the holy sacrifice of the Eucharist, not to sit on our bottoms and wait to get served.
So what is all this activity for? Why did Christ not make us consumers or an audience? Why did He give to each of us gifts of ministry? St. Paul goes on to tell us: “for the equipping of the saints for the work of ministry, for the edifying of the body of Christ.” And what is the goal of this ministry of equipping and edification? It is for all of us to “come to the unity of the faith and of the knowledge of the Son of God, to a perfect man, to the measure of the stature of the fullness of Christ.” What a calling! Perfect unity in faith! The knowledge of the Son of God! Perfect humanity, even to the stature of the fullness of Christ Himself!
With such a noble and beautiful destiny that God has appointed for each of us, how can we be content to sit around and continue to “consume”? How dare the media refer to the adopted sons and daughters of the King of Kings as “consumers”?! Such a way of life is so, so far beneath us. If only we could see ourselves as God does! When He looks around within this holy cathedral, He does not see “consumers.” He does not see people identified by appetite. He sees people called to be saints. He sees adopted, redeemed sons and daughters of God. The angels look at us and see us gleaming with the great light of baptism. The saints look at us and see the grace of God resting upon us as a bright, uncreated Light that illumines the darkness. Truly, as the Gospel reading says to us today, “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.” This is what has been given to us! This is the light of Christmas, of Holy Theophany, of the death and Resurrection of Jesus Christ!
The question now is: What are we going to do with what we have been given? Will we turn away from God’s truly awesome gift and continue to be defined by our appetites, to take on once again the low and dirty role of “consumers”? I truly hope not. We are called to something higher, finer, nobler and more beautiful, called by the One Who is Beauty Himself.
And should those who begin to hear this call and respond look down on those who remain struggling with sinful passions? By no means! We are all sinners. There is no sin that is worse than my sin. Just because I am not afflicted with one kind of temptation does not mean that I should condemn those who are. We have mentioned many ways in which sin drags us down and darkens our identity in Christ. None of these ways makes the people who suffer from them worthy of condemnation. Rather, we are all spiritually sick people in need of spiritual healing. There is much hypocrisy among so-called Christians in our time. Let us not join those hypocrites who condemn one kind of sin while indulging in another.
We read in the Scripture that Christ, after He had accomplished all the great works of His life, ascended into Heaven and sat down at the right hand of the Father. There sits our humanity. Because God became one of us, now there is one of us seated on the very Throne of the Almighty God. What was the purpose of this holy and blessed ascension? It was so He might fill all things. In partaking of Christ in the Eucharist and in all the other ways He offers Himself to us in the Church, we are becoming filled with Christ. Instead of remaining “consumers,” a title properly reserved only for animals, we are becoming the true consummation of creation, the very pinnacle of what God made through Christ and is now healing and remaking through His death and resurrection.
So let us cast off this “consumer” way of life. Let us take hold of what is eternal, pure and perfect, what is of enduring beauty and holiness, not eating up material possessions and one another, but sacrificing ourselves not just for Christ’s sake, but truly for our own. When we do this, we will encounter other sinners and not condemn them, but rather pour ourselves out for them, just as Christ did for us, even though He was sinless. When we do this, we will encounter God here in Orthodox worship and not be bored, but find ourselves hungry not after earthly appetites, which never satisfy, but after heavenly food and drink, which fill us up and change us forever.
To our Lord Jesus Christ, therefore, with His Father and Holy Spirit, are due all glory, honor and worship, always, now and ever, and unto ages of ages. Amen.
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Make His paths straight
In the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, one God. amen.
More than 400 years ago in Tudor England, there was a custom of celebrating a holiday called “Twelfth Night,” which took place on January 5th. Twelfth Night was so named because it was the twelfth day of Christmas, beginning with December 25th as the first day.
During this celebration, a lowly servant would be chosen to be the Lord of Misrule, and all the norms of life would be turned upside down. The Lord of Misrule would preside over this bizarre festival, and his word was law. The masters would serve the servants, and the servants would live like kings. All sorts of strange things would take place, often including a good bit of immorality. Twelfth Night was a time for merrymaking, but it was also a time for twisting everything around. The normal order of life would be abandoned, and all that was improper became proper.
Some of you may be familiar with William Shakespeare’s play, Twelfth Night. In the play, there are cases of mistaken identity, cross-dressing, and people pretending to be what they’re not. Just like the holiday of Twelfth Night, Shakespeare’s Twelfth Night is focused on a world turned inside-out, where people are not what they seem to be.
Our world today is an endless Twelfth Night. What God created to be the normal order of things has been turned upside-down. The culture is filled with merrymaking, but it is not filled with the joy that comes from being who and where we’re meant to be. The messages we receive through advertising and the media are that we need to relax more, take more “me time,” attend to our own needs more, have more fun, and keep buying more and more stuff.
And yet with all this attention we’re paying to ourselves, modern man feels more and more alienated. Even with the possibility for instant communication with people on the other side of the earth, mankind feels disconnected. What was supposed to be a global village has become for many of us a global prison, a set of cells which keep people from each other, barricaded by our possessions and pretensions.
In this cultural Twelfth Night, our identities have become distorted and twisted. Many of us are pretending to be someone we’re not, trying on various masks. Our culture in particular is obsessed with a sexual Twelfth Night, trading identities, reversing roles, and delighting in what is outside the boundaries.
We have each become our own Lord of Misrule, servants who pretend to be masters, and in our inside-out worlds, our word is law. The right of the individual to determine everything in his life is the most sacred thing in our society. Yet how many of us sit alone in the dark at times and wonder, “Who am I? What am I supposed to be? Where am I going?” No one who lives in the endless Twelfth Night can know who he is, because the whole world is designed to deny it and keep it hidden.
In our celebration of Theophany, the Lord’s baptism, we also celebrate St. John the Baptist, called John the Forerunner. In the Gospel account, John is baptizing people in the River Jordan when he sees Jesus approaching him. As soon as he sees Him, he proclaims, “Behold the Lamb of God, who takes away the sin of the world!”
John the Baptist was not a man who suffered from a Twelfth Night identity crisis. He knew who he was. His whole life is summed up in these words: “Behold the Lamb of God!” John’s purpose was to point the way to the Messiah, Jesus Christ. He is the voice crying in the wilderness, prophesied by Isaiah, “Prepare ye the way of the Lord!”
In the Great Feast of Theophany, we see the climax of John’s ministry. He has prepared the way for Jesus, and when Jesus comes, John baptizes Him in the Jordan. The Virgin Mary gave birth to God in the flesh, and John the Forerunner baptizes God in the flesh. For this reason, on most Orthodox iconostases, we see the Theotokos on His right and John on His left. And Jesus Himself calls John “great.”
Why is John great? His greatness is not merely in the physical act of baptizing Christ, just as the Virgin Mary’s greatness is not in the physical act of giving birth to Him. Rather, John’s greatness is precisely because of his obedience to the Word of God which came to him and told him who he was and what he was supposed to do, just like Mary.
People like the Theotokos and John the Baptist live outside the world’s Twelfth Night precisely because of what occurs at Theophany, the day after Twelfth Night, the day when all the games and foolishness come to an end, when the curse of the previous day’s darkness is lifted. At Theophany, those who look with the eyes of faith see the first clear and unmistakable revelation of the Holy Trinity. The voice of the Father bears witness, the Son in the flesh is baptized, and the Holy Spirit descends on Him as a dove.
What was previously hidden has now been uncovered. For thirty years, the secret of Jesus’ identity was known only to a few, and for many centuries, the people of Israel had hoped for His coming. But now, uncovered before us is the revelation of the identity of the Son of God, revealed as both God and man. There is no hinting or cryptic suggestion at Theophany. There is only the in-your-face, fullout, no-mistake revelation of the Almighty Creator of the universe as Father, Son and Holy Spirit. And it is Jesus Who reveals this to us.
For those of us who find ourselves trapped in Twelfth Night, following after meaningless merrymaking and denying ourselves true joy, the feast of Theophany is precisely the way out. As we have seen, there is nothing in Theophany that even remotely resembles Twelfth Night. It is utter denial of that whole way of life.
If we want to find our true identities, it can only be in Christ, Who created us. If we want to know who we really are and where we’re going, it can only be in union with the Holy Trinity, the communion for which we were made. The first step is baptism. In being baptized, we identify ourselves with Christ, Who was baptized at Theophany in order to make our baptism possible. When He entered the water of baptism, He made it holy and filled it up with Himself. When we enter that same water of baptism, we receive Christ and put on Christ.
If you have not been baptized and received into the Church, then know that the grace of Christ’s baptism in the Jordan is available to you. You can escape the instability and meaninglessness of the world’s Twelfth Night by entering into the revelation of the Son of God.
If you are an Orthodox Christian today, then you have the grace of that same baptism which happened almost 2000 years ago in the Jordan. You have put on Christ. But many of us nevertheless wander back toward Twelfth Night. We can renew our baptism by the holy mystery of confession, which the Fathers tell us is like a “second baptism.”
The power of Theophany is not limited only to human beings, however. The whole world finds itself in Theophany, which is why the Church blesses water for this feast, the element which runs throughout all creation and gives it life. The cosmic effect of sin is undone by the cosmic power of the uncreated God becoming one with His creation.
Ultimately, our identities find their completion and revelation in the same way that John the Baptist’s did. We know who we are by looking for Jesus and then by declaring, “Behold the Lamb of God Who takes away the sin of the world!” Like the Virgin Mary, we give birth to Christ in our hearts by hearing the word of God and keeping it. And then we bring that birth to its full revelation in us by baptism, identifying with Christ in the Jordan.
And now, like John, we must point the world to Christ, loudly proclaiming the coming of the Messiah, the hope of all the nations. With John, we must say: “I have seen and have borne witness that this is the Son of God.” The only way we can find ourselves is by finding Him.
To Him therefore be all glory, honor, power and worship, to the Father and to the Son and to the Holy Spirit, now and ever, and unto ages of ages. Amen.
