Today on the Sunday of the Holy Fathers of Christ we remember those righteous ancestors of Christ who prefigure Christ Himself. Matthew’s Gospel, which is assigned for today, traces Jesus Christ’s lineage through Abraham and recounts Christ’s lineage not through Mary but through Joseph, who adopts Jesus and in doing so, gives us one of those signs of our salvation: Jesus adopts all mankind, by bringing us to the Father as adopted sons. Christ’s lineage through Joseph is accurate for Mary as well, who was of the same lineage and tribe as Joseph.
These righteous fathers, ancestors of Christ, pre-figure and point us to Him; they ready us for the coming of the Messiah, our Savior, Jesus Christ. Throughout the Old Testaments, their stories of faith are also stories of redemption, of God working through human sin and failings to prepare the way for the salvation of the entire human race, as God brings about the fulfillment of all His promises to Israel, all His desire for mankind’s redemption, for a new way of our interacting and relating to Him.
We can think of several examples that pre-figure God’s recapitulation, renewal, and redemption of man through Christ. We think of the righteous Seth, who was born in the place of Able, murdered by his brother Cain. Likewise, Christ was born as the new Adam, to inaugurate the new spiritual race of Adam.
We remember Noah, who saved his family from the wickedness of those around him, whom God used to save the animals and continue the human race. He saved his household, bearing them upon the waters of the flood until they reached dry land, which God provided for them. Likewise, Christ saves his ‘household,’ all those in the Church, from the stormy seas of deceptive doctrines, blown about by every wind, and carrying them upon the ship of faith that is the Church to the shore and haven of heaven.
We remember Abraham, who begins Matthew’s Gospel lineage, who offered his son Isaac in obedience to God, pre-figuring the offering of God’s Son, Jesus Christ, as the ultimate and final ‘sacrifice’ through His defeat of sin and death on the cross.
Fittingly, Christ’s lineage is royal as it is priestly, drawing from both the royal line of Judah, from which King David hails, and of Levite, the priestly line. Christ is eternally both our King and our Great High Priest. Jesus Christ as the Logos (Word) of God, made all things as the Father spoke them into being. He is the Author and Sustainer of all life, being Life itself. But the uncontainable God willed to become one of His own creation, to enter into that human nature to renew it as only He as the Author of life could, to bring about a new race of man capable of adoption as God’s children and co-heirs with Christ.
Christ, the new Adam, has through His obedience and will renewed and reversed by the tree of the cross what Adam through disobedience at the tree did to plummet us into an environment of sin. As in Adam all die, through Christ, all are made alive, declares St. Paul (I Cor. 15:22, paraphrased). Such is the result when the Author of Life enters into the state of man’s fallenness and death: Resurrection!
Fittingly, the Feast of Christ’s holy Nativity, Christmas, is also referred to as “the Winter Pascha,” for this reason. We trace our salvation through the incarnation, in which Christ, the life of the world, enters into and renews human nature, completing this salvation by defeating sin and death itself on the cross by His glorious resurrection. So, you could say, the Feast of the Nativity and Christ’s baptism lead us directly to His cross and resurrection.
St. Athanasius writes, “It was in the power of none other to turn the corruptible to incorruption, except the Savior Himself, that had at the beginning also made all things out of nought: and that none other could create anew the likeness of God’s image for men, save the Image of the Father…” (4th century, On the Incarnation).
Isaiah, the Old Testament prophet, told God’s faithful people to look for this sign as they awaited the Messiah and all that God had promised Israel and the world: “Behold, the virgin shall conceive and bear a Son, and shall call His name Immanuel.” (Isaiah 7:14) This is the same Virgin, Mary, who carried the Logos incarnate in her holy womb and bore her Savior and ours.
Emmanuel means, “the Lord is with us.” These are the very words used by St. John to describe this miraculous phenomenon, “The Word became flesh and dwelt among us, and we beheld His glory, the glory as of the only begotten of the Father, full of grace and truth.”
The Word became fully human while remaining fully God. He assumed complete human nature: body, soul, will, and emotion, to enter into this human nature of ours and vivify it, make it alive again as only God could. He invites all humanity to be renewed in His likeness and become part of the new deified race of Adam through new birth, of water and the spirit (John 3).
By virtue of our baptism into Christ, which we will mark in two weeks at Theophany, we too can put on Christ and this vivified new life in Him. We too can become part of His family, the new creation. We too can become adopted sons of God. We too can become part of this story, part of the spiritual genealogy of Christ, His progeny by grace. St. John declares in the Gospel, “as many as have received Him, to them He gave power to become sons of God” (Jn. 1:12-13).
We have in promise the gift of grace as we journey to its attainment. We battle with all those vices and passions that would drive us from this redeemed life with Christ. We pray. We pray more. We repent. We confess. We learn step by step to cooperate with the work of the Holy Spirit in our lives, to become obedient as Christ is obedient, to become humble, as Christ is humble, having condescended to become one of His own creation. So, in this way, you and I can also become lovers of the Truth and die to self, even as Christ Himself has led the way.
This is the message that the genealogy of Christ directs us to. In order to attain salvation, each of us learns to live, not for our own will, but for the will of God who became incarnate for our sake.
May we each look to Christ, the Author and Finisher of our faith, who is become incarnate in the flesh for our sake, for our salvation, to make us into the adopted sons and daughters of His Father and our Father, co-heirs of His eternal Kingdom. As St. Gregory Palamas has said of this day, “May we all attain to this, to the glory of Christ and of His Father without beginning and of the life-giving Spirit, now and forever, and unto unceasing ages. Amen”(Homily Fifty-Seven on the Sunday of the Fathers).
Fr. Robert Miclean
Holy Archangels Orthodox Church
Sunday, December 22, 2013
Sunday before Nativity—Sunday of the Holy Ancestors of Christ
Epistle: Heb. 11:9-10, 17-23, 32-40
Gospel: Matt. 1:1-25
