Today on the Sunday before Nativity, the Sunday of the Ancestors of Christ, we remember those 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.
The righteous Seth, who was born to Adam in the place of Able who was murdered by his brother Cain reminds us that 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. Christ, likewise, saves his ‘household’—all those in the Church—from the stormy seas of deceptive doctrines that are blown about by every wind. Christ carries 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 Christ Himself, who is both the Offerer and the Offered: 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.
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 St. Irenaeus proclaims. As in Adam all die, through Christ, all are made alive, declares St. Paul (I Cor. 15:22, paraphrased). Tthe Author of Life, Christ our true God, enters into the state of man’s fallenness and death and brings 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, told God’s faithful 700 years before Christ 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). 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” (John 1:14).
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).
The Sunday before Nativity is an invitation for us to become adopted sons of God, just as many were grafted into the ancestry of Christ even though they were Gentiles or sinners who repented. 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 this gift of grace as we journey to its attainment. We battle with all those passions that would otherwise 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.
Now the Feast of the Incarnation arrives. May we each look to Christ, the Author and Finisher of our faith, with renewed vigor and awe. He who has become incarnate in the flesh for our sake, for our salvation, desires to adopt us as sons and daughters of His Father and 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 21, 2014
Sunday before Nativity—Sunday of the Holy Ancestors of Christ
Epistle: Heb. 11:9-10, 17-23, 32-40
Gospel: Matt. 1:1-25
