Galatians 6.11 – 18

Luke 13.10 – 17

The Feast of the Entrance of the Virgin was last Thursday. Its Leavetaking is tomorrow. She who is to be the Living Temple of God, the Temple that was the heavenly pattern of the Temple shown to Moses on the Mount, enters the Temple of God, revealed in the Feast of the Entrance to be the copy of the Holy Virgin. The Living Temple, the Heavenly Pattern, enters the stone Temple, the copy of Her, to prepare Herself to become ‘the beautiful and pleasing dwelling place in whom God dwells,’ as the prophet Ezekiel clearly foretold (Eze 42-47).

The woman is the crown of Adam. She it is who completes God’s work of creating Adam (Gen 2.21-22). She it is who ‘heals’ the aloneness of Adam, not by helping him as his servant but by becoming the Mother of God, his Creator, in the flesh, so that God ‘comes to be’ Immanuel, ‘God with us,’ the LORD who dwells in man as in his Temple so that man (as male and female) can dwell in God. She is the true Man as he was meant to be, created in the image and likeness of God: created in the ‘capacity to receive God.’ (Didymus the Blind of Alexandria) In the holy Virgin Mary, the Mother of God, the LORD’s will for Adam, and for all the sons and daughters of Adam and Eve who love Him, is accomplished: ‘Dwell in me, and I in you. The branch cannot bear fruit by itself unless it dwells in the vine, neither can you unless you dwell in me.’ [Jn 15.4]

The Virgin Mary is the Branch who grows from the root of Jesse (Isa 11.1). She is the Rod of Aaron that blossomed; Her Son, Jesus Christ, is the Flower. He is the ‘Rose of Sharon’ (Sng 2.1) that blossomed from Her. It was the mystery of Christmas that was hidden in the flower that blossomed from Aaron’s rod. Jesus Christ is the precious ‘Rose of Sharon’ (Sng 2.1) born of the Virgin in the Cave on Christmas Day.

In the mystery of the Annunciation (Mar 25), He who thought it not robbery to be equal to God the Father emptied Himself. The Holy Spirit overshadows the Holy Virgin as He did the tabernacle of Moses and the Temple of Solomon. It is the witness of the Father Himself to the Virgin as the Living Temple of His Son; the Holy Spirit overshadowing the Virgin corresponds to the witness of the Holy Spirit resting on Jesus at the Jordan, bearing witness to Him as the Son of God. And, in the Holy Spirit, the LORD spins from Her ‘pure blood’ a ‘garment’ of our flesh and blood. In the mystery of His conception of the Holy Spirit and the Virgin Mary, He puts us on and becomes the Son of Man, so that we can put Him on in Holy Baptism and become sons (and daughters) of God.

United to His Holy Virgin Mother, The LORD who is God the Son becomes a partaker of our flesh and blood (Heb 2.14), even to the point of death on the Cross. (Phil 2.5-11) In the flesh and blood He receives as an offering from His Holy Mother in the mysteries of Annunciation and Christmas, He is made able to die in His Holy Pascha. By His death on the Cross In the flesh, in His Holy Pascha that begins at Annunciation, hidden beneath the veil of the Virgin’s sacred womb, and that is made manifest at Christmas, and again at the Meeting of the LORD in the Temple, and again at the Jordan (when the Heavens are opened at Theophany and remain sealed, as the Virgin’s womb is opened at Christmas and remains sealed, and as the Heavens are opened again at the Savior’s death on the Cross and remain sealed, and finally, as the Tomb is opened on Pascha morning and remains sealed) – that is how God saves us!

For, understand well: this Jesus born of the Virgin in the flesh, so that He can die on the Cross in the flesh, is the Son of God through whom the Father created the world and everything in it. When, therefore, He dies on the Cross – voluntarily, i.e., in obedience to the Father, because He wants to save man, He wants to deliver man from death and raise him up to life everlasting – and when in His human soul He descends into hell, He destroys the devil who holds us in the power of death. He shatters the iron bars; He demolishes the brass gates, as the prophets foretold (Ps 107 & Isaiah).

In the flesh He receives as an offering from His Holy Virgin Mother at His conception as a man in Her sacred womb at the Annunciation, He begins to work our salvation in the midst of the earth – in our flesh and blood that has been corrupted by our disobedience, our sins and trespasses, and crippled by our bondage to death our whole life-long (Heb 2.15).

Can you see, then, that this morning’s Gospel is an icon of the whole mystery of our salvation, beginning with the Annunciation, becoming manifest at Christmas when God appears on the earth and is seen living among men (Bar 3.17), becoming incomprehensibly manifest in the supreme Theophany of the Savior’s Cross, becoming hidden again in the Tomb of the LORD’s Holy Pascha, and becoming manifest again, even as it remains hidden, in the Pentecost of our Holy Baptism?

 The crippled woman, bent over to the ground, unable to stand up straight, unable to rise up from the ‘dust of death,’ comes into the synagogue. The synagogue was the extension of the Temple of Jerusalem into the cities and villages of Israel; it’s where the Scriptures – the Law of Moses, the prophets, the Psalms – were read and closely examined. The synagogue of this morning’s Gospel is an icon of every Orthodox parish. Like every other Orthodox parish, St Herman’s is an ‘extension’ of the Temple of God, the Living Temple of the Holy Virgin. In every Orthodox parish, the Scriptures are read and closely examined.

But here is where the shadow of the synagogue gives way to the icon, the reality of the Church, which is the Body of Christ (Heb 10.1). For as the LORD Jesus Christ in our Gospel this morning came on the Sabbath into the synagogue in the flesh from the Virgin in the Cave, so that the words bearing witness to Him in the Scriptures, that were studied so assiduously in the synagogue, received the WORD of those words Himself, transforming the synagogue suddenly into an icon of the Living Temple of the Virgin, so Christ is in our midst, having come to us from the Living Temple of His Virgin Mother in the mysteries of Christmas and in the Sabbath Rest of His Holy Pascha, the flesh and blood of His Body risen from the dead, hidden beneath the veils of the sacramental mysteries of His Body, the Church, which are made manifest to us in the movements, the sounds, the sights, the smells of the liturgical worship of the Church, which is His Body, which is Immanuel, ‘God with us’ in the flesh of His life-giving Heavenly Spirit that raised Him in the flesh from the dead, the same Heavenly Spirit that raised us from death to life in the waters of the Font, the same Heavenly Spirit that is given to us as our food and drink, nourishing us and making us to grow in the Resurrection and the Life that is Jesus Christ Himself, the Son of God who has become, in the Living Temple of His Virgin Mother, the Son of Man.

In the Church that is the Body of Christ, we do not just read and hear about Christ. We eat and drink Him. For the Church is not the synagogue that is about the Christ of God the Father. the Church is His very Body and Blood. The Church is the Christ of God the Father. In the Church, we don’t just read and talk about Him. We receive Him into our body and blood, and we offer ourselves to Him in the bloodless sacrifice of His Body and Blood, given to us as our food and drink.

For, understand! In the mysteries of Christmas, God drew very, very near to us, so near that He became a partaker of our flesh and blood (Heb 2.14), so near that, in the flesh and blood He received from His Virgin Mother, He shared with us in our death, because that is how He was able to save us. By His death, He destroyed death and gave life to those in the tombs. And in the mysteries of His Holy Pascha, He has opened Eden again so that all who will, can, in the Heavenly Spirit of His Holy Resurrection that He bestows on all who love Him, they are made able, they are given the power in the Spirit of Christ to enter, and to draw near to Christ, like the crippled woman in this morning’s Gospel, in the fear of God with faith and love. They are able, they are given the power to draw so near to Christ that they can become, if they want to, partakers of Christ (Heb 2.14); they can eat and drink the Fruit of the Tree of Life, the Child of the Virgin; and in partaking of Christ, they can become communicants of the divine nature! (2 Pt 1.4)

Dear faithful, let us raise our minds on high and, in spirit, let us make our way to Bethlehem! That is the path we’re on in this most blessed season of Advent, the season of the coming of Immanuel! Dear faithful, turn the back of your souls to the darkness of the west. Turn your faces to the Light of the East. Follow the Star, the Angel of the LORD, to Bethlehem, to the cave of your soul, and behold in the beauty of Christ’s Holy Church, the Virgin giving birth to the Precious Rose of Sharon in the Cave, the cave of your own soul! Amen! Glory to Jesus Christ! Most Holy Theotokos, save us!

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