Ephesians 2.14-22

Luke 12.16-21

‘There are two paths,’ we read in The Didache, or The Teaching of the Twelve Apostles, an ancient Christian text written around 70 AD, ‘one of life and one of death, and there is a great difference between these two paths.’ The Didache echoes the teaching of Our LORD Jesus Christ: ‘Strive to enter through the narrow gate, for many will seek to enter and will not be able to. Enter by the narrow gate; for wide is the gate and broad is the way that leads to destruction, and there are many who go in by it. [Luk 13:24 & Mat 7:13]

In the Church, we have entered the beautiful season of Advent. I say, ‘in the Church,’ because in the world, where men have forgotten God, Advent is all about accumulating ‘riches’ under the tree. The world would have us prepare for Christmas by taking advantage of all its ‘Black Friday’ (in contrast to the Church’s Great and Holy Friday?) pre-Christmas sales to accumulate more riches. No need to build barns for these riches. They’ll shortly have become passe, and they’ll be found sooner or later on the curb, or in next Spring’s garage sales.

In the world, the tinsel and glitter of the Christmas ‘holidays’ only veil a season of overwrought frenzy, everyone rushing to get the ‘riches’ for all one’s friends and family packaged and mailed before the lines at the Post Office spill outside in the cold and biting wind, in the midst of tending to all the other errands this season of greed and gluttony pile onto our ‘to do’ list, on top of keeping up with all the other worldly obligations and deadlines of job and family that do not go on vacation for these ‘happy holidays.’

Meanwhile, in the Church, these six weeks of Advent serve to restore the soul in a holy anticipation of sacred joy. While nature itself is following the narrow Path of Life and retreating beneath a blanket of snow in the stillness that descends and broods over the earth, and while the sun gathers its rays and slips beneath the horizon for a long winter’s nap, the faithful retreat into the stillness of the Nativity Fast. Withdrawing far from the ‘madding crowd,’ hidden from the eyes of the world, they take up their cross; and attending to the sacred hymnology of the Church’s worship, they seek that narrow Path of Life that descends into the cave of the heart. They strive to purify their hearts with tears of contrition and repentance and humility that they may join the Shepherds and the Wise Men on Christmas Day to kneel in the presence of the incarnate God and behold the wonder of the Virgin giving birth in the Cave to Christ, the Savior of the world, as Isaiah foretold (Isa 7.14).

During the two major fasting seasons of the Church (Advent and Great Lent) I think these two Paths – the one of life, the other of death; the one that is narrow, the other that is broad and easy, the one of the Church, the other of the world – are most clearly visible. In our Scripture lessons this morning, these two Paths are set before us, the broad and easy Path of death as a barn, the narrow Path of Life as a Temple of God. Let us note that the barn, which I think it fair to say is the ‘temple’ of the world’s greed and self-esteem, is built by human hands. But the Temple of God is not built by human hands.

As we read in Ephesians this morning, the Temple of God is your own body, soul and mind. You are a Temple of God not made by hands, and you are being built by the Hands of God for the purpose of becoming the dwelling place of God and the Treasury of all His riches. These are the eternal riches the soul hopes and longs for: the riches of love, joy, peace, and eternal life in eternal communion with the Father, Son and Holy Spirit, in the embrace of His Most Holy Mother, the Virgin Mary Theotokos, the ‘mother of us all’ (Gal 4.26).

For She is the Living Temple of God through whom we become Temples of God. From Her most pure blood, the Living God builds the Temple of His Body that He will raise from the grave on the Third Day (Jn 2.19-21). Dear ones, this Body that the LORD God will build as His Holy Temple from the Pure Blood of His Holy Mother, the Living Temple of God, is the Temple not made with human hands you hear tell of in Holy Scripture; and, dear ones, please see that this Body not made with human hands but by the Hands of God from the Living Temple of the Holy Virgin, is just like our body! It is like this body that you and I now dwell in! For Christ’s Body fashioned from the pure blood of the Virgin by the Hands of God is just like the original body of Adam that, note well, was not made with human hands. This our body that we inherited from Adam, this body, too, was fashioned originally from the earth by the Hands of God – God the Son and God the Holy Spirit!

Is it mere coincidence that at the beginning of this beautiful and sacred season of Advent, we celebrate the Entrance of the Theotokos into the Temple of God in Jerusalem? She is the Temple of God; She is the Heavenly Jerusalem. The Temple of Jerusalem, built by human hands, receives the Temple of God fashioned from the blood of Her parents, Joachim and Anna, fashioned from the blood of David and Abraham and Adam. So, when Her parents, Joachim and Anna, offer to God She who is the Living Temple of God, and bring Her to the Temple at the age of 3 to be nurtured and raised by the living God, they are offering the whole line of Israel and the whole race of Adam, all the nations, to God. As we hear at Christmas, She is our offering to God. Through our offering, God receives a Mother. Now, in His Holy Mother, in His Holy Temple, He can become flesh and dwell among us, and root Himself in our root, in our heart, our personal center, at that point where we live and die, where we come to be and pass away, and so fill our death with Himself so that He can destroy the enmity, death, that separates us from Him, He Who is our LORD and our Creator, the Heavenly Bridegroom, the Only Lover of Mankind, so that now, in His the Temple of His Body that He built from the pure blood of His Mother, His Living Temple, we can be restored in the peace of God to our original access to the Father in the Holy Spirit.

But look closely and catch the glimmer of another treasure hiding here. It glistens in the riddle of Luke’s genealogy, which takes us to the riddle of the first Adam’s creation in Genesis 2.7. Where is Adam’s mother?

Do you see? Adam’s mother was the dust of the ground! The Mother of all the Living, Eve, came from Adam’s rib. She is the mother of the whole human race but one, Adam. And she, through the transgression, became the mother not of the living but of the dead, for everyone born of the woman is born in death and corruption. The original mother of Adam, the dust of the ground, became the mother of all Adam’s children and even of the woman who came from Adam’s rib. For, remember what the LORD says to Adam and Eve: ‘You are of the dust, and to the dust you shall return.’ That is, ‘Your Mother is the dust of the ground, and to your Mother, the dust, now become the dust of death (Ps 21/22.15 – i.e. of separation from God), you will return.’

The Holy Virgin Mary most significantly was born through the power of God of barren parents. She, too, is a daughter of Eve. She, too, is originally from the dust of death. Yet, from Her womb that made fertile the barren soil of Anna’s womb, the New Adam, the Son of God, is born in the flesh – i.e., He is born in the dust of death which, in the Resurrection of the Virgin’s Son, becomes the Fountain of our Resurrection and our eternal Life! Dear ones, in Christ, the New Adam, the first Adam finally receives a Mother not of the dust, but of living flesh and blood. She is the Holy Virgin Mary, the Mother of God, who has become the Mother of Resurrection and Life to all those who receive Her Son and God, the New Adam, the Resurrection and the Life. In Christ, the New Adam, we share the same Father, God the Father; and we share the same Mother, the Holy Virgin Mary, the Mother of God. In our Mother, the Holy Virgin Theotokos, the Son of God becomes the Son of Man and we sons of men become sons of God; we become children of Light and Life. When we unite ourselves to Christ in the sacred Font, we do not return to the dust of the ground; we are raised from it because we are sown in the womb of our new mother, She who is the Mother of Christ God Our Resurrection and Our Life, our true Inheritance. And the dust of the ground that we are, as we strive to walk the narrow Path of Life, is being built by Her Son and Our God in His Holy Resurrection into a Living Temple not made with hands. And now we are becoming a Living Temple that houses the living God in Resurrection and Life. We become a new creation because our Mother is no longer the dust of death. She is the Holy Virgin Mary, the Mother of God, the Mother of Resurrection and Life. In Her Son and our God, She becomes our Mother; we become a New Man; we become children of God! Our inheritance is not earthly riches that return to the dust; it is Christ God Himself who has destroyed our death by His death.

In the dread joy of Christmas, as we behold the Virgin giving birth to God in the cave, we behold the wonder of the riches of God becoming the very fiber of our being, because we see God become bone of our bones and flesh of our flesh so that, when we offer ourselves to God as a living sacrifice, to be built into His Living Temple not made with hands, we become one Spirit with Him. Death no longer has dominion over us. Our riches are the eternal Life of God because our wealth is Christ God Himself, Our Resurrection and Our Eternal Life! We are no longer barns. We have become Living Temples of the God who has destroyed our death by His death! Amen!