Colossians 3.4-11

Luke 14.16-24

The meal in this morning’s Gospel is a supper; it’s an evening meal. In this world, evening is when the sun disappears beneath the horizon; it is the beginning of darkness. Evening for us is the end of the day; but, in the biblical world of the Church, evening is the beginning of the new day. This Gospel Supper, then, is a Midnight Feast when the old passes away and the new is coming in the Light, in the Glory of Christ.

Creation began in darkness. The Psalmist tells us that the darkness, which the LORD calls Night (Gn 1.6), proclaims the knowledge of God (Ps 17/18.2), indicating that the darkness is the impenetrable depths of divine Wisdom. In the same Psalm, the Psalmist teaches us that the LORD made darkness His secret place; and foreseeing the Last Day, the evening of creation, when the LORD would become incarnate of the Holy Virgin, the Psalmist teaches us that His tabernacle – i.e., His flesh and blood Body – round about Him was dark waters and thick clouds of the skies. [Ps 17/18.11]. Might this be Bosom of the Father and the Holy Spirit that enwraps the mystery of Jesus the incarnate God?

I see the Psalmist’s teaching uncovering the theology in this morning’s Gospel.

‘Dark waters and thick clouds,’ directs our mind to the creation, when, it says, ‘Darkness was on the Face of the Deep.’ [Gn 1.2]. The full passage of the Psalm that I’m quoting from looks very much like a vision of the LORD’s Crucifixion. After describing his vision, the Psalmist then says, ‘the Rivers of the waters were seen [cf Eze 47.1-10], and the foundations of the world were uncovered.’

If the Psalmist’s vision is of the LORD’s Crucifixion, then the Rivers that were seen when the foundations of the world were uncovered would be the Living Waters of the Holy Spirit brooding over the waters of creation. And the Foundation of the world that was uncovered is the Son of God Himself in the flesh, uncovered, hanging naked on the Cross.

In this vision of the Psalmist, the Foundation of the world, so we are given to ‘see’, is not some lifeless, impersonal thing. It is the Person of God the Son, He Who Is the only-begotten God, whose dark ‘secret place’ is the incomprehensible and unknowable bosom of the Father [Jn 1.18].

St Paul teaches us this morning: ‘When Christ who is our Life appears, then you also will appear with Him in Glory.’ In Glory: in His uncreated Light in which is your life (Jn 1.4) – not your biological life that is of this world that passes away, but the uncreated Life of God whose substance is an unfathomable abyss of compassion and mercy. This is the ‘deep darkness’ from out of which the heavens and earth came to be and on which they were founded.

And Christ, the Light of the world in whom is our Life, has appeared – as the Light appeared from out of the darkness in the creation. He, the True Light, came into the world in our flesh and blood; and, in our flesh and blood, i.e., as one of us, as a man, He appeared for the first time in the flesh in the world on Christmas Day.

Where did He appear? In the darkness of the Cave. And from the darkness of the Cave, and from the darkness of the Virgin’s most sacred womb, from the darkness of the Father’s Bosom, He came forth into the world. He ‘came to be flesh’ [Jn 1.14] from the darkness, from the impenetrable depths of the bosom of the Father and in the sacred darkness of the Virgin’s most blessed womb. In the Cave of Christmas, in the Light streaming from the Christ Child’s Holy Face, and in the Light of the Fire of the Holy Spirit that burns in the Most Beloved Virgin (as it burned in the Bush on Mt Horeb that was not consumed [Ex 3.2]), illumining the Cave as though it is the prequel to Mt Tabor, we look back at Gen 1 again, and now see the Light that ‘came to be’ in the beginning from out of the darkness in the form of the Light of the Law, and in whose Light, the world and everything in it was created, as the first prophecy of the Incarnation that would ‘come to be’ on the Last Day, in the evening of the world.

And on Christmas Day, in the Cave illumined by the ‘radiant beams of uncreated Light streaming from Christ’s Holy Face’ and the Fire of God emanating from the Holy Virgin, we see the True Light in whom is the Life of men coming into the world – but now He does not ‘come to be’ in the form of the Law; He ‘comes to be’ in the flesh, and He becomes a partaker of our flesh and blood (Heb 2.14). He ‘springs forth from the seedless womb of the Virgin and keeps it uncorrupt and, in the Cave He reveals to us a New Creation.’ [Akathist to Theotokos, Ekos 7] The way is open for us now to become a partaker of Christ [Heb 3.14] and, in partaking of Christ’s human nature, His Body and Blood, to become a communicant of His divine nature (2 Pt 1.4).

Oh, but on Great and Holy Friday, that same Light was placed in the darkness of the Tomb in the darkness of the evening.

Can you see the theology? The darkness of the Cave, the darkness of the Tomb, in the darkness of the evening of Great and Holy Friday, when the Sabbath Day, the Last Day of the week, or rather, the Last Day of creation, is beginning, this is the darkness that the LORD makes to be His ‘secret place’ when He appeared and was wrapped about in the ‘darkness’ of His ‘swaddling clothes,’ the ‘darkness’ of the Shroud, the impenetrable Mystery of His Incarnation and our salvation in which the True Light becomes our Life, partaking of our flesh and blood so that we can become partakers of His divine nature!

In the darkness of the Cave of Bethlehem, Christ our Life first appeared in the flesh. And the darkness of the Cave was illumined with the Light of His incomprehensible mercy and compassion! And when they placed His Body in the Tomb, it says that the Sabbath epefosken [Lk 23.54] – was illumined with the uncreated Light of Christ shining forth like lightning [Ps 17/18.12-14] from the darkness of the Tomb in the darkness of the evening! For it wasn’t the Tomb only but also the Sabbath, the Last Day of the week, the evening of the creation, that received the True Light and the True Light shone forth in the darkness, and the darkness could not put it out. Instead, the darkness became all Light. But if the True Light, Our LORD God and Savior Jesus Christ, is shining in the darkness of the evening of creation, it can only mean a New Creation is ‘coming to be,’ a New Day is dawning.

From the theology of the Psalmist, this evening meal we read about in this morning’s Gospel is revealed to be the Feast celebrating the beginning of the New Creation. It is the Holy Eucharist of the Church. It is the ‘LORD’s Supper’ that Adam and Eve were called to in the Garden. Its main course is the immortal Fruit of the Tree of Life, brought forth from the Virgin in the Cave, and poured out on us as the New Wine of the Holy Spirit on Pascha Night! It is the Body and Blood of Christ risen from the dead. It is Resurrection and Life that gives Life to those who partake of it. It is a bloodless sacrifice that sanctifies our flesh and blood because it is the offering of God’s love to us, and the offering of our love to the God who first loved us. And if it is an Evening Supper, that means we are at the evening of time; we are today in the Last Day. But that means we are today at the beginning of the New Day that will have no evening. For the First Day of the New Creation that will be eternal began to dawn in the darkness of this creation, bounded by death, when they placed the Body of the True Light – in whom is the life of men – in the Tomb on the Day of Preparation – the preparation for what? The preparation for the New Creation, preparation for the birth, in time-space, of the Church, the risen Body of Christ God!

Eating this meal on this, the evening of the Last Day, we shall not die as Adam but live, for we are eating and drinking the Resurrection and the Life, Christ God Himself, so that even though we die, we shall live. [Jn 11.25]

The Feast of Christmas now less than two weeks away is but the first course of this evening meal. The entrée is the Feast of Pascha. Its dessert is the Second Coming of Christ when Christ who is our Life shall appear and we shall be with Him in Glory, in the uncreated Light of His Holy Resurrection, in whom is our Life.

And, yes, you are being compelled to come to the Last Supper of the LORD! How so? Time itself is compelling you! Evening and morning, the days of this world roll on one by one, step by step, and as they do, they are compelling us inexorably to this Evening Supper of the Last Day. It is the Supper of Christmas and of Pascha, of the Church’s Holy Eucharist.

Time is compelling you to come to the Last Day of this evening Supper. Even so, you are not being compelled to put on the wedding garment that would seat you at the table of this Supper. You may choose to don the wedding garment of the world’s many idols, to give your love to the distractions and the riches of this life. And so, though you will be compelled to enter the Great Banquet Hall and stand before the Judge of all, you will enter without a wedding garment. You will have no wedding garment because you will have made no effort to unite yourself in the fear of God, with faith and love, to the Heavenly Bridegroom, to the LORD Jesus Christ, your Husband, your Creator, your God.

We can, however, choose to come to the Feast not by the compulsion of time, but by the compulsion of our soul’s longing for the Bridegroom who first loved us and gave Himself for us that we might become the Righteousness and the Life of God, partakers of the Savior’s divine nature in His Supper of the Holy Eucharist. And how do we learn to love the Bridegroom? By choosing, out of love for the Heavenly Bridegroom, to deny ourselves, to take up our cross, and to follow Him by crucifying our flesh with its passions, putting to death all that’s earthly in us, in the desire to lose our life for His sake – for that’s what love longs to do – that we might find our life in the Bridal Chamber of His Holy Resurrection, clothed in His Glory.

The invitation has gone out. In the fear of God, with faith and love, draw near! Come to the Feast of Christmas! Come to the Light and drink the waters of immortality Life from the Fountain of Life! How will you respond? Amen! Most holy Theotokos, save us!