Hebrews 11:9-10, 17-23, 32-40

Matthew 1:1-25

‘The Book of the Genesis of Jesus Christ,’ is how our Gospel begins on this the Sunday before Christmas, the Nativity of Christ. We open the Book of Christmas this morning and find ourselves peering into unfathomable depths of theology. We have time this morning to contemplate only this opening phrase.

The formula corresponds to the ‘Book of Life,’ or the ‘Book of the Living,’ which in turn corresponds to ‘Eve, the Mother of all the Living, a clue perhaps that both the Book of Life and the Book of the Genesis of Jesus Christ are the woman. But the woman was called Eve after the curse of the transgression returned Adam to the ground whence he was taken, the ground that was now the ‘dust of death (Ps 21/22.15), and the woman was, instead, the ‘Book of the dead.’

Why did Adam name the woman Eve after the transgression if she was the mother not of the living but of dead? We ‘read’ the answer this morning, when we ‘open’ the Book of Christmas and begin reading the Book of the ‘Genesis of Jesus Christ.’ The Evangelist says: ‘Now, the genesis of Jesus Christ was in this manner. The Virgin Mary – who did not know Joseph (or any man) - brought gave birth to a Son and called His Name, Jesus, in fulfillment of the prophet, Isaiah: ‘Behold, a Virgin shall conceive, and bear a Son, and His Name will be called ‘Immanuel,’ God with us.’ (Mt 1.18-25) Adam named the woman, Eve, as a prophecy even before the prophet, Isaiah, of the Virgin who would conceive and give birth to Immanuel, ‘God With Us.’ In the Holy Virgin, the woman has become ‘Eve’, the Mother of Life, for She is the Virgin Mother of God, Theotokos, the Mother of Jesus, Himself the Resurrection and the Life (Jn 11.25).

It says in Luke that the Holy Spirit overshadowed Her (Lk 1.35), as He did the waters of creation, the Tabernacle of Moses, the Temple of Solomon [and what is the theology of the Virgin revealed in this?), and She conceived without male seed the Son of God who became, in Her, the Son of Man, our ‘kinsman,’ God Himself partaking of our flesh and blood. (Heb 2.14)

Therefore, when we pass through the ‘living waters’ of the Church’s Baptismal Font, and we unite to Christ, for He received His Body from Her, we are being born from above of the Holy Spirit and the Virgin Mary. Christ becomes our ‘brother,’ our adelphos, for we are born of the same womb as He; we become children of God in the Virgin, and She becomes our Mother.

The Holy Virgin Mary is the real Mother of all the living; and if we are Her children, then we are Her living children. For She is ‘full of Grace.’ She is full of God the Son; She is full of Resurrection and Life. She is filled with the Fire of God. She burns as the Bush on Mt Horeb that was not consumed, for the Fire that burns in Her is God Himself, God the Son, Himself the Image of God (Col 1.15) in whom we were made.

If She is Theotokos, Mother of God, then She is the Mother of Fire, the uncreated Fire of divine love [eros]. And She is not consumed by the Fire of God because, if we were created by God in His Image, Jesus Christ, then we were created in the Fire of God. To burn with the Fire of God is our very nature.

When we unite ourselves to Christ and are raised from the Living Waters of the Church’s Baptismal Font as from death, we become ‘full of Grace,’ burning with the Living Fire of God, we live. We are not consumed, we do not die. It’s when we stop burning with the Fire of God that we stop living. The feeble fire of our biological life quickly goes out; and we go back to the dust whence we were taken.

But if the Fire of God now is the Life that burns in us, does that not mean that we hold in our earthen vessels the Treasure of Jesus Christ, the Resurrection and the Life? And now, are not our bodies become a Book of Life in our Mother, the Holy Virgin Theotokos?

Now, we may be added to the Book of the Genesis of Jesus Christ. For, if in the Living Waters of the Baptismal Font, we become ‘brethren’ of Christ, ‘adelphoi,’ born from the same womb, then united to Christ through the Holy Spirit and His Holy Virgin Mother, we are now united to all the generations of Israel. We are raised from the Font as children of Abraham, children of the Faith of Abraham.

For Abraham’s faith was much more than a mental exercise. His faith became flesh and blood in Isaac; the seed of Abraham’s faith was carried through all the generations of Israel until it blossomed, like Aaron’s rod, as the Holy Virgin Mary; and in Her, Israel gives birth to God in the flesh.

She, the Virgin Theotokos, is revealed to be the ‘woman’ who would heal the aloneness of every man, both male and female; for She is the woman who gives birth to God in the flesh, rendering the Son of God to be the Son of Man, ‘God with us!’ And in this, She shows what was meant when the LORD appointed Her to be the helpmate of the man He created as male and female.

Through Her, God becomes flesh and dwells in us; He becomes a partaker of our flesh and blood (Heb 2.14). In that flesh and blood, He destroys our death by His death (Heb 2.15). And in our uniting ourselves to Christ in the Baptismal Font, we become partakers of Christ’s flesh and blood; and in becoming partakers of Christ (Heb 3.14), we become partakers of His divine nature, of His uncreated Fire, of His uncreated Grace, of His eternal Life, His Holy Spirit (2 Pt 1.4), and so are ‘helped’ by the Woman, the Virgin Theotokos, the New Eve, Mother of Life, to become ‘Gods, sons of the Most High’ (Ps 82.6); and so, through Her mediation and Her birthgiving, man is restored to his original nature as the son of God (Lk 3.38).

Coming to Christmas, then, we learn that the whole of the Old Testament is the ‘Book of the Genesis of Jesus Christ,’ and that Book begins as the ‘Book of the Genesis of heaven and earth, when heaven and earth came to be,’ (Gn 2.4), and as the Book of the Genesis of Adam when God created him in the Image of God as male and female’ (Gn 5.1-2)

But, on Christmas, we learn that the whole of the Old Testament is but the Prologue of the ‘Book of Genesis.’ For, on Christmas, we turn the page and ‘pass over’ to the First Chapter of the Genesis of Jesus Christ – which, dear faithful, is revealed in the LORD Jesus Christ’s Holy Pascha to be the ‘Genesis,’ the beginning of the creation of the New Heavens and the New Earth, and the beginning, the ‘Genesis,’ of the creation of Man as a New Creation.

For, in Christ Jesus, the Son of God incarnate, born of the Virgin as Son of Man, the hope of the prophets ‘comes to be.’ The old heart, the heart of stone that was dead, and that was desperately corrupt and deceitful above all things (Jer 17.9), is extracted (Eze 11.19). And the New Man, the God-Man Jesus Christ, by His death and Resurrection, creates in us a clean heart, a heart of flesh, a living heart; and now, when we unite ourselves to Christ, the Door who alone opens onto the Father, our heart opens onto the primordial depths in which we were created; we open out onto the deep beyond all things (Jer 17.9 LXX), in the mystery of God, which is ‘Christ in you!’

For, in the Church, in the Body of Christ born of the Virgin Theotokos, we are born of a New Birth; we are born not of the seed, or the blood, or the lust of man, but of the Holy Spirit and the Virgin Mary. In the living waters of the Church’s Baptismal Font, we are virgin-born. The foreshadowing of Resurrection and Life in the birth of Isaac, raised from Abraham and Sarah who were as good as dead because they were past the age of child-bearing, and the birth of the Virgin, also born of parents who were as good as dead, is now here. For the Resurrection and the Life Himself, Jesus Christ, is born of the Virgin from a seedless conception. How, then, do we enter into this New Birth to become New Creatures, born of the New Eve, Bride of the Father? Dear ones, we become, in Christ, sons of David. We become children of repentance.

Christmas is the beginning, the Genesis, of the inner Exodus of the Gospel, to the Tomb of Christ’s Holy Pascha, when creation will be ‘finished’ with His death on the Cross, and the New Creation begins in the darkness of the LORD’s Tomb. It begins in us when we unite ourselves to Christ, and we are written in the Book of Life, the Holy Virgin Theotokos. Amen!