Ephesians 6.10-17

Luke 18.35-43

Our journey to the LORD’s Holy Pascha has begun. On Thursday last, the LORD said: ‘Behold, we are going up to Jerusalem. All things written by the prophets concerning the Son of Man will be completed. He will be given over to the nations and they will kill Him, and He will rise on the Third Day.’ But His disciples, it says, understood none of these things. His word was hidden from them. They did not know what He was saying. I’m thinking that this is not meant as a chastisement of the disciples. It may mean rather to awaken in us awe and the fear of God because it is saying that the unveiling of the ‘Mystery of God hidden from the ages’ has begun.

Remember that, at Christmas, it was hidden to the Virgin Mother Herself how She could give birth to God (Lk 1.34) and was now holding Him in Her arms, nursing Him – even as She was looking directly into the eyes of the Mystery of God Himself! Yesterday, our Gospel reading was the prayer of Jesus rejoicing in the Holy Spirit and saying, "I thank thee, Father, that Thou hast hidden these things from the wise and understanding and revealed them to babes.” (Luk 10.21) And, on Friday, our reading was from St Peter’s first epistle: “The prophets,” he writes, “searched and inquired what person or time was indicated by the Spirit of Christ within them when predicting the sufferings of Christ and His subsequent glory, mysteries into which angels longed to stoop down to peer into. (1 Pe 1.10-12)

This verb, “which angels longed to stoop down to peer into” takes us full circle back to Jesus’ word to His disciples last Thursday, that the Son of Man would be given over to the nations and slain. Remember that the disciples confessed Jesus to be the Son of God, not from their own reasoning but from the revelation of God the Father. How, then, could it be that Jesus, the Son of God, would be killed? This verb for the angels stooping down to peer into the mystery of God hidden in the words of the prophets is the same verb (parakuptsas) for St John and St Peter stooping down to peer into the LORD’s Tomb (Jn 20.5). It means that the Mystery of God is hidden from the ages in the Tomb of the LORD’s Sabbath Rest. How could God die and be buried as a corpse in a tomb? The Mystery of God which is Christ in you, the hope of glory (Col 1.27), is the mystery of God becoming partaking of our flesh and blood to the point of becoming one with us in our death! One can understand why this word of the LORD to His disciples was hidden from them, why they understood nothing that He was saying to them!

For, St John, it says, believed but not until he himself was inside the LORD’s empty Tomb – not until he was in the mystery of the death of God – and he saw the burial clothes and the turban neatly folded and laying off to the side. (Jn 20.7-8) Up until then, it says, he with the other disciples still did not know the Scriptures, that the Christ must rise from the dead. Even yet, however, when the risen LORD appeared to His disciples and stood among them, even showing them His hands and His feet, that He was not a ghost, even then, it says, the disciples disbelieved – but they disbelieved for joy, and continued to marvel. The verb means they could not wrap their minds around what they were seeing. They were completely discombobulated, disoriented (Lk 24.41). Its fullness was still hidden to them, beyond their ability to comprehend it. It wasn’t until the risen LORD Himself – i.e., the LORD inside the mystery of His death – opened their minds that they were able to understand the scriptures, and He Himself taught them in that hour: "Thus it is written, that the Christ should suffer and on the third day rise from the dead. (Luk 24.45-46)

What are the lessons from all of this? That the death and resurrection of Christ God is hidden from the eyes of the world because it is the mystery of Christ in you, hidden in the tomb of your heart (St Macarios Homily 11.11). It is the mystery of God becoming one with us even to the point of sharing in our death and taking upon Himself the curse of our sins (Heb 2.14, Gal 3.13), making Himself to be sin for us, even though He Himself knew no sin, so that in Him we might become the righteousness of God. (2 Co 5.21) And so, therefore, in Christ, you are dead, and so your life – your resurrection – is now hidden with Christ in God. (Col 3.3)

The mystery of God hidden from the ages is the Resurrection and the Life (Jn 11.25) in you, in the tomb of your heart where you are dead in your sins and trespasses (Eph 2.1). This means that the mystery of Christ remains hidden from us until, in the grace and power received at our Holy Baptism when we are united to Christ in the likeness of His death, we take up our cross and begin following Christ into the tomb of our heart by crucifying, putting to death, all that is earthly in us: fornication, sexual perversities, impurity, passion, evil desire, and covetousness, which is idolatry. We must put them all away, together with anger, wrath, malice, slander, and foul talk from our mouth. Christ remains hidden to us until we put off the old nature with all its practices, and put on the new nature and begin to be renewed daily in knowledge after the image of our creator (Col 3.5, 8-10), as we hold to the Root of our Faith – Jesus Christ – firmly to the end (Heb 3.14), and as we walk daily in the Light of Christ within us as children of the Light (Eph 5.8, 1 Jn 1.7).

Outside the tomb of our heart, outside the ascetical disciplines of crucifying all that is earthly in us, the mystery of Christ within us remains hidden to us! The Gospel remains only words and concepts – and incredible ones at that!

Even so, there is a saving disbelief as we saw a moment ago. It is the disbelief of joy that cannot comprehend the magnitude of salvation in Christ. We see what remains hidden, incomprehensible, to us: that the uncreated God has become a partaker of our flesh and blood, even of our death (Heb 2.14), so that we can become communicants of the Divine Nature (2 Pt 1.4), of God’s own uncreated Light and Eternal Life, of God Himself! The saints of God see it, they experience it, but not even they comprehend the fullness of the Mystery even though they are clothed in it, even though it has become their life and the fullness of their joy, satisfying their every desire - epithumia!

In this Light, we may begin to see what remains hidden in the LORD healing the blind man of Jericho this morning, proclaiming in that healing that the journey to the LORD’s Holy Pascha – His victory on the Cross – has begun! The city of Jericho was one of several fortified cities that Israel, under Joshua (Jesus), had to conquer before finally taking Jerusalem in order to take possession of Canaan, the Land given by God to Abraham as Israel’s inheritance.

The LORD is going up to Jerusalem, it said in our Gospel last Thursday. That means that the Tree of Life has come down from the top of the Edenic mountain in order to go up to Golgotha, the mountain opposite Jerusalem (Eze 11.23), to the very spot that Adam fell and died in the transgression. The journey to the LORD’s Pascha, dear ones, is an inner Exodus first into the tomb of our own heart, the tomb of Lazarus, where we are dead in our sins and trespasses, that we may hear the LORD calling to us with a Great Voice: ‘Come forth!’ And if we answer that command, we will find ourselves following the LORD into His Tomb, its hidden mystery revealed as the narrow Gate of Heaven through which He is leading us up to the Land of our Inheritance, the Kingdom of Heaven in the joy of His Holy Resurrection. The healing of the blind man, then, means that hell has been conquered in the ‘hidden’ man of our heart. It means that the uncreated Light of Wisdom, Jesus Christ, is illumining us from within if we will but turn to Him and call on Him, ‘LORD, have mercy on me!’ But, the Light of Christ is the Life of men, shining in the darkness unconquered (Jn 1.3-4). The LORD healing the blind man then proclaims to us that He is creating in us a new heart and putting into us a new and right Spirit. It means that our old man is passing away, the new man is rising from the dead in the Power, in the Joy, in the Light and Life of Christ’s Death and Resurrection.

In the Church, in the Body of the risen Christ, the faithful always are passing from joy to joy. We leave the joy of Theophany this morning only to enter the joy of the Meeting of the LORD, and then the joy of the Annunciation, and finally the Joy of the LORD’s Holy Pascha. The LORD Himself told us yesterday what our joy is all about: Do not rejoice that the spirits are subject to you (which they are); but rejoice because your names are written in heaven." (Luk 10.20) In the world, you have tribulation, but you are of God; rejoice for He who is in you is greater than he who is in the world, and Christ Our God and Deliverer has overcome the world (Jn 16.33, 1 Jn 4.4). And this is the very Christ who is within you! Amen! Glory to Jesus Christ!