Hebrews 11.24-26, 32-12.2

John 1.43-51

It says that Philip found Nathanael and says to him: ‘We have found Him of whom Moses and the prophets wrote in the Law! Come and see!’

Dear faithful, when you come to the Church, you’re not coming to a meeting of people gathering together to talk about their understanding of Jesus and what they think the salvation is that is in Him. You are joining Nathanael and Philip, and you are coming with them to Jesus Himself and into His immediate presence because the Holy Orthodox Church is the Body of Christ. It is His crucified and risen Body. When you come to the Church you are coming to Christ Himself. When you come into the Church – not just for a service but in your Baptism and Chrismation – you enter a different world; you are entering with St John and St Peter into the mystery of the Savior’s Tomb (Jn 20.1-9); you are coming into the Garden of His Resurrection with Mary Magdalene (Jn 20.10-14). You are leaving this world that is at enmity with God and that is infected with the corruption of lust, and you are entering the radiant Light of Christ that is the Life of men (Jn 1.4).

Therefore, what the LORD says to Nathanael this morning, He is saying to us in the Church, if we are taking up the Lenten disciplines of the Church. For these are the Cross the LORD calls us to take up if we would follow Him. Taking up the Cross of the Church’s Lenten disciplines, we are stepping onto the Path with Philip and Nathanel that leads to the LORD Jesus Christ in the mystery of His Holy Pascha. Indeed, the Path is Christ Himself (Jn 14.6).

The LORD says to Nathanael this morning; the LORD says to us this morning: ‘You will see the heavens opening and the angels of God ascending and descending upon the Son of Man.’

We came into Great Lent, remember, ‘returning’ with the Myrrhbearing women from the LORD’s Tomb. With them, we observed His Tomb, and we saw how His Body was laid. When the Church says to us this morning in the Gospel She has assigned for our contemplation this morning – i.e., when the LORD says to us, because the Church is the LORD’s crucified Body risen from the dead – when She says to us: ‘You will see the angels of God ascending and descending on the Son of Man,’ is the LORD telling us what we will see when, with the Myrrhbearers, we observe His Tomb and see how His Body was laid?

How will we see it? By contemplating all the OT Scriptures assigned to our contemplation during Lent and Holy Week – Isaiah, Genesis, Proverbs, Exodus, Ezekiel, Joel, Zechariah, Zephaniah, the Wisdom of Solomon, the Psalms – contemplating all the prayers and hymns we will hear in the Church’s liturgical worship, contemplating them in the light of the liturgical structure of the Church’s worship, and in the Light radiating from the LORD on the Cross and pouring out of His Tomb from His Body now resting, according to the lectionary of the Lenten Triodion, in the Tomb of His Sabbath Rest (Lk 23.54).

The Church is telling us this morning, the LORD is telling us this morning that if, in the manner I just described, we observe His Tomb and see how His Body was laid we will see what the patriarch, Jacob, saw in his dream. Jacob had his dream during the night when he was sleeping on a stone [is this an image of his death?]. He was on his way, he was on an exodus to find his bride, Rachel (Gn 28.12ff.). She was his ‘promised land.’ In his dream, Jacob saw a ladder ‘fixed’ in the earth, it says. Its top reached to heaven, and the angels of God ascended and descended on it. And the LORD God was standing at the top of the ladder in heaven. (Gn 28.12-13)

But, this morning, the LORD says, ‘You will see the angels of God ascending and descending upon the Son of Man.’ I.e., in the Church – i.e., in the mystery of the LORD’s Incarnation of the Most Beloved Virgin Panagia, in His death and burial – we are given to observe that the LORD has come down the Ladder and is now at the bottom of it where it is fixed in the earth. I.e., we see that the earth in which it is fixed is the earth of His Tomb where the LORD’s crucified and buried Body has become the chief cornerstone of His Church, the Heavenly Temple, which is His Body risen from the dead (Jn 2.19&21). We ‘see’ that the LORD, our King of old, has descended into the midst of the earth, into the Tomb of His Sabbath Rest, working His salvation (Ps 74.12), and ‘finishing’ the creation He began to do in the beginning (Gn 2.4 LXX).

We ‘see’ what the prophets saw: that the LORD God is the Bridegroom of Israel, and the bible is the love story of the cosmos. The LORD Jesus Christ is the Heavenly Bridegroom. The human soul is His Bride whom He loves and seeks after. Like Jacob leaving his father and mother for his bride, Rachel, the LORD of Israel, Jesus Christ, the Heavenly Bridegroom, left His Throne in Heaven for His Bride, Israel, in order to cleave to her, and to unite her to Himself, to become one flesh with her (Heb 2.14) even to the point of sharing in her death through His death on the Cross so that she might share in His own divine nature by being raised from death to life in the joy of His Holy Resurrection.

But, the Church, dear faithful, is the Bride of Christ! She is the New Israel. And so, when you came into the Church through Holy Baptism and Chrismation, you became a member of the New Israel, the LORD’s Bride. And when you drew near in the fear of God, with faith and love, and partook of the LORD’s Holy Spirit in Holy Eucharist, you became bone of His bones and flesh of His flesh.

Jacob, it says, found his bride, Rachel, at a well; it was covered, it says, by a very large stone. And Jacob, it says, rolled the stone away so that his bride, Rachel, could water her sheep. So the LORD Jesus Christ, our Jacob, rolled the stone away from His Tomb so that we could drink the Living Waters of His Holy Spirit from Him who is the Fountain of Life (Jer 2.19).

If we ‘observe’ the LORD’s Tomb in this light, do we not begin to ‘see’ that the Divine Ladder on which the angels of God ascend and descend is the Cross? But if we look more closely, we will see that the Ladder is the Holy Virgin Theotokos, because it is through Her that the LORD descended to earth and took flesh and became the Son of Man. But that means that the Ladder is our own human nature – for the Virgin is not a Goddess; She is human as we are; She is our Mother.

But, the Ladder is also the Cross, because by the Cross Our LORD, our Heavenly Bridegroom, has become one with us; He has destroyed our death, and raised us from our graves, and in His Holy Resurrection, He has ascended in our human nature, to His Throne in the Heavens to the Father. By the Ladder, the ‘nuptial’ Ladder of the Virgin Theotokos and the Cross, He has ‘begotten’ us through His Holy Spirit as ‘children of God’ and raised us from earth to heaven as partakers of His own divine glory.

We came into Great Lent on the Day of Preparation, as it said in our last week-day Gospel reading on the Thursday before we entered the Lenten Gates of repentance. And the myrrhbearers, it said, having observed the LORD’s Tomb and how His Body was laid, turned and ‘descended’ into the stillness of the LORD’s Sabbath Rest to prepare ointments and spices (Lk 23.55).

Observe and see in all of this that this blessed season of the Fast is for preparing ourselves to receive the Heavenly Bridegroom on the ‘marriage bed’ of His Cross, as St Augustine and other holy fathers have said, in the ‘bridal chamber’ of our heart. We are preparing ourselves to unite ourselves to Christ by taking up our cross and putting to death all that is earthly in us, that we may receive the Heavenly Bridegroom in the Joy of His Holy Pascha. And so, the Church describes the Lenten disciplines as the ‘joy of abstinence.’ She describes the fast as the ‘flower of abstinence’ that grows from the wood of the Cross and gives joy to the whole world – for it is by His Cross that the LORD has united Himself to us precisely in our death; and it is by the Cross He gives us to take up, the Cross of the Lenten disciplines, that we may unite ourselves to Him in the joy and eternal Life of His Holy Resurrection. Amen!