Hebrews 1.10 – 2.3

Mark 2.1-12

We see an image of Great Lent in our Gospel this morning. This is but another evidence that the earthly life of the LORD’s Incarnation was the real Exodus to the Kingdom of Heaven, which the Exodus of Israel to the Promised Land prefigured, because the shape of the LORD’s earthly life is the shape of the Exodus of Israel.

It says that the LORD came again into Capernaum, and it was heard that He was in the house as He is, now, in this liturgical season of Lent, in the Tomb. Theologically, then, the house He is in, is the house of our death. Capernaum means ‘House of Comfort;’ the holy fathers tell us that to die in Christ is a sweetness, and who of us would not say that it is a great comfort to die in the house of Christ, the house of His Holy Church?

So, when St Mark says in the verse before (Mk 1.45) that people were coming to Him from everywhere, and again (in 2.2) that many were gathered there together with Him, when we read this theologically – i.e., when we ‘observe’ this with the myrrhbearing women as an image of the LORD’s Tomb, and when we contemplate the LORD being in the house as an image of how His Body was placed in the Tomb’ (Lk 23.55) – our eyes begin to see in this morning’s Gospel an image of the LORD ‘in the Tomb with His Body and in hell with His soul’ where all the dead are gathering around Him from every direction; for, as it says in our Gospel this morning, He was speaking the WORD to them as to the ‘spirits in prison,’ according to St Peter (1 Pt 3.18-19).

What WORD? Would it not be the WORD of their salvation, the WORD of their resurrection to life eternal as Ezekiel foresaw, whose prophecy we read at the end of Matins for Great and Holy Saturday: ‘Behold, I will raise you from your graves; I will put my Spirit within you, and you shall live, and I will place you in your own land!’ (Eze 37.12-14)

For He is the True Light coming into the world in whom is the Life of men (Jn 1.4); He is the True Light shining in the darkness of hell which the darkness of hell cannot extinguish (Jn 1.5). He is the Great Light that, as Isaiah foresaw, the people sitting in the darkness of hell can now see, for the Light of Resurrection, the Light of the Wisdom of God, the uncreated Light that is the effulgence of the Father’s Brilliance (Wisd 7.26), has now risen on those lying dead in the region and shadow of death (Isa 9.1-2; Mt 4.16).– the same Light that was already streaming forth from the LORD’s Tomb when His Body was placed in it, signaling the dawning of the Mystical Sabbath (Lk 23.54) that Moses prefigured (LT 652) –

The paralytic this morning is an image of our soul that is dead because of our sins and trespasses (Eph 2.1). The root of our death is giving the love of our heart not to the LORD, our soul’s true Heavenly Bridegroom, but to the idols of the passions. When we give ourselves to the pleasures of greed and lust, anger, entitlement, sloth and all the rest, we commit suicide. As the prophets say, those who give their love to the idols become just like them; they have eyes that see not, ears that hear not, hands that feel not, feet that cannot walk, mouths that cannot speak. They become, in the hidden man of the heart, paralytics, spiritual corpses. ‘Slain by many sins,’ it says at the Matins for last Thursday, slain by the idols of the passions that I love and give myself to, ‘I bear in life a soul that is dead.’ (LTS 102)

But, ‘observe the LORD’s Tomb and how His Body was placed in it’ in this morning’s Gospel: the LORD is in the house; He is inside the Tomb. He is not outside of us. And the Lenten cry of the Church calls each one of us to ‘Come, let us see – let us ‘observe’ with the myrrhbearing women – our Life lying in the Tomb, that He may give life to those that in their tombs lie dead.’ (LT 652) ‘Observe’ how His Body was placed inside the Tomb. The LORD is inside the root of our death; He is inside our disobedience in love for the idols, filling our death and our disobedience and our love for the idols it with Himself, the Life of all, in His obedience in love for the Father.

But, the Tomb was sealed by a very large stone so that no one could get in to ‘see our Life lying in the Tomb.’ So also, in this morning’s Gospel, the door into the house the LORD was in was blocked by the very large crowd of people so that the paralytic and those with him could not get in.

So, ‘observe’ the four men carrying the paralytic. They are an image of the myrrhbearing women carrying us by their prayers. The myrrhbearing women, it says, observing the LORD’s Tomb and how His Body was placed in it; observing, let’s say, that it was sealed by a very large stone, turned and, literally, descended. Reading St Luke theologically, they descended with their mind into their heart in the stillness of the LORD’s Sabbath Rest. That is, they sought another way into the LORD’s Tomb, a hidden way, the hidden way of prayer and fasting.

Like the myrrhbearers, the four men carrying the paralytic, when they see that they cannot get into the house through the door, find another way to get inside the house where the LORD. They break down the roof of the house. They set out to demolish the wall of enmity that separates us from the LORD inside the house of our heart. And, by their help, the paralytic descends into the house and into the living presence of the LORD, our Life.

The myrrhbearers, it says, ‘rested,’ i.e., they descended into the stillness of the hidden man of the heart in prayer (hesychusan) ‘according to the commandment.’ (Lk 23.55)

What are we receiving from the Church throughout this Lenten season, especially from our readings in Proverbs?  Is it not the commandments of Wisdom, the LORD Jesus, the Wisdom of God, the very Radiance of the Father’s Brilliance? And what are the commandments of Wisdom given to us in Proverbs all about? Are they not about guarding our heart with all vigilance for from it flow the springs of life? For the Fountain of Life, Jesus Christ, is in the house; He is in the heart where we were dead in our sins and trespasses; and if we give ourselves to Him, our soul’s true Bridegroom, if we cleave to Him and unite our death to Him in His death, He destroys our death by His death, and He gives life to us who were in the tombs. But if we choose to live in the house of the passions, as Wisdom teaches us in Proverbs, we step onto the path that leads away from the LORD in the house, and procures the ‘destruction of our soul’ (Prov 6.32).

Here, then, the Church is teaching us how to make our way into the LORD’s Tomb at the end of Matins on Great and Holy Saturday: take up the cross of the  Lenten disciplines – prayer, fasting, mercy – and let the myrrhbearing women carry you by another way, the hidden way of the inner Exodus of the Gospel, into the tomb of your heart where, with faith and love, we draw near to the LORD who is in the house, to die with Him, putting to death all that is earthly in us in the power of the cross, the power of the Lenten Fast, that we may rise with Him in the joy of His Holy Resurrection on Holy Pascha and live no more in the house of this world, bounded by death, but in the house of the LORD’s Sabbath Rest, His Tomb, that is become the Fountain of our eternal life. Amen!