Hebrews 6.13-20

Mark 9.17-31

This has been a big week for our parish. This last Thursday evening, we served Myron’s funeral, and we sent his soul to the church on high. His body we brought into the Temple, and we buried it in the ground. We could see his body. We could touch it. But, where was Myron? In his baptism and chrismation years ago, Myron had united himself to Christ in the likeness of Christ’s death. We therefore know from St Paul that Myron died years ago in his baptism. While he is with his body now hidden in the ground, in his soul, Myron’s life is hidden with Christ in God. (Col 3.3)

And, yesterday morning, Dane and Tom came into the Temple; this morning, Blake came into the Temple, and we brought them to the baptismal font. We can see them. We can touch them. But where are they now in their soul? We can give the same answer we gave for Myron, with but a small difference: they are with their body that is still on the ground, walking around, not yet in the ground as is Myron’s. But in their soul, together with Myron’s, their life is hidden with Christ in God. (Col 3.3) For, in their baptism, as St Paul says: they died. (Col 3.3) They were buried with Christ into death. (Rom 6.4)

We saw at Myron’s funeral, we see at the funeral of every Christian, that the death that we die into at our baptism is not imaginary. It is absolutely real as was Our LORD’s death in the flesh. Our death begins at our baptism, it is finished at our funeral. But, it is precisely in the death that we are buried into at our baptism that we begin to live.

Let’s not be indifferent to this marvel of the Christian Faith. How does the Christian live when he died and was buried in his baptism, as St Paul says, into death? How is our dying in the death of Christ the beginning of our life?

The answer is given in our Gospel this morning. It says that the demon who would seize this boy was a mute spirit, as though the boy became a living corpse when seized by the spirit! And, the spirit would throw him down to the ground – as though to bury him. The boy would foam at the mouth, it says; he would gnash his teeth, and become rigid like a corpse. And the demon would throw the boy sometimes into the fire, sometimes into the water in order to destroy him!

The fire and the water appear here as an image of death. As such, they show death to be a violent assault on our nature. And, we are given to understand in the Church that death is violent, for the soul is ripped from the body, and we are torn away from our loved ones. This is unnatural, for God did not make death. Death came into the world through the envy of the devil. God, on the other hand, created all things for life. Man He made to be immortal; He created him an image, an icon, of His own eternity. (Wisd 1.13-16; 2.23)

Well, when we are baptized in the Church, it’s fire and water that we are baptized into; or, as St Paul says, it’s death we are buried into. The fire we are baptized into is the consuming fire of God, as we read this morning: ‘Our God is a consuming fire;’ it is made visible in the fire of the candle that is dipped into the waters of the Font three times. And the waters we are baptized into are the ‘Living Waters’ of the Holy Spirit, the LORD and Giver of Life, who descends into the waters of the Font through the prayers of the Church, through the Body of Christ that was crucified, dead, buried and risen from the dead.

That is, in our baptism, we die! But, we die and are buried into death with Christ, not by ourselves. In our baptism, we are ‘thrown’ into the same ‘fire’ and ‘water’ the mute spirit was throwing this boy into. In our baptism, we are buried into the very death that the devil has thrown all of mankind into – but we are buried into death with Christ, not by ourselves.

Death is the ‘power’ of the devil that enslaves us in hell, separated from God (Heb 2.15); it is the ‘snare of the fowlers’ that we sing about from the Psalm at the Pre-Sanctified Liturgy during Great Lent. When God ascended the Cross, it is this death He descended into. On Great and Holy Friday, He voluntarily descended into the snare of the fowlers, He placed Himself in the same fire and water, the very death that the mute spirit was throwing this boy into.

And the snare was broken; death was destroyed. Those, then, who are buried into death with Christ in the Church’s baptismal font are buried in the death of the Body of Christ that has broken the snare, and they escape! (Ps 124.7) Death is destroyed in the death of Christ; the fire and water of death – i.e. its violence – is consumed in the all-consuming Fire of Our God and Savior Jesus Christ, and lo: we who were in the tombs are given life. The snare is broken, and we have escaped.

Now we hear the LORD saying: ‘This kind cannot come out except by prayer and fasting.’ For prayer and fasting in the Church are the Cross of the LORD by which the snare of the fowler is broken so that we can escape. And it is this Cross the LORD gives to us in His Holy Church – in the mystery of His Body crucified and risen from the dead – to take up if we would follow Him into His Tomb where He has broken the snare and destroyed death so that we can escape to Life in His Holy Resurrection. This cross is the Ladder in Jacob’s dream; it is the ladder of St John Climacus’ work. It is the ladder of the Kingdom that is found within you, hidden in your soul, by which one is able to ascend to the Kingdom of Heaven, following St Isaac of Nineveh (Hom 2)

When we unite ourselves to the passions – to the lust of the flesh, the lust of the eyes, the pride of life – or to the wisdom of our own opinions, we unite ourselves to the snare of the ‘fowlers,’ the snare of the spirits who would throw us down to the ground and into the water and the fire to destroy us. But, if we unite ourselves to Christ in Holy Baptism, we unite ourselves to the God-Man who has broken the snare of the fowlers, so that we may escape.

Therefore, having risen from the font, we do not lay down our cross. We take it up through prayer and fasting in the way of the Church! For, when we pray and fast in the way of the Church, we take refuge in the LORD who has broken the snare of the fowlers. We are establishing our life on the sure anchor of His Holy Resurrection; its strong consolation and joy becomes the principle of our life that began when we died and were buried with Christ in baptism, and that will be finished at our funeral, for we know that, uniting ourselves to Christ by taking up our cross through the prayer and fasting of the Church, we know that when we finish the death of our baptism at our funeral, we will enter with Christ into the Presence behind the veil, we will into the mystery of God, the mystery of Christ in you, the Hope of Glory, in the Land of our Inheritance, the LORD’s Heavenly Kingdom.  Amen!