Theophany Homily 2022

+In the Name of the Father, and the Son and the Holy Spirit. Christ is in our midst! He is and ever shall be.

Today, we see a bright and mysterious wonder, a radiant mystery. The work of Christ as God incarnate redeeming human flesh continues. On Christmas, our Lord sanctified birth and materiality. On Theophany, our Lord comes to the Jordan to fulfill all righteousness, to cleanse the cosmos from sin, and to reveal our truest humanity by infusing it with his divinity.

Indeed, in the most ancient liturgical calendars, Theophany was the primary winter feast, celebrating both the Incarnation and the Baptism of our Lord. So intertwined are these mysteries, and so infused with God's everlasting light, that they were seen as two sides of the same coin in the consciousness of the Church for the first few centuries. There is also wisdom and meaning, however, in examining them separately, that their distinct salvific meanings might be revealed, and so the Church made them two distinct feasts.

Christ comes to the Jordan to fulfill all righteousness. As a Jewish male in Palestine, he was circumcised according to God's will in the Torah. Here, he comes to fulfill the righteousness of the Law by entering into a ritual of purification and the repentance of sins. As the Living Word, he fulfills the Law, and in so doing, fulfills righteousness for us. In the words of St. Paul in today's epistle, Christ is "purifying for himself a people zealous for good deeds." He comes to each of us, at our baptism, and at each moment of repentance and renewal. He comes to us, fulfilling every letter of the Law so that its spirit might shine through in our lives. As God's own cry of "let there be light," he makes the light to shine in our hearts, that we may be purified, and be zealous for good deeds.

Christ comes to cleanse the cosmos from sin, beginning with the human person, the human being who is the high priest of creation. He reveals to us the fulness of our humanity, by infusing it with his divinity. In a normal washing, water absorbs the impurities of the creature it washes, and is thereafter stained while the creature is clean. But Christ, as we know, had no sin to wash away. Instead, Christ infused the water with his own purity and power, so that it would by God's grace be able to eradicate sin itself. There is a beautiful hymn in the Orthros service for Theophany, where the Jordan River speaks, and rejoices that Christ is teaching it to burn up the thorns of sin. This phenomenon happens most powerfully at our baptism, when we enter into Christ's death and rise in his resurrection. But it also applies in perhaps more subtle but no less powerful ways to the everyday use of water. Everything in God's creation can be a spiritual balm, if we are only open to seeing God's grace radiating from it.

Christ comes to reveal our truest humanity. The fulness of who we are. Christ is always one with the Father and the Spirit, but notice that it is only when he humbles himself to the level of humanness that we first see the entire Trinity bearing witness to our salvation. "When Thou, o Lord, wast baptized in the Jordan, the worship of the Trinity was made manifest." This is, of course, a confirmation of Jesus' identity as the incarnate Word of God. But it is also a validation and a cherishing of our own redeemed humanity by God. St Theophylact tells us that "Adam had closed the heavens, but through Christ they are opened, so that you may learn, that when you are baptized, you, too, open the heavens." This bold vision of the Father and the Spirit bearing witness to Christ was the first time the entire Trinity was revealed in its fulness, and so it happened with much fanfare and visual splendor. But we already know, or come to learn, that God dwells within us and shines resplendently in us at our baptism. And so, even if there is no vision, we know that God is always descending from Heaven, to dwell more deeply and richly in our hearts. If we could live with that awareness at every waking moment, beloved, imagine how bright and full of love our lives would be. This is the journey of faith. Becoming more and more human. Becoming more and more what we already are. And in so doing, we walk with Christ in our hearts and become more and more divine.

I will close with the encouraging words of St. Gregory of Nazianzus: Christ is illuminated; let us be enlightened together, Christ is baptized; let us descend together, so that we might be raised together. Amen.