Titus 2:11-14,3:4-7
Psalm 128:1-5
Matthew 3:13-17



Manifest at Jordan's Stream

Manifested by the star / To the sages from afar,
Branch of royal David's stem, / In Thy birth at Bethlehem.
Anthems be to Thee addressed / God in man made manifest.

In the Name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Ghost. Amen.

With these words, Christopher Wordsworth captured the essence of the Advent of Christ and all our faith: "God in man made manifest." Yes, the purpose of the Advent was to manifest God. But there is something else implied in these words: God was there, within man, all along. The business of our faith, of each one who claims to "follow the Master," is to participate, really and truly, in this revelation. For if we do not see the God within, striving to become the divine Image, which is the pattern of our creation — the nucleus, the center, the essence — then we have no hope of salvation.

Today, the Feast of the Epiphany derives from a Greek word that means "coming to light": "manifested by the star," but also coming to light in the sense of discovery, of revelation. The other great manifestation, celebrated on this day, is at the Lord's Baptism, called the Theophany, deriving from another Greek word meaning "the light of God" or "God in light," that is, God made manifest. Today's Feasts of the Epiphany and Theophany constitute Orthodoxy's second greatest feast, after Great Pascha.

"Manifested by the star." The changeless course of the Heavens stopped as stars turned to reverence their Maker and Master. Too much for human reason to bear? Do I say that God is not subject to man's Laws of Physics?! It is a fact that the pre-eminent journal Nature balked at the Big Bang Theory because it seemed to propose religion, not science. Its editors rightly understood that the theory posited the Laws of Physics to be temporary and provisional — that they did not apply (in that sense did not exist) before the Big Bang occurred, nor would they exist after the universe has contracted back into nothingness. The symmetries of man are framed by God. The Laws of Physics are the instruments of His will, given, and taken, at His pleasure.

God made manifest through changes in the starry Heavens. Is this too remote to command our awe? Is it too subtle for earthbound creatures staring downward and not upward? After all, only three Zoroastrian scientists detected this. Only three knelt down before the God-infant, great manifestion of God. Nonetheless,

... an angel of the Lord appeared to [the shepherds], and the glory of the Lord
shone around them, and they were filled with fear. And the angel said to them,
"Be not afraid; for behold, I bring you good news of a great joy which will come
to all the people; for to you is born this day in the city of David a Savior,
Who is Christ the Lord."
And the shepherds approached the manger where the Child was as the angel had directed.
... and all who heard it wondered at what the shepherds told them. But Mary kept
all these things, pondering them in her heart.
But Mary pondered. What could all these things mean? "Christ the Lord? What or Who is that?"

Forty days later, they presented the Child at the Temple, encountering the prophet Simeon:

Then took he him up in his arms, and blessed God, and said,
"Lord, now lettest thou Thy servant depart in peace, according to Thy Word:
For mine eyes have seen Thy salvation,
Which thou hast prepared before the face of all people;
A light to lighten the Gentiles, and the glory of Thy people Israel."
But the Gospel goes on to record that
Joseph and his mother marvelled at those things which were spoken of Him. (Lu 2:28-33)
They marvelled. They wondered. Mary pondered. To use a word from the first English translation of the Bible, they were astonied. Their minds were overwhelmed, powerless, turned to stone. It was too much for their minds to reach.

Twelve years later, when Mary and Joseph find the missing Jesus in the Temple debating the doctors,

all that heard him were astonished at His understanding and answers.
And when [Mary and Joseph] saw him, they were amazed ... (Lu 2:41ff)
That is, their minds were set into the form of a maze, where reason could not find its way. And Jesus said to His Mother and guardian,
"Did you not know that I must be in my Father's house?"
And they did not understand the saying which he spoke to them. (Lu 2:49-50)
Nonetheless, Jesus obeyed His Mother and guardian, and they departed for Nazareth:
and his mother kept all these things in her heart. (Lu 2:51)
Even the Most Holy Theotokos, having been granted the company and conversation of angels, wondered what all these things and strange words might mean.

♱
Manifest at Jordan's stream,
Prophet, Priest, and King supreme,
And at Cana, Wedding-guest,
In Thy Godhead manifest;
Manifest in power divine,
Changing water into wine.
Anthems be to Thee addressed
God in man made manifest.
We read from the Holy Gospel,
... He went up immediately from the water, and behold, the Heavens were opened
and He saw the Spirit of God descending like a dove, and alighting on Him; and lo,
a voice from heaven, saying, "This is my beloved Son, with Whom I am well pleased."
He rose from the water, and the Heavens opened. This word, opened — the Greek verb is ανοιγω — appears rarely in the Synoptic Gospels, and when it does, it is normally linked to divine revelation. It occurs when Jesus opens the ears of a deaf man (a metaphor for man standing before God but unable to hear Him):
... and looking up to Heaven, He sighed, and said to him, "Eph'phatha," that is, "Be opened" (Mk 7:34).
It occurs in proclaiming the Good News of God's invitation to all humankind:
"Knock and it will be opened to you" (Mt 7:7).
It occurs to express the disciples' yearning for God:
They said to Him, "Lord, let our eyes be opened" (Mt 20:33).
And it occurs on the road to Emmaus:
And their eyes were opened, and they recognized Him;
and He vanished out of their sight. They said to each other,
"Did not our hearts burn within us while He .... opened to us the Scriptures?"
But the greatest opening, or manifestation, occurs at Jordan's stream, where "the Heavens were opened" to reveal the Holy Trinity.

♱


The Fathers — Origen, Irenaeus, Athanasius, to name three — understood the blinding light of this manifestation in terms of human darkness. Here is the problem: humankind was so lost in its failure to understand itself that the already bleak picture could only become darker .... unto absolute black, if left to itself. We no longer knew who we were, why we were born, what might be the meaning of our lives. Like the Emperor's disfigured likeness on an old coin, the silver had worn down to a dull, indecipherable slug (Origen). Like a defaced portrait whose subject could not longer be discerned, the figure on canvas had grown dim, even grotesque (Athanasius). But who might re-mint the coin? How could copies of the portrait be made when the original was lost?

We were made in the image of God but had lost our royal lineaments looking more like lower beasts than noble women and men. But God was no longer with us (as He was in Eden) to sit for the original portrait. The Great Emperor was no longer present to restrike the coins with His Image. We were lost — a crisis of identity so deep that we entered a forgetfulness of who or what we are, which is the essential condition of Hell, all Heavenly part erased, and nothing but brutish beast remaining.

As the Fathers plainly saw, there was but one solution: for God to be with us, Emmanuel, that we might remember what were supposed to look like: Him, who we are: the Son of God's adopted brothers and sisters, and what life means: to claim our royal identity, to conduct ourselves as God's own, and to enter an Everlasting Kingdom with Him. After all, He alone is life, and all else, therefore, is eternal death, His adversary and opposite.

♱

Manifest in making whole
Palsied limbs and fainting soul;
Manifest in valiant fight,
Quelling all the devil's might;
Manifest in gracious will,
Ever bringing good from ill.
Anthems be to Thee addressed,
God in man made manifest.
To be near to Him is life. Should even the shadow of His disciple fall upon an incurably ill man, that man would be healed (Acts 5:15). God's Son did not come to institute healing ministries, soup kitchens, or parish thrift shops. God's intention is always to awaken us to ourselves. If the choice be to sell costly spikenard in order to feed the poor or, rather, to worship God, then the answer is plain to women and men who understand the meaning of life:
".... you always have the poor with you, but you will not always have Me."
The opportunity for relationship with God, Father-and-child relationship, is as fleeting as life itself. For once life has ended, that opportunity is forever lost. We will have entered a new situation, where our will no longer enjoys freedom. The opportunity to love God, so fleeting, so precious, will have been lost forever. In recent months we have meditated on that chilling proverb of the Early Western Church:
Time Jesum transeuntum et non reverentum.
Dread the passage of Jesus, for He does not return, ... not as our Teacher and Friend, but rather as our unerring Judge (quoted in Joseph Campbell, The Hero with a Thousand Faces and in many places).

Consider, then, two sayings of the Orthodox saint, Elder Paisos the Athonite:

Do not trust the mindset of secular people.

Decide which you want most: the sympathy of the world or a return near to God.
May I add what is implied? You cannot have both. You cannot have the approval of the world or the concurrence of your worldly neighbors and a return to nearness with God.

♱

At the end of all our lives, all of the Laws of Physics or of Biology or the world itself will pass away:
Sun and moon shall darkened be,
Stars shall fall, the heavens shall flee;
Christ will then like lightning shine,
All will see His glorious sign;
All will then the trumpet hear,
All will see the Judge appear;
Thou by all wilt be confessed,
God in man made manifest.
If we have rejected God, the greatest crime by far before the bar of royal justice, then in the end, depend upon it, His will cannot be eluded. His laws will not bent. There will be no special cases. He who turned motion of the stars at his Son's birth and darkened the sun at His Son's death, numbers even the hairs on our head and attends to our every word and action.

♱


He is our Father in Heaven, and He will not abandon us but rather will implore us to honor our own celestial Image, which is His.
Grant us grace to see Thee, Lord,
Mirrored in Thy holy Word;
May we imitate Thee now
And be pure as pure art Thou
That we like to Thee may be
At Thy great Theophany
And may praise Thee, ever blest,
God in man made manifest.
The road ahead for each of us is none other than becoming God. Made in His likeness, showered with His loving attention all our lives, we are called to ignore the mindset of secular people, called to return to Him, called to claim our birthright.

Claim it, and the change in your life will astonish: a new and pure light shining from your face. And year by year a saint of light will have taken your once-darkened place. For to us the Heavens have been opened: God in man and in woman made manifest.

In the Name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Ghost. Amen.