It is said that the Lord Jesus is both the Giver and the Gift. He is the Logos, the Creator of all worlds. His Creation is by Him and with Him and in Him. You see, there is no distinction between the Creation and the Creator. The shimmering sacramental beauty we see all around us (which the secular world terms nature) is the radiance of the Creator's beauty.
To become "one with nature" — an impulse sparked by "love of nature" — is the desire to unite with this beauty, to immerse yourself in it, to become permeated with it. Small wonder, the pagans worshiped it.
God gives us life, and, then, He wants us to enter into it seeking to unite ourselves with Him. This is the essence of Eden: the beauty of God's Creation and God. Adam and Eve communed with God in the cool of the day. God sought to inspire them with beauty and then, in that inspiration, to learn of Him so that that they might become like Him, indistinguishably like Him.
God's sacred blueprint and Divine plan, then, is overturned and desecrated when we accept the gift but reject the giver. This, of course, was the pattern set in Eden. The Giver gave in order to teach the holy act of giving, which is His Nature. But Eve reversed the order of things by becoming not a giver but a taker. Adam and Eve were the only two people ever to have everything in the world. But everything in the world was not enough, they wanted more, more than everything. This more and never enough goes to the heart of generational sin as we survey the ruin of a Creation all around us — with its once clear waters now befouled; its once life-giving sun now a hot ball of toxic radiation; its rich, nourishing earth polluted and despoiled.
Becoming a taker is the master lesson plan of the day. Indeed, we blame grave sin on God by saying, "Didn't God make me this way? And doesn't God want me to be happy?" And we can imagine God's thought when the salutation of Christmas Day is, "What did you get?" God has created us, and the marvelous world around us, in order that we might, like Him, become givers.
Union with God is the point of life and the only happiness. We are able to discern this in each new birth, which is the greatest miracle commonly seen on earth. It does not take long for a new mother or father to discover that the purpose of life is love. Each newborn infant announces this burning need right away: the human person needs to receive love and needs to give love. This unquenchable desire continues right up until the end. See the shut-in who is deprived of love, who must wake up every morning to count down the life-subtracting hours of loneliness until they return to bed only to face it all again the next morning. It is love that transforms life, the giving and receiving of love. Life without love is no life at all.
Love is, first of all, a desire to give. Is not this essence of marriage? The gift of yourself to another? Is it not the essence of family as mother and father give to their children .... and give and give and give? A newborn family is consecrated in love: first, the transcendent, life-changing love crowned by holy marriage and, then, that most precious love on earth, which is children, in whose gentle innocence we see the essential, untainted qualities of the human person .... sans television, sans movies, sans toxic culture.
The alternative, which is taking, quickly devolves into poisonous anti-love, killing off the inner genius of innocence and supplanting it with the competitive tyranny of egoism and its attendant demands.
"Who could have imagined so long ago that I would have turned out to be so wonderful as I certainly am?! Don't you agree?! I say, don't you agree?"
This road, sought as the path to happness, leads only to unhappiness, ironically. Ego-stroking, material possessions, and pleasure-seeking are famously the cause for that spiritual pandemic, depression.
If the example of Eden's fall or the inborn aspirations of the human spirit were not enough to make this point, if the Two Great Commandments of love were not enough, then God removes all doubt by being born into the human lifeworld as the Giver par excellence, the "ransom for many."
Jesus' teachings are rooted in giving:
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For whoever desires to save his life will lose it,
but whoever loses his life for My sake will find it. (Mt 16:25) |
And
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"You know that the rulers of the Gentiles lord it over them,
and those who are great exercise authority over them. Yet it shall not be so among you; but whoever desires to become great among you, let him be your servant." (Mt 20:24-26) |
In this giving of ourselves, we bear the Image of God insofar as we are creatures of love. God is love. It is crucial that we recognize self-giving to be angel vocation.
Do we ever find the angels on vacation attending to their own needs? "I need a personal day off." The angels are the faithful servants of the Giver. Angel vocation is one of the foundation stones of Orthodox faith. In our journey of theosis we rise to the likeness of angels, who, in turn, more perfectly resemble God.
This is also the essence of our salvation as adopted children of God. As Jesus teaches in our Gospel lesson this morning,
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.... a certain woman from the crowd raised her voice and said to Him,
"Blessed is the womb that bore You, and the breasts which nursed You!" But He said, "More than that, blessed are those who hear the word of God and keep it!" (Lu 10:41-42) |
That is, keeping the word of God is akin to family ties, even to sacred mother love. Elsewhere in St. Luke's Gospel, Jesus says
| "My mother and My brothers are these who hear the word of God and do it." (Lu 8:21) |
The definition of Divine family is love, to be a giver. And the path of our redemption is to be a giver in the Image of God.
| "Greater love has no one than this, than to lay down one's life for his friends." (Jn 15:13) |
We are a family, not of blood, but of ideals. It turns out that the standard for human conduct is a Heavenly one, not an earthly one.
Last Tuesday we celebrated the Nativity of the Queen of Love. Her holy parents Joachim and Anna understood the purpose of life consecrating their child to serve God. In the words of St. Anna,
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As the Lord my God lives, if I beget either male or female,
I will bring it as a gift to the Lord my God; and it shall minister to Him in holy things all the days of its life. (Protoevangelion of St. James, 4) |
Anna's words echo those of Hannah, the mother of the prophet Samuel:
| "I will take him, that he may appear before the Lord and remain there forever." (1 Sam 1:22) |
Serving Him forever.
The birth and life of John the Baptist follows this pattern. The great examplar, of course, is the Nativity of Our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ. As His life is the blueprint for life itself, we see that every child born into the world is to be a servant to God, following Jesus as His adopted brother or sister. This is family.
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".... the Son of Man did not come to be served, but to serve,
and to give His life a ransom for many." (Mt 20:28) |
His choice of words here invokes a story of mutual love deemed holy in the first-century lifeworld, the story of Damon and Pythias, who each in turn offered his life as a ransom for the other, laying down his life for his friend. St. Luke will say in passing that this was the banner under which the Apostles sailed (Acts 28:11).
If life begins in the school of love and continues this devotion until the end, then surely a life offered as ransom represents the high point of human life and its purpose. Indeed, the two greatest lives ever born into the world — our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ and His Mother, the Most Holy Theotokos — continue to shine as a constellation in the firmament guiding our lives on earth. We pray them to over and over and over again, as we hear them counsel us to follow them, to be a servant. This is a disciple.
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.... a fruitful vine
In the very heart of [her] house, [with] children like olive plants All around [the] table. (Ps 128:3) |
But all this she set aside with one sentence:
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Behold the handmaid of the Lord!
Be it unto me according to Thy word. (Lu 12:48) |
Indeed, her life would fall far below honor as a single mother with no father to be seen. She would be dogged by filthy rumors. Her Son would share this shame, called "Son of Mary" (Mk 6:3) — a despising epithet in patriarchal Israel.
Her heart would be pierced by a sword (Lu 2:35). And she would witness the execration, torment, and death of her only Son for Whom all had been given.
But Why?
Why should she not have been honored during her lifetime?
Why should her Son not have been feted and universally respected during His lifetime?
The answer to these questions points us to the most important of all practical teachings:
This world is not it.
This world is not to be loved.
Honor in this world is not to be sought.
God's will on this point is crystal clear.
We are not to honor the world.
We are not to devote ourselves to it.
The Son of God was born among us
to shepherd us away from this alien place,
to proclaim a Kingdom not of this world.
St. John writes,
| Do not love the world or the things in the world. If anyone loves the world, the love of the Father is not in him. (1 Jn 2:15) |
Decisive. This is not a suggestion. This is not a meditation. And the Son of God declares to none other than the Father,
| I do not pray for the world but for those whom You have given Me, for they are Yours. (Jn 17:9) |
Do you see this difference between worldlings and servant disciples of the Kingdom of God? Again, decisive: "I do not pray for the world."
As we live out our brief, and often difficult, earthly lives, we see that the meaning of that life is ransom — laying down our our lives for others. We follow the God Who laid down His life. He calls us to be suffering servants as He was the Suffering Servant. He calls us His servants in order that He might, in time, be called His friends (Jn 15:15). He calls us to share in the burdens and sacred offices of Divine love, which is the identifing mark of God's Kingdom. This is our essence, our destination, and our eternal Home .... if we be faithful.
The Kingdom of God, rises as far above this world as angels rise above the dog-pack mind of the streets, as the Queen of Angels rises above ego and its never-enough selfishness.
Today, we complete our observance of her birthday. If we could be with her materially, she would show us how to celebrate. There would be no succession of gifts nor party favors. There would be no excess of food and drink.
Rather, she, like Mary of Bethany, would sit at the foot of God
and
with wonder attend to every word that proceeds from His mouth.
Here is "the one thing that is needful."
Here is the secret of life and the golden road to the Kingdom.
For He never strays from the master lesson
whose words are
servanthood,
self-denial,
even ransom.
And
her prayer is that we will take our place beside her.
We are very welcome here.
And
here we will find peace unto our very souls.
In the Name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.