Yesterday, we reflected on the Twelve Tribes of the House of Israel. Jesus has been clear about His mission from the Father: to re-gather the lost sheep (Mt 15:24) and that not a single lamb be lost (Jn 18:9). He has gathered to Himself Twelve shepherds who will be the respective leaders of these flocks, including Judas (a variant spelling of Judah), whose name identifies his high office.
The Lord travels to the Tribe of Gad and prepares a man for leadership, who had become disfigured by his consent to the world's so-call pleasures. A possession of 6,000 demons has become his identity, yet he is transformed by his desire to be cleansed and through Jesus, Who has made him an able and fitting leader, who sends him out into his apostolate: "'Return to your own house [tribe],'" Jesus tells him. "And he went his way and proclaimed throughout the whole city" (Lu 8:39).
A descendent of Levi (called by the Greek name Matthew) will write a Gospel echoing with name of "Abraham" and the phrase "Kingdom of Heaven," It is overbrimming with the presence of angels .... you see, the Kingdom-of-Heaven religion.
The Risen Christ appears before another man. He is of the Tribe of Benjamin and named for a favorite son of that tribe: King Saul. He is determined to stamp out talk of angels, to be rid of this Kingdom-of-Heaven "nonsense," and to push aside the name "Abraham" that Moses may have pride of place. Yes, he has persecuted followers of the Way .... until his own transforming encounter with the Lord Jesus and ever after preaches of transformation of mind and soul as the essence of religion. And, oh yes, Abraham appears as the hero of his ministry of homilies. This man will be renamed "Paul," meaning "least among us," a distinction he constantly invokes, saying that he is last and least among the Apostles.
Today we celebrate the inauguration of the pivotal moment in human history. Heaven has opened. Intimacy with God is restored. Angels will again descend upon the sons and daughters of man. And the Way of Father Abraham, the way of the highest goal of every human life.
This is our religion. This is our faith. The One Holy Catholic and Apostolic Church (today called Holy Orthodoxy) enjoining her sons and daughters to give a wide berth to the secular world, embracing the Divine as Abraham did. She keeps alive the lifeworld of the Early Church. Each day we continue to live by the calendar of the first century, presently thirteen days behind the secular calendar. Each year we observe New Years day on September 1 because this was the new year the Apostles knew. The last great feast of the old year is the Dormition of the Most Holy Mother of God as she is carried body and soul into God's bosom, the Bosom of Abraham. And the first great feast of the New Year is her entrance into the Temple (which feast we anticipate today) signifying restoration of the original and pure religion, for she herself is unparalleled in her intimacy and unity with God. Who could experience the indwelling of God more perfectly than the Holy Mother? Entering the Zion Temple, the Holy of Holies will pale beside the new and living Holy of Holies, where humanity will really and truly encounter God Himself. Glory be to God!
The Way, which Jesus re-institutes, is the Way of Abraham, who, with his wife Sarah, really and truly entered into communion with the Triune God amongst the Oaks of Mamre. This would be the high point of their theosis: of purgation in the wilderness, of illumination, and finally of union with God. He had prepared Himself for this supernal moment repudiating Ur of the Chaldees, luxurious Babylon. Through years and years of purification in the desert, they had burned down their whole world and followed God into pristine and unknown country, keeping the cities of Cain at a far distance. In the end, now called Abraham (i.e., the Father of all) would himself become, like the Son of God, the Kingdom of Heaven, or Paradise, depicted by the Son as the Bosom of Abraham. Here is the fulfillment of this promised unity: becoming One with the Father as the Son and the Father are One, or One with the Son as the Most Holy Theotokos, the new Holy of Holies, is One with the Son of God.
These are the good and dependable promises of Christ from the beginning: "The Kingdom of Heaven has come upon you! Prepare yourselves!" And before the beginning of His ministry, His Forerunner declares these same astonishing words.
He enters human history at the very moment that the people of God have strayed perilously beyond a tipping point: not only failing to give a wide berth the world, represented by Babylon with its worldly religion of animal sacrifice, but becoming that world, even recasting their religion after its polluted image.
All of this is captured allegorically in a final battle between the most pure Lamb of God, signifying the flocks of Israel in a pristine Form, who slays a vile beast known as Babylon.
It is uncanny how closely our own era and culture resemble the first-century Levant. Where once a holy vision of freedom and democracy had stood, now a tawdry version has overtaken it in a vile parody. Freedom has come to signify "having and doing anything we want, however immoral." And democracy has come to mean enshrining our lowest animal urges in law as proscriptions against child pornography are struck down and every kind of ruinous drug is decriminalized or legalized. The American family is now barely recognizable. One in three children in the U.S. do not have an intact family, having a mother and a father according to the most recent government census. By comparison, only 3% of children in China are born into single-parent households. The number is only 7% worldwide (outside the U.S.). Yes, here is the haunting image of freedom and democracy in America.
Meantime, the New York Times has defined liberal democracy in terms of same-sex marriage. That is, without same-sex marriage in place, no society might be deemed a real democracy in the eyes of American foreign policy. And the price for entering NATO, as Poland and Hungary discovered, is to promote these policies however much they run counter to national character or morals.
Do you wonder what the BRICS movement is all about? Why other countries, representing most of the world's wealth, are foregoing the dollar? This is why. For "the land of the free and the home of the brave" would not be recognizable to Americans born before World War II. We even call the manufacturer of these cultural images and values, promoted countless television programs and movies, Babylon.
But today, somewhere on a hilltop far away from polluted Jerusalem, the Incarnate God calls His people away from all that. He commands us to purify ourselves. He bids us look up where Heaven has opened. And he promises that angels will ascend and descend even upon ourselves, the sons and daughters of man.
So let us commence the Nativity Fast with shouts of Glory to God! Let us leach out every toxin in our fasting. Let us give thanks to Him for holiness in our every prayer. And most certainly let us discard all Made-in-Babylon entertainments. Let us turn off our glowing screens. Let us throw out our glossy magazines extolling consumerism and ignore propaganda parading as news stories.
Instead, let us step out into true freedom, walking beneath the skies of high Heaven, in the company of God and the Heavenly Host. Let us become "fellow citizens with the saints and members of the household of God" (Eph 2:19). And let us live every moment on earth in expectation of angels or even the Triune God amongst sacred oaks.
And after our journey, we shall kneel before His crib as Persian religious men did 2,000 years ago. He will give us new life, and He will forgive us our shames. Above all, go! Like Abraham let us go out into God's great unknown never counting the cost. For this is the blessing He has in store for each one of us: to be received in His trust, Who longs to calls us His Friends.
Fare thee forward, O pilgrims of God!
For the One we seek is Life itself.
In the Name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Ghost. Amen.