We celebrate a great feast today: The Conception of the All-Holy Theotokos by St. Anna. It is special to the Hermitage as each day we veneration a second-class relic of St. Anna, which Sr. Mary Anne has had custodianship for decades. It is a fact that upon arriving to these Islands — and deep in the jungles of Maui — we saw a distant white building from a hillside which seemed to call to us. With difficulty we made our way to it. Built entirely from coral, it was the scene of a Marian miracle. We ventured inside. There were only to figures inside: St. Anna and her Most Holy Daughter.
St. Anna represents the proximate genealogy of Jesus down to Mary — the only branch of the earthly family tree to touch the Man-God. In fact, that is what this feast celebrates: family line, conception according to the flesh. Explicit genealogies we find in the Gospels — in the Third Chapter of St. Luke's Gospel and the opening of St. Matthew's Gospel — are that of Joseph, Jesus' stepfather, not a blood-and-bone descent. (But more on that in a minute).
The point of announcing a genealogy is to present one's identity and credentials. For example, for a King to ensure the continuation of his royal line, he must produce an legitimately born heir.
This was an especially vexed issue during the centuries following the Return from Babylon. The questions were, "Who are the true people of God?" and, as there stood three temples, "Which represents the true religion?" as the Samaritan woman at the well clearly states:
| "Our fathers worshiped on this mountain [Mt. Gerizim], and you Jews say that in Jerusalem is the place where one ought to worship." (Jn 4:20) |
Within Judah, however, this no open question. The reply was most vigorously stated The Temple in Jerusalem was most imposing — built by the mighty Persians. In response large groups of Hebrews peoples fled to the north (Samaria) and to the south (Elephantine). Meantime, the message put out by Nehemiah, the Persian governor, and Ezra, his scribe and priest, was all the more shrill: If you didn't experience the Exile in Babylon then you are not a true Hebrew. The Exile, they claimed, was Second Exodus.
Over time, they forged a new identity in the fires of this controversy. Their religion was no longer the ill-defined Hebrew religion with its diverse adherents scattered throughout the Levant. Their brand would be the sharply defined cult practiced within their massive Temple on Mt. Zion: Judah-ism, and its people would be called the Jews.
St. John the Theologian uses this distinctive name sixty-six times in his Gospel to signify a great difference: them, not us. Their festivals may have mandated pilgrimage to Jerusalem, but they were no less alien for that. The Passover of the Jews was their feast, not ours.
But this was the view of those living in the historical Northern Kingdom. In the South, the distinctions made by Ezra were taken quite seriously. Herod the Great (an Arab by birth) put out the story that his genealogy was descended from the Returning Exiles. And the Sadducees, whose lineage was also shadowy, argued strenuously that their genealogy was descended from Zadok, High Priest of the First Temple. But, as I say, this is controverted.
The genealogies St. Anna offer that she was descended from the Tribe of Levi, a priestly line. You will recall that the Levites received no tribal area but were designated to serve the Lord. Anna's story is virtually identical to the story of Hannah in the First Book of Samuel. As barren Hannah gave birth late in life to Samuel, so Anna (a variant spelling of Hannah) gave birth late in life to the Theotokos. As Hannah presented Samuel to "the House of Lord and remain there forever" (1Sam 1:22), so Anna presented the Most Holy Theotokos to the Temple there to live until first menses (as menstrual blood could not be tolerated in the Temple).
Who were the true people of God? Which was the true Temple? The historical picture is uncertain. Even people living during the first-century Levant couldn't tell you. But this is was reason Jesus was sent into the world: the Tribes of Israel were lost. They did not know who they were. They did not know where they were going. They were lost sheep without a shepherd.
Can't we say that this is the general condition of humanity? As we were made in God's Image, born to become God's adopted children, what can we say about present state? Are we not more lost than ever? Our leaders cannot say what a man is or a woman. Shall they aspire to more rarefied questions like, "What is the purpose of life?" And most certainly God does not come into the general conversation.
The world of the first-century Levant, and our own, was and is an undecipherable mess. But it was designed that way. God's original act, from the human perspective, was to impose order out of chaos. We hear it echoing through the Scriptures: YHWH tames the sea monster Leviathan. The unruly sea was the symbol par excellence of chaos in the ancient world. The Son of God, the Logos, masters the waves and the winds. God, and God alone, is the source and guarantor of orderliness. We seek to be covered beneath the safe shadow of His wing (Ps 9). He alone is the rock, the sure defense, against universal mayhem. For the universe, like a restless sea, threatens to devolved back into chaos. Our homes, our families, our towns, our cities, our transportation systems, our infrastructures everywhere — all deteriorate back into disintegration, the void from which all things began, rusting and rotting along the way.
Sir Isaac Newton identified this as a basic element of our universe, a physical law: "every random event contributes to the disorder of the universe."
The Well-ordered One, the One Who alone is Master over chaos, evinced His singular role: "Who then is This, Who commands the winds and seas, and they obey?!" He is Master even over death, the ultimate human chaos.
Yet He permitted His human person to be torn to shreds by high velocities of the world's chaos. And this is our enduring image and icon of the our Lord and God and Savior, bleeding upon a Cross. "And Him crucified," St. Paul says.
God entered our world, showed us Who He was — raising the dead on three occasions, no less — an we could not manage to rightly identify Him.
But still today and always, He alone is One sure thing, He alone is One stable thing, He alone is Absolute Certainty. Cutting through the everlasting fog and chaos of the our world, "He is Way, the Truth, and the Life" (Jn 14:6).
And as He drew a great boundary for the Samaritan woman — to "worship the Father in spirit and truth" (Jn 4:23) — so He sets His Holy Seal on the one, true genealogy: which is adoption by the Father.
It does wend for centuries to this person and that. It does not descend from one notable priest or the other. It is plain and direct and certain: God is our only Father, and Jesus is our eldest brother.
| But He answered and said to them, "My mother and My brothers are these who hear the word of God and do it." (Lu 8:21) |
The only lineage that matters and the only lineage which is true, is the lineage from God Who is, Jesus tells us again and again, "our Father" (Lu 11:2)." St. John uses the term over a hundred times in his Gospel.
We are to love God striving always to do His Holy Will, which He has sent to His Son to reveal to us. And His will is that we live in love the only Divine property to be found on the earth. And our decent affection for each other, our kindnesses, our acts in charity, and our devout love of the Giver Who Is the Gift, must be the hallmark of our lives .... and its foundation, which we offer to God every minute of every day.
"And your Father, Who sees in secret will Himself reward you openly" (Mt 6:4). Indeed, He will adopt as His own sons and daughters. And the First-born among His children, even the Lord Jesus, will embrace us His own. "My brothers," He says.
We see a faint echo of this Divine gift-in-love in faithful Joseph extending his family tree from King David to Mary and Jesus. We know the story through the Protoevangelion of the St. James. Joseph was a respected and pious man with grown sons. But it fell to him by lot to be the guardian spouse of Ever-Virgin Mary. This he flatly refused. "I am an old man," he said. "If I take this child to wife, I will become a byword in my village and the constant object of son's my gibes." All true enough. Yet he plainly saw it was God's will by the blossoming of his staff like a lily.
As we observe the Conception of the Most Holy Theotokos,
(at the same time affirming the sanctity of human life from conception)
let us claim our part in God's story,
let us take our place in this holy lineage,
let us live our lives like women and men
as
God intended.
For in this, we shall know who we are: the children of God.
We shall know where we are going: with the Lord Jesus to Father God
—
He has prepared a place for us (Jn 14:2).
And we shall know the purpose of our lives:
to prepare ourselves each day for this marvelous destination,
the Kingdom of God.
And we shall receive signs, little and great, that our Father in Heaven watches
over us every step of the way.
In the Name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.