[Sermon for the Second Sunday after the Epiphany, January 19, 2025, delivered at St. Mary's Episcopal Church, Phoenix, Arizona]
✠ In the Name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit, the Trinity, one in Essence and Undivided. Amen.
Apparently, God likes weddings.
Scripture is full of marriage references. The prophets make many references to marriage between God and Israel. For example, in Isaiah 62, the Prophet notes that the beaten down people of Israel will be restored in a marriage relationship with the Lord, “You shall be called, ‘My delight is in her,’ and your land ‘Married’.”[1] The Book of the Prophet Hosea is a lengthy allegory in the Prophet’s life with his faithless wife Gomer, standing in the place of the Lord and Israel, an unhappy union fraught with infidelity.[2] Jesus uses the figure of the wedding feast in several parables.[3] The Church is referred to as the Bride in Revelation.[4] The entire book The Song of Solomon has been interpreted as an allegory of the relationship between God and His people. And as we read today, Jesus’ first miracle was at a wedding, and that was no accident.
Why? What is so great about weddings?
Vladimir Lossky in his book Orthodox Theology: An Introduction has a section on “Christian Anthropology.”[5] Despite the implied dryness of its title, that section showcases the theme in St. Maximus Confessor of the calling of Humanity to unite the divisions of creation: human from human, human from Paradise, Paradise from the Earth, the Earth from the Cosmos, the Cosmos from the Uncreated, all without confusion of the elements or annihilation of the individual. This theme reflects the glory of the Most Holy and Undivided Trinity, where three distinct Persons are united within one Essence, perfectly integrated yet never obliterated, not only acting as one but being One, yet still maintaining distinguishable personhoods, maintaining a selfless love for the other Persons at all times, united in a single will, united in a single purpose, united in a single Being and Nature, and thus united in all deeds. It is into this loving relationship that all the created order is called, and it is to Humanity the charge is given to bring Creation into that relationship, not to obliterate by assimilation but to fulfil and expand and grow in the infinite wonder of its Creator.
By this point you may realize something has gone dreadfully awry.
In His love, God provided absolute freedom to all created order to participate in this delightful purpose, for as the Apostle Paul puts it in the thirteenth chapter of his first letter to the Corinthian Church, love seeks not itself, but only the other, it does not coerce, it does not fester in resentment.[6] When the created order came about, when Humanity came onto the scene, God began a great work, but only if Humanity was up for it. Do the work, but do it with God, or as Our Lady said in today’s Gospel, “Do whatever he tells you.”[7]
However, in that freedom was the possibility of what we would come to call the Fall. As told so eloquently in Genesis,[8] Humanity chose to be the arbiter of what is good rather than to look to the source of Light and Life and Goodness to know the good. Humanity chose to separate itself from God, rather than participate in God and consequently in that infinite fulness to realize the vision perfectly. So, because we chose our own way, two things happened:
We immediately imposed limits on ourselves.
We immediately cut off our lifeline, effectively committing suicide.
Humanity was created with potential, with raw, unrealized manifold possibility, but as soon as Humanity exercised the free choice to divorce itself from God, the possibilities were cut. We had the potential to assume immortality by God’s grace. That did not happen. We had the potential to assume the power to have dominion over the created order. That did not happen (and those who claim dominion over nature based on the promise of Genesis[9] need to realize that gift was offered before the Fall and was contingent on remaining in union with God, so they need to cease using that as an excuse for ravaging the Earth). We had the potential for being part of the heavenly council as children of God. That too dissolved into dust.
We were not the first to go down that path.
There are other created intelligences aside from us, given the same freedoms, just not the same natures. They possess different purposes, different potentials, and different outcomes, yet were created to be fellow servants in the work of God. St. Thomas Aquinas in his section on angels tellingly writes that while they can be assembled in larger categories, each angel is in and of itself a separate species corresponding to its unique person.[10] Unlike Humanity, which possesses a common nature, these intelligences each has a nature peculiar to itself, but like Humanity had freedom to choose between going with God and going it alone.[11]
Those who chose to go it alone we call by a very nasty word, a version of the Greek word for Spirit, demon,[12] and their chief, the instigator of this choice, we call by a version of the Greek word for the Adversary, the Devil.[13]
Now, many of the fallen intelligences and Humanity itself did not start out thinking they were going to go it alone. We all were happy with the status quo,[14] but God’s Adversary, in complete and total spite for God, wanted to ruin as much of God’s creation and plan as possible. And so, the Adversary became the Accuser, and by insinuation, cajoling, and outright lies got according to some theologians’ estimates a third of the created intelligences, including Humanity, to exercise their freedom not to go with God.[15] Satan was called a murderer from the beginning,[16] for Satan not only effected Humanity’s spiritual death, but the spiritual death of legions of the heavenly host.
We really do not have much to guess what impact that had on God’s purposes for the other intelligences, for to paraphrase C.S. Lewis, those are their stories and not ours,[17] but for Humanity the impact was devastating. The union of the created order with the Uncreate was ruined. The union of Earth with the rest of the Cosmos was ruined. The union of the Earth with Paradise was ruined. The union of Paradise with Humanity was ruined. The union between Humans was ruined: the selfless leader/helper dynamic between married humans became beset with selfish, exploitative motives, making what should have been a dynamic partnership into an inequal Dom/Sub relationship with an entire range of nasty subtext that arise in various degrees, where community is ruptured, and anti-social actions ranging from petty bickering to obliteration of one by another the result. The union of Humanity with Divinity ruptured, with Humanity, separated now from the source of Light and Life, spiralling into the Abyss.
To say God was displeased with this state of affairs would be gross understatement.
What the Adversary fails to realize about God is that God is infinite and when one plan does not work, another takes its place, or better yet, the original plan morphs to meet the need. Much speculation has arisen over the centuries whether the Incarnation was dependent upon the Fall or whether it would have happened regardless of the state of Humanity. Perhaps it is true that God planned on having the person of the Word take on Human nature, unite it and its will with the Divine nature and will, and thus excite the jealousy of a host of other created intelligences. That is speculation, however. What did happen is God reached out to build a relationship with Humanity, chose a specific ethnic group and worked out a relationship with them, chose a particular family line to work out a relationship with them, and in selfless humility at the proper time took on flesh in the womb of a young maiden of that family in order to unite the Human and Divine natures, to become one with His beloved Humanity, to offer Himself up as a ransom for His beloved Humanity, to shatter the hold of Sin and Death that Humanity took on itself at the Fall, so that Humanity could take on a renewed nature and reverse the course the Adversary set. With the union of Human and Divine, a redeemed Humanity can now realize its purpose of uniting individuals with each other, Humanity with Creation and Creation with its Creator, fully participating in each other in love without loss of distinction but with full integration of Life and Purpose.
It is then no coincidence that the first sign which Our Lord performed was at a wedding, and blessed it with wine, not the inferior, but the superior, much as in the Sacrament He blesses us not with ordinary wine, but with the wine of the Blood of our redemption. The first sign, the sign of the Wedding at Cana, thus set the tone not just for the coming ministry of Christ on Earth, but pointed toward the ultimate purpose, the redemption of Human by God, the reconciliation of Human with God, and the marriage of Human to God, effected in the Person of Jesus Christ, the eternal Word of God.
That is why God likes weddings.
✠ Through the prayers of the Most Holy Theotokos and Ever-Virgin Mary, Holy Dominic, and all the saints, Saviour save us. Amen.
[1] Is. 62.4
[2] Hos. passim
[3] Mt. 22.1-14, Mk. 2.19, Lk. 5.34, Lk. 12.36
[4] Rev. 19.7, 21.2, 22.17
[5] Lossky, Vladimir, Orthodox Theology: An Introduction, tr. Ian and Ihita Kesarcodi-Watson, St. Vladimir’s Seminary Press, Crestwood, NY, 1978, pp. 74-78
[6] 1 Cor. 13.5
[7] Jn. 2.5
[8] Gen. 3.6
[9] Gen. 1.26
[10] St. Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologiae, I.50.4
[11] Op. cit., I.63.2-3
[12] Δαíμων
[13] Διáβολος
[14] Op. cit., I.63.5
[15] Ibid.
[16] Jn. 8.44
[17] Lewis, C.S., The Horse and His Boy, Geoffrey Bles, Ltd: London, 1954, chapter 14
Comments