THE WORD MADE FLESH: SERMON FOR THE SECOND SUNDAY AFTER CHRISTMAS

One of the Oldest Surviving Icons of Christ’s Baptism in the Jordan, Showing Christ as a Beardless Young Man at the Beginning of His Ministry, Baptized by His Cousin, John the Baptist, in the 5th-6th Century Arian Baptistry of Ravenna 

“In the fullness of time, God sent forth His Son, made of a woman, made under the law, to redeem them that were under the law, that we might receive the adoption of sons.” (Galatians 4:4-5) 

By Bp. Joseph (Ancient Church of the West) 

Introduction

Beloved in Christ, today we stand in the afterglow of Christmas and on the threshold of Epiphany, the mystic revelation of Christ to the world - in his naked and swaddled childhood, found by the wisemen in a manger - in his perfect and masculine adulthood, standing naked in the River Jordan, shining with the power of the Holy Spirit, a restored and glowing Second Adam. In His flesh, perfectly God, and in His humanity, perfectly Man!

Scripture 

EPISTLE: Isaiah 61:1-3 - 

The spirit of the Lord GOD is upon me; because the LORD hath anointed me to preach good tidings unto the meek; he hath sent me to bind up the brokenhearted, to proclaim liberty to the captives, and the opening of the prison to them that are bound; To proclaim the acceptable year of the LORD, and the day of vengeance of our God; to comfort all that mourn; To appoint unto them that mourn in Zion, to give unto them beauty for ashes, the oil of joy for mourning, the garment of praise for the spirit of heaviness; that they might be called trees of righteousness, the planting of the LORD, that he might be glorified.

GOSPEL: Saint Matthew 2:19-23 - 

WHEN Herod was dead, behold, an angel of the Lord appeareth in a dream to Joseph in Egypt, Saying, Arise, and take the young child and his mother, and go into the land of Israel: for they are dead which sought the young child's life. And he arose, and took the young child and his mother, and came into the land of Israel. But when he heard that Archelaus did reign in Judaea in the room of his father Herod, he was afraid to go thither: notwithstanding, being warned of God in a dream, he turned aside into the parts of Galilee: And he came and dwelt in a city called Nazareth: that it might be fulfilled which was spoken by the prophets, He shall be called a Nazarene. 

Sermon 

In this holy season, we contemplate the Incarnation of our Lord - the eternal Word made flesh, made man, circumcised as a testament to this reality, a feast that we commemorate today. The readings this day lead us into profound mysteries, urging us to see Christ not only as the Savior of Israel but as the Desire of all nations, the fulfillment of human longing, and the answer to questions raised by every age and culture. While Christ was circumcised to fulfill the Covenant of Abraham, Christ filled the water with His power, so that by baptism, we all become the children of God - inseminated with the “Logos Spermatikos.”

The Incarnation and the Universal Longing

From the dawn of time, humanity has yearned for union with the divine. The myths and philosophies of ancient cultures are full of figures - God-men, heroes, and sages - who bridge the gap between heaven and earth. The Egyptian god “Thoth”, the first deity to be called the "Word of God", embodies divine reason and order, and set the stage for the late Hebrew theological inquiry into the "Son of Man" who sits enthroned in Heaven as God. In Greek thought, “Logos”, as expressed by Philo, was the divine intermediary between God and creation, the “Second Power” in Heaven that was a palpable and manifest “Image of the Invisible God.” This Alexandrian tradition of theology powerfully interacted with the Jewish Revelation in Holy Scripture and saw the rise of Jewish Mysticism that anticipated an incarnated glory, the "Living Shikinah of God." The Rig Veda speaks of the “Purusha”, the primordial man sacrificed to the One Creator God, Brahman, to create the universe, echoing the sacrificial love of Christ and His role as savior. The Bhagavad Gita presents “Krishna”, the incarnation of Vishnu, as the divine man who enters history to bring salvation to all mankind through righteous action and sacrificial rituals. In Mahayana Buddhism, “Bodhisattvas” or “Pusas” incarnate compassion and incarnate in the form of perfect men, taking human form to lead others to enlightenment and creating eternal refuges and heavens by the accumulation of their personal merit. We know that early Syriac missionaries brought the story of Christ the Savior to India and China, and these were readily adopted into the Buddhist system as a Gospel of Redemption by Faith, calling upon the sacred name to ensure salvation in an eternal land of bliss and purity with the Savior. 

Even Confucianism and Daoism hold anticipations of Christ. Confucius described the “Son of Heaven” (天子) and the “Perfect Man” (圣人) who embodies divine virtues and rules with justice. The famous book, called “Lie Zi”, prophesied of a perfect man and messiah who would lead and guide into all truth, revealed in the West and eventually coming into the East. The “Dao De Jing” teaches that the eternal “Dao”, though beyond words, enters the world in humility, as seen in the child born in Bethlehem. This is why the brilliant translators of the Union Text, the “Heheben” (和合本), translated - “In the beginning was the Dao, and the Dao was with God, and the Dao was God” (“太初有道，道与神同在，道就是神”).

But these anticipations, as profound as they are, fall short. None of these stories could fulfill the human yearning for redemption more than Christ Himself could. As St. Athanasius declares: “The Word became man that we might become divine.” In Christ, these shadows or perfection and prophecy find their substance. 

The Myth Became Fact

C.S. Lewis reminds us that the Gospel is “true myth” - the myth that really happened. In the Incarnation, God entered human history, not as a fable, but in time and space. The angel’s command to Joseph, recorded in today’s Gospel, emphasizes this truth: “Take the young Child and His Mother and go into the land of Israel.” The Word of God, leaping down from heaven (Wisdom 18:15), became subject to human vulnerability, fleeing from Herod and settling in Nazareth. In history, this unfolding narrative in the Mind of God, Christ is the great hero and theanthropic warrior that all religions and prophecies have foreshadowed and foretold. 

Unlike the mythical God-men of ancient lore, Christ’s humanity was not a disguise, not a hindrance, and not the result of lustful weakness - but a true participation in our nature for the redemption and infilling of the whole Cosmos. He wept, hungered, suffered, and died. Through His real human life, He sanctified ours, offering us beauty for ashes and joy for mourning (Isaiah 61:3). 

The Ancient Icons of Christ's Baptism, Showing His Perfect Humanity, and Focusing on His Blessing of the Waters, Through Which the World is Made New

Fra Angelico's Italian Icon of the Baptism Perfectly Reflect the Eastern Themes

Christ Cleanses the Spirits of the Water and Changes It From a Habitation of Demons, Chaos, Death and the Underworld, into a Holder of Light, Life, and the Spiritual Power of God for Remission of Sins and Regeneration into Eternal Life

The Eternal Word and the Desire of the Nations

Today’s Gradual from Psalm 45 declares: “Thou art fairer than the children of men: full of grace are thy lips.” The Incarnation reveals that the eternal Logos is not an abstract principle but a Person, Jesus Christ, whose lips speak grace and truth. 

The longing of the nations, expressed in their myths and philosophies, finds its answer in Him. The Rig Veda’s “Purusha”, sacrificed for the cosmos, is fulfilled in the Lamb of God slain for the world (Revelation 13:8). The “Dao”, the eternal way, became flesh and dwelt among us (John 1:14). Krishna’s call to righteousness is surpassed by Christ’s call to repentance and faith in the Gospel. The Bodhisattva’s compassion, so great that it is literally called the “Avalokiteśvara” (अवलोकितेश्वर) the “Ocean of Compassion” - pales before the love of Christ, who bore our sins in His body on the tree (1 Peter 2:24). The Cross becomes the Axis Mundi, the Tree of Life, Yggdrasil, the Rood upon which the ancient gods are defeated and the One God is made manifest to all the world!

The Incarnation and Our Transformation

But Christ did not come merely to fulfill ancient expectations; He came to transform us. As Isaiah proclaimed, He binds the brokenhearted, proclaims liberty to the captives, and gives the oil of joy for mourning. Through Baptism, He accomplishes an internal circumcision of the heart, cleansing us of sin and making us new creations. 

As St. Basil, whose feast we commemorate, reminds us: “Man is an animal who has received the vocation to become God.” By the Incarnation, we are called to share in the divine life, becoming partakers of the divine nature (2 Peter 1:4). 

A Call to See Christ in All Things

Let us, therefore, embrace the Incarnate Word with faith. As we hear in Psalm 93, “The Lord is King, and hath put on glorious apparel.” This apparel is His human nature, taken on for our salvation, woven between Divinity and Humanity from the moment of conception by the Holy Spirit, never separated, never confused, always sharing between the two in perfect harmony - the Communicatio Idiomatum - as the blessed Council of Chalcedon in AD 451 allows us to see, drawing a fence of mystery around the unfathomable depths of the Incarnation. Let us recognize Christ as the fulfillment of the world’s deepest hopes and share this Gospel with all nations. 

In the words of St. Irenaeus: “The glory of God is man fully alive, and the life of man is the vision of God.” This is the life offered to us in Christ, a fleshy, circumcised, incarnated, masculine salvation, that ties together the Adamic commandment to be fruitful and multiply and fill the earth, with the Abrahamic covenant of faith being equated to righteousness, and the moving of our merely physical reproduction of worshippers and knowers of God to a spiritual reproduction through disciples and students. We are not a Gnostic and “transcendent” faith, as Plotinus was rumored to say, being “ashamed to have a body” - no, we are fully enfleshed in the Body of God, the Body born a baby and baptized in the Jordan, and now sitting eternally in glory in Heaven, eternally a circumcised, baptized, crucified and risen again Man! 

Closing Poem and Collect

Beloved as we close, let us hear the beautiful couplet by the English Divine John Donne: 

"Twas much that man was made like God before, 

But that God should be made like man much more."

Let us pray…

COLLECT 

O God, who in the fullness of time didst send forth Thy Son, the eternal Word, to redeem Thy people and fulfill the longings of every heart: Grant that we, being rooted in His truth, may see Thy glory in all creation and proclaim Him as the Desire of the Nations, who liveth and reigneth with Thee and the Holy Ghost, one God, world without end. Amen.