Manifestation and Adoration

The Christmas story as we know it comes from two of the canonical Gospels, that of St. Matthew and that of St. Luke.   St. Mark’s Gospel begins with the event which the Eastern Church makes the focus of Epiphany, the Baptism of Christ.   The Fourth Evangelist begins his Gospel with a theological prologue that includes a plain statement of the significance of the Nativity – “and the Word was made flesh and dwelt among us” – but the narrative portion the Gospel that follows this prologue also begins with the Baptism, or, to be more precise, with John the Baptist pointing Jesus out to His first disciples and relating to them the events of the Baptism, the day after it had occurred.    To get the full Christmas story we need the Gospels of both SS Matthew and Luke, because, although the main participants are the same – the baby Jesus, His Virgin Mother Mary, and her betrothed husband Joseph – as is the location, David’s city of Bethlehem, each Evangelist tells a different party of the story.   For example, whereas St. Luke tells of the Annunciation by Gabriel to the Virgin Mary, it is St. Matthew who tells of the angel visiting Joseph.

 

It is St. Matthew who gives the account of the Adoration of the Magi, which is the principle event commemorated by the Western Church on Epiphany (1).   St. Luke, by contrast, tells of the Adoration of the shepherds.   This is rather interesting due to the difference between the two Evangelists. 

 

St. Luke was a Greek physician who was an associate of St. Paul’s in his missionary journeys.   He is the only Gentile Evangelist, (2) indeed, the only Gentile writer to contribute to the New Testament, or for that matter the whole of canonical Scripture except the portion of Daniel that is told in the first person by King Nebuchadnezzar. (3)   St. Matthew, who was also called Levi, was Jewish.   His Gospel continuously references the Old Testament and presents events in the life of Christ as the fulfilment of Old Testament prophecy.   Indeed, after the very Jewish genealogy that he sticks at the beginning of his Gospel, he presents his account of Jesus in such a way that it evokes the story of Israel in the Old Testament (the angel visits Joseph, the namesake of the Old Testament figure noted for receiving revelation in dreams, in a dream, the Holy Family flee to Egypt to escape Herod as Israel fled to Egypt to escape famine, and then return as Israel returned).    If St. John’s purpose in writing his Gospel, as he himself stated it, was that his readers might come to believe that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of the Living God, and so receive everlasting life, St. Matthew’s purpose appears to have been to present Jesus as the fulfilment of the Jewish Scriptures, and, indeed, it is St. Matthew who records Jesus saying that He came not to abolish the Law and the Prophets but to fulfil them.  

 

All of this makes the difference between St. Matthew’s account of the Nativity and St. Luke’s more striking.   It is St. Luke, the Gentile physician, writing a very Western, eyewitness based, account of the life of Christ, who provides us with all the most Jewish details of the Nativity and the events surrounding it.   St. Luke sticks the Annunciation to the Virgin Mary in the middle of his account of the conception and birth of John the Baptist, to St. Elizabeth, the cousin of the Virgin Mary, and wife of St. Zacharias, a priest serving in the Temple, an account which resembles in many details, Moses’ account of the conception and birth of Isaac to Abraham and Sarah.   St. Luke follows up his account of the Nativity itself, with an account of the fulfilment of the post-natal requirements of the Jewish faith, the Circumcision of Christ on the eighth day when He was given the name Jesus, and the Presentation in the Temple on the completion of His Mother’s purification period on the fortieth day.   The only details from the Roman world that make it into St. Luke’s account of all of this are who the Emperor and local officials were at the time, and the census ordered by Caesar Augustus that was the reason why the Holy Family made the trip to Bethlehem.     It is to St. Matthew, the Evangelist who emphasizes Jesus as the fulfilment of the Jewish Scriptures and their prophecy of a Messiah that we must turn to find an account of Gentiles who feature into the story in any way other than remote, background, details.

 

Although this is striking and interesting it is not counter intuitive.   For the Adoration of the Magi itself has long been understood by orthodox Christians to be the fulfilment of Messianic prophecy – specifically that of the sixtieth chapter of Isaiah.   The second last verse of the chapter immediately prior to this hand declared “And the Redeemer shall come to Zion, and unto them that turn from transgression in Jacob, saith the LORD.”     The sixtieth chapter begins with the following passage:

 

Arise, shine; for thy light is come, and the glory of the LORD is risen upon thee.  For, behold, the darkness shall cover the earth, and gross darkness the people: but the LORD shall arise upon thee, and his glory shall be seen upon thee.  And the Gentiles shall come to thy light, and kings to the brightness of thy rising.   Lift up thine eyes round about, and see: all they gather themselves together, they come to thee: thy sons shall come from far, and thy daughters shall be nursed at thy side.  Then thou shalt see, and flow together, and thine heart shall fear, and be enlarged; because the abundance of the sea shall be converted unto thee, the forces of the Gentiles shall come unto thee.   The multitude of camels shall cover thee, the dromedaries of Midian and Ephah, all they from Sheba shall come; they shall bring gold and incense; and they shall show forth the praises of the LORD.   (vv 1-6)

 

It is not difficult to see why the Church has long seen a specific foreshadowing of the Adoration of the Magi in these verses, as well, of course, as the more general concept of the Gentiles coming to faith in the True and Living God.   The coming of Christ into the world is likened to a light shining in the darkness in the prologue to St. John’s Gospel, and the Adoration of the Magi was certainly a matter of the Gentiles coming to that light bringing gold and (frank)incense and myrrh.   The Isaiah passage, interestingly enough, is almost certainly the source of the tradition that identifies the Magi as kings.   While it would be reading too much into these verses to say that they prove this tradition conclusively, they should be sufficient to answer those who argue that because St. Matthew does not describe them as such in the second chapter of his Gospel, the tradition is therefore wrong.   St. Matthew describes them as magoi, the plural of magos, which, like its Latin equivalent magi, plural of magus, is borrowed from the ancient languages of what is now Iraq and Iran.    This word is rendered “wise men” in St. Matthew’s Gospel in the Authorized Bible, otherwise it is generally rendered “sorcerer”, being obviously the root of the English words magic and magician.   In the lands of its origin it was the designation of an ancient class or order, which was first and foremost priestly, but whose members studied philosophy, astrology, and medicine among other things.   The wise men of Babylon and Persia, depicted in the book of Daniel as advisers to the kings of those empires, were of this order and the Gospel account of the wise men following a star to the Holy Land to worship the newborn King of the Jews would suggest these were of that order as well.  (4)   If the tradition that says they were also the kings of the Isaiah passage is correct, they would therefore have been philosopher-kings.

 

While the Eastern and Western branches of the Church have developed different traditions concerning the Magi, there is a general consensus as to the significance of the event.   The Adoration of the Magi in St. Matthew’s Gospel is the complement of the Adoration of the Shepherds in St. Luke’s Gospel.   The Shepherds as representatives of the Jews and the Magi as representatives of the Gentiles both came to pay homage to Him Who came to be the Redeemer of the entire world and in Whose Church, Jew and Gentile would be united in one body of worshippers.   Or rather, to the put the emphasis where it belongs, in these events, Christ, as the fulfilment of the ancient promises of redemption, was made manifest to the Jews and Gentiles for the very first time.

 

 

This is the significance of the name of the day commemorating the event.  The term epiphany in colloquial use refers to a moment of realization or awareness.   “I had an epiphany” is the common expression.  Originally, however, as a Greek word it had the meaning of a manifestation or appearance.   While the two meanings are clearly related, the current vernacular meaning represents a shift in focus from that which is made manifest to the person who experiences the manifestation.   It is, of course, with the original meaning and perspective, that the term was first applied to the festival.   The Collect for today in the Book of Common Prayer begins with the words “O God, who by the leading of a star didst manifest thy only-begotten Son to the Gentiles” and, indeed, the BCP gives as an alternative name for the day “The Manifestation of Christ to the Gentiles”.

 

The coming of Christ into the world two thousand years ago was a manifestation, as both Isaiah and St. John tell us, of a light shining in a darkness.   The darkness, St. John tells, us “comprehended it not”.  That is as true today as it was then.   St. John also tells us, however, that “as many as received him, to them gave he power to become the sons of God, even to them that believe on his name” and that too is just as true today.

 

May the light of Christ shine upon you and may you in faith receive Him this Epiphanytide.

(1)   The Eastern Church includes the Adoration of the Magi within Christmas proper, as artistic depictions of the Nativity tend to do.   In most of the Eastern Church, due to the difference in calendars, Christmas Eve falls on the same day that the Western Church celebrates Epiphany.   The Western Church makes the Adoration of the Magi the focus of Epiphany, which falls on the day after the Twelve days of Christmas.   The Baptism of the Lord, which the Eastern Church commemorates on Epiphany, is also associated with Epiphany in the West, as is the Wedding of Cana, but the Baptism is traditionally assigned a day later in the Octave of Epiphany. 

(2)   Some dispute that St. Luke was a Gentile, but they do not have a very strong case.   

(3)   The Book of Job, if written by the title character as has traditionally been believed, was not written by a descendant of Abraham but by one of his contemporaries.   This predates, however, the distinction between Hebrews/Jews and Gentiles and so demonstrating Job not to have been the former does not place him in the latter category.  

(4)   By the time the events of the book of Daniel and St. Matthew’s Gospel took place, these priests had adopted the religion of Zoroastrianism, founded by one of their own, Zoroaster, or to use his name in his own tongue, Zarathustra, not to be confused with the Nietzsche character by the same name.   It was from this religion that the heresiarch Mani borrowed the dualism that bears his name in the third century.

 

 

 

 

Gospel Truths of Christ’s Early Life and the Beginning of His Earthly Ministry

Of the Christian festivals, Christmas and Easter tend to overshadow all the rest. This is understandable as these feasts commemorate the foundational truths of the Incarnation of the Son of God and His Resurrection from the dead. The fundamental importance of these truths, however, is no reason to overlook the other events in Christ’s life that the Church has traditionally seen fit to honour for these events have significance in the economy of salvation and the unveiling of God’s revelation of Himself to the world that is well worth our consideration.

The period following immediately after Christmas and preceding the Lenten preparation for Easter includes several feast days which honour events in Christ’s early life as well as the event which marked the beginning of His earthly public ministry. The Epiphany on January 6th is the most important of these and every Sunday until the beginning of Lent (1) is identified simply as the first, second, etc. Sunday after Epiphany. Epiphany is very closely tied to Christmas – in the Eastern Church, they are one and the same feast, and even in the West, where Epiphany is the Twelfth Day of Christmas, the event which it points back to, the visit of the Magi to the infant Christ is inseparable from the rest of the Christmas narrative. The visit of these Gentile wise men from the East who had been watching for the star of “he that is born King of the Jews” points to the truth that the Lord Jesus, while He was indeed the Messiah, the deliver promised to national Israel through the prophets, was the Redeemer also of all the nations of the world.

Prior to the Epiphany there is another event from Christ’s early life that is honoured on January 1st. In the secular calendar this is New Year’s Day but in the Western liturgical calendar it is the Feast of the Circumcision of our Lord falling, as it does, on the octave day of Christmas, i.e., the number of days after Christmas on which a Jewish boy would be circumcised after his birth in accordance with the commandment given to Abraham (Gen. 17:12). The telling of this event occupies the space of a single verse in the entire Scriptures, the twenty-first verse of the second chapter of the Gospel According to St. Luke which reads:

And when eight days were accomplished for the circumcising of the child, his name was called Jesus, which was so named of the Angel before he was conceived in the womb.

For the significance of this event in the economy of salvation, however, we must turn to the book of Galatians. Bishop Lancelot Andrewes, beautifully explained this in a sermon preached before King James I at Whitehall on Christmas Day 1609 (2) on the text Galatians 4:4, 5:

When the fullness of time was come, God sent His Son, made of a woman, made under the Law. That He might redeem them that were under the Law, that we might receive the adoption of sons.

Commenting on the phrase “made under the Law” Andrewes said:

And when did He this? When was He “made under the Law?” Even then when He was circumcised. For this doth St. Paul testify in the third of the next chapter, “Behold, I Paul testify unto you whosoever is circumcised,” factus est debitor universae Legis, “he becomes a debtor to the whole Law.” At His Circumcision then He entered bon anew with us; and in sign that so He did He shed then a few drops of His blood, whereby He signed the bond as it were, and gave those few drops then, tanquam arrham universi sanguinis effundendi, ‘as a pledge or earnest,’ that “when the fullness of time came,” ‘He would be ready to shed all the rest;’ as He did….Well, this He did undertake for us at His circumcision, and therefore then and not till then He had His Name given Him, the name of Jesus, a Saviour. For then took He on Him the obligation to save us. And look, what then at His Circumcision He undertook, at His Passion He paid even to the full: and having paid it, delevit chirographum, “cancelled the sentence of the Law” that till then was of record and stood in full force against us.

It was an event brief in the telling but packed with significance.

Immediately after his mention of the circumcision, St. Luke’s Gospel jumps ahead thirty-three days to the day when, in accordance with the instructions in the twelfth chapter of Leviticus, His mother’s post-natal purification period being ended, He was brought to the Temple in Jerusalem, presented as the first-born son, and an offering made on His behalf. As with the circumcision, in this event Christ fulfilled a requirement of the Law albeit as a passive participant. The account tells of two encounters that took place during this visit to the Temple in which elderly servants of the Lord, Simeon and Anna the Prophetess recognized the infant Jesus as the promised Messiah. This event has been celebrated since ancient times on the fortieth day after Christmas, February 2nd in a Feast that has many names. In the East it is called Hypapante, a Greek word which means “meeting” and clearly emphasizes the encounters with Simeon and Anna. In the West it is known as the Presentation of Christ in the Temple, the Purification of St. Mary the Virgin, or more commonly, Candlemas, from the ancient custom of bringing candles to church to be blessed on this day. The candles signify light, the relevance of which to this particular Feast is to be found in the canticle Nunc Dimmitis which Simeon proclaimed upon taking the infant Messiah in his arms. He declared the Child to be “a light to lighten the Gentiles, and the glory of thy people Israel.” Note how the significance we observed in the visit of the Magi reappears here in the words of Simeon. Christ said of Himself that He is the “light of the world” (John 8:12; 9:5), and He called His disciples to be the same (Matt. 5:14). This is a theme of all of these Feasts which receives a particular emphasis in that of the Presentation.

Christ’s birth, circumcision, the visitation of the Magi, and His presentation in the Temple, commemorated in the West on Christmas, New Year’s, Epiphany and Candlemas respectively, are all we are told in Scripture about the infancy of Christ and, except for the account of His visit to the Temple when twelve, all that the Scriptures tell us about His earthly life prior to the beginning of His public ministry. The event which marked the beginning of His earthly ministry is also commemorated in this time period. It too is traditionally associated with Epiphany. The name Epiphany comes from the Greek word for “manifestation” a word that is very appropriate for the way it has been applied by the Church to both the Visit of the Magi and the Baptism of the Lord – and, in the East, to His birth. The Baptism of the Lord was appointed to be celebrated along with the Visit of the Magi on Epiphany itself by the early Church and this continues to be the Eastern custom. In the West it may be celebrated on the Epiphany or in the following octave, usually on the next Sunday or Monday. It commemorates an event which is told in all four Gospels and which has great revelatory and soteriological significance.

The revelatory significance of the Baptism is, of course, Trinitarian. For while there are references to the Word/Son of God and the Spirit of God throughout the Old Testament, beginning with the Creation account, it is at the Baptism that all Three Persons appear manifest together in their distinctiveness, relationships, and essential unity. The Father speaks from Heaven, identifying His Son and declaring Himself to be well pleased with Him, as the Holy Spirit visually descends from the Father upon the Son.

The Gospel According to St. Matthew records that when Jesus went to John the Baptist to be baptized, John initially refused, objecting that “I have need to be baptized of thee, and comest thou to me?” To understand his objection, we must understand the nature of his message and ministry. John the Baptist had been preaching in the wilderness, proclaiming that the long awaited Kingdom of Heaven was at hand and calling upon Israel to repent of their sins. The baptism that he administered in the Jordan River was a symbol of that repentance. Those who received his baptism confessed their sins as they did so and John himself said of his baptism “I indeed baptize you with water unto repentance.” Jesus had no sin of which He needed to repent. Hence John’s objection – the impeccable Jesus ought to be the One administering baptism rather than taking the place of a penitent sinner and receiving it. Jesus’ answer was “Suffer it to be so now: for thus it becometh us to fulfil all righteousness.” What did He mean by this?

Jesus’ earthly ministry ended with His being betrayed, arrested, and then crucified. He had committed no sin, much less a crime worthy of capital punishment. He had told His disciples that this would happen, however, and after His Resurrection He explained to them why it happened, which they in turn passed on to us. St. Peter wrote:

Christ also suffered for us, leaving us an example, that ye should follow his steps: Who did no sin, neither was guile found in his mouth: Who, when he was reviled, reviled not again; when he suffered, he threatened not; but committed himself to him that judgeth righteously: Who his own self bare our sins in his own body on the tree, that we, being dead to sins, should live unto righteousness: by whose stripes ye were healed. (I Peter 2:21-24)

Or, in the more concise words of St. Paul, “he hath made him to be sin for us, who knew no sin; that we might be made the righteousness of God in him.” (II Corinthians 5:21)

This was the mission on which He had been sent into the world – to take the place of sinners as the spotless sacrifice that would satisfy the offended justice of God and restore fallen man to God’s favour bringing forgives and pardon, reconciliation and peace. Just as His ministry ended, so it began, with Him taking the place of sinners in undergoing John’s baptism. This is what He meant when He said “thus it becometh us to fulfil all righteousness.” Everything which God’s Law required, Jesus fulfilled perfectly on behalf of the rest of mankind whose sins prevented us from meeting the requirements. This included the ceremonial requirements fulfilled by His circumcision and presentation in the Temple, the moral requirements fulfilled by His life of perfect obedience, and finally, the full payment of the penalty that had been incurred by those who had not been able to meet these other requirements, i.e., everybody else. Under the Law, repentance was the condition for forgiveness of sin. The prophet Ezekiel spelled it out this way:

The soul that sinneth, it shall die. The son shall not bear the iniquity of the father, neither shall the father bear the iniquity of the son: the righteousness of the righteous shall be upon him, and the wickedness of the wicked shall be upon him. But if the wicked will turn from all his sins that he hath committed, and keep all my statutes, and do that which is lawful and right, he shall surely live, he shall not die. All his transgressions that he hath committed, they shall not be mentioned unto him: in his righteousness that he hath done he shall live. Have I any pleasure at all that the wicked should die? saith the Lord GOD: and not that he should return from his ways, and live? (Ezekiel 18:20-23).

Fallen human nature being what it is, however, we are as incapable of repenting so perfectly as to never sin again as were incapable of producing perfect obedience to the Law in the first place. When Christ took the place of the repentant sinner and underwent the baptism of John He signified that He undertook to make good for human failure with regards to this requirement of the Law as well. This, of course, no more excuses us from the responsibility to sincerely confess our sins and strive to repent of them any more than Christ’s perfect obedience gives us a license to disobey God but it places repentance like obedience on a completely different basis under the Gospel than it was under the Law. Under the Gospel God freely gives to man in Christ everything which He required of man under the Law. The message of the Law is “do and live”, the message of the Gospel is “it is done, believe and live” and our doing, under the Gospel, flows out of the life that we receive by believing. Under the Law God required that a sinner completely turn around and change his ways in order to be forgiven. Under the Gospel God gives to the sinner who believes in Jesus Christ a full pardon of all his sins and along with the pardon He gives the Holy Spirit Whose ministries of regeneration and sanctification gradually produce over the course of our lives the transformation of mind and behaviour that God required of the sinner under the Law. We are to repent of our sins and obey God to the best of our ability, but under the Gospel we are to place no confidence whatsoever in our own repentance or obedience but to confess our best efforts at either to fall far short of what God requires and to place all of our faith in Christ and His perfect and sufficient merits.

That Christ came under the Law and met all of its requirements perfectly so as to place us in a new standing with God under the Gospel, a standing of grace, is a theme which, like that of Christ as “light of the world” runs through all of these events of His early life and ministry. These are very important themes indeed and it is well that the Church honours these events annually giving us opportunity to contemplate them.

(1) Or, in the older liturgical calendar prior the revisions of the last century, until Shrovetide, the two and a half weeks prior to Ash Wednesday.
(2) This is the fourth in the first volume of Lancelot Andrewes, Ninety-Six Sermons, compiled and edited by Bishops William Laud and John Buckeridge at the command of King Charles I following Andrewes death and first published in 1629.