The Anticipation of All Creation

In this insightful sermon, Daniel McInnes explores the deep anticipation shared by all creation as it awaits the coming of its Creator. He delves into the significance of genealogies, the faithfulness of biblical figures, and the destiny of humanity in God's divine plan.

Transcript

In the name of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. Amen. Amen. Do you feel the anticipation? Does anybody feel the anticipation of what's coming? Do you have a sense of that? Maybe when you're kids, you know, you really feel it. Everyone goes and shakes the presents under the tree and tries to figure out what that is, you know, all that kind of thing. But is that all there is to it? Is it just for kids, just the fun for adults, just the nostalgia of what we've experienced when we were children? Is that all there is to this feeling of expectation that we have at this time of year?

So I was listening to Dr. Nathan Jacobs, who's an Orthodox philosopher, and he was talking about this very topic. He was discussing this because he said, you know, when he was a kid, of course, he had all these great memories of Christmas family and presents and all those wonderful things. But as he grew, he was like, I don't think that's all that's going on here. What's going on, this feeling of anticipation coming into this season, what's it all about? So he looked into it, thought about it, and by looking at what the church has said over the many centuries and the church fathers and all kinds of things, he basically came to the conclusion that what we experience is the real expectation, the real expectation of all creation. All creation waiting, waiting for its creator.

When God created all of the heavens and the earth, he created man as kind of in between. We have that spirit breathed into us by God, but we're also made from the earth. And through us, all of creation was supposed to participate as far as it can in the glory of God. All of creation, from all of the things that are made, creatures, even the inanimate things, everything was supposed to participate as far as it could, according to its own nature in the glory of God.

But when man fell, that connection was broken. Now, creation can't participate in the glory of God in the way that it was supposed to in the beginning. And for that reason, we're told in the scriptures that all creation groans, awaiting for the manifestation of the son of God. So, at this time of year, we actually experience not just the nostalgia of what we experienced when we were kids or just the fun of the whole season. We actually experience the real expectation, the real longing of all of creation for its creator who is coming into the world in just a few days time.

So as we think about that and we look at what's happening in today's epistle reading and in the gospel reading, we have a genealogy. In St. Paul, we don't have a genealogy, but we have like a listing of people who were faithful servants of God who were part of the coming of Christ.

And it's really important that we actually pay attention to these genealogies. Genealogies can be written for all kinds of purposes. We're very modern people, so we think a genealogy should be, you know, like a family tree. Every single person listed, you know, and who they were and all that kind of thing and their relation to everybody else, all that kind of stuff, right? So, we're very modern people. We think like that. But in the ancient world, genealogies were written for various purposes. And they weren't just written for that purpose. They were written, for example, to show how things should be inherited. So, you wouldn't necessarily include everybody. You would just include the firstborn, right? Because the firstborns are the one who inherit. And then the firstborn would then disperse the assets and whatever to other family members, but it was the firstborn who was going to inherit.

It could be the claim to kingship, for example, right? Similar kind of idea. So, these things were written for various purposes. So, we think about the one that we heard today from the gospel of St. Matthew. What's its purpose? He doesn't actually start at Adam. Well, we know from St. Luke's genealogy, he starts at Mary and then goes all the way back to God actually, right? But in the one that we heard today from the Gospel of St. Matthew, he starts from Abraham. Abraham and then goes through to David and keeps going and so on. So, we've got this whole genealogy.

The point of the genealogy is to state very clearly that Jesus is the Messiah. He is the promised one. He is the one they're waiting for. He is the one who has been looked forward to from the time of Abraham all the way through. When we listen to the promises of Abraham, Abraham was told that his children would be as the stars, right? And we think of that and we just think of the number. We think the stars are innumerable. So, his children would be like the stars.

But in the ancient world, stars were associated with angelic beings. So, when Abraham was told that his children would be like the stars, what do you think he was being told? His children would be like angelic beings. What's that? That's called theosis. Right back then, at that time in the very beginning, Abraham was being told that his children would become like the stars of heaven. In other words, there would be like this divinization taking place. That's why he didn't look for a permanent place on this earth. We're told that Abraham himself didn't inherit even a foot's length of land during his life. If he'd wanted to, he could have gone back to the city and he could have had as much land as he wanted. But he lived as a foreigner in a foreign land looking forward to a city whose foundation was not made on this earth, but its foundation was God.

So, that's the destiny that we have. We have this destiny of being glorified and divinized in Christ. And this genealogy is telling us how that came about through real human beings.

So, the genealogy tells us what's going to happen, what the ending is, where it's heading towards, but also that Jesus was a real human being. He was a real human being who had real human ancestors. And if you look at that genealogy, not all of them are perfect. There's some dodgy things going on in that genealogy, right? If you look into it, if you read the Old Testament, you'll find in the stories that you read, there's a number of things going on in there that you would look at and go, "Really? That person's in the genealogy of Christ. Okay, we've got Rahab. Rahab was a prostitute, okay, in Jericho."

So, she's one of the ancestors of Christ. But she was faithful. When the Israeli spies came into the city, she took them in and protected them. And then she sent them back. And because she was faithful to what they said, she was protected and she became an ancestor of Christ.

There are other examples as well. We can look into that genealogy. It tells us a whole story of real human beings, real humanity. The history of God's incarnation comes through all of those people and it's not perfect, but God is perfect. And he came in real humanity with all of that history. He came into this world to bring back that connection to God, to us, so that we can manifest his glory in this world and into all of creation.

So, as we go forward towards the nativity of Christ, we should be thinking about what kind of representation of God are we in this world because that's what this is all about. Christ came to make us like him so that we can be his representatives in this world. We can bring his energies and his glory into this world.

In the epistle reading today, again, we have a different type of, it's not a genealogy, it's a listing, but we're told about faithful people. Faithful people who did the work of God in this world. We talk about Abraham who lived in the land, lived in a land of promise as in a foreign land living in tents with Isaac and Jacob. So, he lived there as a foreign land. He was looking forward to a city that has its foundations whose designer and builder is God.

Abraham wasn't perfect, but he was faithful. He was when God said to him, "Leave your land. Leave your homeland and go to Canaan." Told him where to go. And he said, "Okay." And he went. When God said to Abraham, "Sacrifice your son Isaac," he thought, "Well, God's promised that through my son Isaac, my children are going to be like the stars in heaven." So, even if I kill Isaac, that means God can bring him back to life. In other words, he understood that God had the power to resurrect even the dead. And so, even there, he didn't even hesitate. He took his son and he went. Of course, it didn't happen. God provided the ram instead of his son, but he was faithful. As we read that passage from Hebrews, we see by faith, by faith, by faith. But really, what we should be reading there and the Greek word really means by faithfulness.

By faithfulness. It's not just something that we believe. It's not just a mental ascent to something. The demons believe if that's all it is. The demons know that Jesus is the son of God. Right? They know who God is. They know all the things. They know the Bible better than we do. If all things are just about mental ascent, then the demons have got that over us. It's not about mental ascent. It is that plus doing what we are told to do, what we've been asked to do. It's the fulfilling of that in our lives that's important. And these people that we read about in Hebrews fulfilled God's word as they lived their life. Although there's some rogues in there as well. All right, we see Gideon. Gideon sometimes did the right thing and then sometimes he kind of didn't, and that led to real problems later on if you read the story of Gideon. So, he's a kind of a mixed character. Barack was a bit of a wimp.

God told him to go and fight and he said, "Well, I'm a bit scared." So, God said, "Okay, well I'll send Deborah. I'll send a woman in your place." And she'll win and then you'll be kind of humiliated by that, which is exactly what happened, right? She was faithful.

We've got other people who are even more troublesome like Jephthah. If you know the story of Jephthah, he was told to go and fight the Philistines, and he said, "I will sacrifice the first thing that comes through the gate if I win," right? Well, his daughter was the first thing that came through the gate and he sacrificed his daughter.

That's pretty bad, right? So, there are other readings of that, but the traditional Orthodox reading is that Jephthah actually did that, right? And they don't think that Jephthah was a good guy. They say his daughter was faithful. His daughter was faithful. He was not very faithful. But God was faithful to the promise. They did win. We got Samson. Samson's maybe everyone's childhood hero, very strong and all that. Samson was not a good guy. Samson was supposed to be a Nazarene and he had three vows and he broke every single one of them. He broke every single one of them. When his hair was cut off, that was the last one. And the Holy Spirit departed from him. At the very end, when he's between the pillars of the temple, he says, "My last wish is to get revenge for all the terrible things that have been done to me and to kill everybody who's here." It's not exactly repentance, right?

So, we have some kind of rogues even in that history. But the point of the story is, and we don't know what St. Paul was going to say about these people. He probably wasn't going to say many great things about Samson and Jephthah and whoever. We don't know what he was going to say. There are faithful people who are around them who were faithful, right, and God was faithful in every situation. God is always faithful.

But we can always take from these stories the fact that we ourselves have a responsibility to be faithful to what God has given us to do. But as we see with some of these people, God can fulfill his side and we can really let it down. All right? We can make a mess of it.

So, I think St. Ephraim the Syrian says of Samson that Samson's broken body stands as a monument at the gates of hell to what happens when you're overcome by the passions, which is not a ringing endorsement of anybody. So, even if we play our part in bringing about what God wants in this world, even if we do that, despite the way of life that we live, despite that.

So, as we go forward and as we welcome the coming of Christ, we should reflect on what type of actions we are doing, what type of life we're living, what type of faithfulness are we showing in the world because God's will will be done anyway regardless of what we do. But if we work with God, we become the conduits of his energies and of his glory and his manifestation in this world. If we don't, God's work, God's will will still be done, but we will fall, and we don't want that. So, let's reflect on that as we're waiting for Christ in that expectation. All of creation, all of creation now is groaning and waiting for the coming of its creator so that that connection with the energies of God can be restored and so his energies will once again flow for all of creation and all of creation will be beautified in Christ. Amen.