Sunday, December 29, 2024

Colossians 3:4-11
Luke 14:16-24
Week of Holy Forefathers

In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Glory to Jesus Christ. Glory forever. Today as we prepare for the coming of God in the flesh, the Church remembers the holy ancestors of Christ—the forefathers of God. We remember them both in this Sunday and the next when we read the great genealogy in the beginning of St. Matthew’s Gospel. So happy name’s day to all those named Adam, Eve, Abraham, Jesse, David, Zerubabel, Selathiel, Haggai (especially remembered for his prophecy about the Word without Beginning coming to a newly restored second Temple), and of course, Joseph and Mary, the Mother of God. Who all gets counted as a forefather or ancestor of God? We usually use this latter designation for the parents of Mary, Joachim and Anna. However, it is used in the Church’s commemoration of many different types of saints: high priests like my own saint Aaron, patriarchs, prophets, kings, judges, etc. This is the week we remember Christ’s spiritual progeny, as not all of these are related to him by blood but are nevertheless tied to him by adoption and covenant. Next Sunday we will focus more specifically on his physical lineage when we read the genealogy in Matthew’s Gospel. What then does it really mean to be or become part of God’s family? How do we revel in the incredible gift that we are alive and the chain of events that led us to this moment in time had very much to do with many fathers and mothers before us making the choice to love one another?

I remember one of the first times I entered an Orthodox Church and witnessed a large extended family all worshiping God together in one church. It was both encouraging and discouraging. I was encouraged to see an actual, physical family that had faithfully preserved belief in God for several generations. Like Saint Paul wrote to Timothy, “I thank God whom I serve as my forefathers did.… and I have been reminded of your sincere faith which first lived in your grandmother Lois, and in your mother Eunice, and I am persuaded now lives in you also.” (II Timothy 1:3, 5) But I was at the same time discouraged as I thought of my own pedigree, my own fathers in the flesh whose checkered beliefs and divided opinions about God defy this kind of faithfulness and unity. In America, where independence is an absolute virtue, it is easy to feel like an orphan without a faith or any connection to tradition. But let us take a second look this morning at who it is that the Lord of Glory invites to be part of his ancestry, to be partakers of His banquet.

This morning’s gospel from Saint Luke is the parable of the great banquet in which a certain man invites guests. It is the Lord’s picture of blessedness in the Kingdom of God. We are not told much in the text of the guests who were first invited: only that they were many and presumably important and that, “They all alike began to make excuses.” The lame things they prefer to the banquet are not nearly as important as who the enraged master invites next. He commands his servants, “Go out to the roads and country lanes and compel [the people there] to come in so that my house will be full.” We conclude that our Lord who is the master of the banquet does not show favoritism but as Saint Peter realizes concerning a certain Roman centurion named Cornelius, “God accepts men and women from every nation who fear him and do what is right.” (Acts 10:35) But that isn’t all. Why does he accept all this riff raff into His house instead of hunting for more celebrities to like and subscribe to his show? Russian novelist Feodor Dostoevsky has a wonderful gloss on this parable and reworking of this important moment:

‘You too come forth,’ He will say, ‘Come forth, ye drunkards, come forth, ye weak ones, come forth, ye children of shame!’ And we shall all come forth, without shame and shall stand before him. And He will say unto us, ‘Ye are swine, made in the Image of the Beast and with his mark; but come ye also!’ And the wise ones and those of understanding will say, ‘Oh Lord, why dost Thou receive these men?’ And He will say, ‘This is why I receive them, oh ye wise, this is why I receive them, oh ye of understanding, that not one of them believed himself to be worthy of this.’

— F. Dostoevsky in Crime and Punishment

So who then are God’s ancestors? What qualifies them to be invited to this August company guests at this divine feast? As we look at the icon what do we see besides mostly Gray-haired, older men? Listen carefully to the genealogy read next Sunday from Saint Matthew and you will hear some women too. And what kind of men and women are these who are listed in the company of the Lord’s ancestors? Yes, they were all given great offices to hold like prophet and high priest, king and patriarch, but the beginning of their lives was hardly exceptional. They were idolators, murderers, adulterers, con-artists, fornicators, blasphemers, and experts in all kinds of worldly uncleanness. Yet they did not stay that way. But they obeyed the rule of today’s epistle of Saint Paul to the Colossians “…to put to death your members which are of the earth [including all those named sins] …. and put on the new men who is renewed in knowledge, according to the image of him who created him, where there is neither Jew nor Greek, circumcised or uncircumcised, barbarian, Scythian, slave nor free, but Christ is all and in all.” (Colossians 3:5, 10-11)

So, from this catalog of sins and from the Gospel, we learn that the invitation to join the family of God really extends to all with the only requirement that you leave your sins at the door. And though the master of this banquet is exalted and divine, he has met our humanity in the humblest of settings and become like us in all things except sin. As commentator George Grant recently observed,

Indeed, in Christmas, the greatest and most remarkable paradox of all is revealed: He who was infinite, was yet an infant; He who was eternal, was yet born of a woman; He who was almighty, was yet nursing at His mother’s breast; He who was upholding the universe, was yet carried in His mother’s arms. Thus, G. K. Chesterton exclaimed, “Outrushing the depth of the fall of man is the height of the fall of God. Glory to God in the Lowest.”

— George Grant in The World and Everything in It