Colossians 3.4-11

Luke 14.16-24

The LORD says, ‘A certain man once gave a great banquet.’ The certain man is God the Father. The banquet is Christmas, the Feast of the Birth of God in the flesh of His Holy Mother.

The Son of God begotten of the Father before all ages is now begotten in time and in the flesh through the woman, the Most Blessed Virgin Mary. At Christmas, the woman becomes Theotokos, Birth-giver of God in the flesh. By being conceived in Her womb not by the seed of man but by the divine Seed of the Holy Spirit, God the Son becomes the Son of Man.

In His ‘I Am,’ Jesus Christ is God, not man; but in His Incarnation, the same divine Son of God becomes Himself the Son of Man. Jesus Christ is one and the same only-begotten God in two natures, the uncreated nature of His Father and the created nature of His Most Blessed Mother.

The human nature that He receives from the Virgin becomes His own. Our human nature becomes an essential ‘part’ of the Son of God as much as it is an essential ‘part’ of us. God is now one with us. God is now flesh of our flesh, bone of our bones.

In His conception of the Holy Virgin (Mar 25), God the Son leaves His Father without being separated from Him; and in His death and burial, which He suffers in our nature that is now His own, the Son of God cleaves to us as to His bride. His union with us begins in the womb of the Holy Virgin; His union with us is consummated in the Tomb, which He transfigures into the Bridal Chamber, the Font of Resurrection and Life (Jn 11.25) for those who, in their turn, leave father and mother and cleave to Him, the Heavenly Bridegroom and only Lover of Mankind, in love. Through the Woman, the Holy Virgin Theotokos, we who were sons of men become gods, sons of the Most High, just as the LORD Himself said through His servant, the Psalmist (Ps 81/2.6). The image of God that we are is restored to its original beauty. But not even yet do we proclaim the Gospel, the Good News, that makes this a Great Banquet.

 St Paul says to us this morning: ‘When Christ who is our life shall appear, you also will appear with Him in glory.’ (Col 3.4) Christ appears to the whole world at Christmas, when He is born in the flesh of the woman and enters the world out of His great love for us. But it is at Holy Pascha that He appears in glory in His Resurrection from the dead.

And in His Resurrection, He appears in glory only to those who draw near to Him in the ‘tomb’ of their heart in faith and love and who struggle to cleave to Him, to deny themselves in order to love Him with all their soul, strength and mind, who struggle to lose their love for the life in this world that is passing away that they may receive Him in the Glory of His Resurrection; for He is Himself the Resurrection and the Life. To receive Him is to receive the eternal life of God and to live in the love of God that endures forever.

What makes this a great banquet is that we receive God at this banquet. We can begin to live in Him, the Resurrection and the Life, at this banquet. For the main course of this Banquet is the LORD Jesus Christ’s own divine nature. We receive Him, that is, not just in our reasonings and feelings that are easily deluded. We receive Christ in the Glory of His Resurrection and Life when we eat His Body, the Fruit of the Tree of Life, and drink His Blood, the New Wine of His Holy Spirit in the Holy Eucharist of the Church, which is the Body of Christ. Jesus said, ‘Truly, I say to you, unless you eat the flesh of the Son of man and drink his blood, you have no life in you; he who eats my flesh and drinks my blood has eternal life, and I will raise him up at the last day. For my flesh is food indeed, and my blood is drink indeed. He who eats my flesh and drinks my blood abides in me, and I in him.’ [Jn 6:53-56]

The LORD says: ‘A certain man (God the Father) gave a great banquet and invited many, and sent His servant to say to those who were invited, ‘Come, for all things are now ready!’ The servant is the Son of God incarnate, Jesus Christ; He is the Suffering Servant of whom Isaiah spoke. And it is as the Suffering Servant that God the Son appears to us at Christmas. But, the Suffering Servant is the Wisdom of God, the Radiance of the Father’s Glory (Heb 1.3, Wisd 7.25), who upholds the whole universe by the WORD of His Power. The WORD of His Power is His Incarnation from the Holy Virgin that is consummated in the mystery of His Holy Pascha. The incarnate God’s death on the cross is the supreme epiphany, for it ‘uncovers the foundation of the world’ (Ps 17/18.15), which is the Lamb of God slain from the Foundation of the world (Rev 13.8). It is the Son of God rejected by the rulers of this age (1 Cor 2.8). When they crucified Him and buried Him in the Tomb, they did not know that they were laying the Cornerstone of the Heavenly Temple (Jn 2.19&21) in the tomb of the human heart (St Macarios, Hom 11.11), deep in the earth of our death where Christ Jesus, our God and King from of old, was working His salvation within us from the beginning (Ps 74.12).

The mystery of Christmas, and of the LORD’s Holy Pascha, are the occasion of the Father’s Great Banquet. Its main course is the Holy Spirit of the LORD Jesus Christ’s own divine nature, given to us as our food and drink in His crucified, buried, risen and glorified Body in the Holy Eucharist of His Body, the Church! To partake of Christ’s Body and Blood in the Holy Eucharist of His Body, the Church, is to partake of Christ’s death in our flesh, in which He has destroyed our death by His death and given life to all those in the tombs! To come to the Great Feast of Christmas and to partake of Christ (Heb 3.14) in Holy Eucharist is to unite ourselves to Christ in the likeness of His death, and thereby to become communicants of Him who is the Resurrection and the Life. At Christmas, and at Holy Pascha, the flaming sword gives way, and we may all approach and enter, mystically, the cave of our heart to hold Christ mystically in our arms as His Mother, and to cherish Him as the Mother cherishes her child.

Is it not so that when a child is born, he becomes the life of his mother? Her life is no more her own; she doesn’t want it to be. Her life is now in her child. And, what mother leaves her child to go live ‘her own’ life in the world?

At this Feast of the Nativity of Christ, the mother’s love for her child, and of the child’s love for his mother is the image that reflects the mystery of our relationship to Christ. At Christmas, the Holy Virgin Theotokos, through Her maternal love and mercy for us, holds out Her Son to us that we may receive Him into our soul and become, with Her, birthgivers, theotokoi, of God in the womb of our heart. For, in the Church’s Holy Eucharist, do we not ‘receive the Heavenly Spirit,’ the Seed of God, into our souls and bodies as the Virgin received Him into Her womb (Lk 1.34)? And what mother, hearing that her child, her life, is calling her to himself would want to go anywhere else or do anything else but to come to the Banquet to be with Her Child?

At Holy Pascha, on the other hand, it is the mystery of the Bridegroom’s love for His Bride, and of the Bride’s love for Her Bridegroom, that reflects our relationship to the God incarnate of the Holy Virgin. And what beloved bride, hearing that Her loving Bridegroom is calling her to Himself in the Bridal Chamber, would not leave everything to cleave to Him in faith and in love to become one with Him in the Bridal Chamber of her soul?

Who, then, do our souls love as our life, our child, our Bridegroom, if, hearing that the LORD God has appeared in the cave of our heart, having become bone of our bones and flesh of our flesh that we may become partakers of His Glory in His raising us from death to life, who do we love if we choose, like the nine lepers from last week’s Gospel, to cleave to our friendship to the world that is passing away and not flee from the corruption that is in the world because of lust and run to the Only Lover of mankind who longs to make us partakers of His own eternal life if we would love Him who first loved us?

If Christ our Life is appearing to us at Christmas, and if our desire is to be with Him in His Glory, should we not set out to put to death our friendship with the world that makes us enemies of God: fornication, lust, greed, anger, laziness, indifference, filthy language, in the faith and hope that we will appear with Christ in the Glory of His Holy Pascha? The Father is calling us! The Mother of His Son is calling us: ‘Having opened the gates of the temple of God, the Glorious Gate [the Theotokos] through which human thoughts may not pass urges us to enter with Her and to delight in Her divine marvels; these are the riches of the Glory of our inheritance in the Virgin’s Son, Our LORD Jesus Christ!

In the joy of the Feast, Glory to Jesus Christ! Amen! Most holy Theotokos, save us!