The quiet revolution in the Jordan

  • theophany_angels.jpgCom­ing into church this morn­ing, my mind was already awash in details to sort out. It’s rare that a major feast falls on Sun­day, but when it does, things get more com­pli­cated. So I was being a good lead chanter and reflect­ing on all things Theophany-related when one of the chanters who’s a recent con­vert asked, “So every­thing changes today?”

    It stopped me amid­ships, not only because it accu­rately summed up how many details in the ser­vices get altered for the feast, but also because it seemed to cut to the heart of why we cel­e­brate Theo­phany at all, why the day com­mem­o­rat­ing the bap­tism of Christ by the Fore­run­ner is — alert the media — as big a feast as Christmas.

    The abstract answer, for once, was the same as the prag­matic one. “Yes, every­thing changes today.”

    The chants and hymns of the day seem to focus on three things. Three rea­sons that a world rev­o­lu­tion began when the Son of Man entered the waters of the Jor­dan River. Three ways that every­thing changed today (though per­haps I should say at least three ways, since a scholar might be able to come up with more than my own hum­ble chant-reading self.)

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    1. Theo­phany = God + appear­ing

    holy-trinity.jpgThe first is best exem­pli­fied by the tropar­ion for the feast, and if you haven’t heard this already 99 times today, then you must’ve stayed home from church:

    When Thou, O Lord, wast bap­tized in the Jor­dan, wor­ship of the Trin­ity wast made man­i­fest; for the voice of the Father bore wit­ness to Thee, call­ing Thee His beloved Son. And the Spirit in the form of a dove con­firmed the truth of His word. O Christ our God, Who hath appeared and enlight­ened the world, glory to Thee.

    And also shown by this icon, one of the best-loved by Andrei Rublev. The day when Christ went down into the waters was the day that God revealed some­thing no one had ever known, some­thing so com­pletely inti­mate con­cern­ing Him­self that we never would’ve known if He hadn’t cho­sen to reveal it: This is the day we found out that God was God in Three Per­sons. That sim­ple but inscrutable rev­e­la­tion has been the source of end­less intel­lec­tual gym­nas­tics and not a few here­sies ever since. But there’s no get­ting around the facts of the case: God the Son was bap­tized; God the Father gave tes­ti­mony in a voice from the heav­ens; God the Holy Spirit descended in the form of a dove.

    We would never be in quite the same dark­ness regard­ing the nature of God again. If the doc­trine of the Trin­ity has led many doubters to leave Chris­ten­dom when like the offended fol­low­ers in Christ’s time they said, “‘This is a hard say­ing; who can under­stand it?’ … and they walked with Him no more (Jn 6:60,66),” it had to be known if we were truly going to enter the Church Age. In that sense, every­one who sings the tropar­ion, who affirms the Tri­une God, may be a lit­tle bit like the dis­ci­ples who didn’t leave Christ. When He asked, “Do you also want to go away?” Simon Peter answered on behalf of us all: “Lord, to whom shall we go? You have the words of eter­nal life.”

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    2. The Jor­dan was turned back

    Jor­dan River, why wast thou aston­ished at behold­ing the Invis­i­ble naked ? And he answereth, say­ing, I beheld him and trem­bled; for how shall I not trem­ble and fear, when the angels trem­bled at sight of him, heaven was astounded, earth was encom­passed by trep­i­da­tion, and the sea was bash­ful, with all things vis­i­ble and invis­i­ble; for Christ hath appeared in the Jor­dan to bless the waters.

    – Sec­ond Kathis­mata of Theo­phany, Orthros

    theophany2.jpgCon­sider this hymn which puts a ques­tion to the Jor­dan River and records its (his?) answer. There’s a lit­tle more going on here than just poetic license. Though the Jews knew that there was only one God, they were liv­ing in the midst of the ram­pant poly­the­ism of other tribes, not to men­tion the Greeks and Romans, who as John Mark Reynolds puts it, lived in a god-soaked world. The reper­cus­sions of the Theo­phany, of God mak­ing Him­self known, was that poly­the­ism would never again occupy the same place as a plau­si­ble alter­na­tive. All we lit­tle peo­ple get to talk about what our god or gods are like unless He pipes up and shows us what’s right and what’s wrong regard­ing Him­self (some­what like God hav­ing the last word in the Book of Job). So when God spoke, He put the river-god of the Jor­dan to flight, as you can see in this icon. The fig­ure at bot­tom, flee­ing the scene of the bap­tism, is the per­son­i­fied god of the Jor­dan River. Though many neo-pagans these days would love to argue the point, the truth of it is that that river-god would never return.

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    3. He blessed the waters of baptism

    theophany.jpgAnd Thou didst con­sent also to be bap­tized at the hand of a ser­vant, that by the sanc­ti­fi­ca­tion of the nature of water, O sin­less One, Thou might­est pre­pare for us a way for the renewal of birth by water and the Spirit, restor­ing us to our first free­dom. Where­fore, as we cel­e­brate the mem­ory of this divine mys­tery, we beseech Thee, O Lover of mankind, to sprin­kle us, Thine unwor­thy ser­vants, accord­ing to Thy divine promise, with puri­fy­ing water and the gift of Thy compassion.

    – 2nd Prayer for the Sanc­ti­fi­ca­tion of the Waters

    Just as Christ told John to bap­tize Him in order to “ful­fill all right­eous­ness,” He sanc­ti­fied both the prac­tice of bap­tism and the bap­tismal waters. Once the River Jor­dan had received the Son of God, it would never be what it was. Water itself would never be what it was.

    And cer­tainly, human­ity would never be what it was.

    Christ our God, thou hast sanc­ti­fied the courses of the Jor­dan, crushed the might of sin, bowed thy­self under the hand of the Fore­run­ner, and saved mankind from error. Where­fore, we plead with Thee to save Thy world.

    – Third Kathis­mata of Theo­phany, Orthros

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    Quick follow-up

    Two things I found out from a lit­tle more reading:

    1. When I said that Theo­phany is a big a feast as Christ­mas, I was wrong. It’s a big­ger feast. Pascha is the biggest feast — really, the feast of feasts; Pen­te­cost is sec­ond and Theo­phany is third. Don’t know if that’s impor­tant, but it may show up in a SOYO test quiz some­time or something.
    2. Speak­ing of SOYO, this arti­cle on the Anti­ochian Web­site called “For Teens: What is Theo­phany?” offers an inter­est­ing bit of trivia: “Do you know any­one named Tiffany? It is the angli­cized ver­sion of Theo­phany!” Well, live and learn.

    Related posts:

    1. What is revealed at Theophany
    2. Prayer request
    3. On curios­ity
    4. One last Christ­mas prayer
    5. As we set out

    January 6th, 2008 | Grace | 4 Comments |

4 Responses and Counting...

  • Tanya 01.06.2008

    Grace,
    Thank you for this post. Since it is my first year par­tic­i­pat­ing in the Church, yes­ter­day was a new and won­der­ful expe­ri­ence to me, and thank you for bring­ing back its mem­ory to light my day. :)
    Tanya

  • Grace

    Con­grat­u­la­tions! Glad to be a help. It’s been my expe­ri­ence that the feasts that hap­pen close to your entry (or re-entry) into the Church are always spe­cial to you. Theo­phany would be a very good one to have that rela­tion­ship with.

  • s-p

    I remem­ber my first Theo­phany and the long prayer of Jere­mias(?) at the great Sanc­ti­fi­ca­tion of the Waters. It com­pletely blew me away. It still does.

  • Grace

    It’s funny, isn’t it, how there’s “some­thing old and some­thing new” in these ser­vices every time? It seemed to me this year that some of the most beau­ti­ful har­monies of the­ol­ogy and poetry were in the prayers and chanted say­ings around this feast. These sorts of things are really one of the most pre­cious lega­cies of the Ortho­dox Church, and the great thing is you grow into them a lit­tle bit at a time.

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