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Icon, Part 6: Theophany
Rejoice, O River Jordan, be glad; for within thee the Maker of all things now is here, moved by mercy to seek at a servant’s hand saving Baptism for our sakes. Dance, be glad, O Adam, and, O Eve, our foremother; God supremely good, Who is redemption for all men, is come down to dwell with us.
The Torrent of Delight, Who is Master of all things, doth come unto the river’s swift streams to be baptized; for He willed to give me drink of waters that purify. And when John beheld Him, he cried out to Him, saying: How shall I stretch out my hand upon Thy divine head, whereat all things quake with fear? Orthros Kathisma of the Fore-feast of Theophany
Coming out of the Advent season, and the 12 days of the Nativity (Christmas), we have reached the Great Feast that marks the end of the Christmas season: Theophany. In the non-Chalcedonian Orthodox churches (the so-called Oriental Orthodox), Theophany is of far greater significance than the Nativity, and indeed, it is often remarked that in the early days of the Church Theophany was universally the greater occasion than the Nativity, with the Nativity having been originally intended to amplify Theophany. Outside of the liturgical Christian churches, however, this observance has largely been forgotten, which is, I would argue, a significant loss to the understanding and practice of the Christian faith.
Indeed, as we shall see, Theophany has much to say on who Jesus of Nazareth truly was and is, for it is both the commemoration of the start of His ministry on Earth, and one of but two occasions within the gospels where the trinitarian nature of GD is revealed in full (the other being the Transfiguration). By forgetting this Feast, Christians also forget one of the key foundational revelations of the faith.
The Feast:
Now John was l clothed with camel’s hair and l wore a leather belt around his waist and ate locusts and wild honey. And he preached, saying, “After me comes he who is mightier than I, the strap of whose sandals I am not worthy to stoop down and untie. I have baptized you with water, but he will baptize you with the Holy Spirit.” In those days Jesus came from Nazareth of Galilee and was baptized by John in the Jordan. And when he came up out of the water, immediately he saw the heavens being torn open and the Spirit descending on him like a dove. And a voice came from heaven, “You are my beloved Son; with you I am well pleased.” (Mark 1: 6-9) Crossway Bibles. The Holy Bible, English Standard Version (with Cross-References) (Kindle Locations 241812-241838). Good News Publishers. Kindle Edition.
John the Baptist (also called John the Forerunner), a cousin of Jesus, was active at this time preaching for the nation of Israel to repent, and he was baptizing people in the River Jordan. What is baptism? A ritual submersion into water that symbolizes a cleansing through burial and rebirth. John, according to Luke, was a cousin of Jesus. At that time, many people sought John out and asked him who he was. According to the gospels, John repeatedly said that he was but the forerunner of one who was coming soon after him. He was living in the wilderness, wearing a hair-shirt, and living off the land, and must have had something of a wild appearance. He is certainly often depicted in icons as slightly disheveled. And Jesus of Nazareth sought him out.
Christianity is well associated with the rite of baptism, for Jesus and his disciples routinely baptized others as John had before them, and Christians have done so ever since. Yet Jesus first sought out John to be baptized by him. How does John respond?
Then Jesus came l from Galilee to the Jordan to John, to be baptized by him. John would have prevented him, saying, “I need to be baptized by you, and do you come to me?” But Jesus answered him, “Let it be so now, for thus it is fitting for us to fulfill all righteousness.” Then he consented. (Matthew 3: 13-14).
John, recognizing that Jesus is far greater than himself, is reluctant, yet in the end consents. Thus, as it says elsewhere in the gospels, John diminished for he had foretold Jesus, Jesus had come and by being baptized by John was now succeeding him with a greater ministry still. Yet there is, as is taught in the Orthodox church, a curious twist. John baptized with water, yet Jesus baptizes in the Holy Spirit, and Christians to this day are baptized in the name of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. Yet as Jesus is God, his baptism in the River Jordan is really Him baptizing and blessing the waters. Indeed, as the Kathisma and Prokeimenon of Theophany say:
Kathisma: River Jordan, what hast thou * beheld, that thou art sore amazed? * He Whom none can see, saith he: * I saw Him naked, and I feared. * How should I not be afraid before Him and turn back? * The Angels, seeing Him, * trembled with fear and awe; * Heaven was amazed; * the earth with quaking shook; * the sea drew back in dread with all things * both visible and invisible. * Christ hath appeared in the Jordan River, * to sanctify the waters.
Prokeimenon: The sea beheld and fled; Jordan turned back.
The Jordan and the seas turned back? These are echoing lines from the Psalms, from Psalm 114, verse 5, and Psalm 77, verse 15. If one puts the gospels back into the context of their day, a time of beliefs in pagan river spirits and gods and demigods, then all pagans would have seen the waters and seas as having their own lesser spirits. Jesus’s entry into the water terrifies them and drives them off. As Father Stephen D. Young puts it:
“ The power of these hostile spiritual beings is crushed by Christ signaling, as it did in Joshua, the beginning of a new conquest which will end with Christ’s victory and enthronement over all creation.”
Most importantly, however, is that the baptism is the first revelation of Jesus as the Christ, with the God the Father’s voice from on high, and the Holy Spirit descending on Him like a dove. It is the first trinitarian revelation of Jesus Christ in the gospels. Thus Theophany (from the Greek meaning “revelation of God”) is one of the most important Festal observances of the Orthodox calendar. That many Christian denominations do not mark this, nor honor this revelation particularly greatly, is a great loss. Christmas and Easter are wonderful holidays to mark the year, but Jesus’s life and ministry encompassed a great deal more.
The Icon
In the icon of Theophany, the dominant figure is Jesus himself, naked save for the cloth wrapped about his waist, standing in the River Jordan. The scene, however, does not attempt to be a photo-realistic depiction of the banks of the Jordan, but rather a depiction of the spiritual reality of the baptism. Jesus is not in the water either, but on it, for He is the one baptizing the waters.
The river is very often seen looking very like twisting threads, ripping not towards the viewer, but away and behind the jagged cliffs, symbolizing how the river is said to have run back in fear. In the waters are two river spirits, themselves trying to flee. In some icons, these are not mere river spirits, but satan himself and the dragon of the book of Revelation.
At the upper edge of the icon, an incomplete (for He cannot be depicted) glory of God the Father shines forth, and from it descends a white dove, also in glory, onto Jesus, thus completing the Holy Trinity. Angels look on in wonder from the far bank of the river.
On the left bank we see John the Baptist in his shirt of camel hair, sometimes covered by a tunic. His hand is on Jesus’s head, and he is often gazing up at the descending Holy Spirit. Near John’s feet, we see a small tree with an ax leaning against it. This is a warning that trees that fail to bear fruit will be removed (see Matthew 3:10). 
In a tradition going back well into the early days of Christianity, this day is especially celebrated.@midge posted about this last year here). The faithful will bring bottles of various types, and even jugs, to bring home with them this blessed and Holy Water. The priest will also dip a whisk of basil sprigs into the water, and use the whisk to sprinkle (or rather fling) holy water on the congregation and around the church. He will, in this manner, bless all the icons and other parts of the building. This water may well be kept in a font for weeks or even months for the faithful to draw from.
In the weeks that follow Theophany, many families will invite their priest to come and likewise bless their houses, and sometimes their businesses, for the coming year (from Theophany until the start of Lent can be a busy time). Thus we transition from the Advent and Nativity seasons into the winter months and mark the start of our new year.
Sources:
https://orthodoxwiki.org/Theophany
https://oca.org/fs/sermons/discourse-on-the-day-of-the-baptism-of-christ <== This is one of St. John Chrysostom’s homilies.
https://oca.org/orthodoxy/the-orthodox-faith/worship/the-church-year/epiphany
https://blogs.ancientfaith.com/wholecounsel/2019/01/02/theophany-and-river-gods/
https://www.orthodoxroad.com/theophany-icon-explained/
Thanks so much, Skip! Blessed Feast!
Interesting, is there an Orthodox Feast of the Epiphany as well? The Catholic liturgical Christmas season ends with the Feast of the Baptism of our Lord but that is next week with Epiphany being celebrated this week.
Outstanding. Thanks, Skip.
The visitation of the Magi is commemorated at Christmas itself.
I hvae a question, Skipsul— if the people at the time would’ve perceived the Jordan to have its own spirit/s (driven out or back by Jesus) how would they have understood John’s baptismal activity?
Great post. A lot for this Evangelical Protestant to take in all at once.
I’ve been thinking for some time now that I need to learn more about the Orthodox faith traditions, especially regarding the liturgy and forms of worship.
Fr. Stephen D. Young can answer this a lot better than I can, as I’m still learning this as I go, but Young’s teaching on the entirety of the Bible show a consistent pattern of first the Jews, and then the Christians taking the pagan imagery and myths of the surrounding areas (Egypt, Babylon, Persia, Greece) and then countering back with the truth. Think of Paul in Athens at the statue of the unknown God, standing up and preaching that the unknown god was, in fact, God Himself. Young frequently describes things in the Bible as direct counter-points to pagan claims of the time in much the same manner – in Genesis, for instance, the Garden of Eden was a garden God Himself created, whereas the pagan temples often were constructed with gardens so as to attract their gods. The real God creates, the false ones are created.
So too it is with the river spirits shown in the icon. The Jews, of course, understood John’s baptizing within their need to ritually cleanse themselves, and would have had little truck with the notion of there being river spirits. Meanwhile the non-Jewish pagans around would not have fully understood John’s baptizing (and he wasn’t preaching to them anyway), but they would certainly have understood the presence of river spirits, and would therefore understand that Christ, true God of true God (as it says in the Nicene Creed), in entering the water, would drive off any such demons as he sanctified the water, as Christ baptized the Jordan.
https://blogs.ancientfaith.com/wholecounsel/2019/01/02/theophany-and-river-gods/
I’m glad you found it helpful. Christian history goes back 2000 years, which is not a small amount of time to try to comprehend or digest. Looking into that history is made harder by the tendency of even secular historians to gloss almost entirely over the first 1500 years of that history (except where it intersects with politics or culture clashes like the Crusades, the Ottoman threat, schismatic popes, etc.), and not take much interest until the Reformation. And I well remember how my own history classes (and I was a history major in college), almost entirely ignore Eastern Europe for much the same reasons. You take a European History class, and Russia barely gets a mention until Peter I, while Greece and the Balkans (which were majority Orthodox Christian) are blotted out as “Ottoman Empire”, right up until that empire starts to crack up.
I was turned on to an interesting Christian history podcast called Word and Table some months ago. The hosts are Anglican, and they have a deep knowledge and appreciation of Christian history. I was listening to their episode on a little-known manual of Christian worship called The Didache. This manual was in wide circulation in the early church, and often mentioned or quoted by other writers, but was later lost and till it was found in the 19th century. In their discussion of the book, one of the hosts makes the point that in the zeal of the Reformation, in the efforts to try to strip away any accretions that did not seem genuine or biblically based, the reformers often set aside traditions and practices that really did date back to the earliest Christians. And it’s not like such reformers had much to work with in making those decisions, as so many early Christian works had nearly vanished, or existed only in obscurity (the letters of Saint Ignatius of Antioch, for instance were likewise long vanished, even though they have marvelous insights into the first generation after the Apostles – Ignatius having been a student of John). Books like The Didache are very informative in that regard, and their earlier finding might have helped shape the Reformation differently.
https://wordandtable.simplecast.fm/c8cffba2
I took a whisk-full of holy water in the face yesterday, which amused my kids to no end. There was a lot of joyful giggling as our priest blessed us and our church. This video (shot a few years ago) was circulating yesterday, and this priest really takes it to a new level:
Skip, at Easter/Pascha, I practically get bathed in holy water. :-) Several of my pastors over the years have taken great joy/amusement in dousing me, but good…I don’t quite know what it means that they have so much fun, but there it is.
Excellent Skip. I had not realized that the Baptism of our Lord carried so much and had been so celebrated. I can now understand why. Gospel of Mark actually skips the birth and starts off with it. But why this event above the Nativity? While the Nativity doesn’t reveal the Trinity, the incarnation is the singular event that changed everything.
The Incarnation is of course extraordinary. But it was also witnessed by few, and revelatory really only in hindsight, save for a few. Further, in the early church, the celebration of the Nativity was originally intended to build up to Theophany. The Baptism also was the start of Jesus’s earthly ministry, and the first full revelation of who He really was in the Trinity. It is at this moment that God reveals first Himself as Trinity.
Of all the Christian denominations in the world, what acts unite them all? There are but two performed in common to all (though their purpose and significance are not agreed upon): Baptism and Communion. We are baptized because Jesus both accepted baptism from John, and then baptized others.