The Treasure of our Resurrection: The Dismissal-Resurrectional Theotokion in Tone 7

Daniel 12, Proverbs 31, Psalm 44 (45), Psalm 131 (132), Isaiah 7

In the past few weeks, we have been blessed to remember numerous saints, and two of my favorites— one ancient, and one contemporary.  During our celebration of both St. Ambrose (last week) and St. Herman of Alaska (this week), we sang the resurrectional-dismissal hymn to the Theotokos—a deceptively simple prayer in tone 7:

Since you are the treasure of our Resurrection,

we put our hope in you, all-praised One.

Lead us out of the pit and the abyss of transgressions,

for you have saved us, who are subject to sin, by giving birth to our

Salvation.

Before giving birth you were a virgin,

and a virgin while giving birth,

and after giving birth you still remain a virgin.

 

The words of the first line may roll off our tongues,

• But what do we mean by saying that she is “the treasure of our resurrection?”
• Why is it that we put our hope in her, and ask her to lead us out of the pit?
• And why is her ever-virginity so important that the hymn emphasizes it with three lines?

Let us turn to the Scriptures to help us with these questions.

We begin with the description of her as “the treasure of our resurrection.” Jesus, of course, is the Resurrection and the Light.  He is the “first-fruits” of the resurrection, for Saint Paul reminds us in 1 Corinthians 15 that we hope to bear the image of the risen Jesus, and no longer be subject to death as was Adam.  Jesus, in his unique resurrection, fulfilled the promises of the prophet Daniel (chapter 12), who spoke of the final time of awakening, when the wise will shine like the stars. For centuries Jewish faithful looked forward to that day.  Those who witnessed it on Pascha morning were surprised when Jesus was raised first, ahead of all the righteous who were asleep—though there was a hint of that general resurrection when many of the righteous dead appeared in the streets of Jerusalem on the first Pascha morning. But the general resurrection was still to come, and we await it, too.

Yet with holy Mary, something unusual happened at the solemn hour of her death.  We have no bodily relics of Mary, do we? Since we have bodily relics of most saints, this is surely evidence that there was something odd about her falling asleep in the LORD.  Though we do not have relics, we have a wonderful story, passed down for centuries.  We are told that after she died, the LORD took her—not just her soul, but also her body— to be with Him. Now the normal pattern, of course, is that the body and soul are parted for some time, the soul left naked until the time of the resurrection, when everything will be made new—including our bodies, which will then follow in the pattern of the risen Jesus.  But with the Theotokos, we see a potent sign of that day for which we hope.  Her body was not left behind waiting for renewal, but was itself taken into glory with her soul and spirit. In her person, she symbolizes what we have been told will happen on the last day—our whole spirit, and soul and body will be preserved blameless at the coming of our LORD, as Paul says to the Thessalonians.

There is not a great deal of plain teaching regarding the Theotokos in the OT, for it is meant to point to Christ Himself.  Yet we have hints of this marvelous event there.  There are in particular some picturesque descriptions which may refer to the people of God as a whole, but which refer most particularly to our Mother.  We may think, for example of the final chapter of Proverbs, which refers to the ideal woman, the one who cares earnestly for her household.  Towards the end of that poem, we hear this praise: “Many daughters acquire riches; many do mighty things, but you excel and surpass all.”

Then, in Psalm 44 (MT45), we hear about the “daughter of the king” who is loved by the Monarch and stands at His right hand.  Moreover, because of her special place with the King, her maiden friends and her neighbors will also be led into the Temple, sharing in that glory. The beauty that she has will become the occasion of others’ rejoicing, not simply something she enjoys herself.

Finally, in Psalm 131 (MT132), we hear about the fulfillment of King David’s desire to have the presence of the LORD near to him.  In terms of history, this psalm commemorates the time when God’s people brought the Ark of the Covenant into the city of David, and when David danced with abandon before that Ark.  In this Psalm, we hear the cry, “Arise, O Lord, into Your rest, You and the ark of Your holiness” (verse 8).  However, we all know that the Ark of the covenant foreshadowed the human Ark who would carry God Himself within her.  The Ark contained only the tablets, and a sample of the manna, and the budding rod of Aaron, by which Pharoah was confounded.  But the human Ark, our Theotokos, bore God Himself.  She bore the One who was the fulfilment of the commandments, the true Bread from heaven, and the scourge of the Devil, not simply of a human despot.  And so the Lord arises, taking His ark with Him! Moreover, in this same psalm, we hear of how God has chosen Zion so that He might dwell within her, might satisfy her poor, might clothe her members with salvation, and might bring about the rejoicing of the saints (verses 13-16).  We frequently think of Mary as personifying all the joys of Zion—she is the human woman who symbolizes all the faithful!

 

In all these ways, then, she is the hope of our resurrection.  When we look at what God has done in and for her, we see our own future—to follow in the way of Jesus, taking on the glory of the new Human being, and being found in a form which can never again die!

 

Why, though, do we put our hope in her?   This is one of those phrases frequently found in the songs to Mary, where what is normally said of Jesus is declared of her, by extension. Through her, God the Son came to be among us—and so, within her was the beginning of our salvation.  We put our hope in the One whom she bore.  And, because we see the first work of His glorification of human beings in her, we hope for our own bright future.  By her Son, we were brought out of that pit of death and sin, that abyss that threatens to swallow all of us up.  As St. Paul puts it in Ephesians 2:4, “but God, who is rich in mercy…even when we were dead in trespasses, made us alive together with Christ….and raised us up together, and made us sit together in the heavenly places in Christ Jesus.” It was Mary’s “yes” that opened the door for God to enter into the abyss of this world, and so rescue us.  It is probably no accident that our Nativity scenes show the Virgin giving birth in a cave, just as the baptism icons show Jesus plunging into the bowels of the earth.  God comes to the place of darkness, and fills it with His light:  and the Virgin consented to this! She, too, would have her own suffering as a result of God’s great act of mercy.  As St. Symeon put it, “a sword” would pierce her soul—imagine watching your blameless Son suffer and die on a cross? And she, too, had her own temptations, but continued to say “yes” to God, showing that cooperation with God is possible.  And after the darkness comes light and joy.

She saw this light, and so can witness of it to us.  The same Mary who pondered all these things in her heart was almost certainly the ultimate source for the evangelist Luke, who tells us of all that God did in Christ.  He it is who reminds us that the Dawn has come for those who sit in darkness.  And so, listening to her witness, transmitted through the evangelist, and knowing her obedience to God’s voice, we hope in her, and believe in the Son who descended to our plight, saving us.

Finally, our song ends with three strong affirmations of her virginity:

Before giving birth you were a virgin,

and a virgin while giving birth,

and after giving birth you still remain a virgin.

All Christians who read the gospels and believe them accept the first line— “before giving birth” she was a virgin.  The gospels, both Matthew and Luke, make this very clear, with Matthew talking of St. Joseph’s great fear that his espoused had been unfaithful, and Luke explaining, in working out the genealogy, that Jesus was only supposed to have been the son of Joseph (3:1), while he was in fact the son of Mary and the Son of God (3:38). But the OT showed glimmerings of this wonderful miracle, especially in its Greek translation, which was used by Matthew (Mat 1:23). Isaiah 7:14 speaks of a young woman who would be with child, and thus be a sign of God’s deliverance—and the name of the child would be “Immanuel,” God with us.  This is only absolutely true of Jesus, and so has become a sticking point between Jews and Christians for centuries.  Though the Hebrew text does not use the technical word for virgin, the passage certainly is suggestive of a great wonder; the Greek text, which was used by the apostle, and which is normative for Orthodox, makes the virginal character of this young woman explicit!  So it is that Christians for centuries have spoken of the entry of God the Son into the world as absolutely unique:  He has only one human parent, his mother.  This plays out in counterpoint to the beginning of creation, where the first woman came from a man. In its uniqueness, it points to a brand new creation.  In one sense, Jesus shares flesh, his humanity, with us.  In another sense, he is new.

There is continuity and revolution going on here.

But she also, says the hymn, remained a virgin during birth-giving and after.  There is nothing explicit about this in the Scriptures. Indeed, many Protestants would consider the virginal status during childbirth to be a fantasy, and the virginal status afterwards to contradict the New Testament stories.  After all, we hear about Jesus’ brothers and sisters, and indeed, we read the book of James, the brother of the Lord.  They also counter that the Scriptures say that “Joseph did not know his wife until Jesus was born”—surely that implies that afterwards they had normal marital relations?

 

To these doubters, we should perhaps point out their own history.  ALL the earliest reformers—Luther, Zwingli, Calvin—believed in the “ever-virginity” of Mary.  Indeed, Calvin was a great commentator on Scripture, and never once read the references to Jesus’ brothers, nor the comment about Joseph’s knowledge of Mary as a contradiction of this belief.  The slow erosion of knowledge about Mary came through the centuries as Protestants grew further and further, in some ways, away from holy tradition.  In dealing with the Scriptures themselves, we point out that the use of “brother” and “sister” was far more extensive in the ancient world, and could refer easily (as it still does today in some families) to half-siblings, and to cousins.  The Orthodox tradition tells us that Joseph, much older than Mary, had children from a previous marriage: these are the family who came to try to rescue Jesus when they thought he had gone a little mad with his evangelizing.  As for “until”, the point of Mat. 1:25 is to ensure that the reader understands that Jesus was indeed not Joseph’s natural son: there are other examples in Scripture where “until” is used, but it does not imply a different state of affairs after the event being described. Surely, if we think about it, it sounds eminently reasonable that Joseph would not feel free to be intimate with the body that had borne God’s own Son!

 

As for the virginity “while giving birth,” this surely describes a continuing miracle.  Just as the conception was miraculous, so God intervened during the birth-giving of the Theotokos so that she did not experience the same violence that all the daughters of Eve know.  Holy Mary would have her own motherly woes as this child grew, was misunderstood, and finally rejected by others.  But her willing participation in this act of God surely attracted God’s clemency towards her, so that, for this moment, the curse of Eve, to bear in pain, was suspended. No harm was done to her maidenhood. And so God’s coming into our world was peaceful and quiet— “how silently, how silently, the wondrous gift is given!”  This is his characteristic way of joining us in the first advent, as we see when He comes to Jerusalem on a peaceful donkey, rather than on a warhorse.

Virginity, then, is Mary’s sign to us of human potential and openness to the creator.  To celebrate this is not to denigrate marriage, nor to suggest that “sex is dirty.”  It is to recognize the absolute uniqueness of the coming of the God-Man into our midst, and the utter devotion of Mary to one husband— God.

Celibacy can be recognized as a great gift, without us thereby saying that the marital status is substandard.  As St. Paul puts it, “some have one gift, and some another.”  But in Holy Mary, we see a myriad of conjoined gifts—virginity and motherhood, submission and resolve, and the beginning of the hope of our Salvation.  And so we praise God for her, and ask her to intercede on our behalf.