The Theophany or Epiphany - the baptism of Christ
The Epistle reading (I Cor 10:1-4) describes how the people of Israel left Egypt, and were baptised into Moses in the cloud and in the sea, and this speaks to us of our baptism. The people of Israel pass from slavery in Egypt to the wilderness beyond, and eventually come to the promised land, the land of freedom. We pass from the slavery of Satan to the kingdom of God, from death to eternal life. Incidentally, this also illustrates why the Church baptises infants. We may be sure that the people of Israel carried their infants across the sea with them. They did not leave them on the Egyptian shore for Pharoah's army to find "because they were too young to understand it". Salvation and redemption are gracious acts of God, of which we are the beneficiaries, not mental exercises requiring our reasoning powers.
The sea is not merely a body of water. It is infested by evil and threatening monsters, which symbolise the power of Egypt, so Isaiah cries out:
Awake, awake, put on strength, O arm of the Lord awake, as in days of old, the generations of long ago. Was it not thou that didst cut Rahab in pieces that didst pierce the dragon? Was it not thou that didst dry up the waters of the great deep that didst make the depths of the sea a way for the redeemed to pass over? And the ransomed of the Lord shall return and come to Zion with singing everlasting joy shall be upon their heads they shall obtain joy and gladness and sorrow and sighing shall flee away (Is 51:9-11).
And, recalling this, when the priest blesses the water for baptism he says, "Thou didst hallow the streams of Jordan, sending down upon them from heaven thy Holy Spirit, and didst crush the heads of the dragons who lurked there."
When Christ was born in Bethlehem, God hid himself. As someone once pointed out, if you want to hide a needle, the best place to hide it is not in a haystack, because if you look long enough you can find it. If you want to hid a needle, you hide it among other needles. God became man, and hid himself among the human race, one baby among many who were born in that year. The shepherds, the wise men, the Theotokos and St Joseph, they knew because the angels and the star had revealed it to them. The rest did not know,
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