Someone asks how we speak in our hymnography of Christ being crucified on the tree, and do not confine our language to describing specifically the cross. One answer is that, for us, the matter is intensely important. In other words, there is significance in that it was wood and that it was a tree. By a tree man fell and by a tree man was lifted up. By a tree man was deceived, and by it he was illumined and given sight. The serpent was lifted up on a pole, and the nation was healed, foretelling the one who, lifted up did cast down and defeat the serpent, healing all men. The deification of all creation requires the participation of all creation in Christ’s incarnation – and vice versa. The tree is one such thing. The gnostic – modern or otherwise, can never accept this. For him, material must be secondary, irrelevant, or even disruptive to salvation. For the Orthodox, there is no salvation without matter. As St. John of Damascus has said, I will not cease to venerate the matter through which my salvation has been effected.
And so water, and so oil, and so many other things are means of salvation for us. When we see one kind of material, we do not see it as disconnected from all other things of that kind, or indeed from any thing or anyone, but related, connected, indeed redeemed, recapitulated, and communicated, joined to us, because all matter is joined to Our Lord. He in His Incarnation and in his very flesh summed up and redeemed all matter, and now all things groan waiting for our redemption, that finally all things may be complete in us.