3rd June Trinity 2007, Birth Eternal Spirit

June Trinity

John 3: 1-17

Hendrickcz

There was a man in the circle of the Pharisees, whose name was Nicodemus; he held high rank among the Jews. He came to Jesus in the night and said, “Master, we know that you are a high teacher of mankind, come to us from God, for no one can do such signs of the Spirit as you do unless God himself is working together with him in his deeds.”

Jesus answered and said to him, “The truth out of the spirit I say to you: whoever is not born anew from above cannot behold the kingdom of God.”

Nicodemus said to him, “How can a man be born again when he is old? Can he return to his mother’s womb to be born again a second time?

Jesus answered, “the truth out of the spirit I say to you: whoever remains as he is, and does not come to a new birth out of the formative power of the water and out of the breath of the spirit [or, …and is not born anew out of the spiritual power of eternal becoming and out of being touched by the might of the spirit world] cannot enter into the kingdom of God. What is born out of earthly elements is of earthly nature. But what is born out of the breath of the spirit, is itself spirit. Do not wonder that I said to you that you must be born anew from above. The spirit wind blows where it will; you hear the sound of it, but you do not know where it comes from, or where it is going. So it is with everyone who is born anew out of the breath of the spirit.

Nicodemus replied and said to him, “How can one attain this?”

            Jesus answered, “You are a teacher of Israel and do not know? Amen, the truth I say to you: we speak of what we know, and we bear witness to what we have seen in the spirit, but none of you accepts our testimony. When I speak to you of earthly things and you do not believe them, how shall you believe when I want to speak to you of heavenly things? No one has ascended to the spiritual world who has not previously descended out of the spiritual world, that is, the Son of Man.

Just as Moses once lifted up the serpent in the wilderness, so must the Son of Man be lifted up, so that everyone who finds his power in their hearts can win a share in the higher life beyond time. God has so loved the world that he has given his only begotten Son. From now on, no one who fills himself with his power shall perish, for he will share in timeless, higher life. God did not send the Son into the world to condemn it, but in order that the world be saved [healed] through him, and not fall prey to ruin.”

3^rd Trinity Sunday

June 17, 2007

John 3: 1-17

Every night we fall asleep. What belongs to the earth – our body – remains lying in the bed. But our soul

soars aloft to breathe divine spirit-air. It rises to the place where our own true spirit, our higher self nourishes our earthly life. Sleep is there a natural form of prayer, one God-given way of connecting with eternal being.

            Christ has a conversation with Nicodemus in the realm of the night. He tries to tell Nicodemus that He, Christ, has come to earth to add something new to the natural order. He has come to help us find our way to our won eternal spirit without first having to fall asleep. He came so that we can begin to bring down, bring to birth our eternal spirit, our higher self, here on earth; so that we can breathe in the wind of the spirit also when we are awake during the day.

            This is what is meant that Christ descended out of the realm of the Father spirit to save the world: He came to bring the eternal realm of the stars down to the earthly world. He came to bring heaven to earth, so that we can raise the earthly into the heavenly.

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3rd June Trinity 2009, The Chorus

June Trinity

John 3: 1-17

There was a man in the circle of the Pharisees, whose name was Nicodemus; he held high rank among the Jews. He came to Jesus in the night and said, “Master, we know that you are a high teacher of mankind, come to us from God, for no one can do such signs of the Spirit as you do unless God himself is working together with him in his deeds.”

Jesus answered and said to him, “The truth out of the spirit I say to you: whoever is not born anew from above cannot behold the kingdom of God.”

Nicodemus said to him, “How can a man be born again when he is old? Can he return to his mother’s womb to be born again a second time?

Jesus answered, “the truth out of the spirit I say to you: whoever remains as he is, and does not come to a new birth out of the formative power of the water and out of the breath of the spirit [or, …and is not born anew out of the spiritual power of eternal becoming and out of being touched by the might of the spirit world] cannot enter into the kingdom of God. What is born out of earthly elements is of earthly nature. But what is born out of the breath of the spirit, is itself spirit. Do not wonder that I said to you that you must be born anew from above. The spirit wind blows where it will; you hear the sound of it, but you do not know where it comes from, or where it is going. So it is with everyone who is born anew out of the breath of the spirit.

Nicodemus replied and said to him, “How can one attain this?”

            Jesus answered, “You are a teacher of Israel and do not know? Amen, the truth I say to you: we speak of what we know, and we bear witness to what we have seen in the spirit, but none of you accepts our testimony. When I speak to you of earthly things and you do not believe them, how shall you believe when I want to speak to you of heavenly things? No one has ascended to the spiritual world who has not previously descended out of the spiritual world, that is, the Son of Man.

           Just as Moses once lifted up the serpent in the wilderness, so must the Son of Man be lifted up, so that everyone who finds his power in their hearts can win a share in the higher life beyond time. God has so loved the world that he has given his only begotten Son. From now on, no one who fills himself with his power shall perish, for he will share in timeless, higher life. God did not send the Son into the world to condemn it, but in order that the world be saved [healed] through him, and not fall prey to ruin.”

3^rd June Trinity

June 21, 2009

John 3: 1-17

Every night we surrender our bodies and enter the realm of God and his angels. There we are fed and repaired. In the morning we return to the house of the body; we awaken refreshed and, as it were, reborn.

Nicodemus meets with Christ in the realm which we enter at night. Christ tells him there of the necessity of being reborn on yet another level. Not physically, nor in the daily way of waking up, but on an even greater level.

For even when we are awake, we are all of us asleep, dreaming the dream of our ordinary lives. Yet behind this world is the real world, the mighty world from which originates all that is evolving. It is a place in which we are not ordinarily conscious. It is a place where we can hear the sound of God’s breath as He breathes the breath of new life into everything at every moment; where our life is His creating life. Christ urges Nicodemus, urges us all, to awaken into this realm, to be born into this higher life beyond time. It will take us a while; we ‘take our waking slow’. But we have all caught glimpses. The poet asks:

Your great mistake is to act the drama

as if you were alone.  ….Surely,

even you, at times, have felt the grand array;

the swelling presence, and the chorus, crowding

out your solo voice. [1]

So may we, in this life 

trust

to those elements 

we have yet to see…[2]

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---

[1] “Everything is Waiting for You”, David Whyte, in Everything is Waiting for You.

[2] David Whyte, “Working Together”, in House of Belonging. 

6th June Trinity 2008, I AM Alive

June Trinity

John 3: 1-17

There was a man in the circle of the Pharisees, whose name was Nicodemus; he held high rank among the Jews. He came to Jesus in the night and said, “Master, we know that you are a high teacher of mankind, come to us from God, for no one can do such signs of the Spirit as you do unless God himself is working together with him in his deeds.”

Jesus answered and said to him, “The truth out of the spirit I say to you: whoever is not born anew from above cannot behold the kingdom of God.”

Nicodemus said to him, “How can a man be born again when he is old? Can he return to his mother’s womb to be born again a second time?

Jesus answered, “the truth out of the spirit I say to you: whoever remains as he is, and does not come to a new birth out of the formative power of the water and out of the breath of the spirit [or, …and is not born anew out of the spiritual power of eternal becoming and out of being touched by the might of the spirit world] cannot enter into the kingdom of God. What is born out of earthly elements is of earthly nature. But what is born out of the breath of the spirit, is itself spirit. Do not wonder that I said to you that you must be born anew from above. The spirit wind blows where it will; you hear the sound of it, but you do not know where it comes from, or where it is going. So it is with everyone who is born anew out of the breath of the spirit.

Nicodemus replied and said to him, “How can one attain this?”

            Jesus answered, “You are a teacher of Israel and do not know? Amen, the truth I say to you: we speak of what we know, and we bear witness to what we have seen in the spirit, but none of you accepts our testimony. When I speak to you of earthly things and you do not believe them, how shall you believe when I want to speak to you of heavenly things? No one has ascended to the spiritual world who has not previously descended out of the spiritual world, that is, the Son of Man.

Just as Moses once lifted up the serpent in the wilderness, so must the Son of Man be lifted up, so that everyone who finds his power in their hearts can win a share in the higher life beyond time. God has so loved the world that he has given his only begotten Son. From now on, no one who fills himself with his power shall perish, for he will share in timeless, higher life. God did not send the Son into the world to condemn it, but in order that the world be saved [healed] through him, and not fall prey to ruin.”

6^th June Trinity

June 22, 2008

John 3: 1-17

  

Rocks don’t grow. The only way they can change is to be destroyed, ground into dust. Water and wind, however, move and shape. Water forms rocks; moving water and wind wear them down.

The problem with Nicodemus in the beginning of this reading is that his thinking is like a rock. When Christ talks about being born again, Nicodemus’s pictures something literal and limited to the earthly. Christ, however, is talking about the primacy of the spirit. The living waters of the Spirit form and shape; spirit breath breathes soul into all that is formed. Each child’s body is shaped in the waters of the womb.

We have all descended from the spirit. Our task is to consciously ascend into the heavenly realms while we are still on earth. On earth we human spirits are to rebirth ourselves back into an awareness of the realm from which we have come, the realm that has shaped and formed us.

Blake

Christ uses a picture from the Old Testament to explain this to Nicodemus: near the end of their forty years wandering in the desert, the Israelites were complaining bitterly about the food and water, complaining about their fate. The Lord sent fiery serpents. Many people died, but in those who survived, the stinging of conscience awakened their awareness of the sinfulness of raging against God’s karmic plan for them. They asked Moses to intercede. The Lord instructed Moses to fashion a brass snake and fasten it to a standard; all who had been bitten by the poisonous attitude would gaze upon the shining, uprighted snake on a pole. This symbol is a caduceus, the symbol of healing. In this picture of the snake being uprighted, they would recognize the wisdom of accepting their destiny in inner uprightness, without complaint. (Numbers 21:8)

The spirit is primary. It is not our fate, our destiny that is decisive, but how our spirits meet it. When we meet the bite of our fate with courage and inner uprightness, we have the potential to be changed and re-formed, to be born again as new human beings out of the waters of life and wind of the spirit from which we come.

Christ is for us the archetype of this process. He, the great Spirit, descended to earth, took on a body, and suffered a terrible fate. We can gaze upon him, the Shining One, upright on the pole of a cross. He is the ever-living caduceus, the symbol of healing. He is wisdom uprighted, sacrificed to love. He is our human fate, carried in uprightness, into and through death.

“Do not be afraid, he says. I am the first, and the last and the living one. I was dead, and see, I am alive forevermore, and I have the keys of death. I am the first born from the dead.” (Rev 1:5 -7).

Christ is the first in a new form of humanity. And we are to follow him into a new birth that even death cannot swallow.

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