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.”
3rd June Trinity
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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