1st St. Johnstide 2016, Weight of History

John the Baptizer, Tissot

1^st St. Johnstide

June 24, 26, 2016

Mark 1: 1 -11

 This is the beginning of the new word from the realm of the angels, sounding forth through Jesus Christ. Fulfilled is the word of the prophet Isaiah:

Behold, I send my angel before your face.

He is to prepare your way.

Hear the voice of one calling in the loneliness of the human soul

Prepare the way for the Lord within the soul,

Make his paths straight, so that he may find entrance into Man’s innermost being!

Tissot, Brooklyn Museum

Thus did John the Baptist appear in the loneliness of the desert. He proclaimed Baptism, the way of a change of heart and mind, for the acknowledgment of sin. And they went out to him from all of Judea and Jerusalem and received baptism from him in the river Jordan and recognized and confessed their failings.

John wore a garment of camel’s hair and a leather belt around his waist. Fruits and wild honey were his food. And he proclaimed:

               

‘After me comes one who is mightier than I. I am not even worthy to bend down before Him and to undo the straps of His sandals. I have baptized you with water, but He will baptize you with the fire of the Holy [healing] Spirit.’

In those days it happened: Jesus of Nazareth came to Galilee and was baptized in the Jordan by John.

And at the same time as he rose up again out of the water, he beheld how the spheres of the heavens were torn open, and the spirit of God descended upon him like a dove.

And a voice sounded from the world of the spirit:

‘You are my son, the beloved —in you is my revelation.’ [‘Today I have conceived (begotten) you.’ Luke 3:22]

1^st St. Johnstide

June 24, 26, 2016

Mark 1: 1 -11

At the solstice, the length of the day ceases to change. It remains essentially the same for several days. Solstice creates a pause, a quiet place in the flow of time.

Pauses are opportunities for reflection. We are encouraged to look back, to remember. In remembering there can arise in us the wish to do some things better if we were to encounter them again. We may have done our best at the time. But knowing what we know now, we would do it differently in the future.

Uriel, the Archangel for this solstice season [in the Northern Hemisphere] is the holder of humanity’s

memory. He creates the historic conscience that arises out of humanity’s deeds and mistakes, its errors, but also humanity’s greater intentions for the future. John the Baptist carried this memory conscience of humanity’s history, which was essentially the fall into sin. And down the ages he calls to us to change the way we think and feel, to change how we act. He encourages us to recognize the necessity of realigning ourselves with our higher intentions.

Those higher intentions are embodied in Christ Jesus. John points to Him as the one who has taken on the burden of the sins of the world, the weight and course of humanity’s history. He does so in order to  heal humanity from the sickness of sin; to wring Life from the dominion of the death force; to raise humanity up out of ruin.

Christ has shown us the Way to the Truth about Life. But He does not work as a magician. St. John reminds us that now it is up to us to change our hearts and minds; to straighten Christ’s path into our souls. Only thus can Christ work in humanity.

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5th June Trinity 2016, Beautiful Fact

June Trinity

John 6: 53-69

Jesus answered, ‘Yes I tell you, if you do not eat the earthly body of the Son of Man and drink his blood, you have no life in you. Whoever eats my body and drinks my blood has life beyond the cycles of time, and I give him the power of resurrection at the end of time. For my flesh is the true sustenance, and my blood is the true draught. Whoever truly eats my flesh and drinks my blood remains in me and I in him. As the life-bearing Father sent me, and as I bear the life of the world by the will of the Father, so also he who makes me his sustenance will have life within him through me. This is the bread which descends from heaven. It will no longer be as it was with the fathers who ate of it and died. Whoever eats this bread will live through the whole cycle of time.’ He said this in his teaching in the synagogue in Capernaum.

Many of his disciples who heard this said, ‘These are hard and difficult words; who can bear to hear them?’ Jesus was aware that his disciples could not come to terms with this and he said to them, ‘Do you take offense at this? What will you say when you see the Son of Man ascending again to where he was before? It is the Spirit that gives life; the physical by itself is of no avail. The words that I spoke to you are spirit and are life. But there are some among you who have no faith.’ For Jesus knew from the beginning who would betray him. And he went on: ‘This is why I said to you: No one can find the way to me unless it is given him by the Father’.

5^th June Trinity

June 19, 2016

John 6: 53-69

Throughout the history of human thought, there has always been a battle of meanings: the literal vs the poetic; fact vs fiction; real vs imaginary. Especially today we tend to see these contrasts as mutually exclusive. Either something is real, or it isn’t.

The event we read about today comes after Christ’s feeding of the five thousand, when He imbued bread and fish with the life force from the stars. In today’s reading He insists that He will go further. He will offer his body and blood to be eaten. It must indeed have seemed a strangely dangerous saying to his listeners, and perhaps at first blush even to us. To literally eat someone’s body and blood is taboo, repulsive. Yet what Christ is saying at this moment is prophetic. Only after the Last Supper will they become literally and safely true. For then Christ infuses the forming power of his body into bread. He pours the living essence of his blood into wine. And thus ordinary literal food becomes his flesh and blood – not only poetically, but also factually. Opposites are reconciled. Spirit and matter are combined into communion, so that humankind can continue to exist and develop into the future. For whenever the Last Supper is re-enacted, He is present.

‘Whoever eats my body and drinks my blood has life beyond the cycles of time, and I give him the power of resurrection at the end of time,’ He says.* A beautiful fact, and a real promise.

*John 6: 54

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4th June Trinity 2016, A Sweet Death

June Trinity

John 11: 17-44

When Jesus got [to Bethany] there, he found that he [Lazarus] had already been in the tomb for four days. Bethany was near Jerusalem, about two miles away. Many Jews had come to Martha and Mary to console them about their brother. When Martha heard that Jesus was coming, she went to meet him. But Mary remained within. And Martha said to Jesus, “Lord, if you had been here, my brother would not have died. But I know that even now God will give you whatever you ask.

Jesus said to her, “Your brother will rise again.”

Martha answered, “I know that he will rise again in the great resurrection at the end of time.”

Then Jesus said to her, “I AM the resurrection and the life. Whoever fills himself with my power through faith, he will live even when he dies; and whoever takes me into himself as his life, he is set free from the might of death in all earthly cycles of time. Do you feel the truth of these words?”

And she said, “Yes Lord. With my heart I have recognized that you are the Christ, the Son of God, who is coming into the world.”

When she had said this she went and called her sister Mary and said to her privately, “The Master is here and is asking for you.” Jesus had not yet entered the town. He had stayed in the place where Martha had met him.

When the Jews who were with her in the house, consoling her, saw Mary get up quickly and go out, they followed her. They thought she was going to the tomb to weep there. But Mary came to the place where Jesus was, and when she saw him, she fell at his feet and said to him, “Lord, if you had been there, this brother of mine would not have died. “

When Jesus saw how she and the Jews coming with her were weeping, he aroused himself in spirit and, deeply moved within himself, he asked, “Where have you laid him?”

They answered, “Come, Lord, and see.” 

Jesus wept. Then the Jews said, “See how he loved him.” But some of them said, “Could not he who restored the sight of the blind man keep this man from dying?”

And again Jesus, deeply moved within himself went up to the tomb.

It was a cave, and a stone lay across it. And Jesus said, “Take away the stone!”

Then said Martha, the sister of him whose life had reached completion, “Lord, there will be an odor [he has already begun to decompose], for this is the fourth day.”

But Jesus said, “Did I not say to you that if you had faith, you would see the revelation of God?”

Then they took away the stone. And Jesus lifted up his eyes to the spirit and said, “Father, I thank you that you have heard me. I knew that you always hear me; but because of the people standing here I say it, so that their hearts may know that you have sent me. Then he called with a loud voice: “Lazarus, come out!”

And the dead man came out, his feet and hands bound with strips of linen, his face covered with a veil. And Jesus said, “Unbind him, and let him go.”

June Trinity

June 12, 2016

John 11: 17-44

By now the fruit trees have long since blossomed and dropped their petals. Yet hidden in the green leaves, the small fruits continue to grow toward ripening. When they are ripe they, too, will fall; but preserved, even in their decay, are the seeds of future life.

Today’s reading is about falling into death. Christ says that even her, in death, there is continuing life. Taking in his life force, we will continue to live. In him is life and rebirth, even after death. The seeds of our lives are preserved in him. Ultimately we will all return. As Rilke says,

… we are never finished with our not dying

Dying is strange and hard

If it is not our death, but a death

That takes us by storm, when we’ve ripened none

Within us.

We stand in your garden year after year.

We are trees for yielding a sweet death.

But fearful, we wither before the harvest.[1]

God, give us each our own death,

The dying that proceeds

From each of our lives:

The way we loved,

The meanings we made…[2]

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[1] M. R. Rilke, The Book of Hours, Barrows and Macy, p. 133

[2] M. R. Rilke, The Book of Hours, Barrows and Macy, p. 131