Ascension 2019, Greet Yourself Arriving

Ascension

John 16: 22-33

So you have to suffer pain now.

William Blake

But I will see you again, and then your hearts will be filled with joy and no one can take that joy from you. Up to now, you have not prayed in my name. Pray from the heart, and it will be given to your heart, that your joy may be fulfilled.

All this I have given to your souls in imagery. But the hour is coming when I will no longer speak to you in pictures but will tell you openly and unveiled about my Father, so that you can grasp it in full, knowing consciousness. Thus will I proclaim to you the being of the Father. On that day you will ask out of my power and in my name. And no longer will I ask the Father on your behalf. For the Father himself will love you because you have loved me, and have known in your hearts that I have come forth from the Father. I have come forth from the Father and I have come into this world.

I leave the sense world again and return to the world of the Father, of which you say that it is the world of death.”

Then Jesus’ disciples said, “Now you are speaking in clear thought and without imagery. Now we know that all things are revealed to you and that you do not even need to have anyone ask you questions. This makes us believe that you came from God.”

Jesus answered, “Do you now feel my power in your heart? Behold, the time is coming and has already come, when you will be scattered, each to his own loneliness. You will then also leave me alone. But I am not alone, for the Father is eternally united with me.

All this I have spoken to you so that in me you may find peace. In this world, you will have great fear and hardship. But take courage. I have overcome the world.”

Pieter Coecke van Aelst, FlemishTapestry 

Ascension Sunday

June 2, 2019

John 16: 24-33

Our heart is the very center of our being. We can imagine our heart as the center of a series of concentric circles, with all our dear ones in closer circles, our acquaintances further out. Our heart is the center of our universe. Others circle our periphery.

Likewise, we ourselves occupy the circles around other people’s hearts. For of course they too have many circles around them. The human world is a labyrinth of interlocking circles, all connected by the famous six degrees of separation.

We are celebrating Christ’s Ascension. It is the time when He expanded His Being, His Heart, into the greatest and the broadest possible series of circles. The circles of His universe include all human beings, even those who have never heard of Him. Christ’s connection to us actually involves zero degrees of separation, for he has expanded His being in ever-widening circles to catch every human heart. The circles of His heart’s love run through the very center of each human heart. And that is where we will find Him—in the deepest, centermost core of our own being, in the innermost core of every human being we encounter.

We have scattered ourselves in division, in loneliness. We ourselves may have placed Christ on one of the circles further out of our own heart, as one of our ‘acquaintances’. But He has connected us directly to His heart. He carries us in His love. So when He urges us to ‘pray from the heart’ (John 16:24), perhaps he is showing us the way to find Him. Perhaps when we enter our own deepest core and find Him there, find the One whose being is Love, we will recognize our true identity.

As we offer this Eucharistic meal, the words of the poet can inspire:

The time will come

when, with elation,

you will greet yourself arriving

at your own door, ….

You will love again the stranger who was your self.

Give wine. Give bread. Give back your heart

to itself, to the stranger who has loved you

all your life, whom you have ignored…*

Christ is urging us to join our hearts with His, so that we too can love the world as He does.

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*Derek Walcott, “Love After Love”, in Collected Poems 1948-1984, New York, Farrar Straus Giroux, 1986.

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2nd November Trinity 2018, The God of Life

Revelation 14: 6-13

And I looked and saw another angel flying in mid-heaven, bringing the good news which is good news forever to those living on earth—to every race and nation and every tongue and folk. And the angel cried out with a great voice, saying:

“Stand in awe of God and turn to honor him. For we have come to the hour of his divine decision. Raise yourself in prayer to him who in truth created the heavens and the earth and the sea and all the springs of water.”  

And a second angel followed, who said, “Fallen, fallen is the great city of Babylon, who made all nations drink of the wine of her sacrilege, in order to draw the holy into misuse.”

And a third angel followed them, who cried out with a powerful voice: “Whoever adores the beast and its likeness and accepts its stamp on forehead or hand, he will drink of the wine of God’s anger, thick and strong and undiluted, from the cup of his wrath. And in the presence of the holy angels and in front of the Lamb shall anger be transformed into pain like the pain of fire and sulfur.

Memling

Their suffering rises and darkens the encircling air like smoke through the cycles of time. And day and night those who made the beast into their god, who honored its picture as the highest, who took its being into their innermost being, find no peace. In this place however there works the power of the steadfast endurance of those who have taken the healing power of the Spirit into themselves, who have fulfilled the goals of the Spirit, and who have worked trusting in Jesus’ healing deed.

And I heard a voice out of the worlds of Spirit which said, “Write this down: People of heaven are the dead who die in the Lord from now on. Yes, says the spirit, let them rest from their efforts and labors, since their good deeds, the fruits of their lives, are not lost along their paths of soul, but have preceded them here.

2^nd November Trinity

Nov 4, 2018

Revelation 14: 6 – 13

With its hard, dry skin, a seed looks like a dead thing. When the conditions of light, warmth, and moisture are favorable, the cells of the seed’s skin die away. Inside is an embryo waiting, which swells and begins to grow. One root-shoot grounds itself into the earth, while a second leaf shoot struggles to gain the light. As we are approaching the end of the liturgical year, it is appropriate to hear a reading about endings, and what is seed-like.

This revelation to John features angels who urge us to honor the creative God of Life in uprightness. It warns of the ultimate disintegration and pain of those who misused their sacred creativity. It speaks of those who, like a seed that only developed a root and no leaf shoot, worshipped the beast of the abyss. And it assures us that our steadfast endurance of earthly suffering, our harboring of the healing spirit of love, and our trust in Christ are realities. By their own nature, these realities migrate into the light of the spiritual world. They are not lost, but they continue to exist there as housing and nourishment for our souls after death. For we do indeed have the power to create our own heaven or our own hell. In the words of Rudolf Meyer, one of our early priests:

Your kingdom of heaven, oh Human, is where you believe and love.

Rising toward heaven happens the more you practice love.

What is the human heart—bethink—if Jesus Christ,

The more He lives with us, the more he is in His heaven?

The Hell is in you, into which He descends

And also the heavenly kingdom in which he is transfigured.

Someday, when the coverings fall away, there will be announced and revealed

How deep hell’s ground, how wide your heaven was.

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Ascension 2011, Infinite Wishes

Ascension

John 16: 24-33

Hitherto you have asked nothing in my name. Pray from the heart, and it will be given to your heart, that your joy may be fulfilled.

All this I have given to your souls in imagery. But the hour is coming when I will no longer speak to you in pictures, but will tell you openly and unveiled about my Father, so that you can grasp it in full, knowing consciousness. Thus will I proclaim to you the being of the Father. On that day you will ask out of my power and in my name. And no longer will I ask the Father on your behalf. For the Father himself will love you because you have loved me, and have known in your hearts that I have come forth from the Father. I have come forth from the Father and I have come into this world.

I leave the sense world again and return to the world of the Father, of which you say that it is the world of death.”

Then Jesus’ disciples said, “Now you are speaking in clear thought and without imagery. Now we know that all things are revealed to you and that you do not even need to have anyone ask you questions. This makes us believe that you came from God.”

Jesus answered, “Do you now feel my power in your heart? Behold, the time is coming, and has already come, when you will be scattered, each to his own loneliness. You will then also leave me alone. But I am not alone, for the Father is eternally united with me.

All this I have spoken to you so that in me you may find peace. In this world you will have great fear and hardship. But take courage. I have overcome the world.”

Ascension Sunday

June 5, 2011

John 16: 24-33

Often in fairytales, someone is granted three wishes. How these wishes are granted depends on the character of the person wishing. In one tale, a husband and wife are granted three wishes; but the two exist in such disharmony that they squander their wishes on nonsense. In another tale, a fisherman has to ask for more and more for his prideful wife who wants more and more power and status; at last the bubble bursts and they find themselves back where they started.

At a certain point it usually occurs to older children that their third wish would be to have every subsequent wish come true. Yet we know that a child has not yet the wisdom to handle that kind of power.

Christ says to us: Pray, ask from the heart and it will be given to your heart, that your joy may be fulfilled….Ask out of my power and in my name. John 16: 24, 26.  Here we are being granted infinite wishes! But there is the caveat of wisdom—we must ask out of Christ’s bestowing love and in accordance with the Father’s lawfulness. We must align our wishes with the laws that lead toward the future of the universe.

We ask: lead us not into temptation. Deliver us from the evil. Not my will, but Thine be done.  Luke 22:42  In so doing, we are asking from a place of wisdom. We are asking from the place where all the red threads of human destinies join together. We are asking from the center of Christ’s heart, from the central place in the universe. We may ask where that place is; the poet answers:

Your kingdom of heaven, oh Man, is where you believe and love.

The ascension happens the more you practice love….

You seek Jesus Christ—he thrones not high and far;

He makes the earthly realm into His Love’s Star.[1]

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[1] Rudolf Meyer

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