3rd Johnstide 2021, Kindness is Eternal

 

Johnstide

John 1:19-34

This is John's testimony when the Jewish leaders sent priests and Levites from Jerusalem to ask him, "Who are you?" 

Freely and openly, he confessed. He did not deny but confessed, "I am not the Christ [the Anointed]." 

Domenico Ghirlandaio -

Then they asked him, "Who are you then? Are you Elijah?" 

And he said, "No, I am not." 

"Are you the prophet?" He answered, "No." 

Then they said, "Who are you? What answer are we to give to those who sent us? What do you say about yourself?" 

He said in the words of the prophet Isaiah, "I am the voice of one crying in the loneliness: Prepare the way for the Lord [so that the Lord may enter into the inmost soul [or, inmost self]." 

And those sent by the Pharisees asked him, "Why do you baptize if you are neither the Christ, nor Elijah, nor the prophet?" 

John answered them, "I baptize with water. But someone is standing in your midst whom you do not know, who comes after me although he was before me. I am not worthy even to untie the strap of his sandals." 

This took place in Bethany near the mouth of the Jordan, where John was baptizing. 

Notre Dame

The next day he [John] sees Jesus
coming to him and says, "Behold the Lamb of God who takes upon himself the burden of the sin of the world. He it is of whom I said: 'After me comes one greater than I  for he existed long before me. Even I did not know him; but for this, I have come, and have baptized with water so that human souls in Israel might become able to experience the revelation of his being." 

And John testified: "I saw how the Spirit descended upon him like a dove from the heavens and remained united with him. I did not know him, but he who sent me to baptize with water said to me, 'He on whom you see the Spirit descend so that it remains united with him, he it is who baptizes with the (breath of the) Holy [or, Healing] Spirit.' And I saw this, and so I testify that this is God's Son."

3^rd Johnstide

July 11, 2021

John 1:19-34 

Each of us, at the core of our being, has an eternal self. Over time, this eternal Self clothes itself in different personalities, each with its own particular time and destiny. Our self-awareness is usually limited to our current incarnation. The eternal core self is hard to find, hard to recognize. 

When John the Baptist is asked who he is, he answers from an awareness of his temporal self. ‘I am not Elijah, not the Christ, not the prophet.’ At the same time, he is clear about his personal destiny—that he came to baptize. 

He is also clear about Jesus’ identity. He sees past Jesus’ earthly personality to His eternal core as the Lamb of God, upon whom the Spirit of God descended and remained. And John is aware that his own destiny is to serve Christ Jesus. 

Carracia

Awareness of one’s own eternal core Self is a gift of grace. Perhaps it is more important to develop an awareness of the eternal selves of others than it is to look for our own eternal core. Perhaps it is more important for us to stand as witnesses for each other—to recognize, as John did, the eternal self of the other, to witness and accompany their destiny. Perhaps this is part of the change of heart and mind that John advocates: that we turn away from self-involvement, toward a humble support of others. 

Something like this is hinted at in Psalm 15:

Those with a passion for justice,

who speak the truth from their hearts;

who have let go of selfish interests

and grown beyond their own lives;

…Their compassion lights up the whole earth,

and their kindness endures forever.* 

 

The Psalms, translations by Stephen Mitchell

 www.thechristiancommunity.org

 

 

4th Passiontide, Palm Sunday 2021, He Suffers In Us

 4^th Passiontide (Palm Sunday)

Matthew 21:1-11

 And they approached Jerusalem and came to  Bethphage by the Mount of Olives. Then Jesus sent two disciples ahead and said to them, "Go to the village which you see before you and at once you will find a donkey tied there and her foal with her. Untie them and bring them to me. If anyone says anything to you, tell him that the Lord needs them, and he will let you take them right away."

This took place to fulfill what was spoken through the prophet:

'Say to the daughter of Zion,

Behold, your king comes to you in majesty.

Gentle is He, and He rides on a donkey and a foal of the beast of burden.'

Julia Stankova

The disciples went and did as Jesus had instructed them. They brought the donkey and the foal, placed their garments on them and Jesus sat on them.

Many from the large crowd spread their clothes on the road, while others cut branches from the trees and spread them on the road. The crowds that went ahead of them and followed Him shouted:

Hosanna to the Son of David!

Blessed is he who comes in the Name and Power of the Lord!

Hosanna in the highest! [or, Sing to Him in the highest heights!]

When Jesus entered Jerusalem, the whole city was stirred and asked, "Who is he?" The crowds answered, "This is Jesus, the prophet from Nazareth in Galilee."

4^th Passiontide, Palm Sunday

March 28, 2021

Matthew 21:1-11

We are entering Holy Week. The altar and vestments are black. Especially in this week, Christ battles the forces of duality. These are the false polarities of either/or, black or white, the yes or no of dead binary thinking. Good or bad; heaven or hell. By the end of the week, He will arrive at Golgatha, literally the Place of the Skull. At the place of the skull, He will die. And in a garden, He will rise again.

Christ exists in the living world of flow,

Julia Stankova

change, and metamorphosis. He operates in the changing subtleties of the grayscale, in the nuances of color in transforming one form to another. His opponents ask Him questions designed to entrap Him. He gives them answers from outside of their framework, answers from the flowing world of a greater reality.

Today we still battle with the deadness into which our brain-bound intellect so quickly falls. We still tend to use ill-making polarities in the way we think, thus closing ourselves off from more significant possibilities. Nevertheless, we strain to open our thoughts in reverence. We struggle to warm our hearts in empathy. We strive to act according to inspirations of our conscience, our higher self.

In those moments when we manage reverence of thought, when we burn with heart’s love, when we act out of inspirations of conscience, in such moments, Christ can operate in the world. In such moments Christ is in us.  It is He that thinks in us, suffers in us, dies, and rises in us. As Rilke says,

To work with Things in the indescribable

relationship is not too hard for us;

the pattern grows more intricate and subtle,

…

Take your practiced powers and stretch them out

until they span the chasm between two

contradictions ... For the god

wants to know himself in you.*

 

---

* Rainer Maria Rilke, in Ahead of All Parting, ed. and translated by Steven Mitchell

 

For more inspiring resources, go to https://www.christiancommunityseminary.ca/podcast

 

2nd Epiphany 2021, Truth at Every Moment

2^nd Epiphany

Luke 2:41-52
 
Every year his [Jesus'] parents went to Jerusalem for the feast of the Passover. And when he was twelve years old, they took him with them. Now, after they had gone there and fulfilled the custom during the days of the feast, they set off on their way home. But the boy Jesus remained behind in Jerusalem. His parents did not know this; they thought he was among the company of the travelers. After a day's journey, they missed him among their friends and relations. When they did not find him, they returned to Jerusalem to look for him. 

Durer

After three days, they found him in the Temple, sitting in the midst of the
teachers, listening to them and asking them questions. And those who heard him were amazed at his mature understanding and his answers.
 
And when they saw him, they were taken aback, and his mother said to him, "My child, why have you done this to us? Behold, your father and I have been searching for you in great distress."
 
And he said to them, "Why did you look for me? Did you not know that I must be and live in that which is my Father's?"
 
But they did not understand the meaning of the words he spoke to them. And he went down with them again to Nazareth and followed them willingly in all things.
 
And his mother carefully kept all these things living in her heart. And Jesus progressed in wisdom, maturity, and grace [or, favor] in the sight of God and humans.

2^nd Epiphany
January 17, 2021
Cynthia Hindes
 
You are likely familiar with the fairy tale in which what was raised as a duckling turns out to be a swan. In today’s gospel reading, the boy Jesus undergoes the first of his many transformations.

William Holman Hunt

He comes into his own swan-hood: wise, mature, and beautiful. His parents don’t understand how unexpectedly he could turn into something so different from what they had known him to be.

There is a part of all of our souls that is like the boy. Our parents, our family, our society has laid certain expectations on us. But our true identity is swan-like. The boy Jesus is the archetype for how we deal with the possible conflict between the imperatives of our higher, our developing swan-nature, and the demands of our family and surroundings.

The young Jesus willingly follows both. And we too can firmly tread the path of our own higher development. And at the same time, we can respect and honor those to whom we are responsible.

Soon enough, the boy will leave home and embark on a world-shattering journey. But for now, despite a dawning self-awareness, he continues to develop quietly, inwardly. Perhaps he prays the words of Psalm 121:

I look deep into my heart,
to the core where wisdom arises.

Alexsandr Antonyuk

Wisdom comes from the Unnamable
and unifies heaven and earth.
The Unnamable is always with [me] you,
shining from the depths of [my] your heart.
His peace will keep [me] you untroubled
even in the greatest pain.
When [I} you find him present within [me] you,
{I} you find truth at every moment.
He will guard [me] you from all wrongdoing;
he will guide [my] your feet on his path.
He will temper [my] your youth with patience;
he will crown [my] your old age with fulfillment.
And dying, [I] you will leave [my] your body
as effortlessly as a sigh.*
 
* Psalm 121, (adapted) from A Book of Psalms, trans. and adapted by Stephen Mitchell

2nd Johnstide Homily 2020, Spirit Creates Order

2nd Johnstide

Matthew 3:1-17

In those days, John the Baptist came. He proclaimed his message in the isolation of the Judean desert. He said, “Change your hearts and minds. The realm of [the human being filled with] the heavens has come close.”

He it is of whom the prophet Isaiah speaks:

A voice is heard, calling in the loneliness [of the human soul]: ‘Prepare the way for the highest leader [within the soul], make his path straight and good [Order your feeling and thinking, so that within you a path arises for the inner Lord!].

John wore a garment of camel’s hair and a leather girdle around his waist. Hard fruits and wild honey were his food.

At that time, people came out to him from Jerusalem and the whole of Judea and from the region around the Jordan, and they were baptized by him in the flowing waters of the Jordan and confessed [admitted] their sins [failings, and the errors of their lives].

When he saw that many Pharisees and Sadducees also came for baptism, he said to them, ‘You sons of the serpent, who has told you how to escape from the coming World-Fire [Fury]? Now, therefore, strive after [to bring forth] the right fruits of the change of heart and mind. Do not think that you are safe by saying: We have Abraham as our father. I say to you: the heavenly Father is just as able to raise Abraham-sons from these dead stones. Already the ax is laid to the root of the trees [of the bloodlines], and every tree that does not bear good fruit is felled and thrown into the fire [of testing]. I baptize you with water to lead you to a change of consciousness [heart]. He who comes after me is mightier than I; unworthy am I even to carry his sandals. He will baptize you with the Holy Spirit and with fire. His winnowing fork is in his hand, and he will cleanse his grain of the chaff. He will gather the wheat into the barn [for the future], but the chaff he will burn in an unquenchable fire.”

Then Jesus came from Galilee to the

Icon, Baptism in the Jordan

Jordan to John, to be baptized by him. But John refused and said, “It is I who need to be baptized by you—and now you come to me?”

Jesus answered him, “Let it be so now. It is good thus so that we fulfill properly all that destiny [divine righteousness] requires.” Then he consented.

Having been baptized Jesus was already coming up from the water again when behold, the heavens opened to him, and he saw the Spirit of God descending in the form of a dove and alighting upon him. And a voice spoke out of the heavens:     

“This is my Son whom I love,

            [Today I have conceived him. Luke 3:22]

In him will I reveal myself.”

2nd Johnstide

July 5, 2020

Matthew 3:1-17

At the end of the day's work or a big project, the environment may have become disordered.  Clean-up is called for. A visitor to one of the original Waldorf curative schools was told that he could find the school's founder and teacher after-school still in the classroom, cleaning up. As the visitor approached, he could hear the teacher repeating a phrase again and again: The Spirit creates order! The Spirit creates order!

Icon,John the Baptist, Angel of the Desert, detail

Today's gospel reading describes such a moment in human history. The old phase of the elite bloodlines is over; their work is done. John the Baptizer said, "The ax has been laid to the roots of the trees," the ancestral trees of the bloodlines. This is because their mission, that of creating a pure bodily form for the Messiah, is complete. After this, there can only be decay; for the bloodlines are no longer capable of spiritual awareness.

Yet a new order is arriving. The Spirit creates order! Jesus comes to the Jordan as the beginning of a new era for human beings. Christ, the divine Son and our Brother, will enter humanity. Everything will be up-ended. Even John the Baptizer's perception of his own unworthiness is no hindrance. Now a new order, a new Spirit consciousness, has arrived. Now the divine will inhabit the body. Now heaven can reveal itself on earth, for a new spirit consciousness of love for all human beings, beyond bloodline, tribe, or nation, will slowly and gradually take over the earth. 

It is true that elitism, tribalism, and nationalism will ever try to interfere with the new order. But they have no future. Only the Spirit creates order. Now is the time to recognize that all of humankind is one family, for we are all children of God. Here the 15th Psalm is a kind of prophecy: 

Lord, who can be trusted with power,

Codex Rossanensis, Christ as Good Samaritan

and who may act in your place?

Those with a passion for justice,

who speak the truth from their hearts;

who have let go of selfish interests

and grown beyond their own lives;

who see the wretched as their family

and the poor as their flesh and blood.

They alone are impartial

and worthy of the people's trust.

Their compassion lights up the whole earth,

and their kindness endures forever.*

 

 

*Psalm 15, in The Psalms, translations by Stephen Mitchell

 

2nd June Trinity 2019, Helping Guide

June Trinity

John 4, 1-26 (adapted from Madsen)

At this time the Lord became aware that it was rumored among the Pharisees that Jesus was finding and baptizing more disciples than John (although Jesus himself did not baptize, though his disciples did.) Therefore he left Judea and went back again to Galilee.

Now he had to pass through Samaria. So he came to a Samaritan town called Sychar, near the plot of land Jacob had given to his son Joseph. Jacob’s well was also there. Jesus was weary with the journey, and he sat down by the well. It was about midday, the sixth hour.

Then a Samaritan woman came to draw water. And Jesus said to her, “Give me to drink.” For his disciples had gone into town to buy bread.

Then the Samaritan woman said to him, “How can you, a Jew, ask a drink of me, a Samaritan woman?” For the Jews avoided all contact with the Samaritans.

Jesus answered her, “If you knew how the divine world now draws near to men, and who it is who says to you, ‘Give me to drink’, you would ask him, and he would give you the water of life [the living water].

“Sir,” the woman said to him, “you have nothing to draw with, and the well is deep. From where will you draw the living water? Are you greater than our Father Jacob, who gave us this well and drank from it himself, as did his sons and his flocks and herds?”

Jesus answered, “Everyone who drinks this water will be thirsty again, but whoever drinks the water that I will give him, his thirst will be quenched for all time. Indeed, the water I give him will become in him a spring of water welling up as true life for eternity.”

The woman said to him, “Sir, give me this water, that I may never be thirsty again and need never come here again to draw.”

He said to her, “Go call your husband and show him to me.”

“I have no husband,” she replied. Jesus said to her, “You have well said that you have no husband. Five husbands you have had, and he whom you now have is not your husband. This you have said truly.”
“Sir,” the woman said, “I perceive that you are a prophet. Our fathers worshipped on this mountain, but you Jews say that only in Jerusalem is the place where one should worship.”

Vonaesch

Jesus answered, “Believe me, o woman, the hour is coming when you will worship the Father neither on this mountain nor in Jerusalem. You worship a being you do not know; we worship what we do know. That is why salvation had to be prepared for among the Jews. But the hour is coming and has now come when the true worshippers will worship the Father with the power of the spirit and in awareness [knowledge] of the truth.”

Then the woman said to him, “I know that the Messiah is coming who is called Christ. When he comes, he will teach us all things.”

Jesus said to her, “I AM he who stands before you and speaks to you.”

2^nd June Trinity

June 23, 2019

John 4: 1-26

If we wish to journey through an area foreign to us, we may engage a guide. The guide knows where best to stop for food and water, for shelter. We depend on the guide’s familiarity with the terrain to get us safely through to our destination.

There is a certain sense in which our own five senses are guides.  They each offer specific information about where we are. Taken individually each sense gives such different information that we cannot depend on them singly. We ourselves need to sift through what we receive from them. And further, their information is limited to the earthly, sense-perceptible world.

In the non-material world, the world of life and living beings, in the world of love, we need another guide; someone who knows the territory, who will nourish and shelter us on the way; who will see us to our destination. The Act of Consecration of Man (communion liturgy) speaks of One who is our helping guide through the territory of our freedom.

The Samaritan woman meets him by the well. In tradition she is called Photina,

‘the luminous one’. In her conversation with him she realizes that relying only on the guidance of her five senses, (her ‘husbands’) is not taking her where she wishes to go. Her soul is parched. Christ offers himself as the living water, and as her guide on her journey. She recognizes that he knows, in fact He is the way; that he stands before her and speaks to her of where she truly wishes to go; that He is her helping guide.

Psalm 121 speaks of this guide:

….The Unnamable is always with you,
shining from the depths of your heart.
His peace will keep you untroubled
even in the greatest pain.
When you find him present within you,
you find truth at every moment.
He will guard you from all wrongdoing;
he will guide your feet on his path….*

*A Book of Psalms, trans. and adapted by Stephen Mitchell

3rd St. Johnstide 2015, Who Can Be Trusted

St. Johnstide

Florentine School, Wikimedia

John 3: 22-36

After this Jesus and his disciples came to the land of Judea. There he stayed with them and baptized. John also baptized; he was at Aenon near Salim, because there was much water there, and people came to him and were baptized. For John had not yet been imprisoned.

Then a dispute arose between the disciples of John and the Jews about the path of purification. And they came to John and said to him, “Master, he who came to you beyond the Jordan, to whom you bore witness – here he is, baptizing, and everyone is going to him.”

John answered, “No human being can grasp spiritual power for himself that is not given to him from the higher worlds. You yourselves can testify that I said, ‘I am not the Christ, but I have been sent before him.’

“He who has the bride, he is the bridegroom. But the friend of the bridegroom, who stands by and listens to him, he is filled with joy at the bridegroom’s voice. This joy of mine is now full. He must increase, but I must decrease.

He who descends from above, out of the spiritual world, is elevated above all beings of the earth. Whoever is only of the earth, whose being arises from the earthly, his word is also earthbound.

He who comes from the heavens is elevated above all who have arisen from the earthly. What he has seen and heard in the world of the spirit, to that he can bear direct witness, but no one accepts his testimony.

But whoever accepts his testimony, sets his seal to this: that God is true [truth] [that there is no higher truth than the reality of God]. Whoever God has sent, his words are filled with the power of divine thought, for God gives the spirit to human beings not according to human rules, but according to the creative power that he awakens in man.

The Father holds the Son surrounded in his love, and has given everything into his hands. Whoever trusts in the power of the Son within himself, he grows out of the earthly into timeless life.

Whoever cannot trust in the power of the Son within will not behold the world of life; rather the working might of the spirit world must one day burn him like a fire that will consume him.”

St. Johnstide

July 12, 2015

John 3: 22-36

There is a part of ourselves that wants to make things happen. And to do that, we need energy and power. After all, we can’t use our power tools without plugging them into an energy source! In this earthly world, we have figured out how to create our own energy sources for our power tools.

John the Baptist also speaks about the uses of power and spiritual energy sources. ‘No one can grasp spiritual power for himself that is not given to him from higher worlds,’ he says. John 3:27 In the spiritual world we don’t create power; we receive it. For the energy source to perform spiritual deeds is generated in the heavens. We have to ‘plug in’ to a higher source.

When John says ‘I must decrease,’ he is recognizing the source and energy in the universe, which is Christ. John recognizes that he himself must depend less and less upon his own self-generated deeds and come to receive more and more of what Christ wants to generate through him. The course of John’s outer life, his beheading, seems tragic. But we know that his life continues on another , more angelic level. He is the guiding spirit of the circle of the disciples. He inspires John the Evangelist’s gospel and Book of Revelation. For within himself John the Baptist trusts in the power of the Son, the Bridegroom, and grows out of the earthly into timeless life. John 3:36  

As Psalm 15 says:

Lord, who can be trusted with power,

and who may act in your place?

Those with a passion for justice,

who speak the truth from their hearts;

who have let go of selfish interests

and grown beyond their own lives;

who see the wretched as their family

and the poor as their flesh and blood.

They alone are impartial

and worthy of the people's trust.

Their compassion lights up the whole earth,

and their kindness endures forever.[i]

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[i] Psalm 15 (The Psalms, translations by Stephen Mitchell)