2nd Easter 2017, Inside and Outside

2nd Easter

John 20: 19-29

On the evening of the first day after the Sabbath, the disciples were together with the doors locked for fear of the authorities. Jesus came and stood in their midst and said,

Duccio, Maestra Altar

“Peace be with you!”

And while he said this, he showed them his hands and his side.

Full of joy the disciples recognized the Lord. And again, he said, “Peace be with you. As the Father has sent me, so I am sending you.”

And when he said this, he breathed on them and said, “Receive Holy Spirit through which the world will receive healing. From now on you shall work in human destinies with spiritual power so that they shall have the strength to wrest themselves free from the load of sin, and at the same time to bear the consequences of their offences.”

Now Thomas, one of the twelve, called the Twin, was not there with them when Jesus came. Later the disciples said to him, “We have seen the Lord.”

But he replied, “If I do not see in his hand the marks of the nails, and do not put my finger in the place where the nails were, and place my hand in his side, I cannot believe it.”

Eight days later, the disciples were again gathered in the inner room and Thomas was with them. Though the doors were locked, Jesus came and stood in their midst and said, “Peace be with you.”

Then he said to Thomas, “Stretch out your finger and see my hands, and stretch out your hand and put it into my side. Be not rigid in your heart, but rather feel and trust in my power in your heart.”

Then Thomas said to him, “You are the Lord of my soul; you are the God whom I serve.”

And Jesus said to him, “Have you found my power in yourself because you have seen me? Blessed are those who find my power in their hearts, even when their eye does not yet see me.”

2nd Easter

April 23, 2017

John 20: 19-29

If I were to say that there is a big red thing hovering above the altar, you would naturally look to see it. Unless you could see it yourself, your natural reaction would be disbelief; and perhaps you might begin to distrust my sanity! For our perceptions are based on what we can see, hear, taste, touch.

Thomas questions whether what his fellows report could be real. Like us, he needs to verify it with his own experience. And Christ rewards his healthy skepticism. 'Stretch out your finger and see, stretch out your hand and put it inside,' He says. 'Trust in my power in your own heart.'

Overbeck

Christ asks Thomas, asks all of us, to stretch out our powers of perception, to expand the ways in which we see, hear, touch. This expansion is to move in both directions: outward, toward the world, and inward, toward the faculties of the heart. We are to begin to perceive beyond the merely material sensory world. We are to expand our awareness, open ourselves to other levels of being.

These levels are both higher and deeper. They are both within the world and within us. For Christ and His Healing Spirit of Love is here, now, on the earth. It is planted as a seed within our hearts, for us to nourish and grow. He gives us the strength to grapple with our old habitual ways of seeing, our rigidity of heart. He gives us the strength to bear and work creatively with our destiny.

Finding Christ's power within our hearts gives us the trust and peace that moves us beyond our ordinary way of understanding. Through Christ, worlds open up.

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Easter Sunday, 2017, Weaving Fires of Fate

Easter Sunday 

Mark 16: 1-18

And when the Sabbath was over, Mary Magdalene, Mary the mother of James, and Salome bought spices, so that they might go and anoint Him. And very early on the first day of the week, they went to the tomb just as the sun was rising. And they said to one another, “Who will roll away the stone for us from the door of the tombAnd looking up, they saw that the stone was rolled back—and it was very large.

Mileseva Monastery

And they went into the tomb. There they saw a young man sitting on the right side, clad in a white robe; and they were beside themselves with amazement. And he said to them, “Do not be startled; you seek Jesus of Nazareth the Crucified One. He is risen; He is not here; see, there is the place where they laid Him [his body]. But go, and say to his disciples and Peter “He will lead you to Galilee. There you will see Him as He promised you.”

And they went out and fled from the tomb in great haste, for trembling and astonishment had come upon them; and being awestruck, they were unable to say anything to anyone about what they had experienced.

When He had risen early on the first day of the week, He appeared first to Mary Magdalene from whom He had driven out seven demons. And she went and told those who had walked with Him, as they mourned and wept. But when they heard that He was alive and had been seen by her, their hearts could not grasp it.

Vonesch

After this, He appeared in another form to two of them on the way as they were walking over the fields. And they went back and told the rest, but they could not open their hearts to their words either.

Afterwards, He appeared to the eleven themselves as they were celebrating the meal. He reproached them for their lack of openness and for their hardness of heart because they had not wanted to believe those who had seen Him, the Risen One.

And He said to them, “Go into all the world and proclaim the new message from the realm of the angels to the whole of creation. Whoever unites his heart with it  [believes] and is immersed in me [baptized] will attain the salvation. But whoever closes himself against it does not let the power of selflessness into his heart [does not let the power of My Self into his heart] will meet his downfall. And spiritual powers [these signs] will stand by those who unite themselves with it and will attend their path [believe]: Through the power of my being [in my name] they will drive out demons; they will speak a new language; serpents they will make upright, and poisons they are given to drink will not harm them. They will lay their hands on the sick, and give healing forces to them.

Easter Sunday

April 16, 2017

Mark 16: 1-18

Tourmaline

Even if they are beautiful, stones are lifeless. The only change they are capable of is turning into dust. They symbolize what is hardened and dead, inert. Living things, by contrast, are capable of a thousand transformations.

There are such stony, deadened elements in our own nature – the mineral element in our bodies; the old habits of mind and body that no longer serve; the protective shells around our hearts.

The women at the grave ask, "Who will roll away the stone for us?" It is their intention to set aside what is lifeless. And in answer, they see that it has been done. They see an angel, a Son of Life, sitting on the right side – the active side – of the tomb. For from that moment, death is no longer inert. Death has become a portal into something transformative, something living. It has become a portal into a new kind of life.

Christ's transformative power inhabits death. It gives us the strength to overcome the deadened parts of ourselves - our useless habits, our hardened hearts. With Him, we can overcome the death-dealing forces in us. With Him, we can learn to speak a new language, a language of uprightness and healing; a language of love.

We each have our own angel, sitting beside the grave of our heart; all we need to do is to set an intention, set the intention toward what is living and transforming, and ask our ever-active angel, devoted to Christ:

 Burne-Jones

You, my heavenly friend, my Angel

You who've accompanied me to the earth,

And you who will accompany me through the gates

of death . . .

Do not cease to enlighten me, to strengthen me, to counsel me,

So that from the weaving fires of fate,

I may emerge a stronger vessel of destiny

and more and more learn to fill myself

with the meaning of God's World goals . . . *

* "Guardian Angel Meditation", Ernst Karl Plachner, (not Rudolf Steiner)

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Good Friday 2017, Fire of Life

Holy Week, Good Friday

John 19: 1-15

Tissot

Then Pilate took Jesus and had him scourged. The soldiers braided a crown of thorns and put it on his head, and threw a purple cloak around him, walked up to him and said, “Hail, King of the Jews!” and struck him in the face.

And again, Pilate went out to them and said, “Behold, thus I bring him out to you, so that you may know that I find no guilt in him.

And Jesus came out, wearing the crown of thorns and the purple cloak. And Pilate said to them, “Behold, the man!” [Behold, this is Man!]

When the chief priests and the Temple attendants saw him, they shouted, “Crucify him, crucify him!”

Then Pilate said, “Take him yourselves and crucify him, for I find no guilt in him.”

Then the Jewish leaders replied, “We have a law, and according to that law he must die, because he has made himself a Son of God.”

When Pilate heard these words, he was even more alarmed, and again he went into the courthouse and said to Jesus, “From where have you received your mission?” But Jesus gave him no answer.

Then Pilate said to him, “You will not speak with me? Do you not know that I have the power to release you and also to crucify you?”

Jesus answered, “You would not have power over me unless it had been given to you on high. Therefore, the greater burden of destiny falls upon him who handed me over to you.”

From then on, Pilate tried to set him free. But the people shouted, “If you release him, you are no longer a friend of Caesar, for everyone who makes himself a king is against Caesar.”

When he heard these words, Pilate led Jesus out, and sat down on the judgment seat in the place called the Pavement, in Hebrew Gabbatha. I was the day of the preparation of the Passover Festival, about midday. And he said to the people, “Behold, this is your King.” But they shouted, “Away with him, away with him, crucify him!”

Pilate asked them, “Shall I crucify your King?”

And the chief priests answered, “We have no king but Caesar!”

Holy Week, Good Friday

April 14, 2017

John 19: 1-15

Salvador Dali

Holy Week is the arduous and inexorable march toward Christ Jesus's death. And we have finally arrived. On the cross, Christ feels the approaching darkness. He knows that he has accomplished the final step, the final descent into Jesus's human body, into Jesus's very bones. The astringency of the vinegar is the final pull, the final consolidation. He has fully entered the bones at whose very marrow the fire of the new life of the blood is burning. It has been accomplished, he says, and breathes out his spirit.

It is as though, having gone as deeply as he can, he crosses the null-point, a threshold into the very realm of creative life. His pure life's blood seeps into the earth. His strong spirit-life is breathed out into the atmosphere. And then his body, bones unbroken, wrapped in its own weight of healing herbs, is given over to the earth. He continues his descent, into the earth's blood, its rivers, into its bones, the minerals. The earth becomes his new body.

The gospel hints at a tender process that continues after His death, for it says that the tomb, cut out of the rock, is new, fresh. And the tomb lies in a garden.

Bernhard Eyb

Christ entered the realm of life through the gateway of dying. He entered, alive, into death's own realm. There he assembles a whole new human bodily form in which all can live who have united themselves with him.

In the funeral service of The Christian Community, Christ says, I am the new birth in death. I am life in dying. Through him, because of him, with him, we, too, can remain alive when crossing through the gateway of death.


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