3rd November Trinity 2019, Clarion Call

Trinity November

Rev. 3, 1-6, (Sardis) 

Angel of Sardis, Tiffany

And to the angel who penetrates the congregation of Sardis write:Thus speaks he who has power over the seven creating spirits of God and over the seven stars: I know the consequences of your deeds, for one says of you that you live, and yet are dead. Awaken, and strengthen what remains in you, that is otherwise about to die, for I have not found that your works possess reality before my God.

Remember how you were once receptive for all the workings of the spirit, and for all words which came from the spirit. Care for them in your soul in inner loyalty. Change your heart and mind.

If however, you do not awaken, I will come over you suddenly like a thief, and you will not know at which hour I will come over you.

But you have some names in Sardis whose souls have not been darkened by illusion and addiction to the senses. They will walk with me in white garments, for they are worthy of them.

He who overcomes, he shall be clothed with white garments, and I will not wipe out his name from the Book of Life. I will speak out his name and acknowledge him before my Father and his Angels. He who has ears to hear, let him hear what the spirit says to the churches.

3rd Nov Trinity

November 10, 2019

Revelation 3: 1-6

William Morris

In the fairytale of Sleeping Beauty, the twelve good fairies bestow their gifts on the child at her christening. Before the twelfth fairy can offer hers, a thirteenth, angry at not having been invited, storms in and predicts the child’s death at fifteen. The last twelfth fairy cannot undo the curse but can soften it. She changes the death sentence into a sleep of a hundred years.

The writer of the Revelation also demonstrates this activity of past predictions reaching into a future life. For the letters to the seven congregations are actually addressed to the seven ages of humankind’s development. The letters are an assessment of each age, their strengths, and their weaknesses. Today’s letter to Sardis, the fifth one, is aimed particularly at our present age. The warnings are a matter of life and death. “One says of you that you live, and yet you are dead.” Rev 3:1  For we human beings have indeed been asleep for a long time, unaware of those spiritual beings that constantly surround us as we sleepwalk through our lives. If we continue in what John calls our illusion and addiction to what the senses convey of the material world, then our own souls and spirits will indeed die.

The cure for this sleep, this sickness unto death, is to wake up. For our souls and spirits live and are fed through wakeful consciousness; their very nature consists of conscious awareness.  In humankind’s childhood, we received the gifts and blessings of the divine world, because we were open and receptive. But then we fell into a long sleep, in which we no longer received the gifts, no longer even remembered the givers. The time of sleep and forgetfulness is over. Humanity needs to wake up.

In the fairytale, when the hundred years were over, the prince passed through

Giambatista Basile

the thorny hedge that protected the sleeping kingdom and awakened the princess with a kiss. In our time, the Prince of our soul is kneeling beside our sleeping spirits, waiting for us to wake up out of our own freedom and initiative. If we refuse, the awakening will come but will appear as doom, fearful, and frightening.

John’s letter to the fifth age is a clarion call. Wake up and live! Wake up and converse with your Prince! Live in loyalty to the Spirit who loves you.

This conversing with the spirit of love we call prayer. An early mystic wrote:

The Holy Spirit has compassion on our weaknesses,

and though we remain impure, He often comes to visit us.

When He finds our spirit praying to Him in love,

He immediately dispels the marauding horde of thoughts

that keep it hobbled. And then he bids it forward

to the delicious works of spiritual prayer.

When the angel of the Lord arrives,

he scatters by his word alone

every force that acts against us,

and brings to our spirits that light

that shines without deception.*

*Evagrios of Pontos, “Effusions on Prayer,” in Love’s Immensity; Mystics on the Endless Life, Scott Cairns, p. 55.

2nd November Trinity 2019, Seed Sized

November Trinity

Revelation 1, 1-20

This is the unveiling of the being of Jesus Christ, which proceeds out of the divine world for those who would serve him. To them shall be revealed what must of necessity happen in the future and which powerfully presses into world events. God formed this revelation in imagery and sent it through his angel to his servant John. And so John speaks as a witness to everything he saw, that is, to the Divine Word, and to the life of Jesus Christ, which serves as a testimony. Blessed is he who knows how to read the prophetic words, and blessed are those who know how to hear them, and all who take what is written in this book into their souls; for time presses.

John, to the seven congregations in Asia:

Grace and peace to you

From Him who is, and who was, and who is coming

And from the seven creating spirits before his throne

And from Jesus Christ.

By his witnessing, he is the archetype of trust.

He is the firstborn from the realm of death,

He is the leading spirit of the Kings on earth.

He has turned to us in love, and by the power of his blood

He has released us from the spell of sin which lay upon us.

He has established us as true kings and made us into priests

before the divine Ground of the World, his Father.

To him belongs all light of the spirit and all power of soul from aeon to aeon. Amen.

See: he comes in the realm of the clouds.

All eyes shall see him, also the eyes of those who pierced him. And men down the ages will lament about him. Yes. Amen.

I am the Alpha and the Omega,

Thus speaks the Lord our God

who is, and who was, and who is coming

the divine ruler of the world.

I, John, your brother and your companion in all trials and also in the inner kingdom and in the power of endurance which we possess through our oneness with Jesus: I was on the island of Patmos. There it was granted to me to receive a share of the divine Word and to bear witness to the sufferings of Jesus.

On the Lord’s Day, I was lifted up to the world of spirit and I heard behind me a mighty voice like the sound of a trumpet. It said: write what you see in a book and send it to the seven congregations: to Ephesus, to Smyrna, to Pergamum, to Thyatira, to Sardis, to Philadelphia and to Laodicea.

And I turned to see him whose voice was speaking to me. And as I turned I saw seven golden lampstands, and in the midst of the lampstands, a figure like that of the Son of Man:

clothed with a long billowing garment,

encircled round his breast with a golden band;

his head and his hair shining white like snow-white wool,

his eyes like a flame of fire,

his feet like burnished bronze glowing in a furnace,

his voice like the rushing of many streams of water.

In his hand he held seven stars;

from his mouth issued a sharp two-edged sword

and his face shone, as the sun shines in its full radiance.

And when I saw him, I fell at his feet and was as if dead. But he laid his right hand upon me and said: “Do not be afraid. I am the first and the last, and the living one. I was dead, and look! I am living and I bear the life of the world through all aeons. Mine is the key to the realm of death and of the shades. Write down what you see: what is now, and what is to come.

The secret of the seven stars, which you see in my right hand, and of the seven golden lampstands is this: The seven stars are the picture in the spirit for the angels of the seven congregations, and the seven lampstands are the seven congregations themselves.”

2^nd November Trinity

November 3, 2019

Revelation 1: 1-20

The writer of the Revelation struggles to put into words what he hears and sees in the spirit. Through his words, he creates a picture for us. Through his word-picture, we see the One he sees, hear the One whose voice he hears.

The altar is a kind of re-creation of what John saw. Like John, we are here in the spirit on the Lord’s Day. We see the seven lampstands in the seven candles. And amongst the burning candles is a picture of the One we hear about in John’s vision:

clothed in a billowing garment…

eyes like a flame of fire…

face shining like the sun in full radiance.

The picture painted above the altar is a kind of stand-in, over and against the day when we are able to see the Living One himself there, face to face. For He is indeed there at the altar, amidst the candles. And during the consecration, the transformation, He changes himself in yet another picture. At the altar we are offering to him what He needs in order to transform himself into yet another form, so that there we receive him, clothed in snow-white bread on a silver paten, shining in wine in a golden chalice.

We hear his words as we listen to the Gospel. We gaze at him pictured among the seven candles. We unite with him as he offers himself to us in bread and wine.

In bread and wine he makes himself small, seed sized, so that we can take him into our Selves; so that he can grow in us; so that we may be his community.

All Saints, Nov 1, 2019

1 Thessalonians IV, 13-18

(But) we do not want to leave you ignorant, brothers, about those who have

fallen into the sleep of death, so that you do not distress yourselves as those others do, who have no hope. For as we know in our hearts that Jesus died and has overcome death through resurrection, so also will God lead with him those who have fallen asleep in Jesus. For we tell you this in the word of the lord, that we who are living and are remaining for the revelation of Christ's presence will not precede those who have fallen asleep. For the Lord, himself will come down from heaven at the shout of command, at the archangel's call, and at the sound of the trumpet of God, and those who have died in Christ will be the first to rise; afterward we, the living, who are left, will be caught up together with them in a cloud to the meeting with the Lord in the realm of the air. Therefore, encourage one another with words such as these.

All Saints Day

Evelyn De Morgan

November 1, 2019

1 Thessalonians 4: 13-18

We know the story of how the archangel Gabriel announced to Mary that she would bear God’s son. There is another story that after Gabriel had left, a dark angel, whom Mary recognized as the angel of death, remained behind.  This angel told her that, carrying souls across the threshold of life, he was every man’s faithful companion, be they young or old.

The angel said that even God’s son would have to know death, indeed that He was born so that he would die. These words pierced Mary’s heart like a sword. Filled with grief’s sorrow, Mary could not understand.

So the angel of death took her invisibly to a place where an old woman lay dying. After standing there a while, they heard the woman tell her grieving husband that although she had seen the dark angel of death again, she was no longer afraid to go with him; for a smiling child with shining eyes was with him. The child had touched the angel’s dark wings, and they had begun to shine in all the colors of the rainbow. This was the most beautiful thing she had seen in all of her life.*

Christ came into earthly life, as we do, with death as His faithful companion. With His superabundant life, He transformed this companion of ours, so that by the time of His own death, the angel of death had been changed into a being of beauty and knowledge, a glory that serves ongoing Life even in death. When those who have died look back on the moment of their death, they see it as the most beautiful and inspiring event of their existence.

Sombart

One of the tasks humankind now faces is to find and face the angel of death while still alive here on earth. When our courage overcomes our fear of death, when we take courage and face him, we see that Christ, shining, is holding his hand, touching his wings and turning them into the multicolored beauty of our hope and knowledge of the living world of the spirit. When we face them, we see the faces of all who have walked across the threshold of death with Christ and the transformed angel.

The angel of death gives us the gift of knowledge and understanding on earth.  May those who have gone before us, who have beheld Christ and his companion, send us their inspiration.  May our thoughts, our feelings, our devotion live in the shining life of the Christ Spirit into the times to come.

* from a story titled, “Mary and the Angel of Death,” by Georg Dreissig, in Das Gold der Armen, (The Gold of the Poor) Urachhaus

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