3rd Sunday after Easter, May 8, 2022, As Friends

  

3^rd Sunday after Easter

Christ the True Vine, icon (Athens, 16th century)

John 15:1-27 

"I AM the true vine, and my Father is the vinedresser. Every branch of mine that does not bear fruit HE takes away, and every branch that does bear fruit HE makes pure that it may bear more fruit. You have already been purified by the power of the word that I have spoken to you. 

"Abide in me and I in you. 

"As the branch cannot bear fruit out by itself unless it is given life by the vine, neither can you unless you stay united with me. I am the vine; you are the branches. Whoever remains united with me and I in them bears much fruit, for apart from me, you can do nothing. Whoever does not remain united with me withers like a branch that is cut off. Such branches are gathered up, thrown into the fire, and burned. If you abide in me, and my words live on in you, pray for that which you also will, and it shall come about for you. By this, my Father is revealed that you bear much fruit and become ever more my disciples. 

"As the Father has loved me, so I have loved you. Live on in my love. If you take my aims into your will, then you will live on in my love, just as I have taken the aims of my Father into my will and live on in HIS love. 

"These words I have spoken to you so that my joy may be in you and that your joy may be complete. 

"This is the task I put before you: that you love one another as I have loved you. 

Arthur Ernst Becher

"No one can have greater love than this: that they offer up their life for their friends. You are my friends if you follow the task I have given you. No longer can I call you servants, for servants do not know what their master is doing. But I call you my friends because I have made known to you all that I have heard from my Father. 

"You did not choose me, but I have chosen you and appointed you that you should go and bear fruit and that your fruit should live on after you so that what you ask the Father in my name HE should give it to you. I say to you out of the fullness of my power: Love one another. 

"If people hate you, remember that they hated me before you. If you belonged to people in general, they would love you as belonging to them; but because you do not belong to them since I chose you out of humankind, people hate you. 

"Remember the word that I spoke to you: 'Servants are not greater than their master.' If they have persecuted me, they will also persecute you. If they have held on to my word, they will hold on to yours also. Everything that they do to you, they will do as though they did it to me, for they do not know HIM who sent me.

 "If I had not come and had not spoken to them, they would be without sin, but now they have no excuse for their sin. Whoever hates me hates my Father also. If I had not done deeds among them, such as no one else has ever done, they would be without guilt. But now they have seen me and have still hated both me and my Father. 

"But it was to fulfill what is written in their Law: 'They hated me without a cause.' 

"But when the Comforter comes, the Spirit of Truth who proceeds from the Father, HE will bring knowledge of me and will be my witness. And you also will be my witnesses because you have been united with me from the very beginning."

 3^rd after Easter

May 8, 2022

John 15:1–27 

"No one can have greater love than this than that he offer up his life for his friends." 

To offer up one's life will not necessarily require that we be martyred. Nevertheless, we all have ample opportunity to offer our lives to others—for our lives are bound up with our time, our presence, and our attention. 

Wulfing

Today is Mother's Day in the US. To be a mother, to be a parent, is to be allowed to give one's life to a friend. For as many who have been parents sense, the child given to us to nurture is someone with whom we have been long connected in other past relationships. And one of the best future outcomes of the parent-child relationship is becoming adult friends. 

As all know who have ever been a parent, parenting means giving large amounts of time and attention, of offering up one's life forces for another. Such an offering creates both joys and sorrows. Joy in watching the child grow, as each new step in their development reveals more and more of their nature. Sorrow, for their difficulties. Times may even come when the child may rail against us. But the Holy Spirit, the spirit of truth, comforts us with the knowledge that this is because they need to take a step in the direction of independence. And once they have mastered the new level, they will return. 

Artist unknown

Today we rejoice that we all have had a mother whose life gave us our lives--our bodily mothers and Mother Earth. 

In this gesture of giving life, we can see an image of Christ, the God who gave life to us all, indeed even to Mother Earth herself. And we are also reminded that in His great love, He made the extreme offering of his own life so that all creation on earth could live. He lived and died for all creatures, for the earth herself. He lived and died so that humans could develop from spiritual children into servants and finally into his friends. 

Christ rejoices in our independence. He rejoices in the further revelation of our essence. And He rejoices when we turn to him as friends.

www.thechristiancommunity.org

 

 

2nd Sunday after Easter 2022, Strength to Deeply Love

 2^nd Sunday after Easter

Sanz-Cordona

John 10:1-16
 
"Yes, the truth I say to you: Anyone who does not go into the sheep through the door, but breaks into the fold elsewhere, is a thief or robber. Only he who enters by the door is a shepherd of the sheep.
 
"To him, the doorkeeper opens, and the sheep respond to his voice. He calls each one by name, according to its nature, and he leads them out into the open. When he has brought them out, he walks before them, and the sheep follow after him, for they trust his voice. A stranger they will not follow, but rather flee because they do not know the stranger's voice."
 
Thus did Jesus reveal himself to them in pictures, but they did not understand what he was saying to them.

 
Then Jesus went on. "Yes, the truth out of the spirit I say to you. I AM the door to the sheep. All who came before me were thieves and robbers. But the sheep did not listen to them.
 
"I AM the door. Anyone who enters through me will find healing and life. He learns to cross the threshold from here to beyond, and from there to here, and he will find nourishment for his soul. The thief comes only to steal and kill and destroy. But I – I have come that they may have life, and overflowing abundance.

"I AM THE GOOD SHEPHERD. The good shepherd lays down his life for the sheep. Whoever works for wages and is no true shepherd, whose sheep are not their own, sees the wolf coming, abandons the sheep, and flees while the wolf snatches them and scatters them. For they are only hirelings and care nothing for the sheep.
 
"I AM THE GOOD SHEPHERD. I know who belongs to me, and my own recognize me, just as my Father recognizes me in the depths, and I know the being of the Father; and I offer my life for the sheep.
 
"Other sheep have been entrusted to me who are not of this fold; I must also lead them. They too will listen to my voice, and one day there will be one flock, one Shepherd."
 
2^nd Sunday after Easter

May 1, 2022
John 10:1-21
 
A doorway is an opening that leads from one space to another. The door can either open or close off the access. In our everyday lives, we encounter many doors; not only the physical ones in rooms and buildings but also the portals between one state of soul and another.
 
One such doorway is waking and sleeping. At night we are meant to move calmly and easily through the doorway of sleep. The doorway to our earthly concerns closes behind us, and we move out into the starry pastures where our souls are nourished, and our bodies refreshed. And then, at the right time, we are called back to our earthly home.
 
But fear and worry, clinging to earthly concerns, can hold us back at the gateway to sleep, or bring us rushing back too soon.
 
At the beginning of our earthly lives, we stood before a similar portal. We were called into life, onto earthly fields. And at the end, we will be called back again to our heavenly home.
 

William Dyce

Christ is the one who calls us to both our homes, the earthly one and the heavenly. For He Himself is at home both here on the earth and in the starry expanses. He is the one who leads us to the thresholds of sleep and of life. He is the one who opens the door. Day after day, night after night, life after life, we can follow His call. He walks in the spirit ahead of us. We can trust in the calling of His voice. For His is the voice that summons our deepest self. His is the voice of nurture, the voice of the purest, most accepting, all-forgiving love. 
 
So, as a ‘sleep aid’ we can say the following prayer:
 

May the events that seek me
Come unto me.
May I receive them
With a quiet mind
Through the Father’s ground of peace
On which we walk.
 
May the people who seek me
Come unto me.
May I receive them
With an understanding heart
Through the Christ’s stream of love
In which we live.
 
May the spirits which seek me
Come unto me.
May I receive them
With a clear soul
Through the healing Spirit’s Light
By which we see.*
 
 
And then we can awaken from the Good Shepherd’s nourishing fields of sleep, the kind of sleep that
 
I sleep where I will
wake with the
strength to
deeply
love….**
 
 
*Adam Bittleston, "Against Fear," in Meditative Prayers for Today. Available at https://steinerbooks.presswarehouse.com/browse/book/9781782504672/Meditative-Prayers-for-Today
 
**Theresa of Avila, (1515-1582), “Clarity is Freedom” in Love Poems from God, Daniel Ladinsky, p. 279

1st After Easter, Vast Unfolding Design

 1^st Sunday after Easter

John 20:19-29 

On the evening of the first day after

Coptic

the Sabbath, the disciples were together with the doors locked for fear of the authorities. Jesus came and stood in their midst and said, “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 the 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 offenses.”

Morgan Psalter

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.” 

1^st After Easter

April 24, 2022

John 20:19-29 

A child of two or three is absorbed with learning about the sense world, exploring and naming things. But around four, there comes a moment when the child will close its eyes and say, ‘I can see pictures’. An inner eye opens, and the faculty of picture-making, of imagination, day-dreaming, and ultimately of memory is born. Some children can then also image real beings that cannot be seen with outer eyes. 

Tissot

The disciples of Christ spent three years with Him, getting to know him in the sense world. They learned to name Him. After the great panorama of His tragic death, He was lost to their ordinary sight. But their love for Him had readied them to see Him with the imaging faculty of their hearts. He comes to them, and they see Him with the eye of the heart. 

In His coming, He gives them a task: He breathes into them holy, healing Spirit, in order that they may work in a strengthening, healing way in the destinies of those whom they meet. Their hearts are to be open, filled with trust in His power, so that they may also see Him at work in the lives of others. They begin to trust in His power working in their hearts, in others, as a new capacity of seeing. 

Poet Denise Levertov describes this moment of awakening in her poem about St. Thomas, who says: 

But when my hand

Led by His hand’s firm clasp

Entered the unhealed wound,

Wayne Forte

My fingers encountering

Rib-bone and pulsing heat,

What I felt was…

…light, light streaming

Into me, over me, filling the room…

I witnessed

all things quicken to color, to form,

My question

Not answered, but given

Its part

In a vast unfolding design lit

By a risen sun.* 

The Act of Consecration of Man is also a picture of Christ’s working. Gathered in prayer, we receive Him in the inner room of our heart. Our hearts see Him offering thanks to His Father. We see Him uniting His soul with bread, with water and wine. We feel His touch. He breathes His peace into us so that we too can work in a healing way in the lives of others, ‘in a vast unfolding design, lit by a risen sun.’

 

* Denise Levertov, “St. Thomas Didymus”, in The Stream and the Sapphire, p. 81

 www.thechristiancommunity.org