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.”
2nd 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.
