Creator Said...

Bradi Barth

The universe only pretends to be made of matter. Secretly it is made of love. (Daniel Pinchbeck?)

Creator said, “I want to hide something from the humans until they are ready for it. It is the realization that they create their own reality.”
The eagle said, “Give it to me. I will take it to the moon.” Creator said, “No. One day they will go there and find it.”
The salmon said, “I will bury it on the bottom of the ocean.” Creator said, No, they will go there, too.”
The buffalo said, “I will bury it on the Great Plains.” Creator said, “They will cut into the skin of the earth and find it even there.”
Grandmother who lives in the breast of Mother Earth and who has no physical eyes but sees with spiritual eyes, said, “Put it inside of them.” And Creator said, “It is done.”
- Creation story from the Hopi Nation, Arizona

3rd Passiontide 2020, Time of Suffering

Rembrandt

3rd Passiontide
John 8: 1-12

Jesus returned to the Mount of Olives, but as soon as day dawned, he was already in the Temple court, where the people flocked to him, and he sat down and began to teach them. The teachers of the law and the Pharisees led in a woman caught in adultery. They made her stand in the middle, and said to Jesus, “Teacher, this woman was caught in the act of adultery. In the law, Moses commanded us to stone such women. Now, what do you say?” They said this only as a trap, in order finally to have a reason for accusing him.

But Jesus bent down and started to write something into the earth with his finger. When they kept on pressing him with questions, he stood up and said to them, “Whoever among you is without sin, let him cast the first stone at her.” And again, he bent down and wrote into the earth.

Breugel

When they heard this, their conscience began to stir within them, and they went out, one after the other, beginning with the eldest. And only Jesus was left and the woman who stood in the middle. Jesus stood up and said to her, “Woman, where are they? Has no one passed judgment on you?”

“No one, sir,” she said.

Then Jesus declared, “Neither do I condemn you. Go now and leave your life of sin.”

And Jesus began to speak to them again: “I am the light of the world; he who follows me will not walk in darkness but have the light in which there is life.”

3^rd Passiontide
March 29, 2020
John 8: 1-12

If someone adds something to food or drink to thin it out or to poison it, we say that it has been adulterated. It has been watered down or made harmful.

Over millennia, humanity's soul has been adulterated. The forces of humankind's adversary have inserted the thorn of evil, the sting into our hearts. It is a wound.

Bradi Barth

Because of this wounding, we have become weak. We are both 'watered down,' not fully potent, and at the same time capable of harm.

Christ came to the earth to experience what it is like being a human being in a body of flesh. He knows in depth the underlying human condition of weakness. And its capacity for evil. Yet in His empathy and compassion, He does not judge us. Instead, He seeks to give us strength, to heal us, to raise us.

Given the current world situation, we may now feel contracted in grief. Now is our time of suffering. Yet, like the woman in the gospel reading, we must realize that collectively we have brought this on ourselves. We all have succumbed at some point to self-centered desires and lack of compassion. However innocently, we have all contributed to evil.

And yet, as always, Christ stands in our midst, offering strength and healing to our souls and spirits. He gives us the opportunity to move beyond the self-centered desires, the restless pleasure-seeking, the judgmental anger, and self-pity. We have been adulterated. He offers us the strength to change our ways, become our better selves. Keep going, He says. Separate yourselves no longer from a right relationship to Me, to others, to the world.

In the words of the poet, we may say to Him:

My heart is so small

Fra Angelico

it's almost invisible.
How can You place
such big sorrows in it?

Yet He answers:

"Look, … your eyes are even smaller,
yet they behold the world."*

Eventually, with Him, we will rise and expand.
 
* Rumi, in Whispers of the Beloved, by Maryam & Azima Melita Kolin

www.thechristiancommunity.org

Against Fear

Adam Bittleston

 

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.

www.thechristiancommunity.org

2nd Passiontide II 2020, More Than Enough

2^nd Passiontide

John 6:1-15

After this, Jesus crossed to the far shore of the Sea of Galilee near Tiberius, and a great crowd of people followed him because they had seen the signs of the spirit, which he had performed on those who were ill.

Then Jesus went up on the mountain and sat down there with his disciples. The Jewish Passover Feast was near.

Speyerer Gospel

When Jesus raised his eyes to the world of the spirit and beheld how crowds of people were coming toward him, he said to Philip, “Where shall we buy bread, that all these people may eat?”

He asked this to test his understanding and presence of mind, for he himself knew what he was going to do. Philip answered him, “200 denarii [seven months wages] would not buy enough bread for them each to have only a little.”

Another of his disciples, Andrew, Simon Peter’s brother, spoke up: “A boy is here with five barley loaves and two small fish, but what are these among so many?”

Jesus said, “Let the people sit down in groups.” There was plenty of green grass in that place, and the men sat down, about five thousand of them. Jesus then took the loaves, gave thanks, and gave to those who were seated, likewise of the fish, as much as they wanted.

Now when they were satisfied, he said to his disciples, “Gather up the fragments, that nothing be lost.” So, they gathered them, and they filled twelve baskets with the fragments of the five barley loaves left over by those who had eaten. Seeing the sign that he had done, the people said, “Truly, this is the prophet who is to come into the world.”

When Jesus became aware that they intended to come and make him king by force, he withdrew again to the mountain alone by himself.

2^nd Passiontide

March 24, 2020

John 6:1-15

To maintain our earthly existence, we must eat. Some saints have been able to exist by taking in no other bread but Communion. We ask ourselves how this is possible.

In the gospel reading, Christ’s question to Philip – where shall we buy bread – is, in essence, a question about whether nourishment can only be mediated by the earthly, by money. And Philip’s answer is accurate enough on the material level—seven months' wages would not be sufficient to buy bread for so many.

Woloschina

However, the answer to how to feed the people can also have another starting point: a young boy’s gift, five barley loaves, made from spring’s first harvest, two fish from the watery element. In paradisal Galilee, the people sit in an elevated place, on green grass, between heaven and earth, as the sun is going down. The first stars become visible. And to what seems to be very little bread in earthly terms, Christ, with gratitude, adds what truly feeds us—the Father’s Light, His Life, His Love from the realm of the stars.

Christ leads hearts into an awareness of the hidden realm of pure Life itself. The life realm is where living things multiply, thirty, sixty, a hundredfold. It is a realm of more than enough. The material part of bread is a necessary carrier, but a bite, a crumb of living bread suffices. What nourishes, what satisfies our heart’s most profound need, is the thirty, sixty, hundredfold Life in it.

It is also quite possible that in this realm of more than enough, the people too were able to offer what they had brought. They multiplied the gift. Filled with the Christ blessing, there was more than enough; there was enough left over to show them, and us, that our real nourishment is mediated, not only through the forces of the earth but through the living forces of the Father’s circle of the stars. There is more than enough, to show that

‘…What in the bread doth feed,

Is God’s Eternal Word, His Life, His Light, His Deed.*

Even at home, we can consecrate ourselves today. We can offer and receive our nourishment in gratitude. Through our gratitude, we allow Christ to bless and fill our daily bread with his Life. For us, too, more than enough will be all that we need to live. 

*After Angelus Silesius

www.thechristiancommunity.org