1st 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 first born 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
one-ness 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 Laodicia.
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 this 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.”
1st
November Trinity
Nov.
1, 2008
Rev.
1: 1-20
When
God created us, he first created the human archetype. He said, “Let us make the
human being in our image, after our likeness.” Genesis 1:26 We
can barely begin to imagine the glory of that image of the human being in the
heart of God.
On
earth, when small children begin to draw people, they create stick figures.
Only after many years of practice and development of talent could a person attempt
to paint a depiction of the archetype of the human being in living color.
Today’s
gospel paints a mighty rendering of the Divine Human Being. He is the
archetype, the image of the Human Being spiritualized. This is why John struggles
to describe him using so many similies – hair like snow, like wool, eyes like
flames, feet like bronze glowing in a furnace. This spiritualized Divine Human
Being calls himself the first and the last. He is the picture that harkens back
to how God made us in the beginning. He is also the picture of what the human
being will be at the end of time – light-filled, radiant like the sun.
We
human beings are currently at the stick figure phase of our development. We are
encased in matter, spiritually inept, childlike. But standing before us is the
image of the goal of human evolution, the image of our spiritual maturity, the
Son of Man. John calls him the archetype of trust and faith. He is the picture
of God’s trust in humanity. Because of what Christ Jesus did, the divine world
can have faith and trust in humanity. For God sent into human form Christ, who
accomplished His mighty deed of death, resurrection and ascension. Christ fulfilled
the great human archetype on earth. He achieved the spiritualization of the
human form.
Because
of Christ Jesus, humanity’s goal is again within reach for all of us. For
whatever one human being achieves on earth becomes accessible to all of us. He embodies
the promise that our work on our human development, our work in the spirit, our
work of spiritualizing matter will one day bear fruit. This is the new belief,
the new faith that the Divine world has in us. One day we too will join Christ
in the Human Form Divine. One day we too will be light-filled, radiant like the
sun.
St.
Augustine
pictured:
…an eternal day,
consecrated by the radiating
resurrection of
Christ, and prefiguring
…not of spirit only,
but of the body, too.
There we shall rest
and see, see and love,
love and praise. This
is what shall be
in our exalted end
without end.
St. Augustine,
“The Eighth Day”, in Love’s Immensity,
Mystics on the Endless Life, by Scott Cairns, p. 48.
