Good Friday 2009, Living Breath

Good Friday Evening

April 10, 2009

Living creatures breathe. This breathing is a gesture of expansion and contraction. It started with the sea—waves move in and out; tides flow, racing up the shore, and ebb, pulling away.  A plants grows, expands, blossoms, then its entire life contracts into the seed. Animals breathe in and out.

In our own lives we too experience these two basic gestures over time—from moment to moment in our own breathing; in the tides of our blood stream; in the growing and declining of the different phases of our lives; and ultimately in the waxing and waning of life itself.

Our real selves are gathered from the far reaches of the cosmos. We have breathed our actual, real selves into our bodies; we have compressed ourselves into the body until we feel ourselves as occupying a center point. Along with this compression of ourselves we suffer pain. With every in-breath we draw into our bodies just a bit; with every exhale we expand a bit. Every night in sleep our soul-spirits stream out to the stars; at daybreak they rush back into the body.  One day we will finally breathe our soul-spirits out again fully, so that they can expand to fill God’s heaven.

Christ started out as the greatest, most expanded being possible. He, the Logos, the Great Word that spoke all creation into existence, gradually contracted himself to become human-sized. This extreme form of compression, this final in-breathing of His spirit was completed on the last day of Jesus’ life. And such an extreme compression, down into the marrow of the bones, was itself painful in the extreme. Good Friday afternoon becomes that still point, that moment of quiet between in- breath and out-breath. His heart’s blood pours into the earth. With His last words, “Father, into your hands I commend My Spirit”— He exhales, expires, carrying His consciousness toward the Father.

How we human beings think about this gesture of expansion and contraction

makes a great deal of difference. Our intellect sees these gestures of expansion and contraction as polarities, contrasts. But we must add to the two a third element—that of time; in, out, and in again. It is a process, one that is cyclic and continually starts afresh.

The remnant of the pain and suffering we see hanging on the cross after His death, the body so lovingly taken down by his friends and wrapped in linen and spices, this remnant hides another invisible process taking place on an unseen level. For, in expiring, Christ begins the exhalation of his Spirit’s life back out into the cosmos. His heart’s love begins to expand further, sending His life and love outward toward all humanity, to the whole earth. He begins his journey of toward resurrection and ascension,. It was a new beginning, not only for him, but also for us; for He dies without ending. He ascends while maintaining his rootedness in the earth. We are all carried in His great heart; our souls are kept alive in His unceasing life. The earth, in its slow dance through the seasons, breathing between summer and winter, became His body.

We have nothing to fear from death, for since Christ, death is permeated with life.

The poet comments:

And what is to cease breathing, but to free the breath from its restless tides, that it may rise and expand and seek God unencumbered?

Only when you drink from the river of silence

shall you indeed sing.

And when you have reached the mountain top,

then you shall begin to climb.

And when the earth shall claim your limbs,

then shall you truly dance.[1]

---

[1] Kahlil Gibran, “Of Death” in The Prophet

Good Friday 2010, God's Human Face

Holy Week, Good Friday

John 19: 1-15

Then Pilate took Jesus and had him scourged. The soldiers braided a crown of thorns and put it on his head, and threw a purple cloak around him, walked up to him and said, “Hail, King of the Jews!” and struck him in the face.

And again Pilate went out to them and said, “Behold, thus I bring him out to you, so that you may know that I find no guilt in him.

And Jesus came out, wearing the crown of thorns and the purple cloak. And Pilate said to them, “Behold, the man!” [Behold, this is Man!]

When the chief priests and the Temple attendants saw him, they shouted, “Crucify him, crucify him!”

Then Pilate said, “Take him yourselves and crucify him, for I find no guilt in him.”

Then the Jewish leaders replied, “We have a law, and according to that law he must die, because he has made himself a Son of God.”

When Pilate heard these words, he was even more alarmed, and again he went into he courthouse and said to Jesus, “From where have you received your mission?” But Jesus gave him no answer.

Then Pilate said to him, “You will not speak with me? Do you not know that I have the power to release you and also to crucify you?”

Jesus answered, “You would not have power over me unless it had been given to you on high. Therefore the greater burden of destiny falls upon him who handed me over to you.”

From then on, Pilate tried to set him free. But the people shouted, “If you release him, you are no longer a friend of Caesar, for everyone who makes himself a king is against Caesar.”

When he heard these words, Pilate led Jesus out, and sat down on the judgment seat in the place called the Pavement, in Hebrew Gabbatha. I was the day of the preparation of the Passover Festival, about midday. And he said to the people, “Behold, this is your King.” But they shouted, “Away with him, away with him, crucify him!”

Pilate asked them, “Shall I crucify your King?”

And the chief priests answered, “We have no king but Caesar!”

Good Friday Evening

April 2, 2010

John 19: 1-15

When we are born, the bones at the tops of our heads have not yet grown

Josephine Wall

together. They are still open. The Father’s sun, moon and stars still shine their living cosmic forces down into us through this ‘skull skylight’. They pour the living, forming forces of the cosmos into us, helping us shape the growing instrument of the body.

As we grow, the skylight closes. To quote Wordsworth:

Heaven lies about us in our infancy!  

Shades of the prison-house begin to close  

        Upon the growing Boy,….  

At length the Man perceives it [heaven] die away,  

And fade into the light of common day.[1] 

The window to heaven shuts. But all the while, we are shaping our own unique and very individual faces.

Grunewald

Christ opened a new skylight into the human constitution. At Jesus’ Baptism, “as he came up out of the water, he saw the heavens were torn open, and he saw the spirit of God descending upon him like a dove.” Mark 1:9 – 11 Jesus, the unique individual, is born anew, from above, through water and the Holy Spirit. The breadth and power of the cosmic dimension are reunited with the uniquely individual human. And thus a new human being is formed. Christ Jesus becomes the New Adam, our new ancestor. Uniting ourselves with him, the heavens will open again for us too.

Christ Jesus is also God with a human face. His disciples were so united with him in love that they began to look like him, to wear His face. In the Garden of Gethsemane, Judas came along for the arrest because someone who knew Him had to point out which one to take prisoner.

God, eternally divine, and eternally human, now wears a face that shows what every human being experiences on earth—from radiant joy to deepest anguish--and everything in between. The face of Christ, above all, shows deep compassion, born of an intensely intimate understanding of the human condition. There is no interior space that he has not inhabited. He danced at weddings, and experienced the joy of friendship. He also experienced the terrible and lonely suffering of torture and execution. But above all He knew the mighty joyous sense of triumph of fulfillment, of the accomplishment of overcoming for the first time the deepest tragedy that has befallen us—death itself.

Memling

Scientists studying the brain have recently discovered what are called mirror neurons, sensory centers of empathy that allow us to read faces, and to perceive what others are feeling. Through this perceptual mirroring, we can respond to others appropriately.

The face that Christ presents to us in art is often earnest. His face expresses an intent seriousness. It is as though He were silently asking: will you mirror Me? I have plumbed the depths of human experience in order to understand you, to gather you up from the depths. Will you take Me as seriously as I take you? Will you now plumb your own depths, to find Me there?

www.thechristiancommunity.org

---

[1] Wordsworth, "Ode On Intimations of Immortality"

Good Friday 2011, Hearts' Burning

Good Friday Evening

April 22, 2011

Many ancient mythologies tell of a bird of great beauty, with colored plumage of red and gold. It first appeared on the primeval mound that rose from the watery chaos at the first creation. It first cry, so melodious that the rising sun stops to listen—marks the beginning of time and its rhythmic division into hours, days, weeks, years. It lives on dew, killing nothing and crushing nothing it lands on.

This bird has a very long lifespan, some say 500, some say 1,000 years. As the end of its life approaches, the bird builds a pyre nest of the branches of aromatic trees, like the myrrh. It sets it afire and is consumed. After three days there arises a young bird, who gathers the ashes of the nest, which was both sepulcher and cradle, and forms them into an egg of myrrh. It takes this egg to the city of the sun and deposits it on the altar of the Sun God, thus ushering in a new era out of its own life.

During this past week, Holy Week, Christ, the great Sun Spirit, walked through his last week of his human life. On the Sunday, he rode humbly into the royal city, greeted with wild enthusiasm as the king. On Monday he confronted calculating human greed and theft as he cleansed the Temple. On Tuesday he warned of the changing of the times, and battled for the hearts and minds of those who oppose him. On Wednesday Mary Magdalene anointed him with aromatic oil in anticipation of his death. By Thursday, after pouring his life and soul into bread and wine to nourish his followers forever, he was barely able to hold onto life as the fire of his love for humanity consumed the body. He was arrested and handed over by one of his own followers. Swiftly and unjustly, He was tried in both religious and secular courts, mocked, tortured and publicly and falsely executed as a common criminal. His friends bury him wrapped in balsam spices.

 

After his own crossing into the realm of death, he continues His descent. He penetrates into the underworld, releasing the dead from their chains and allowing them to rise.

Christ is the Sun Bird, the creator of time. He lives on the dew of his Father’s will. Because he is also eternal, from beyond time, everything he did in his human life and death is still ongoing. His descent into the depths of existence, in life and in death, means that these are the very places we can always find him. He is here where life becomes difficult or threatening. He is here amid all the temptations. He walks with us through all our greater and lesser deaths. He is here in the midst of all the unfairness and injustices of life. He is here in the times when our very souls may seem to have died.

He is also always here in the very depths of our own being, in the deepest core of our heart, with his power to resurrect. He is in us as the firebird, the force that consumes and un-forms the old when its time is past. He answers when, in the words of the Psalmist:

 Out of the depths I cry to you, LORD;

 Lord, hear my voice.

Let your ears be attentive

   to my cry for mercy.

  ….

 But with you there is forgiveness,

   so that we can, with reverence, serve you.

….

put your hope in the LORD,

   for with the LORD is unfailing love

   and with him is full redemption. (Psalm 130)

He is the phoenix force that helps us re-form ourselves anew out of the ashes.

All during Holy Week, the epistle says that the place of our heart is burning. Though we live in a cold earthly abode, there is a breath of hope that comes to us from the inside of the grave. For our hearts are burning….

www.thechristiancommunity.org

Good Friday 2012, Wrestle Death

Holy Week, Good Friday,

John 19: 1-15

Then Pilate took Jesus and had him scourged. The soldiers braided a crown of thorns and put it on his head, and threw a purple cloak around him, walked up to him and said, “Hail, King of the Jews!” and struck him in the face.

And again Pilate went out to them and said, “Behold, thus I bring him out to you, so that you may know that I find no guilt in him.

And Jesus came out, wearing the crown of thorns and the purple cloak. And Pilate said to them, “Behold, the man!” [Behold, this is Man!]

When the chief priests and the Temple attendants saw him, they shouted, “Crucify him, crucify him!”

Then Pilate said, “Take him yourselves and crucify him, for I find no guilt in him.”

Then the Jewish leaders replied, “We have a law, and according to that law he must die, because he has made himself a Son of God.”

When Pilate heard these words, he was even more alarmed, and again he went into he courthouse and said to Jesus, “From where have you received your mission?” But Jesus gave him no answer.

Then Pilate said to him, “You will not speak with me? Do you not know that I have the power to release you and also to crucify you?”

Jesus answered, “You would not have power over me unless it had been given to you on high. Therefore the greater burden of destiny falls upon him who handed me over to you.”

From then on, Pilate tried to set him free. But the people shouted, “If you release him, you are no longer a friend of Caesar, for everyone who makes himself a king is against Caesar.”

When he heard these words, Pilate led Jesus out, and sat down on the judgment seat in the place called the Pavement, in Hebrew Gabbatha. I was the day of the preparation of the Passover Festival, about midday. And he said to the people, “Behold, this is your King.” But they shouted, “Away with him, away with him, crucify him!”

Pilate asked them, “Shall I crucify your King?”

And the chief priests answered, “We have no king but Caesar!”

Dottori

Good Friday

April 6, 2012

John 19

The awful stillness of Good Friday begs the question: Was Christ truly overcome on the cross? What really happened?

The outer fire of His will showed itself so masterfully at the beginning of the week, in the cleansing of the temple and the intense discussions with the Pharisees and Saducees. Now that will-fire goes deeper. He pursues, on both higher and deeper planes the demonic powers. He fights against the Luciferic powers, those glittering beings of deceptive light who want to estrange us from the earth, while we live on earth. He fights against the satanic powers who want to harden us and to fetter us to dead matter. They would thus rob us of a connection with the earth and with our loved ones after death—for it is only a spiritual connection, a living heart connection with the earthly that survives in the afterlife. In the stillness of Good Friday, Christ is following the satanic powers into their hiding place in order to overcome them there.

In the Garden of Gethsemane, he wrestled with a death that would have been premature. With the mightiest force of prayer ever known on earth, He wrestled to remain in the body. Christ was victorious and death is repulsed.

And on the cross He wills to remain still united with the earth when He goes through death. He wrestles to enter still more deeply into the world of earthly matter, which is His body. He will not abandon this last remnant to the Prince of this World. And when the earth quakes, all the demons of the earth seem to storm forward to help the satanic death power to victory.

However, death cannot strip Christ of the sovereignty of His spirit. It cannot strip Him of His authority over all earth existence. When Christ says, ‘It is finished’, He is referring to the complete conquest over death. The Christ, in dying, goes directly into the earth. The blood streams from His wounds and his soul, in love, goes with it into the body of the earth. The body that hangs on the cross begins to radiate light, like a gilded figure on a black cross. The radiant Sun of Christ weaves a ray of Easter into the darkness of Good Friday.

With His burial, His body goes into the earth as well. The earth receives the body and blood of Christ, the great communion. It is the medicine for the spiritualizing of all material existence—the medicine that makes whole.

Goethe hints at the amazing power of this event:

Smoothly and lightly the golden seed by the furrow is cover'd;

Yet will a deeper one, friend, cover thy bones at the last.

Joyously plough'd and sow'd! Here food all living is budding,

E'en from the side of the tomb Hope will not vanish away.[1]

www.thechristiancommunity.org

---

[1] Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, “To The Husbandman”

See Holy Week, a Spiritual Guide from Palm Sunday to Easter, by Emil Bock.

4th Passiontide Palm Sunday 2008, Remain Unused

4^th Passiontide

Hippolyte Flanders

Palm Sunday

Matthew 21: 1-11

And they approached Jerusalem and came to Bethphage by the Mount of Olives. Then Jesus sent two disciples ahead and said to them, “Go to the village which you see before you, and at once you will find a donkey tied there and her foal with her. Untie them and bring them to me. If anyone says anything to you, tell him that the Lord needs them, and he will let you take them right away.”

This took place to fulfill what was spoken through the prophet:

‘Say to the daughter of Zion,

Behold, your king comes to you in majesty.

Gentle is He, and He rides on a donkey and on a foal of the beast of burden.’

The disciples went and did as Jesus had instructed them. They brought the donkey and the foal, placed their garments on them, and Jesus sat on them.

           

Many out of the large crowd spread their clothes on the road, while others cut branches from the trees and spread them on the road. The crowds that went ahead of them and followed Him shouted:

Hosanna to the Son of David!

Blessed is he who comes in the Name and Power of the Lord!

Hosannah in the highest! [Sing to Him in the highest heights!]

When Jesus entered Jerusalem, the whole city was stirred and asked, “Who is he?” The crowds answered, “This is Jesus, the prophet from Nazareth in Galilee.”

4^th Passiontide, Palm Sunday

Van Gogh

March 16, 2008

Matthew 21: 1-11

In today’s Gospel reading, we are presented with a somewhat odd picture: the king, entering His city of peace, riding on two beasts of burden, a donkey and her young one. This is certainly was an event that happened at the gate of Jerusalem two thousand years ago. But it is still happening.

For one could say that the beast of burden represents the human physical body. It is the vehicle for the conveyance of our human spirit on earth. It is the bearer of the burdens of our destiny. But out of this beast of burden, another is already coming forth, a younger one, created by our current life, in preparation for our life in the future.

We can invite Christ to ride with us; we can make our bodies the vehicle of conveyance for His Spirit, as well as our own. We can place ourselves at the King’s disposal.

There is a terrible Holy Week paradox in this: for the King is riding toward His sacrificial death. We are carrying Him there. But beyond this, death will be transformed; there will be resurrection. And the young one in us will be strengthened, able to carry more of His Spirit in the future. We too will eventually become sacrificial Kings.

As Rilke says:

All will come again into its strength:

…people as strong

and varied as the land….

no belittling of death,

but only longing for what belongs to us

and serving earth, lest we remain unused.[1]

www.thechristiancommunity.org

---

[1] Rainer Maria Rilke, Book of Hours, Barrows and Macy, p. 121.

4th Passiontide Palm Sunday 2009, Ashes of Your Life

4^th Passiontide

John August Swanson

Palm Sunday

Matthew 21: 1-11

And they approached Jerusalem and came to Bethphage by the Mount of Olives. Then Jesus sent two disciples ahead and said to them, “Go to the village which you see before you, and at once you will find a donkey tied there and her foal with her. Untie them and bring them to me. If anyone says anything to you, tell him that the Lord needs them, and he will let you take them right away.”

This took place to fulfill what was spoken through the prophet:

‘Say to the daughter of Zion,

Behold, your king comes to you in majesty.

Gentle is He, and He rides on a donkey and on a foal of the beast of burden.’

The disciples went and did as Jesus had instructed them. They brought the donkey and the foal, placed their garments on them, and Jesus sat on them.

           

Many out of the large crowd spread their clothes on the road, while others cut branches from the trees and spread them on the road. The crowds that went ahead of them and followed Him shouted:

Hosanna to the Son of David!

Blessed is he who comes in the Name and Power of the Lord!

Hosannah in the highest! [Sing to Him in the highest heights!]

When Jesus entered Jerusalem, the whole city was stirred and asked, “Who is he?” The crowds answered, “This is Jesus, the prophet from Nazareth in Galilee.”

4^th Passiontide, Palm Sunday

April 8, 2009

Matthew 21: 1 – 11

In many parts of the world, Passion Plays are still performed. The drama of Holy Week is enacted, sometimes with whole villages participating.

Holy Week itself is a kind of cosmic drama. Each event, each gesture, each word has deep significance. Christ’s entry into Jerusalem is at the same time the entry into Holy Week.

The scene is staged by Christ himself. As the all-knowing director of the drama, He sends His disciples to fetch the props: two donkeys, a mother and her foal. The prophet Zechariah had already given part of the script:

Hippolyte Flanders

Rejoice greatly, O daughter of Zion!

Shout in triumph, O daughter of Jerusalem.

Behold your King is coming to you.

He is just and endowed with salvation

Humble and mounted on a donkey

Even on a colt, the foal of a donkey! Zechariah 9:9

The people too, are familiar with the script. And when they see Him entering Jerusalem on a donkey, they know immediately, or think they know, what this means: their new king is entering his capital city, now lying under Roman occupation. And they play their part, shouting in triumph the words of David’s hymn. (Psalm 143)

We, too, in hindsight, know the script. And we know, as does the Director and true Author of the script, that a profound irony is being enacted. The people’s expectation of an earthly king will not be fulfilled. By the end of the week, enraged and disappointed, they will be calling for His execution.

Yet an even deeper current of meaning flows just beneath, and above the surface of the narrative. Something unexpected will happen. After three days His death will be transformed into a kingdom of Life. Rather than an earthly king of a particular people, He will become the regent of all human souls. The shattering of illusions, even death itself, cannot end what is here beginning. In the words of the poet:

William Holman Hunt

Sometimes with

the bones of the black

sticks left when the fire

has gone out

someone has written

something new

in the ashes

of your life.

You are not leaving, you are arriving.[1]

www.thechristiancommunity.org

---

[1] David Whyte, “The Journey”, in The House of Belonging.

4th Passiontide Palm Sunday 2010, Our Future Humanity

4th Passiontide, Palm Sunday

Matthew 21: 1-11

And they approached Jerusalem and came to Bethphage by the Mount of Olives. Then Jesus sent two disciples ahead and said to them, “Go to the village which you see before you, and at once you will find a donkey tied there and her foal with her. Untie them and bring them to me. If anyone says anything to you, tell him that the Lord needs them, and he will let you take them right away.”

This took place to fulfill what was spoken through the prophet:

‘Say to the daughter of Zion,

Behold, your king comes to you in majesty.

Gentle is He, and He rides on a donkey and on a foal of the beast of burden.’

The disciples went and did as Jesus had instructed them. They brought the donkey and the foal, placed their garments on them, and Jesus sat on them.

           

Many out of the large crowd spread their clothes on the road, while others cut branches from the trees and spread them on the road. The crowds that went ahead of them and followed Him shouted:

Hosanna to the Son of David!

Blessed is he who comes in the Name and Power of the Lord!

Hosannah in the highest! [Sing to Him in the highest heights!]

When Jesus entered Jerusalem, the whole city was stirred and asked, “Who is he?” The crowds answered, “This is Jesus, the prophet from Nazareth in Galilee.”

4^th Passiontide 

Palm Sunday

March 28, 2010

Matthew 21: 1-11

It is amazing how clearly one can sometimes see from far away. The crowds on Palm Sunday see Christ as a prophet. But the prophet Zechariah, seeing him from a distance of five hundred years says:

 'See, your king comes to you,

   gentle and riding on a donkey,

      on a colt, the foal of a donkey. (Zechariah 9:9, Matthew 21:5)

He sees Christ in three dimensions.

First of all Christ is regal, a king, coming in majesty. This is a description of the radiant spirit of Christ who is Lord and King over all.

He is nonetheless gentle. This is a description of His soul, a soul that has been purified of all egotism.

And He rides on a double beast of burden. This is a picture of His body, both the physical body into which He descended, and the new resurrection body that will be born of it at Easter.

Memmo

And so the far-seeing prophet presents us with a kind of true symbolism, a realistic picture of Christ. He is majestic but gentle. He is willing to ride the beast of burden that is our physical nature in order to become, in the words of John the Baptist, the one who bears the sins of the world. Christ Jesus is the image of the human being made divine.

He is the picture of our future humanity. One day we too will be majestically in command of ourselves. We will be gentle with others. We will be willing to ride and guide the body, which bears the burden of our karma, and the karma of the world.

www.thechristiancommunity.org