5th June Trinity 2016, Beautiful Fact

June Trinity

John 6: 53-69

Jesus answered, ‘Yes I tell you, if you do not eat the earthly body of the Son of Man and drink his blood, you have no life in you. Whoever eats my body and drinks my blood has life beyond the cycles of time, and I give him the power of resurrection at the end of time. For my flesh is the true sustenance, and my blood is the true draught. Whoever truly eats my flesh and drinks my blood remains in me and I in him. As the life-bearing Father sent me, and as I bear the life of the world by the will of the Father, so also he who makes me his sustenance will have life within him through me. This is the bread which descends from heaven. It will no longer be as it was with the fathers who ate of it and died. Whoever eats this bread will live through the whole cycle of time.’ He said this in his teaching in the synagogue in Capernaum.

Many of his disciples who heard this said, ‘These are hard and difficult words; who can bear to hear them?’ Jesus was aware that his disciples could not come to terms with this and he said to them, ‘Do you take offense at this? What will you say when you see the Son of Man ascending again to where he was before? It is the Spirit that gives life; the physical by itself is of no avail. The words that I spoke to you are spirit and are life. But there are some among you who have no faith.’ For Jesus knew from the beginning who would betray him. And he went on: ‘This is why I said to you: No one can find the way to me unless it is given him by the Father’.

5^th June Trinity

June 19, 2016

John 6: 53-69

Throughout the history of human thought, there has always been a battle of meanings: the literal vs the poetic; fact vs fiction; real vs imaginary. Especially today we tend to see these contrasts as mutually exclusive. Either something is real, or it isn’t.

The event we read about today comes after Christ’s feeding of the five thousand, when He imbued bread and fish with the life force from the stars. In today’s reading He insists that He will go further. He will offer his body and blood to be eaten. It must indeed have seemed a strangely dangerous saying to his listeners, and perhaps at first blush even to us. To literally eat someone’s body and blood is taboo, repulsive. Yet what Christ is saying at this moment is prophetic. Only after the Last Supper will they become literally and safely true. For then Christ infuses the forming power of his body into bread. He pours the living essence of his blood into wine. And thus ordinary literal food becomes his flesh and blood – not only poetically, but also factually. Opposites are reconciled. Spirit and matter are combined into communion, so that humankind can continue to exist and develop into the future. For whenever the Last Supper is re-enacted, He is present.

‘Whoever eats my body and drinks my blood has life beyond the cycles of time, and I give him the power of resurrection at the end of time,’ He says.* A beautiful fact, and a real promise.

*John 6: 54

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4th June Trinity 2016, A Sweet Death

June Trinity

John 11: 17-44

When Jesus got [to Bethany] there, he found that he [Lazarus] had already been in the tomb for four days. Bethany was near Jerusalem, about two miles away. Many Jews had come to Martha and Mary to console them about their brother. When Martha heard that Jesus was coming, she went to meet him. But Mary remained within. And Martha said to Jesus, “Lord, if you had been here, my brother would not have died. But I know that even now God will give you whatever you ask.

Jesus said to her, “Your brother will rise again.”

Martha answered, “I know that he will rise again in the great resurrection at the end of time.”

Then Jesus said to her, “I AM the resurrection and the life. Whoever fills himself with my power through faith, he will live even when he dies; and whoever takes me into himself as his life, he is set free from the might of death in all earthly cycles of time. Do you feel the truth of these words?”

And she said, “Yes Lord. With my heart I have recognized that you are the Christ, the Son of God, who is coming into the world.”

When she had said this she went and called her sister Mary and said to her privately, “The Master is here and is asking for you.” Jesus had not yet entered the town. He had stayed in the place where Martha had met him.

When the Jews who were with her in the house, consoling her, saw Mary get up quickly and go out, they followed her. They thought she was going to the tomb to weep there. But Mary came to the place where Jesus was, and when she saw him, she fell at his feet and said to him, “Lord, if you had been there, this brother of mine would not have died. “

When Jesus saw how she and the Jews coming with her were weeping, he aroused himself in spirit and, deeply moved within himself, he asked, “Where have you laid him?”

They answered, “Come, Lord, and see.” 

Jesus wept. Then the Jews said, “See how he loved him.” But some of them said, “Could not he who restored the sight of the blind man keep this man from dying?”

And again Jesus, deeply moved within himself went up to the tomb.

It was a cave, and a stone lay across it. And Jesus said, “Take away the stone!”

Then said Martha, the sister of him whose life had reached completion, “Lord, there will be an odor [he has already begun to decompose], for this is the fourth day.”

But Jesus said, “Did I not say to you that if you had faith, you would see the revelation of God?”

Then they took away the stone. And Jesus lifted up his eyes to the spirit and said, “Father, I thank you that you have heard me. I knew that you always hear me; but because of the people standing here I say it, so that their hearts may know that you have sent me. Then he called with a loud voice: “Lazarus, come out!”

And the dead man came out, his feet and hands bound with strips of linen, his face covered with a veil. And Jesus said, “Unbind him, and let him go.”

June Trinity

June 12, 2016

John 11: 17-44

By now the fruit trees have long since blossomed and dropped their petals. Yet hidden in the green leaves, the small fruits continue to grow toward ripening. When they are ripe they, too, will fall; but preserved, even in their decay, are the seeds of future life.

Today’s reading is about falling into death. Christ says that even her, in death, there is continuing life. Taking in his life force, we will continue to live. In him is life and rebirth, even after death. The seeds of our lives are preserved in him. Ultimately we will all return. As Rilke says,

… we are never finished with our not dying

Dying is strange and hard

If it is not our death, but a death

That takes us by storm, when we’ve ripened none

Within us.

We stand in your garden year after year.

We are trees for yielding a sweet death.

But fearful, we wither before the harvest.[1]

God, give us each our own death,

The dying that proceeds

From each of our lives:

The way we loved,

The meanings we made…[2]

---

[1] M. R. Rilke, The Book of Hours, Barrows and Macy, p. 133

[2] M. R. Rilke, The Book of Hours, Barrows and Macy, p. 131

2nd May/June Trinity 2016, Opening the Eyes

June Trinity

Tissot

John 3: 1-17

There was a man in the circle of the Pharisees, whose name was Nicodemus; he held high rank among the Jews. He came to Jesus in the night and said, “Master, we know that you are a high teacher of mankind, come to us from God, for no one can do such signs of the Spirit as you do unless God himself is working together with him in his deeds.”

Jesus answered and said to him, “The truth out of the spirit I say to you: whoever is not born anew from above cannot behold the kingdom of God.”

Nicodemus said to him, “How can a man be born again when he is old? Can he return to his mother’s womb to be born again a second time?

Jesus answered, “The truth out of the spirit I say to you: whoever remains as he is, and does not come to a new birth out of the formative power of the water and out of the breath of the spirit [or, …and is not born anew out of the spiritual power of eternal becoming and out of being touched by the might of the spirit world] cannot enter into the kingdom of God. What is born out of earthly elements is of earthly nature. But what is born out of the breath of the spirit, is itself spirit. Do not wonder that I said to you that you must be born anew from above. The spirit wind blows where it will; you hear the sound of it, but you do not know where it comes from, or where it is going. So it is with everyone who is born anew out of the breath of the spirit.

Nicodemus replied and said to him, “How can one attain this?”

Jesus answered, “You are a teacher of Israel and do not know? Amen, the truth I say to you: we speak of what we know, and we bear witness to what we have seen in the spirit, but none of you accepts our testimony. When I speak to you of earthly things, and you do not believe them, how shall you believe when I want to speak to you of heavenly things? No one has ascended to the spiritual world who has not previously descended out of the spiritual world, that is, the Son of Man.

Just as Moses once lifted up the serpent in the wilderness, so must the Son of Man be lifted up, so that everyone who finds his power in their hearts can win a share in the higher life beyond time. God has so loved the world that he has given his only begotten Son. From now on, no one who fills himself with his power shall perish, for he will share in timeless, higher life. God did not send the Son into the world to condemn it, but so that the world be saved [healed] through him, and not fall prey to ruin.”

May/June Trinity

May 29, 2016

John 3: 1-17

Last week we became aware that Christ needs us in order to continue his work on earth. He needs our wonder and awe, our compassion, and our deeds guided by conscience. Today’s reading further indicates the process by which we make ourselves his instruments.

We each have the potential to become a different kind of human being. And so the first step is to awaken this second man within us. We do so by tapping into the spiritual power that finds its expression in water. For water is the medium through which all things are born, grow and evolve. It represents the eternal power of development.

And we are also to open to the might and power of the good beings of the spiritual world. Through this kind of inner opening, and the power that is given us to transform ourselves, the second man in us is awakened. We are born anew from above.

Each of us has a seed potential for this new birth within us; for God has planted it in each one of us. And our encounters with Christ, who is the Water of Life, will gradually bring this second man in us to birth. The poet David Whyte speaks of this birth:

That day I saw beneath dark clouds

The passing light over the water
And I heard the voice of the world speak out
I knew then as I have before
Life is no passing memory of what has been
Nor the remaining pages of a great book
Waiting to be read
It is the vision of far off things
Seen for the silence they hold
It is the heart after years of secret conversing
Speaking out loud in the clear air ….*
It is the opening of eyes long closed

*  David Whyte, “The Opening of Eyes”  in Songs for Coming Home

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1st May/June Trinity 2016, No Hands

June Trinity

Arild Rosenkrantz

May 22, 2016

John 17: 6-11

I have made manifest your name to those human beings who have come out of the world to me through you. Yours they were, and you have given them to me, and they have kept your word in their inmost being. Thus, they have recognized that everything which you have given me is from you; for all the power of the word which you have given me, I have brought to them. They have taken it into themselves and have recognized in deepest truth that I come from you, and they have come to believe that I have been sent by you. I pray to you for them as individual human beings, not for humanity in general. Only for the human beings which you have given me, because they belong to you. Everything that is mine is yours and what is yours is mine, and the light of my being can shine in them. [I am revealed in them.] I am now no longer in the world of the senses. And I am coming to you. Holy Father, keep, through the power of your being, those who came to me through you, so that they may become one, even as we also are one.

June Trinity

May 22, 2016

John 17: 6-11

We have come to a particular moment in the cycle of the liturgical year. This moment represents both an ending and a beginning. We have completed our walk through the mighty deeds Christ did on and for the earth. We have accompanied him from His birth through His death, His Ascension, and His sending of the Father’s Spirit at Pentecost. This gospel reading is taken from the evening before His death. He had nearly completed His time in a material physical body and was about to inhabit another kind of body, His resurrection body of light, and ultimately, at Ascension, to take on the whole earth as His

body.

At this moment in time, it is as though we remember and reflect back on certain highlights, certain key points about His time with us before we move on to the next phase of the year.

This gospel passage, called the High Priestly Prayer, is the one we also heard at Confirmation, that moment in a child’s life which signals the end of childhood and the beginning of another life phase, the phase of youth. And the priest also reads this passage at the Last Anointing, just before a person’s death. In this prayer, Christ assures us that he remains watching us prayerfully, intimately and individually. And he commends us in prayer to the Father’s care.

We could say that this moment signals the end of ‘Phase One’ and the beginning of ‘Phase Two,' both in Christ’s life and in our lives in the cycle of the year. And what is Phase Two? It is an opportunity that depends on upon our openness and loving response to everything He has gone through. Will we continue His work? Will we open ourselves anew in wonder and awe of all he has done? Will we take up His compassionate, healing spirit? Will we act out of the promptings of our good angels, the promptings of our higher selves? He hopes we will take up His work. For as Teresa of Avila said,

Christ has no body now but yours

No hands, no feet on earth but yours

Yours are the eyes through which He looks

compassion on this world

Christ has no body now on earth but yours.

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Whitsun 2016, Eye of the Beholder

Pentecost

John 14: 23-31

Jesus replied, “He who truly loves me reveals my Spirit, and my Father will love him, and we will come to him and prepare with him a dwelling in the everlasting [an eternal dwelling]. He who does not love me cannot reveal my Spirit. And the spirit power of the word that you hear is not from me; it is the speaking of the Father who sent me.

I have said this to you while I am still with you. But he who is called down, the health-bringing Spirit, whom the Father will send in my name, he will teach you everything and will awaken within you all that I have said to you.

Peace I leave with you; my peace I give you. I do not give to you as the world gives. Do not let your hearts be troubled and do not be afraid [have no fear].

You have heard how I said to you, ‘I am going away, and yet I am coming to you.' If you loved me, you would rejoice because I am going to the Father[ly Ground of the World], for the Father is mightier than I am.

I have told you now before it happens, so that when it happens you may find trust. I no longer have much to say to you, for soon the prince of this world is coming. Yet over me, he has no power.

But the world shall see in this how I love the Father [Ground of the World] and how I act by the Father’s purpose, as it was entrusted to me. Arise, let us go on from here. [let us be on our way.]

Pentecost (Whitsun)

May 15, 2016

John 14: 23-31

The manner and mood in which we look at the world determine to a great extent what we will see. And our attitude also influences how the world responds to us.

R. Acosta

Even our idioms reflect this. We speak of a bird’s eye view – seeing the panorama – or a worm’s eye view – the details at ground level. We speak of turning a blind eye, seeing with a jaundiced eye, of giving the stink eye or the evil eye.

We can also see with stars in our eyes. We remind ourselves that beauty is in the eye of the beholder.

In today’s reading, Christ speaks of love as a kind of eye. To know Christ, to see him best, we must look for him with the eyes of love. And whoever loves Christ also looks at the world with such eyes. And furthermore, anyone beholding this love shining forth is seeing something of Christ’s spirit. “He who loves me reveals my spirit.

The Father gives the world its being and substance, its existence. God, the Son, brings everything alive, gives the world and  us the power of creative becoming, the power to change and evolve. Seeing with the eyes of Christ means being able to see beyond what is, to what is evolving, to what will be.

The Spirit of the Father and the Son is

the spirit of healing. What is broken can be mended; what is ill can become healthy. Those who love Christ reveal his health-bringing spirit because they gaze upon the world with love and understanding. They see clearly both from the worm’s eye and the eagle eye view. And they see with the starry eyes of one who knows where all comes from, and where all is intending. They see the beauty of what is evolving. And patiently they tend it. 

Ascension 2016, Water of Life

Ascension by Wm. Blake

Ascension

John 16: 24-33

[Hitherto you have asked nothing in my name.] Pray from the heart, and it will be given to your heart, that your joy may be fulfilled.

All this I have given to your souls in imagery. But the hour is coming when I will no longer speak to you in pictures, but will tell you openly and unveiled about my Father, so that you can grasp it in full, knowing consciousness. Thus, will I proclaim to you the being of the Father. On that day, you will ask out of my power and in my name. And no longer will I ask the Father on your behalf. For the Father himself will love you because you have loved me, and have known in your hearts that I have come forth from the Father. I have come forth from the Father, and I have come into this world.

I leave the sense world again and return to the world of the Father, of which you say that it is the world of death.”

Then Jesus’ disciples said, “Now you are speaking in clear thought and without imagery. Now we know that all things are revealed to you and that you do not even need to have anyone ask you questions. This makes us believe that you came from God.”

  Jesus answered, “Do you now feel my power in your heart? Behold, the time is coming and has already come, when you will be scattered, each to his own loneliness. You will then also leave me alone. But I am not alone, for the Father is eternally united with me.

All this I have spoken to you so that in me you may find peace. In this world, you will have great fear and hardship. But take courage. I have overcome the world.”

Clouds, NASA

Ascension

May 5, 8, 2016

John 16: 24-33

Water has the wonderful capacity to change forms easily. As solid ice, it floats. As a liquid, it flows downward to the lowest point it can find. As water vapor, it is invisible, a small amount occupying a vast space. Under the right conditions, the invisible vapor condenses into visible clouds and returns to earth as liquid rain.

Christ is the Water of Life. He took on a solid body in Jesus. At his death, he descended into the earth. At the Resurrection, he gave birth to his life form, sometimes visible, mostly not. At Ascension he became like water vapor – he expanded his nature and being into the entire biosphere of the earth. Like water vapor, he is invisible. But he is the Life that surrounds and penetrates both the earth and us. We breathe him in with every breath we take. Under the right circumstances, he condenses and becomes visible again.

Last Supper, Rosenkranz

One of those times is during the Act of Consecration, the communion service. At his Last Supper, he chose bread and wine to be forever the visible forms of his life. He chose bread to be his body, the form in which he appears. He chose the juice of the vine to be visibly his rejuvenating life, his life blood. And he offers them to us in communion so that we have the opportunity to take in his formative forces, his Life, in a conscious way. In this way, he walks the earth, in us. We may hear him in the words of the poet:

In a mist of light

falling with the rain

I walk this ground

of which [dead] men

and women I have loved

are part, as they

are part of me.  In earth,

in blood, in mind,

the dead and living

into each other pass,

as the living pass

in and out of loves

as stepping to a song.

The way I go is

marriage to this place,

grace beyond chance,

love's braided dance

covering the world.[1]

---

[1]  Wendell Berry in The Wheel

6th Easter 2016, The Greatest Achievement

6th Easter

John 14: 1-31  

“Let not your hearts be troubled. Trust in the power that leads you to the Fatherly Ground of the World and to me. In my Father’s house, there are many rooms. If it were not so, how could I have said to you, ‘I go there to prepare a place for you’?  And when I have gone and prepared a place for you, I will come again and take you up into the realm of my being and working, so that where I work, you also may work. And you know the way where I am going.”

Then Thomas said to him, “Lord, we do not know where you are going. How can we know the way?”Jesus answered, “I myself am the Way—the Truth— and the Life. No one finds his way to the Father but through me. If you had really known my Being, you would have recognized my Father as well. From now on you do know him and have seen Him.”

Then Philip said to him, “Lord, show us the Father; that would satisfy our deepest yearning.”Jesus said to him, “Have I been with you so long and yet you do not know me, Philip? Whoever has seen me has seen the Father. How can you say, ‘Show us the Father’? Does your heart’s voice not tell you that I am in the Father and the Father is in me? The words I say to you are not just my own. But the Father, who lives eternally in me, continues to do his works in them. Build your faith on the power of my Being that lets you know: I in the Father, the Father in me. Or at least learn to trust through looking at the works themselves that have arisen.

Truly, truly I say to you, whoever trusts in my Being will also do the works that I do --and greater deeds will he do, because I go to the Father. Whatever you ask for in unity with me, I will do it, so that the deeds of the Father may be revealed in the working of the Son. When you turn to me in prayer in the power of my name, I will be the Creating One in all your works. If you truly love me, you will share in my spiritual goals. And I will ask the Father and He will send to you another Counselor, who will stand by you forever, even the Spirit of Truth. The earthly world cannot receive this Counselor, for it cannot perceive his working and does not recognize him. But you know him, for he will live with you and will work in you.

I will not leave you desolate—I will come to you. Yet a little while, and the world will see me no more, but you will see me. Because I live, you will live also. On that day, you will truly know what it means that I am in the Father, and you in me, and I in you.

Whoever bears my spiritual goals within himself, and brings them to revelation in his working, is one who truly loves me. And whoever truly loves me will be loved by my Father, and I will love him and will reveal myself to him.”

Then Judas, (not the Iscariot) said, “But Lord, how is it that you will reveal yourself to us and not to the people who are in the world?

Jesus replied, “Whoever truly loves me reveals my Spirit, and my Father will love him and we will come to him and prepare with him a dwelling in the everlasting [an eternal dwelling]. Whoever does not love me cannot reveal my Spirit. And the spirit power of the word that you hear is not from me; it is the speaking of the Father who sent me.

These things I have spoken to you while I am still with you. But the health-bringing Spirit, the Counselor whom the Father will send in my name, he will teach you everything and will bring to your remembrance all that I have said to you.

Peace I leave with you; my peace I give you. Not as the world gives do I give to you. Let not your hearts be troubled nor let them be afraid.

You heard me say to you, ‘I am going away, and yet I am coming to you’. If you loved me you would have rejoiced, because I am going to the Father, for the Father is greater than I am.

I have told you now before it happens, so that when it happens you may find trust. I no longer have much to say to you, for soon the ruler of this world is coming. He has no power over me.

But I act in accordance with the Father’s purpose, as it was entrusted to me so that the world may know that I love the Father. Do the same. Arise, let us be on our way.

6^th Easter

Olive Ascher

May 1, 2016

John 14: 1-31  

The birth of a child is accompanied by suffering. The labor of bringing forth new life is painful. The transition itself is painful. Yet when the child is born, the pain recedes, even from memory, and is replaced by joy.

Our lives continue to be filled with moments or phases of transition. The new is brooded for a while, as an idea, a hope, an impulse. There is a laboring to achieve a new state, perhaps with the sadness of letting go of the old.

Christ himself underwent many transitions. Step by painful step he descended from divine levels of power to becoming a human being. In the beginning, He suffered the pangs of hunger and temptation in the desert.  He was subject to the enmity of the leadership and the lack of understanding of his friends. He

Grunewald

endured the lonely anguish of death, a transition which no god had ever undertaken before. He brought forth a new kind of body, a warm, light-filled harmonious resurrection body. This was the greatest achievement of a human being, achieved under unimaginable suffering. The Risen One became the meaning of the earth.

Christ is always with us in all our transitions, all of our greater and lesser deaths, all of our struggle to bring forth something new. For as he says in our funeral service: I am the new birth in death; I am the life in dying. For in dying we enter his light-filled realm of life. So let us arise and be on our way.