1st Michaelmas 2018, Deeply Loves

1^st Michaelmas 

Matthew 22, 1-14

And Jesus continued to speak in parables to them: The kingdom of the heavens arising in human hearts is like a man, a king, who prepared a marriage feast for his son. And he sent out his servants to call the guests who had been invited to the marriage, but they would not come.

Then he again sent out other servants, and said, “Say to those who have been invited, ‘Think, I have prepared my best for the banquet, the sacrificial oxen and fattened cattle have been slaughtered; everything is ready. Come quickly to the wedding.”But they were not interested and went off, one going to his field to be his own master, another falling into the hectic pace of his own business. The rest, however, took hold of the servants, mistreated them and killed them. 

Then the king grew angry; he sent out his army, brought the murderers to their destruction and burned their city. Then he said to his servants, “Although the marriage feast is prepared, the invited guests have proved themselves unworthy. Go out therefore to the crossroads of destiny and invite to the wedding whoever you can find.”And the servants went into the streets and gathered together all whom they found, both bad and good. And the wedding hall was filled with guests. 

Corina Ferraz

Then the king came in to see the guests, and among them, he noticed a man who was not dressed in the wedding garment which was offered to him. And he said to him, “My friend, you are sharing the meal; how is it you came in here without putting on the wedding garment that was offered to you?” But the man was speechless. 

Then the king said to the servants, “Bind him hand and foot and cast him out into the darkness, where human beings wail and gnash their teeth. For the call goes out to many, yet only a few make themselves bearers of the higher life.”

1^st Michaelmas

Sep 30, 2018

Matthew 22:1-14

Today’s reading describes the human heart as a kingdom. This kingdom in our heart is populated by a dynamic cast of characters.

There is the king, who oversees the whole kingdom and guides its events. One could say that the King is our destiny. There are the parts of us bringing us messages from the King; there are parts of us that are busy, distracted from our true destiny, even murderously destructive. And there are the parts of us that answer the call, even if they are not yet fully fit to participate, like the one who did not put on the wedding garment.

And finally, there is the King’s Son who is to wed. Whom will the Son wed? He wants to wed our soul: our willing, our feeling, our thinking. Not only our individual soul, but the heart and soul of our community. For He deeply loves us. In the depths of our heart there dwells One ready and waiting to join His life to ours.

Our destiny tries to guide us to the wedding. We must, in freedom, ignore the busybodies in us, subdue the fear that would destroy our true destiny. Now is the time to answer the invitation. In the words of the poet:

          ….

Now is the time to understand

David Newbatt

That all your ideas of right and wrong

Were just a child's training wheels

To be laid aside

When you finally live

With veracity

And love.

….

What is it in that sweet voice inside

That incites you to fear?

 ….

This is the time

For you to compute the impossibility

That there is anything

But Grace.

Now is the season to know

That everything you do

Is sacred.*

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* Hafiz, “Now is the Time” in The Gift - versions of Hafiz by Daniel Ladinsky

10th August Trinity 2018, Awaken in Christ's Body

10^th Trinity August, September

Luke 7, 11-17

And it came to pass that on the

next day Jesus went into a city called Nain,

Nicusor Dumitru

and his disciples and a large crowd went along with him. And as he drew near to the gate of the city, they became aware that a dead man was being carried out—the only born son of his mother, and she was a widow. And a large crowd of people from the city accompanied her.

And seeing her the Lord felt her suffering, and said to her, “Weep no more.”

And approaching, he touched the coffin, and pallbearers stood still. He said, “Young man, I say to you, arise!”

The dead man sat up, and began to speak. And Jesus gave him to his mother. Astonishment and awe seized all who were standing there, and they began to praise God and to glorify what was here revealed, saying,

“A prophet powerful in spirit has been raised among us, and God has come down to us, his people.”

Word about him spread out into all of Judea and all of the neighboring regions.

10^th August Trinity

September 23, 2018

Luke 7: 11-17

Watching as a high diver plunges into the depths, he seems to disappear for a time before he re-surfaces. This is the time of the year when we are being encouraged to plunge into our own depths. And in the deepest and darkest part of our being there lies the fear of dying.

Part of this fear comes from the body’s need to protect its existence. But the other part comes from the soul’s fear of transformation, and little ego’s fear of extinction. This is because in our time, the little ego is so intensely interwoven with our bodily existence.

In today’s reading, a mother mourns because her son, a young man, has died. His path has taken him to where we all must go—into our deepest fear. And there he meets Christ, who calls him awake and bids him rise, to take up his bodily existence yet again.

Thus Christ establishes a new eternal archetype: one’s Self rises and lives through its relationship to the greater Self, Christ's I AM. Christ calls us awake and bids us rise, both now, and after we die. In the words of a mystic:

We awaken in Christ's body

as Christ awakens our bodies….

For if we genuinely love Him,

we wake up inside Christ's body

Danny Hahlbohm

where all our body, …

is realized in joy as Him,

and He makes us, utterly, real,

and everything … is in Him transformed

and recognized as whole, as lovely,

and radiant in His light

he awakens as the Beloved

in every last part of our body.[1]

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[1] Symeon the New Theologian (949 - 1032), “We awaken in Christ's Body”, translated by Stephen Mitchell.

96th Anniversary Address, Sep 1922-2018

Anniversary Address Sep 17, 2018

 For 40^th Anniversary of our Chapel in Devon, PA, our first purpose-built chapel in North America, and the 96^th Anniversary of the Founding of The Christian Community

War has always been a part of human culture, unfortunately. In past centuries it mostly took place locally. But in 1914 a war commenced that had world-wide consequences. A perfect storm of advances in war technologies, in communications and the sheer numbers of humans involved, meant that when it ended, 16 million people had died; 37 million if you count the resulting deaths from disease and starvation. The Great War, as it was called, collapsed the old order. Human beings urgently sought a new political or social order, a new outlook or purpose in life, a new form of religion.

Against this backdrop of social chaos and political upheaval, Rudolf Steiner was working creatively in education, in medicine, agriculture, in special needs. In 1917 Rudolf Steiner had said,

Spiritual science may be taken as a support, as a foundation for the life and exercise of religion in the highest sense, and particularly in relation to the mystery of Christ…. …religion in its living form and practice kindles the spiritual consciousness of the human community.

If this spiritual consciousness is to become a living thing in human beings, we cannot possibly remain at a standstill, settling merely for abstract ideas of God or Christ; we must stand renewed among the religious practices and activities…

Friedrich Rittelmeyer, a prominent Lutheran preacher and writer and student of anthroposophy, had earlier approached Rudolf Steiner for a new form of religion. But it took a younger generation of theology students, among them Emil Bock and Alfred Heidenreich, to take up the impulse of bringing such a new form into existence. With Steiner’s help and encouragement, on Sep 16 and 17 in 1922, woven into the first Acts of Consecration of Man, the ordinations of 45 priests took place, including three women. It was a priesthood that would serve the sacramental mysteries of Christianity. Albert Steffen, poet, playwright, and a friend who accompanied the founding, wrote:

Today, the first Act of Consecration was completed out of the spirit, and at which the Risen Christ was present…I can say that Christ was there, for when the words of bread and wine were spoken, I saw his resurrected light-life body. It is the first time that I have seen the being of Christ. His arms were outstretched and there was a radiance about his head. And I experienced then that he healed and hallowed. He was there, and is there.**

The First World War was called the Great War, the War to End all Wars. But in fact, it was the beginning of what would be more than a century of continuing world conflict and social upheaval. Yet, in the midst of it, there was established a way to connect with the living being of Christ, and to build healthy human communities. Obviously, the need continues.

Most of us born in last century, on our way to incarnation before we were born, encountered the massive number of exiting souls of those who had died during the wars. Those souls transferred to our souls and spirits the strong urge to overcome the waste of war and to build strong and positive human communities. For us, the light of the sacraments was a beacon that helped us find Christ and The Christian Community on earth.

The present moment is the gateway into the future. Our praying together during the sacraments gives Christ an opportunity to work in a particular, healing way on the earth. With Christ’s help, we ourselves are generating the beacon for the present and coming generations. Every time the sacrament is celebrated, a light goes out to nourish the guardian angels of human beings. The greater the number of people praying together, the more exponentially greater the light that is generated.

Even after we die, we can be preparing the future. We can be the souls who tell the incarnating human souls and their angels to look for our Sunday Service for Children. We can tell them to bring their parents. We can tell them to look for the light of those communities built on Christ’s love, his healing, his peace.

*Cosmic and Human Metamorphosis, Feb 20, 1917. Quoted in Pioneers of Religious Renewal, Christian Maclean, p. 114

**Steffen, Wege der Christus-Erfahrung, p. 21. Quoted in Pioneers of Religious Renewal, Christian Maclean, p. 40.

9th August Trinity 2018, May They Come

9th August Trinity

Matthew 6; 19-23, 24-34

“Do not save up your treasures on the earth, where moths and rust eat away at them and thieves tunnel in and steal. Save up your treasures in heaven, where no moth and no rust consumes and thieves do not tunnel in and steal. Because where you have gathered a treasure, there your heart will bear you.

“The lamp of the body is the eye. So if your eye is wholesome, your whole body is lighted; whereas if your eye is bad, your whole body is in darkness. So if the light inside you is dark…what great darkness!

Worship of Mammon, E. De Morgan

“No one can serve two masters: either he will hate one and love the other, or he will put up with one and despise the other. You cannot serve God and greed’s demon of riches [mammon].

“That is why I tell you, do not trouble your heart about what you will eat and drink or with what you will clothe your body. Is not life more important than food, and the body more important than clothing? Look at the birds in the sky: they do not plant, do not harvest, and do not fill barns, and your heavenly Father still feeds them. Are you not of more value than they? Can any of you, by being vastly concerned, add one moment to the span of your life?

And why do you worry about clothing? Study how the lilies of the field grow: they do not work, and they do not spin cloth. But I am telling you that not even Solomon in all his glory was ever arrayed as one of these. If that is how God clothes the wild grass of the field, here today and thrown into the furnace tomorrow, will He not do much more for you, o small in faith?

“So do not worry, saying, ‘What will we drink? What will we wear?’ It is the nations who ask for all these things, and indeed, your heavenly Father knows that you need all these things. Ask first for God’s kingdom and its harmonious order, and these other things will be delivered to you as well.

So do not worry about tomorrow, because tomorrow can worry about itself. Today’s trouble is enough for today.

9^th August Trinity

Sep 16, 2018

Matthew 6: 19-34

Here in the North, the days are noticeably shorter. And with the growing darkness, there arises a subtle measure of anxiety. Will I get everything done? Am I sufficiently prepared for what is coming? Will there be enough?

Fear and anxiety are part of the equipment that comes with being in a body. They help ensure our bodily survival. But when anxiety begins to grow and to infect our souls and gnaw at our spirits, it endangers our true life. We need to counter its working by remembering to trust in the growing kingdom of God within our hearts, by recalling God’s harmonious order, by trusting in His beneficence. God knows what we truly need. If we align ourselves with His higher purposes, then what we truly need comes to us. And the body survives as well.

Adam Bittleston gave us a prayer against fear. It helps us align ourselves with what God wants to send to us. It can be an antidote to our rising anxieties:

Pentecost, Mark Wiggin

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.*

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*Adam Bittleston, “Against Fear” in Meditative Prayers for Today. Available at Steinerbooks.com

8th August Trinity 2018, I Thank You

8^th August Trinity

Sep 9, 2018

Luke 17:11-19

James Christensen

The ancient Hebrews were required to tithe, that is, to give one-tenth of their income back to God by offering it to the temple. In today’s New Testament reading, one outcast in ten returns to give thanks to the Son of God for healing his destiny. We could read this story’s characters as being the different parts of one human being.

We all feel ourselves divided, ill, outcast from heaven. We ask for mercy, to be healed and rejoined to the community of the heavens. In the story, all ten who ask are granted their request. Yet only one returns with a heart-offering, a tithe of gratitude. However, Christ, the Lord of Karma and our Destiny-Guide, notes that this is only a tenth.

C. Shuplyak

Can we remember to be grateful for everything that happens to us? For our destiny would be immeasurably aided if we were to give wholehearted, one hundred percent thanks to God for everything that happens to us. In this way, we align ourselves with our own destiny. We receive it with an open heart. And we can work with it in a creative way.

We can give thanks for everything, both ‘good’ and ‘bad’. For we know that Christ and our guardian angel mean only the best for us; they are always there to guide us toward our future, especially when we return to them with thanks. Knowing this and expressing our gratitude makes us strong. And this power of trust and gratitude for the beneficence of God becomes our own power to perceive the good in all that happens. Christ himself demonstrates this by giving thanks to His Father before uniting himself with bread and wine, His chosen destiny.

So we say in the words of e.e. cummings:

i thank You God for most this amazing

day:…

(i who have died am alive again today,

…

how should tasting touching hearing seeing

breathing …

doubt unimaginable You?

(now the ears of my ears awake and

now the eyes of my eyes are opened)*

---

* e.e. cummings, in Complete Poems 1904-1962

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7th August Trinity 2018, No Hands But Yours

7^th August Trinity

Luke 10: 25 - 37

van Gogh

On one occasion an expert in the law stood up to test Jesus. “Teacher,” he asked, “what must I do to inherit eternal life?”

“What is written in the Law?” he replied. “How do you read it?”

He answered, “‘Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your strength and with all your mind’; and, ‘Love your neighbor as yourself.’”

“You have answered correctly,” Jesus replied. “Do this and you will live.”

But he wanted to justify himself, so he asked Jesus, “And who is my neighbor?”

In reply, Jesus said: “A man was going down from Jerusalem to Jericho when he was attacked by robbers. They stripped him of his clothes, beat him and went away, leaving him half dead.  A priest happened to be going down the same road, and when he saw the man, he passed by on the other side.  So too, a Levite, when he came to the place and saw him, passed by on the other side.  But a Samaritan, as he traveled, came where the man was; and when he saw him, he took pity on him.  He went to him and bandaged his wounds, pouring on oil and wine. Then he put the man on his own donkey, brought him to an inn and took care of him.  The next day he took out two denarii and gave them to the innkeeper. ‘Look after him,’ he said, ‘and when I return, I will reimburse you for any extra expense you may have.’

“Which of these three do you think was a neighbor to the man who fell into the hands of robbers?”

The expert in the law replied, “The one who had mercy on him.” Jesus told him, “Go and do likewise.”

7th August Trinity

Sept 2, 2018

Luke 10:25-37

Corrine Vonaesch

One way into understanding the gospel parables is to consider each of the characters as parts of a single human being.  The man who was robbed and beaten represents that part of all of us traveling on life’s path - a part of our soul has been robbed of our spiritual wealth and beaten down until our souls are half-dead. 

There also lives in each of us a priest and temple servant who serve the first part of the commands of the law, the part about serving God with one’s whole heart, mind, and strength. It is a holy office, requiring that one show up at the appointed time, ritually clean, for a service performed on behalf of the whole people. 

And we all have an inner Samaritan, a foreign stranger traveling through life, who is under no tribal obligation to help a Hebrew from Jerusalem. And yet help he does, purely out of human compassion. He fulfills the second part of the commandment, the part about loving whoever one stands next to. He does so not only by personally ministering to the wounded but also by paying someone else to continue his efforts.

What Christ is saying is that our ritual observances toward God are only a part of what serving God means. We also need to fulfill the second part of the commandment, the commandment of love for our fellow human beings. We need to find within ourselves healing ways to serve the God within others. This does not necessarily have to be dramatic. But we need to be able to inwardly pause and help others we encounter along the way. We can comfort with a kind word or even a smile. We can offer something that helps soothe a wounded soul. We can help someone in whatever way we can toward their own healthier future. We can even, if necessary, make it possible for someone else to do it for us. And we can always pray for others.

Christ as Good Samaritan, Codex Rossanensis

We turn towards God with all the strength of all our soul’s capacities. And we turn toward our fellow human beings with the strength of our love. Love manifests not only in thoughts and feelings but most especially in deeds. For we are God’s hands on earth. As St. Theresa 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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6th August Trinity 2018, Be Opened

Mark 7, 31-37

6th Trinity August

As he was again leaving the region around Tyre, he went through the country around Sidon to the Sea of Galilee in the middle of the region of the ten cities of the Decapolis. They brought to him one who was deaf and who spoke with difficulty and asked him to lay his hands on him. And he led him apart from the crowds by himself, laid his finger in his ears, and moistening his finger with saliva, touched his tongue, and looking up to the heavens, sighed deeply and said to him, “Ephphata, be opened.” His hearing was opened and the impediment of his tongue was removed and he could speak properly. And he commanded them not to say anything to anyone. But the more he forbade it, the more they widely they proclaimed it. And the people were deeply moved by this event, and said, “He has changed all to the good: the deaf he makes to hear and the speechless to speak.

6^th August Trinity

August 26, 2018

Mark 7: 31-37

The inner ear is formed in a spiral like a seashell. Sounds whirl in ever tightening circles through the organ of hearing. This movement is an incarnational one; it generates words; it generates thought and meaning in the soul, which can then spiral outward again as creative speech.

The deaf-mute is someone who is hindered in this process. He can neither take in words and their meaning nor create them. Such a hindrance also cuts one off from one’s community. It tends to generate fears and suspicions in the soul. It hinders the exercising of our highest human function: objective thought, creative speech. Even without an organic problem, we human beings can be mind deaf, heartsick, soul mute.

Tissot

Christ’s healing consists of an intimate quality of touch. With His fiery words, ‘Be opened’, He opens the man’s ears, loosens his tongue, opens his soul. He restores to him his full human capacities—open senses, open heart and mind, open speech. The man goes from being imprisoned within himself to being able to spiral outward again. He is healed of his illness.

We too all suffer from “the sickness of sin”, the sickness of the human condition. But even this illness is there to create new capacities. In the words of John O’Donohue,

When the reverberations of shock subside in you,

May grace come to restore you to balance.

May it shape a new space in your heart

To embrace this illness as a teacher

Who has come to open your life to new worlds.

May you use this illness

As a lantern to illuminate

The new qualities that will emerge in you.*

*John O'Donohue, "A Blessing for a Friend on the Arrival of Illness", In To Bless the Space between Us, p. 60

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