2nd Michaelmas 2020, Done in Beauty

2^nd 3^rd or 4^th Michaelmas

Revelation 12:1-17 

Giusto de' Menabuoi

And a momentous image was unveiled in the world of spirit: a woman, clothed with the radiant power of the sun, the moon under her feet, her head adorned with the crown of the twelve stars of heaven. And she is with child and cries out in the labor and pain of giving birth. 

And at the same time, a second image was revealed in the heavens: a great fiery-red dragon with seven heads and ten horns. On its heads, it has seven crowns, and its tail is sweeping a third of all the stars in heaven and dashing them onto the earth. And the dragon is standing before the woman about to give birth so that when she bears the child, he can devour it. And she bore a child, a son “who would shepherd all nations with a rod of iron.” And the woman’s child was caught up to God and his throne. And the woman fled into the wilderness where she has a place that God keeps ready there so that they can take care of her for days numbering one thousand two hundred sixty.

Rubens

And a war flared up in the spirit world. Michael and his angels fought against the dragon. And the dragon fought amid his own angels, but he was not strong enough, and there was no longer any place for them in heaven. Down came the dragon, the giant, the serpent, the evil one called both Satan and the devil, deceiver of all the world. Onto the earth, he came hurtling down, and all his angels with him. 

And I heard a great voice in heaven, saying: 

Now can begin the working which proceeds from our God—

The power to heal the world,

The power to transform all being,

The power to draw everything into godly being.

Arisen is the spiritual leadership of his Christ.

Overthrown is the accuser of our brothers,

He who accused them night and day before the countenance of God.

They have overcome him through the blood and the sacrificial power of the Lamb

And by the divine Word to which they bore witness.

They did not love their own lives too dearly, nor did they fear death.

Therefore, rejoice you heavens

And all who lodge therein!

But woe to the earth and the sea:

For the Adversary has come down to you,

And he seethes with measureless fury,

For he knows that his time is short. 

Durer

And when the dragon recognized that he had been cast onto the earth, he began to persecute the woman who had borne the son. Then the woman was given the two wings of a great eagle, so that she could fly into the desert to her appointed place, where she is to be nourished for a cycle of time, for cycles of time, and for half a cycle of time, far from the face of the serpent. 

And the serpent opened his mouth and spewed out a river of water after the woman so she would be swept off her feet by the river. But then the earth came to the woman’s assistance; it opened its mouth and swallowed the river which the dragon spewed from his mouth. And the dragon burned with fury against the woman. He stormed away to make war on the rest of the woman’s seed, people who keep to the divine world aims and who are united with the destiny and witnessing of Jesus. As I saw this, I was standing on the sandy shore of the sea.

2^nd Michaelmas

Oct 11, 2020

Revelation 12:1-17

When we are under the stress of time pressure, some of us may fall apart; some of us may manage to focus intently and work quickly, and then afterward collapse. But for a few, in an emergency time expands and somehow slows down. They somehow know exactly what to do and do it encased in a bubble of calm.

Durer

The reading says: ‘The dragon seethes with measureless fury, for he knows that his time is short’. He is under time pressure. But his pressure is to do the most damage and destruction he can in his limited allotment of time. He also knows that by turning the stress and pressure on us, by infecting us with his fury, he can sooner or later create collapse.The woman, the Soul of Humanity, is giving birth to the Divine Child. She is given a divine gift—the wings of the eagle. They enable her to get above the problem, above the dragon, and look down on it. And then time expands and slows down. She knows exactly what to do. She flies to a solitary place, an inner place, where she is encased in calm and nourished by the divine.

The dragon in his fury is heavy and earthbound. And even when he spews forth a flood of lies, of information, of requirements and misinformation, the earth itself is willing to assist in the rescue of humanity’s soul. The earth itself absorbs the flood of the dragon’s fury. The earth and nature do their best to help provide a physical space of calm nourishment.

What is it that keeps our individual souls from being persecuted and flooded? It is our own solitary place, the inner space into which we go with our eagle wings of compassionate thought, our place of spiritual nourishment, of prayer and meditation. But we must practice flying. The Native American poet Joy Harjo says:

To pray you open your whole self

Durer

To sky, to earth, to sun, to moon

…And know there is more

That you can't see, can't hear

….Like eagle that Sunday morning

Over Salt River.  Circles in blue sky

In wind, swept our hearts clean

With sacred wings.

We …know that we must take the utmost care

And kindness in all things.

Breathe in, knowing we are made of

All this, and breathe, knowing

We are truly blessed because we

Were born, and die soon, within a

True circle of motion,

Like eagle rounding out the morning

Inside us.

We pray that it will be done

In beauty.

In beauty.*

 

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*Joy Harjo, “Eagle Poem”, in How We Become Human: New and Selected Poems 1975-2001

www.thechristiancommunity.org

1st Michaelmas 2020, Wedding Gift

1^st Michaelmas

Matthew 22:1-14

And Jesus continued to speak in parables to them: 

unknown illuminator, Marriage of the Lamb

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. 

Then the king came in to see the guests, and among them, he noticed a man who was not dressed in the wedding garment [that was offered to him]. And he said to him, “My friend, you are sharing the meal; how did you enter here not having a wedding garment?” 

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

Oct 4, 2020

Matthew 22:1-14

 A wedding is a cause for great joy, for the couple have found each other on earth.  They are joining forces for a creative and fruitful union, for something that neither could do alone.

This gospel reading of the wedding of the king’s son is about the relationship

Burnand

between our souls, individually and collectively, and Christ. Christ is the Bridegroom. Our souls are meant to be the Bride. The divine Father invites us to wed Christ his Son.

This means that first of all, we must show up. We need to extricate ourselves from the demands of ordinary everyday life and enter the hall of prayer, the hall of the celebration meal.  In order to do so worthily, we are to clothe ourselves in the appropriate soul attire. This attire we receive as grace from the King. We are to receive and clothe ourselves in three garments: We are to attire ourselves in an open reverence and grateful awe of thought. We are to wear an open empathy of heart for all the world. We are to array ourselves in the promptings of the angels who inspire our thoughtful actions.

Thus clothed we are ready to celebrate the Great Wedding. We step into the hall of light, in the company of other such souls. There, our souls are joined with Christ, the King’s Son. We have found Him on earth. We are joining forces with Him for a creative and fruitful union, for something that neither could do alone. St. Francis said in a poem called “A Wedding Gift:”

I hear you singing, dear, inviting me to your [arm] limb.

I am coming, for all that we do is a

preparation for love.

I hear you singing, my Lord, inviting me to your throne.

We are coming, dear, for all the toil you have

blessed us with is a preparation to know and hold the

sacred.

 

I hear you singing, my soul, but how can it be that

God’s voice has now become my own?

“That’s just a wedding gift for our

Divine Union,”

my Beloved

said.*

*St. Francis of Assisi “A Wedding Gift,”  in Love Poems to God, Daniel Ladinsky, p. 44.

www.thechristiancommunity.org

 

10th Trinity 20, Death Makes Whole

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, 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.

Pierre Bouillon

 

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. 

10th Trinity August, September

September 27, 2020

Luke 7, 11-17

Death is a great mystery to us. It is also a great masquerade. The being of death is a pretender.

In today’s reading, a young man has died. One senses the communal loss and anguish. He is now ‘outside’, out beyond the city gates, beyond the crowd and his bereft and widowed mother. But he is not beyond Christ. Christ approaches him in death and bids him live, to rise above what would bind him and hold him down.

We too go through our dying times, even in life; times when we suffer the paralysis of grief; times like now when our former life dies away from us. And for us too, Christ approaches, especially just at such times. He bids us rise from our sleep, our grief, from our deaths.

For He is the Master of the cycle of life, death and life again. Living things die; they fall, but like seeds. And from them a new life germinates. We die our smaller and greater deaths, but new life is already germinating within us, through Christ. For in the funeral service of the Christian Community Christ says, I am the New Birth in Death. I am the Life in dying. As the poet Novalis says,

What dropped us all into abysmal woe,

Pulls us forward with sweet yearning now.

In everlasting life death found its goal,

For thou art Death who at last makes us whole.*

---

*Novalis, in "Hymns to the Night."

www.thechristiancommunity.org

9th Trinity III, 2020, Money As Servant

9th August Trinity

Matthew 6:19-34 

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! 

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

Therefore I tell you, do not trouble your heart about what you will eat and drink

Jan de Kok

or with what you will clothe your body. Is not life more important than food and the body more important than clothes? 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 like 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

September 20, 2020

Matthew 6:19-34

The question of our relationship to money is well worth looking at more closely, especially here in the western world. In this Gospel reading, Christ makes it quite clear what our relationship to money needs to be. 

Shirley Markham

Notice that Christ is not saying that money itself is evil. The traditional word Mammon in verse 24 comes from the Chaldean, and means avarice. Christ is pointing out the tendency we human beings have of allowing money to take over as our first love. He is saying that if money and material concerns take first place in our lives, two things will happen: 

First of all, our relationship with the divine world will be crowded out. For, as He says, there is really only space in our souls for attention to one thing at a time. True devoted attention means shutting out everything else. "You cannot serve two masters; you will love the one and despise (that is, neglect) the other." (Matthew 6:24) And whatever we spend the most time giving our devoted attention to will, of necessity, become the most important thing in our lives. "Where your treasure is, there your heart will be too," He says. (Matthew 6:21) How many of us can honestly say that we spend most of our devoted attention to God? 

Secondly, whatever we are most devoted to, whether money or God, will become our master. God is the master teacher who respects our freedom, who encourages our development and integrity, who helps us build confidence and trust in the universe. 

Money as master aims itself toward our lower desire nature, whipping up our desire life. It encourages our dissatisfaction and greed, creating the need for more, bigger, and better stuff. Money as master enslaves us. It is the enslavement, not the money itself, about which Christ warns us. "You cannot serve God and be enslaved to the Almighty Dollar" (Matthew 6:24). But, difficult though it is, we can serve God and, at the same time, find a right relationship to money. 

Tissot

We do so by making money itself into our servant. We make money our servant when we recognize that all wealth, all richness, all possessions come from God. It all belongs to Him, not to us. He gives it to us to administer, to take care of, to pass along to others. Money is not ours to own and hoard. 

The right relationship is God first, and then our needs (not our egotistical desires) will be filled. And if God should choose to send us more than just the bare necessities, then we are in a position to ask Him what He wants done with it. Money as a servant is the means by which much good can be done in the world, for others. 

"So," to quote Matthew (the tax collector, who knew something about money,) "do not make your soul small with worry [be anxious], saying. 'What will we drink? What shall we wear?'… your heavenly Father knows that you need all these things. Ask first for God's kingdom and its harmonious order. Then all these other things will be yours as well." (Matthew 6:31-32)

www.thechristiancommunity.org

 

8th Trinity III 2020, This Amazing Day

8^th Trinity

Luke 17:11-19

And it happened as he was on the way to Jerusalem that he passed through the middle of Samaria and Galilee. 

James Christensen

And as he was entering a certain village, ten men who had leprosy met him. They stood at a distance, and they raised their voice, saying, “Master, Jesus, have mercy on us!” 

And seeing them, he said, “Go, and show yourselves to the priests.” And it came about that as they went on their way, they were cleansed. 

Now one of them, when he saw that he had been healed, turned back, glorifying God with a loud voice, and fell on his face at his feet and thanked him--and he was a Samaritan. 

And Jesus responded and said, “Were not all ten cleansed? And the nine—where are they? Was no one seen returning to praise the revelation of God’s working in this event except this foreigner?” 

And he said to him, “Rise and go your way. The power of your trust has made you strong.” 

8^th Trinity

September 13, 2020

Luke 17:11-19 

The ancient Hebrews were required to tithe, that is, to give one-tenth of their

Alexander Master

income back to God by offering it to the temple. In today’s New Testament reading, one in ten of the formerly ill outcasts returns to give thanks to the Son of God for what has happened to him. We could read this story’s characters as being the different parts of a single human being. 

If we are honest, we all recognize that we are 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. 

Do we remember to be grateful for everything that happens to us? For our destiny would be immeasurably aided if we were to give whole-hearted, 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 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, especially when we return to them with thanks. Knowing this and expressing our gratitude makes us strong. And this power of trust in the beneficence of God, becomes our own power to make good all that happens. 

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

i thank You God for most this amazing

Kate Austin, Praise Him

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).*

 

www.thechristiancommunity.org

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*e.e. cummings, (Complete Poems 1904-1962)

 

7th Trinity III 2020, Avoid and Focus

7^th August Trinity

Luke 10:1-20 

After this, the Lord appointed seventy-two others and sent them two by two ahead of him, before his face, to every town and place where he himself was about to go. He told them, “An ample harvest, and few workers! Ask the harvest master, therefore, to send out workers to help with the harvesting. Go: I hereby send you out like lambs among wolves. Do not take a wallet or knapsack or sandals, and do not pause to greet anyone on the way.

 

“When you enter a house, first say, ‘Peace to this house.’ If a person of peace is there, your peace will alight on them; if not, it will turn round and come back to you. Stay in that place, eating and drinking with them, because the worker is worth his wages. Do not move around from house to house.

“When you enter a town and are welcomed, eat what is set before you, and heal the sick and tell them, ‘The kingdom of God is close upon you.’ But when you enter a town and are not welcomed, go into its streets and say, ‘Even the dust of your town that sticks to our feet we are shaking off before your eyes. Yet be sure of this: The kingdom of God is approaching. I am telling you, Sodom will be better off than that town on that day. 

“The worse for you, Chorazin! The worse for you, Bethsaida! Because if the deeds of the spirit that occurred in you had occurred in Tyre and Sidon, they would long since be sitting in sackcloth and ashes as a sign of their change of heart and mind. But Tyre and Sidon will be better off on the day of decision than you. And you, Capernaum, won’t you be exalted to the skies? You will go down to the depths. 

Dore

Whoever listens to you listens to me; whoever rejects you rejects me, but whoever rejects me rejects him who sent me." 

The seventy-two returned with joy and said: “Lord, even the demons submit to us in your name.” 

He replied, “I saw Satan fall like lightning from the sky. Here, I have now given you authority to trample on snakes and scorpions and all the power of the enemy, and none of it shall ever hurt you. But do not be glad that the spirits submit to you; be glad that your true being is taken up into the world of the heavens (that your names are recorded in the heavens).

7^th Trinity

September 6, 2020

Luke 10:1-20

In the reading, Christ sends out a multiplicity of people into the world. He tells them that their situation is like a lamb being sent out among wolves. He also tells them three things that will protect them from being ‘devoured.’

First, they are not to hoard (no wallet or knapsack). Then they are not to lose focus and get distracted by pausing to greet others on the way. And further, they are to develop a peaceful equanimity. They are to radiate peace. They are not to worry about results—if they are not welcomed, they should move on.

We all have our task in life, and our karmic appointments to keep. Nowadays, it is tempting to accumulate ‘stuff’ as a hedge against the wolf of anxiety.  And it goes without saying that we are inundated by sales calls, emails, media posts that may be distracting us from our true task.

At the same time, amazingly, we are to send out our peace, and if it is not accepted or absorbed by others, it is meant to return to us; that is, we absorb it back into ourselves. We are meant not to lose our inner balance if people reject us, or to be disappointed if things don’t turn out the way we had hoped.

If we can succeed in the difficult inner tasks of avoiding accumulating, of avoiding distractions, if we can focus in peace and inner balance, then indeed the wolfish demons of fear and false expectations must submit to us, to Christ working in us. For this is the way Christ now works on the earth—in us, and through us.

 

6th Trinity III 2020, No Non-Being

6th Trinity 

Mark 7:31-37

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.

Julia Stankova

 

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 Trinity

August 30, 2020

Mark 7:31–37

As we get older, our hearing often declines. It is as though our ears close a bit. We fail to accurately pick up what was spoken to us. And so we may get a false message. And to others, our response may seem inappropriate, even humorously. Yet even if our hearing is perfect, it can be that our hearts are closed, so we don’t pick up what is really being said.

In a sense, we are all deaf. Our hearts are sometimes closed, often in self-defense, against the overwhelming voices of pain and suffering around us. We rarely hear the inspirations our angels are whispering to us.

We speak with difficulty. Yet our words wield enormous creative power, for good or for ill. The poet Wislawa Szymborska makes us aware of their power; she says,

Tissot

When I pronounce the word Future,

the first syllable already belongs to the past.

 

When I pronounce the word Silence,

I destroy it.

 

When I pronounce the word Nothing,

I make something no nonbeing can hold.*

 

Christ came to open our hearing, to open our hearts so that our words have the power to create. ‘Be opened,’ he says.  ‘Hear my voice in your heart.’  When you break your silence with love, you create a future which no non-being can destroy.

www.thechristiancommunity.org

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*Wislawa Szymborska, “Three Oddest Words”.