Christian Community Homilies

Monday, June 16, 2014

3rd June Trinity 2007, Birth Eternal Spirit

June Trinity

John 3: 1-17

Hendrickcz

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 in order that the world be saved [healed] through him, and not fall prey to ruin.”

3^rd Trinity Sunday

June 17, 2007

John 3: 1-17

Every night we fall asleep. What belongs to the earth – our body – remains lying in the bed. But our soul

soars aloft to breathe divine spirit-air. It rises to the place where our own true spirit, our higher self nourishes our earthly life. Sleep is there a natural form of prayer, one God-given way of connecting with eternal being.

Christ has a conversation with Nicodemus in the realm of the night. He tries to tell Nicodemus that He, Christ, has come to earth to add something new to the natural order. He has come to help us find our way to our won eternal spirit without first having to fall asleep. He came so that we can begin to bring down, bring to birth our eternal spirit, our higher self, here on earth; so that we can breathe in the wind of the spirit also when we are awake during the day.

This is what is meant that Christ descended out of the realm of the Father spirit to save the world: He came to bring the eternal realm of the stars down to the earthly world. He came to bring heaven to earth, so that we can raise the earthly into the heavenly.

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3rd June Trinity 2009, The Chorus

June Trinity

John 3: 1-17

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?

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

3^rd June Trinity

June 21, 2009

John 3: 1-17

Every night we surrender our bodies and enter the realm of God and his angels. There we are fed and repaired. In the morning we return to the house of the body; we awaken refreshed and, as it were, reborn.

Nicodemus meets with Christ in the realm which we enter at night. Christ tells him there of the necessity of being reborn on yet another level. Not physically, nor in the daily way of waking up, but on an even greater level.

For even when we are awake, we are all of us asleep, dreaming the dream of our ordinary lives. Yet behind this world is the real world, the mighty world from which originates all that is evolving. It is a place in which we are not ordinarily conscious. It is a place where we can hear the sound of God’s breath as He breathes the breath of new life into everything at every moment; where our life is His creating life. Christ urges Nicodemus, urges us all, to awaken into this realm, to be born into this higher life beyond time. It will take us a while; we ‘take our waking slow’. But we have all caught glimpses. The poet asks:

Your great mistake is to act the drama

as if you were alone. ….Surely,

even you, at times, have felt the grand array;

the swelling presence, and the chorus, crowding

out your solo voice. [1]

So may we, in this life

trust

to those elements

we have yet to see…[2]

www.thechristiancommunity.org

[1] “Everything is Waiting for You”, David Whyte, in Everything is Waiting for You.

[2] David Whyte, “Working Together”, in House of Belonging.

6th June Trinity 2008, I AM Alive

June Trinity

John 3: 1-17

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?

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

6^th June Trinity

June 22, 2008

John 3: 1-17

Rocks don’t grow. The only way they can change is to be destroyed, ground into dust. Water and wind, however, move and shape. Water forms rocks; moving water and wind wear them down.

The problem with Nicodemus in the beginning of this reading is that his thinking is like a rock. When Christ talks about being born again, Nicodemus’s pictures something literal and limited to the earthly. Christ, however, is talking about the primacy of the spirit. The living waters of the Spirit form and shape; spirit breath breathes soul into all that is formed. Each child’s body is shaped in the waters of the womb.

We have all descended from the spirit. Our task is to consciously ascend into the heavenly realms while we are still on earth. On earth we human spirits are to rebirth ourselves back into an awareness of the realm from which we have come, the realm that has shaped and formed us.

Blake

Christ uses a picture from the Old Testament to explain this to Nicodemus: near the end of their forty years wandering in the desert, the Israelites were complaining bitterly about the food and water, complaining about their fate. The Lord sent fiery serpents. Many people died, but in those who survived, the stinging of conscience awakened their awareness of the sinfulness of raging against God’s karmic plan for them. They asked Moses to intercede. The Lord instructed Moses to fashion a brass snake and fasten it to a standard; all who had been bitten by the poisonous attitude would gaze upon the shining, uprighted snake on a pole. This symbol is a caduceus, the symbol of healing. In this picture of the snake being uprighted, they would recognize the wisdom of accepting their destiny in inner uprightness, without complaint. (Numbers 21:8)

The spirit is primary. It is not our fate, our destiny that is decisive, but how our spirits meet it. When we meet the bite of our fate with courage and inner uprightness, we have the potential to be changed and re-formed, to be born again as new human beings out of the waters of life and wind of the spirit from which we come.

Christ is for us the archetype of this process. He, the great Spirit, descended to earth, took on a body, and suffered a terrible fate. We can gaze upon him, the Shining One, upright on the pole of a cross. He is the ever-living caduceus, the symbol of healing. He is wisdom uprighted, sacrificed to love. He is our human fate, carried in uprightness, into and through death.

“Do not be afraid, he says. I am the first, and the last and the living one. I was dead, and see, I am alive forevermore, and I have the keys of death. I am the first born from the dead.” (Rev 1:5 -7).

Christ is the first in a new form of humanity. And we are to follow him into a new birth that even death cannot swallow.

www.thechristiancommunity.org

Sunday, June 15, 2014

1st June Trinity 2014, Every Empty Cup

June Trinity

John 3: 1-17

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?

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

Rubens

1^st June Trinity

June 15, 2014

John 3: 1-17

The blossom opens itself to the sun. Its pollen rises, carried to the upper reaches of the atmosphere. Enlivened by the warmth and light of the sun, it returns to earth, bringing new living forces, the power of germination, to the plants.

Nicodemus comes to Christ in the night realm, with soul and spirit open. Christ speaks to him about life being renewed from above, from the warmth and light of the realm of the spirit. At first Nicodemus confuses this renewal of life with the earthly level of physical birth. But Christ explains that being touched by the spirit, by the spirit’s power of eternal becoming, is what allows our lives to be ever renewed. It is our contact with the regions of moving light and warmth that is our entrance into the kingdom of the heavens, even as we still live in bodies on earth.

It is our own eternal spirit, the drop of the divinity given to each of us at birth, which has descended with us out of those regions of light. It is our awakening to this part of our being that allows us to open and ascend again into the realms of spirit, now, like the pollen rising from the flower. It is the power in us of prayer, the power of mindfulness, the power of gratitude. This is the Christ power, the power of the Son of Man, working in us. As the poet says:

C . Shuplyak

God

pours light

into every cup,

quenching darkness.

…God pours light

and the trees lift their limbs

without worry of redemption,

every blossom a chalice.

…as light

pours like rain

into every empty cup

set adrift on the Infinite Ocean.*

This is the power that lets us rise, even daily, into the realms of timeless life, to be renewed and refreshed, so that when we descend again, ‘the world can be healed and not fall prey to ruin.’

*Hafiz, “God Pours Light”, (Interpretive version of Ghazal 11 by Jose Orez)

2nd June Trinity 2010, Spirit Into Matter

June Trinity

John 3: 1-17

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?

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

2^nd June Trinity

asperatus cloud

June 6, 2010

John 3, 1-17

The interplay of water and air creates ever-changing forms. Water become invisible as it rises into the air. It condenses into clouds that continually form, shape-shift and disappear. Water as liquid sunshine drops from the sky back to earth and forms lakes, rivers that flow to the sea.

We human beings have formed bodies in the womb to be our earthly house. Before that, we existed as invisible spirits, spirits who then formed and entered matter.

Nicodemus’s puzzlement about being born anew from above shows how much humanity had lost touch with its own spiritual being and activity. Christ came to help us join our invisible spiritual self, the part that descended from God, with our earthly selves, in a new way. He came to help us become effective as spirits working on earth. He came to help us connect with the ‘real time’ activity of the spiritual world, that creative realm which continually brings the new into being.

Christ came to help us bring spirit into matter, so that ultimately everything on earth can be filled with the renewing creating power of becoming. And this mighty process will take place through the divine power working through human beings, through Christ in us. Through Christ in us we are born anew out the spiritual power of eternal becoming. In Christ we are touched by the might of the spirit world, so that the earth may be renewed, and not fall prey to ruin.

www.thechristiancommunity.org

June Trinity 2011, Waking Up

June Trinity

John 3: 1-17

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?

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

van Dyck

1^st June Trinity

June 19, 2011

John 3:1-17

We are approaching the longest day, the shortest night of the year. The plants have grown enthusiastically. Their flowering has released clouds of pollen. Carried up by the wind and thermals, it will be kissed by the life-giving power of the sun. When it returns to the plants, it will bring them the potential to create the seeds of new life.

We too have our times when we expand out into the universe. Mostly we do so unconsciously, in sleep. When we return to our bodies in the morning, blessed and strengthened by an encounter with our angel, we are refreshed and ready for the new life in a new day.

Nicodemus comes to Christ in the realm of night. And Christ tries to make clear to him that it is now necessary to become aware, to consciously work with these spiritual forces of new birth from above with our day-waking consciousness. The spirit breath, the spirit wind carries with it words of creation, the potential for the next step in the evolution of humankind. The spirit gives us the impulses for the new—a new way, a new direction, a new paradigm. For the old is falling away. But the spirit needs our voluntary cooperation.

As we approach the zenith of the year, it is time to open ourselves. It is time to receive the blessing and strength from the spirit, for what is coming. We may not know where exactly which direction the impulse for the new is coming from; we may not know where it will lead us.

van der Weyden

It will most certainly at first lead us through the death of the old way, just as following Christ led Nicodemus through the events of Christ’s death and resurrection. For we hear of him helping to prepare Christ’s body for the tomb. John 19:39 Nevertheless, we can listen for the sound of the spirit wind, and rise to hear the words of becoming, sounding on the breath of the spirit. As we do so, we will begin to share in Christ’s timeless, higher life. John 3:16

As poet said:

Beyond living and dreaming

there is something more important:

waking up.[1]

www.thechristiancommunity.org

[1] Antonio Machado, The Winged Energy of Delight, translations by Robert Bly

3rd June Trinity 2012, Practiced Powers

June Trinity

John 4, 1-26

At this time the Lord became aware that it was rumored among the Pharisees that Jesus was finding and baptizing more disciples than John (although Jesus himself did not baptize, though his disciples did.) Therefore he left Judea and went back again to Galilee.

Now he had to pass through Samaria. So he came to a Samaritan town called Sychar, near the plot of land Jacob had given to his son Joseph. Jacob’s well was also there. Jesus was weary with the journey, and he sat down by the well. It was about midday, the sixth hour.

Then a Samaritan woman came to draw water. And Jesus said to her, “Give me to drink.” For his disciples had gone into town to buy bread.

Then the Samaritan woman said to him, “How can you, a Jew, ask a drink of me, a Samaritan woman?” For the Jews avoided all contact with the Samaritans.

Jesus answered her, “If you knew how the divine world now draws near to men, and who it is who says to you, ‘Give me to drink’, you would ask him, and he would give you the water of life [the living water].

“Sir,” the woman said to him, “you have nothing to draw with, and the well is deep. From where will you draw the living water? Are you greater than our Father Jacob, who gave us this well and drank from it himself, as did his sons and his flocks and herds?”

Jesus answered, “Everyone who drinks this water will be thirsty again, but whoever drinks the water that I will give him, his thirst will be quenched for all time. Indeed, the water I give him will become in him a spring of water welling up as true life for eternity.”

The woman said to him, “Sir, give me this water, that I may never be thirsty again, and need never come here again to draw.”

He said to her, “Go call your husband and show him to me.”

“I have no husband,” she replied. Jesus said to her, “You have well said that you have no husband. Five husbands you have had, and he whom you now have is not your husband. This you have said truly.”
“Sir,” the woman said, “I perceive that you are a prophet. Our fathers worshipped on this mountain, but you Jews say that only in Jerusalem is the place where one should worship.”

Jesus answered, “Believe me, o woman, the hour is coming when you will worship the Father neither on this mountain nor in Jerusalem. You worship a being you do not know; we worship what we do know. That is why salvation had to be prepared for among the Jews. But the hour is coming and has now come, when the true worshippers will worship the Father with the power of the spirit and in awareness [knowledge] of the truth.”

Then the woman said to him, “I know that the Messiah is coming who is called Christ. When he comes, he will teach us all things.”

Jesus said to her, “I AM he who stands before you and speaks to you.”3^rd June Trinity

June 17, 2012

John 4:1-26

If someone were to ask us for a drink of water, most of us would do our best to accommodate them. We know how basic and burning a need thirst can be. We also know that human interdependence means that we often need others to provide what we need.

Christ requests of the Samaritan woman, of all of us, ‘Give me to drink.’ Astonishing to think that He who created water has to ask human beings for a drink. Yet this demonstrates the tremendous generosity and respect that the Divinity offers us—that it asks, and waits for us to respond.

Christ has a burning thirst for what we can give Him. He needs our noblest thoughts, our hearts’ love, our

devoted wills. Offering them to Him creates a fountainhead within our own being. He joins with us in creating a fountain of love for God, a fountain of creative, peaceful love for fellow human beings, a fountain of wonder and amazement for the way God works. So in the words of Rilke:

Take your practiced powers and stretch them out

until they span the chasm between two

contradictions ... For the god

wants to know himself in you.[1]

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[1] Rainer Maria Rilke, in Ahead of All Parting, ed. and translated by Steven Mitchell