3rd Epiphany 2016, Letting Go

3rd Epiphany

Jesus Heals Leper

Matthew 8, 1-13

When he came down from the mountain, large crowds followed him. And behold, a man with leprosy approached him, and kneeling down before him said, “Lord, if you are willing, you are able to make me clean.”

Jesus stretched out his hand and touched him saying, “I am willing; be cleansed.”

And immediately he was cleared of his leprosy. And Jesus said to him, “See that you tell no one. But go and show yourself to the priests and offer to them the gift that Moses commanded as a testimony of your cleansing.”

When Jesus had entered Capernaum, a Roman captain, leader of a hundred soldiers, approached him, pleading with him and saying, “Lord, my boy lies at home, paralyzed, suffering great pain.”

Jesus said to him, “I will come and heal him.”

The centurion answered, saying, “Lord, I am not worthy to have you enter under my roof. Just say a word, and my boy will be healed. For I myself am a man under authority, with soldiers under me. If I say one word to this one—‘Go, ’  he goes, and if I tell another ‘Come,’ he comes. If I tell my servant ‘Do this,’ he does it.

Jesus Heals Centurion's Boy

Hearing this, Jesus was amazed and said to those following him, “Amen, the truth I tell you, I have not found anyone in Israel with such great power of trust. And I tell you, that many will come from the east and from the west and will take their places at the feast with Abraham and Isaac and Jacob in the kingdom of the heavens. But the sons of the kingdom will be cast out into the darkness of [godforsaken] external existence, where there will be wailing and gnashing of teeth.”

And Jesus said to the centurion, “Go home.  Let it be done to you as you have believed.”

And the boy was healed in that hour.

3rd Epiphany

January 24, 2016

Matthew 8, 1-13

If we hold a stone, we trust that if we let go, it will fall to the ground. If it is a helium balloon, we trust that if we let go, it will rise to the sky. It does no good to demand that they do otherwise than what God has ordained them to do.

In the gospel reading, a lowly outcast approaches Jesus, and in courage and trust asks to be healed. He trusts that Jesus will heal him if Jesus wills it. And a high officer does the same. He approaches Jesus in humility for the sake of another. He trusts Jesus the same way he would trust his own commanding officer. It is their trust in Christ that allows for their healing. The souls are healthy; only the body is ill. They ask, and then they cede control; they let go and bow in humility before God’s will.

Roland Tiller

In our lives, too, we can trust in Christ’s destiny guidance. We can ask in humility for cleansing and healing. And in humility we can let go of control, trusting in what God has ordained.

And at the same time, we can trust that whatever the outcome, whether we rise or fall, Christ is accompanying the direction of our lives, and especially the direction of our souls. As it says in the service, our ‘housing’ may be sick, yet Christ’s creative word enables us to change and evolve; our souls can become healthy. Our humble courage and trust in asking for soul healing makes straight the paths of the Lord of Karma into our lives.

2nd Epiphany 2016, God of Transformations

2^nd Epiphany

Jesus Among the Doctors, Durer

January 17, 2016

Luke 2, 41 - 5

Every year his [Jesus’] parents went to Jerusalem for the feast of the Passover. And when he was twelve years old, they took him with them. Now after they had gone there and fulfilled the custom during the days of the feast, they set off on their way home. But the boy Jesus remained behind in Jerusalem. His parents did not know this; they thought he was among the company of the travelers. After a day’s journey they missed him among their friends and relations. When they did not find him, they returned to Jerusalem to look for him.

Tissot

After three days they found him in the Temple, sitting in the midst of the teachers, listening to them and asking them questions. And those who heard him were amazed at his mature understanding and his answers.

And when they saw him, they were taken aback, and his mother said to him, “My child, why have you done this to us? Behold, your father and I have been searching for you in great distress.”

And he said to them, “Why did you look for me? Did you not know that I must be and live in that which is my Father’s?”

But they did not understand the meaning of the words he spoke to them. And he went down with them again to Nazareth and followed them willingly in all things.

And his mother carefully kept all these things living in her heart. And Jesus progressed in wisdom, in maturity and grace [favor] in the sight of God and man.

2^nd Epiphany

January 17, 2016

Luke 2, 41 - 5

Twelve is a number of completion. The thirteenth begins a new cycle. We might think of January as the thirteenth month of the past year, a month that both looks back and looks ahead.

In their forty years of wandering the desert, the Hebrew people had something that remained the same – the commandments, written in stone. Their God was a God of Anchoring Permanence, who accompanied them in all their changing circumstances.

Durer, inset

With Jesus things began to change. At twelve he undergoes a process in the temple that changes him so radically that his parents barely recognize him; they cannot understand what he is saying. This is the development of a God of Transformations, a God of Change. He will continually change and transform in his life on earth. And like John his predecessor, He will encourage his followers also to change their hearts and minds. At the same time, his is not a rebellious overthrow of the past; he still honors what was written in stone. Instead he will amplify the meaning of the commandments, giving them even greater depth and nuance, greater meaning.

Our lives too have a mixture of permanence and change. We can remember and honor the immutable. And at the same time we can develop the flexibility and fluidity to operate with nuance in the midst of change. Christ is the great teacher of transformation. He gives us the strength and the flexibility for all the changing conditions of our lives. And like the mother, we are to keep all these things living in our hearts. 

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1st Epiphany 2016, First Ancestor

1st Epiphany

Matthew 2: 1-12

Herod and the Magi, Tissot (Brooklyn Museum)

When Jesus was born in Bethlehem in Judea—during the time of King Herod—behold: wise priest-kings from the east arrived in Jerusalem, saying,

               

“Where is the one born here King of the Jews? We have seen his star rise in the east and have come to worship him.”

               

When King Herod heard this, he was deeply disturbed, and all Jerusalem with him. And he assembled all the high priests and scribes of the people and inquired of them in what place the Christ was to be born.

And they said to him, “In Bethlehem of Judea, for thus it was written by the prophet:

And you Bethlehem, in the land of Judah,

Are by no means the least among the rulers of Judah;

For out of you shall come forth the ruler

Who will be shepherd over my people, the true Israel.”

Then Herod, secretly calling the Magi together again, inquired from them the exact time when the star had appeared. He directed them to Bethlehem and said, “Go there and search carefully for the child, and when you find him, report to me, that I too may go and bow down before him.”

After they had heard the King, they went on their way, and behold, the star that they had seen rising went before them, and led them in its course over the cities until it stood over the place where the child was.

Tapestry by Burne-Jones

Seeing the star, they were filled with [there awakened in them] an exceedingly great and holy joy.

Entering the house, they saw the child with Mary his mother; they fell down before him and worshipped him. Then they opened their treasures and offered him their gifts: gold and frankincense and myrrh.

And having been warned in a dream not to return to Herod, they departed to their country by another way.

1st Epiphany

January 10, 2016

Matthew 2: 1-12

To be a king means to rule over a place with a boundary. The king administers, defends, and maintains it. In ancient times kings were souls pre-ordained by the spiritual world, who were sent into a particular bloodline, a bloodline that offered the kingly soul the necessary attributes.

King Herod was no divinely appointed king; he was a political appointee. When emissaries from other lands come looking for the great soul born into the hereditary bloodline, Herod becomes anxious to maintain his position. But the emissaries, priest-kings themselves, are led by the higher guidance of the soul-star. It leads them to the child who will become, not a ruler, but a ‘shepherd of all nations.’

Later Herod’s son Antipas will also be a King Herod curious about this man of whom he has heard so much. He will play his part in the deaths of both John the Baptist, the old Adam, and Jesus, the New Adam. The irony is that neither Herod actually had anything to fear from Jesus, for although he was born into the kingly line, he was not destined to become an earthly ruler. His kingdom would be the whole earth, conquered by the shedding of his own blood, a kingdom beyond time.

Something of eternal nature of Christ’s kingship wafts through the encounter with the priest-kings. They make the child offerings symbolizing their wisdom, their devotion, their forces of healing.

They laid their offerings at his feet:

The gold was their tribute to a King,

The frankincense, with its odor sweet,

Was for the Priest, the Paraclete,

The myrrh for the body's burying.*

The child they worship in joy will die a sacrificial death. But Christ will make possible the healing of humankind and of the earth. He will rise as the first ancestor of a new bloodline, the line of the Christened humans.

*Longfellow, “The Three Kings”

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Holy Nights 2015 - 2016, Training Wheels

Luke 18: 18-34
January 3, 2015

One of the highest spiritual leaders of the people asked him, “Good Master, what must I do to obtain eternal life?”

Jesus answered him, “Why do you call me good? No one is good except the divine Father only. You know the commandments, you shall not corrupt marriage, you shall not kill, you shall not steal, you shall not speak untruth, and you shall honor your father and your mother!

He said, “All these I have observed strictly from my youth.”

When Jesus heard this, he said, [Jesus, looking at him, loved him and said… Mk 10:21] “One thing however you lack: Sell all of your possessions, and give the money to the poor; thus will you achieve a treasure in the spiritual world—then come and follow me!

These words made him very sad, for he was extremely rich. And when Jesus saw him thus, he said, “How hard it is for those who have earthly riches to find entry into the kingdom of God. Sooner would a camel walk through the eye of a needle, than a rich man be able to find the entrance to the kingdom of God!”

Tissot

Those who heard this said, “Who then can find salvation?”

He said, “For man alone it is impossible; it will be possible however through the power of God working in man.”

Then Peter said to him, “Behold, we have left all that was ours behind us and have followed you.”

He replied, “Amen, the truth I say to you. Everyone who leaves a house  or wife, or brothers or parents or children for the sake of the kingdom of God will receive much more in earthly existence, and in the coming aeon deathless life.”

Then he took the twelve to himself and said, “Now we are going up to Jerusalem, and everything which the prophets have written about the Son of Man will fulfill itself: He will be given over to the peoples of the world; they will mock and taunt him, they will spit upon him and scourge him and kill him; but on the third day he will rise up from the dead.”

Yet his disciples understood nothing of all this. The meaning of his words remained hidden from them, and they did not recognize what he was trying to tell them.

Luke 18: 18-34

King Stephen, wikimedia

Despite whatever financial concerns we may have, we are all rich. Rich in experience, rich in memories. We all live in fact like the kings and queens of past ages - in warm homes, with enough to eat and comfortable conveyances for travel. We are well outfitted with those servants for work that we call ‘appliances’.  Yet at some point we may become, like the rich leader, ready to take the next step.

Are we ready to follow Christ somewhere deeper than just enjoying our status, deeper even than being good and law-abiding people? We hesitate, perhaps because we know we are not strong enough. We can only do what we are able to do, what we can. But we don’t have to do it alone. God adds to it. ‘For what is impossible for human strength will become possible through the power of God'. In the words of Hafiz:

….Now is the time to understand

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?

Now is the time for the world to know

That every thought and action is sacred.

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.*

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

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New Year's Day 2016, The First Step

New Year’s Day 2016

January 1, 2016

Luke 15:11-32

John Macallan Swan

And he said further: “A certain man had two sons. The younger of them said to his father, ‘Give me the share of the estate which falls to me.’  And he divided his wealth between them. And not many days later the younger son gathered everything together and went on a journey to a far country and squandered his estate in the enjoyment of loose living. When he had spent everything, a severe famine came over the land, and he began to be in need. So he went and attached himself to a citizen of the country who sent him out into his fields and let him herd swine. And he longed to fill his stomach with the pods that the swine were eating, but no one gave him anything.

Then he came to himself, and said, ‘How many of my father’s hired men have more than enough bread, but I am dying here of hunger. I will rise up and go to my father and say to him, ‘Father, I have sinned against the higher world and against you. I am no longer worthy to be called your son. Make me one of your hired men [workers].’

So he rose up and traveled along the road to his father. When he was still a long way off, his father saw him, felt his misery, ran toward him, embraced him and kissed him. And yet the son said, ‘Father, I have sinned against the higher world and against you. I am no longer worthy to be called your son. Make me one of your hired men [workers].’

But the father called his servant to him. ‘Quickly! Bring the best robe and put it on him. Put a ring on his hand and sandals on his feet, and slaughter the fattened calf. Then we shall eat and be merry. For this my son was dead and is risen to life. He was lost and is found again.’ And they began to celebrate.

Meanwhile the older son was in the field. When he returned home and came near the house, he heard the sound of music and dancing. He called one of the servants to him and asked him what it meant. He gave him the news: ‘Your brother has come home again. So in joy your father has slaughtered the fattened calf because he has him back again safe and sound.’

The son grew dark with anger and didn’t want to go in. But his father came out and pleaded with him. He however reproached his father saying, ‘Look! For so many years I have been with you and have never neglected one of your commands. But you never gave me so much as a goat that I might be merry with my friends. And now comes this son of yours who has eaten up your wealth in scandal, and you offer him the fattened calf.’

The father however said to him ‘Child, you are always with me and all that I have belongs to you too. But now we should be glad and rejoice, for this your brother was dead and lives; he was lost and has been found again.’

New Year’s Day 2016

January 1, 2016

Luke 15:11-32

We have come to a nodal point in the flow of time; an end, and with it, an opportunity to begin again, to start afresh.

The lost son had sallied forth with a high heart, eager to taste life and experience the world. But eventually he come to the end of his own resources. And he comes to himself. He realizes that he has lost a right and proper relationship to his father, and he chooses to be willing to start over, rebuilding the relationship from a lower, more humble starting point. At the same time, with an overflowing compassion, his father welcomes him back with more than open arms.

Humanity too has largely lost the right relationship to our heavenly Father. We are often too busy enjoying life, immersed in rich experience, too proudly self-sufficient to notice that we are eating husks. But we can be graced with moments when we come to ourselves and recognize what we have lost. As Wendell Berry said,

"It may be when we no longer know what to do, we have come to our real work,

 and that when we no longer know which way to go, we have begun our real journey."

So in the words of another poet, David Whyte, *

…Start with

Prodigal Son Returns, Kathryn Donegan

the ground

you know,

the pale ground

beneath your feet,

your own

way of starting

the conversation.

Start right now

take a small step

you can call your own

don't follow

someone else's

heroics, be humble

and focused,…

Start close in,

don't take the second step

or the third,

start with the first

thing

close in,

the step you don't want to take.

For our heavenly Father, with love and compassion, always welcomes us back to our new beginnings.

* David Whyte, ” START CLOSE IN” in River Flow

Holy Nights, 2015 - 16, Appearance and Illusion

Holy Nights

December 27, 2015

Luke 4: 1 – 14

And Jesus left the Jordan valley, his soul filled with the Holy Spirit. And he followed the guidance of the Spirit into the loneliness of the desert. There he remained for forty days, during which he had to withstand the temptation by the Adversary.

Schnorr von Carolsfeld, Wikimedia

During this time he took no food at all, and when the days came to an end he felt hunger. Then the Adversary said to him, ‘If you are the Son of God, speak to this stone so that it becomes bread.’  But Jesus answered him, ‘Scripture says: Man does not live by bread alone.’

And the Adversary led him up, showed him all the realms of the world in a single moment, and said to him, ‘I will give you power over everything that you see, the earthly and even the forces beyond the earthly. For the power belongs to me, and I can give it to whom I will. If you will kneel in worship of me, the whole world shall be yours.’ But Jesus replied, ‘Scripture says: Let all your worship be for the divine Lord, let your service be for Him alone.’

Then he removed him to Jerusalem and set him on the parapet of the Temple and said to him, ‘If you are the Son of God, throw yourself down from here. For it says in the scriptures that HE has commanded his angels to protect you and bear you up on their hands, so that not even your foot shall strike against a stone.’ But Jesus answered him, 

‘Yet it also says: You shall not make your heavenly Lord become a servant of your arbitrary wishes.’

And when the Adversary had put him through all temptation, he departed from him to bide his time. And Jesus, empowered by the Spirit, returned to Galilee.*

Holy Nights

December 27, 2015

Luke 4: 1 – 18

This season of the year is filled with highs and lows. There is joy and excitement, and there is irritation and sadness. What was so promising can be followed by disappointment.

The Baptism, Ninetta Sombart

Before this incident in the reading, there is the spiritual high point of Jesus’

Baptism, when the heavens open and the Spirit of Love descends into him. Yet this is followed immediately by the approach of the Adversary. The main thrust of all the temptations is for the soul to give more weight and value to the earthly than to a proper relationship to the divine. This is a universal temptation, one that all human beings face. And all three temptations are based on an illusion, the illusion that the worldly adversarial forces can offer us more than can God. By maintaining the strength of his relationship to the Father, Christ could later incorporate this experience of human temptation in his universal prayer to the Father: Lead us not into temptation. One could expand this line of the prayer as follows:

The Temptation, William Blake

You do not allow the tempter to work in us beyond the capacity of our strength. For in your being, Father, no temptation can survive, since the tempter is but appearance and illusion….**

This is the key for us: to see through the illusory nature of whatever tempts us to put our faith and trust in worldly power and worldly goods. We are encouraged instead to direct our souls, our clear thinking, the warmth of our feeling, the devotion of our will toward the guidance of the Father of All and toward the angel he gave each of us to guard us.

---

*from The New Testatment, a rendering by Jon Madsen. To purchase, go to Steinerbooks.com or Amazon.com 

** from The Esoteric Lord’s Prayer, Rudolf Steiner.

Christmas Day 2015, Peace Be

Christmas III

John 21: 15-25

Now is proclaimed the end of the entire gospel according to John in the 21st chapter:

After they had had held their meal together, Jesus said to Simon Peter: “Simon, son of John, do you love me more than the others here?

Peter answered, “Lord you know that I am your friend”. Jesus said to him, “Feed my lambs.”

And he said to him again, a second time, “Simon, son of John, do you love me? Peter answered, “Yes, Lord, you know that I am devoted to you.” Jesus said to him, “Shepherd my young sheep.”

He asked him a third time, “Simon, Son of John, Are you my friend?”

Peter was heartbroken that he could say to him the third time, ‘Are you my friend’, and he answered, “Lord, you know all things; therefore you know that I am devoted to you.”

Jesus said, “Feed my sheep. Amen the truth I say to you, when you were younger you girded yourself and walked wherever you wished. But when you are old, you will stretch out your hands and Another will gird you and lead you where you do not wish to go.”

He told him this to indicate the kind of death by which he would bring the divine to revelation. Then he said to him, “Follow me.”

But Peter, turning, saw the disciple whom Jesus loved, following him. He was the one who had leaned upon his breast at the supper and had asked, “Lord, who is it who betrays you?”  When Peter now saw him, his asked, “Lord, what of this man, what is his task?”

Jesus said to him: If is my will that he remain until my coming, that does not affect your path. Follow me…”

From this day the story spread among the brethren that this disciple would not die. But Jesus did not say to him that he would not die, but, “If it is my will that he remain until my coming, that does not affect your path.”

This is the disciple who here bears witness to these things and who has written all this. And we know that his testimony is true. There are also many other things that Jesus did. If they were to be written down one by one, I do not think that the world itself could contain the books that would have to be written.

Christmas III

John 21: 15-25

There is a story* about a hermit in the rugged mountains, who spent his life praying for his fellow human beings. Near his cave he had built a shrine to St. Nicholas, the protector of all travelers. He kept an oil lamp burning to show travelers the way. The track near his cave ran beside a deep chasm with strong violently gusting winds, which could sweep a traveler off his feet and into the ravine. It was said that it was an evil spirit who cast the people into the ravine. The hermit kept watch, and if he heard a cry, he would run with a rope to save lives.

One spring evening, on Good Friday as the hermit entered his cave, he heard a voice who asked to speak with him. It was the spirit of the mountain, asking him why the hermit prevented him from casting people into the abyss. The hermit answered that he loved human beings, as God’s youngest creatures, despite their errors and weaknesses.  ‘All that I do is in God’s name, for His love is great.’ The spirit said he would leave the travelers in peace if the hermit could prove that God’s love was greater than any other power. He gave the hermit three chances.

First the hermit told the story of how a shepherd, searching for a lost sheep, had been blown off the path. His daughter had come to look for him and tried to save him, but in the hermit’s absence both had perished. This example of familial love did not impress the spirit.

The next day he told of two soldiers, one of whom carried his wounded and abandoned friend up to the cave. The spirit was likewise not impressed with the love between friends.

That evening a robber, convinced that the hermit had money, beat him and left. When the hermit heard the familiar roar of the wind, and heard the cry, he staggered out and with his last strength threw the rope down to the robber and tied the other end to a rock, allowing the robber to escape. His soul left his body and hovered over it.

The mountain spirit came and spoke: can you see me? The soul answered , Yes now I can see you as you really are. The spirit asked, “Why did you do that? He murdered you!”

‘Love your enemies, my God has taught me,’ answered the saint.

Silence fell.  Then the mountain spirit said: ‘This is greater love than anything that I have ever known.  I shall keep my promise.  Farewell.’

‘Peace be with you’, said the saint.

*"The Saint and the Mountain Spirit" by Maja Muntz-Koundoury can be found in: The Easter Story Book (Floris Books, Edinburgh 1991). To purchase, click here.

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