STAND UP (Lk.7:11-17)

Wherever we go or stay, we are everywhere surrounded by the dying earth existence.  Nearly a hundred years ago, when The Christian Community was founded, this expression, which sounds in our Creed, was virtually unknown.  Admittedly, death was very much present in the war that preceded the founding of The Christian Community, but a dying earth existence…?  At the time, probably no one could grasp the scope of this expression.

In our time, we all know in fact from our own experience what these words signify, even though there continue to be people who deny a crisis.  Wait but a few decades, and no one will be able to deny anymore that we are surrounded by the dying earth existence.

Not only is the earth around us dying, but also the earth we take into ourselves.  Everything we take in—food, drink, air, sense impressions, thoughts—has to die completely to be able to serve us.  We human beings are the cause of countless forms of death on earth.

An old legend tells that, after Adam was expelled from Paradise, at each footstep the grass withered under his feet.  In a certain sense, this legend has become reality.

Despite our leading role in this death process, through Christ—so says our Creed—we attain the re-enlivening of the dying earth existence.  Does that happen exclusively through Christ?  Or are there ways in which we can help Him renew life?  Christ bears and orders the life of the world.  How can we help Him bear and order?

Look into the world through the eyes of Christ—and the world appears in a new light.

Hear Him speak before you say a word—and your words will have wings.

Take Him into your thinking—and your thoughts will become more lucid.

Ask Him to go with you—and your feet will be guided.

And even though we are bound hand and foot to the dying earth existence, He will speak to us, even when we die: Stand up!

 

–Rev. Bastiaan Baan September 27, 2020

Our eyes have the capacity of adjusting themselves to darkness.  When we come out of sunlight into a dark tunnel or cave, we are at first disoriented. Or when we walk at night from a lighted street into a dark wood, we may perhaps be frightened by the darkness.  But if we do not lose patience we notice that our eyes gradually become used to the darkness, and that we begin to recognize the world around us.  This is actually the best way to overcome fear of darkness—walk step by step into a dark space; wait until you become familiar with the darkness, and you begin to see.

This is not only true in the physical world, but also a spiritual reality.  Every day we are confronted with a world of dark, horrific events.  As a rule, we don’t want to see them at all.  We turn away and try to force ourselves to look at the light side of life.  In our current western world there is even an aversion to every sort of darkness.  We turn away from the sick, the dying, the hungry, the refugees, the criminals.  We don’t want to see the dark side of life.  Or are we perhaps afraid of it?

When Christ spoke of the eye as the light source of the body, He was not telling a parable, but a daily truth.  It is not the bad world that makes us bad.  It is not the darkness outside us that darkens us inwardly.  But it is the way we look into the world that brings us darkness or light.

The question is not: What do I see?

But: How do I see?

Am I looking into the world with fear, with abhorrence, or even with hatred?

Or can I look into that same world with compassion and love, in spite of all the darkness?

This subtle way of looking not only illumines and relieves ourselves, but will eventually also illumine and relieve the darkness of the world around us.

A mother who had lost her two children wrote after a long period of rebelliousness, mourning and depression:

When I

concentrated

and full of love

look at the darkness

then I see

light.

 

–Rev. Bastiaan Baan, September 20, 2020

Sending the Seventy (Lk.10:1-20)

During His life on earth, Christ often sent helpers ahead to each town and place where He would Himself come.  They are called disciples (literally followers) and apostles (from apostello, to send off).

Why was that necessary?

Would it not have been much simpler if He had done everything by Himself?  Everything these helpers did—healing, driving out demons, making peace—He also did Himself, and He did it very differently from his followers.  Only of Christ was it said that He healed with power, with exousia.  The disciples could not work without His help.  But He—why would He not be able to help without helpers?

The Bible is full of the longing for the Almighty, for the moment when Christ shows His full powers.  In the Apocalypse this moment is proclaimed by a mighty voice in heaven that calls: “Now is come salvation and strength and the kingdom of our God, and the power of his Christ.” (Rev.12:10). In chapter 19:6 this empowerment is confirmed with the words: “Alleluia: For the Lord God omnipotent has become king.”   Up to that moment kingship had been in other hands.  One day the prince of this world will have to yield the kingship to the rightful Lord.  But we are not yet there.

Christ asks each one of us: “And you—what can you do to help me?  Will you go before me and prepare the way?  Wherever you go, you can become my helper.  And if you go before me and prepare the way, I will go with you in silence and bless your weak, imperfect efforts—until one day the time of my omnipotence has come.”

-Rev. Bastiaan Baan, September 6, 2020