In your midst stands one whom you do not know. (Jn.1:26)
When at the end of the day you look back and wonder: Where was I today? you most often come to many places, to a lot of busyness in many ways, but hardly to yourself. We are called from one task to another, or we simply let ourselves be led from one impression to another. But where was I myself?
There is only one place where I am completely myself, and that is in my own midst, a place where I am not more and not less than myself, where you can have a feeling of poverty and riches at the same time. On the one hand, you feel privileged because you are king in your own realm; I can myself decide to whom I open the door. On the other hand, you feel poor because you are impotently facing yourself and find that you hardly know who you actually are. I don’t know myself.
In this empty space I am alone with myself. Of old, this space has been called the hidden Holy of Holies—not only in the temple, but also hidden in the human being.
“In your midst stands one whom you do not know.”
With these words, John not only indicates Christ who is waiting for him in order to be baptized. He also indicates our midst, where Christ stands and waits until He may come into our hidden Holy of Holies.
– Rev. Bastiaan Baan, July 15, 2024
A Letter from the Lenker: Regional Sendings in 2024
John 5: 24-25
“Whoever hears the word that I speak, and places his trust in Him who sent me, he has life beyond the cycles of time. The great decision of destiny does not apply to him, for he has already passed from death to life. … The hour is coming—and it has already come—when the dead will hear the call of the divine Son, and those who hear Him will be bearers of true life.”
Reality and illusion, truth and lie are two worlds we are less and less able to distinguish from each other. We can no longer self-evidently rely on the visible world we are shown. With cunning technology an illusory world is conjured up before us that cannot, or can hardly, be distinguished from the real one. The same is true for the words with which people want to convince us. Do people really mean what they say? Or is it a lie wrapped up in pretty words? More than ever do we live in a world where visible and audible reality is mutilated.
But one manifestation does not let itself be disguised like a wolf in sheep’s clothing. That is the moral music, the tone that makes the music in the language. When we direct our attention, not to the meaning of the words, but to the tone in which they are spoken, we can hear something of the hidden world behind the words. Words are more than just sheaths. It is the intention that makes them truth or lies.
Christ speaks to us in the Gospel. How does He speak? We only do His words justice if they are spoken from mouth to ear. The written word only becomes reality if we become conscious of the fact that it is the voice of Christ that is speaking to us. That is the secret of the proclamation of the Gospel at the altar. Do I hear Him speak through the words?
When our hearts fill themselves with His pure life, His voice sounds in our words—His voice, that wants to awaken the living and the dead to life.
Rev. Bastiaan Baan, June 27, 2024