,

Easter

Never to die anymore—that might well be the worst that could ever happen to a human being.  If that ever came to pass, a human life would never be able to renew itself.  When a life is fulfilled, death comes as a liberator.  When you are weak and infirm, when the burden of the years and cares becomes unbearable, death is the greatest benefactor who bestows another form of life on us.

Finally, the dying person is redeemed from suffering, freed out of the prison of the body.  Sometimes this liberation shows itself even visibly.  After the death throes the deceased leaves its traces on the face—an expression of rest and nobility that you don’t find anywhere but in death.  Finally freed from the burden of life.

When Christ died, something else happened—completely different from the death of every human being.  Long before His death on the cross, He announced His path already with the prediction: “The Son of Man will be for three days and three nights in the heart of the earth.”  The heart of the earth has a sting, which is death.  Its lord and master?  It is the prince of darkness.

Christ did not wage the worst battle on the earth, but in the heart of the earth—to vanquish death from the inside, to heal the heart of the earth.

Since His death, each human being who seeks Him can die differently—no longer imprisoned in the heart of the earth, but secure in the heart of Christ, where each who has sought Him has a home.

Christ was not committed to the earth like mortal remains.  He laid Himself into the earth to renew His creation—as a seed that lets blossom the whole earth.

 

Rev. Bastiaan Baan, Easter 2025

/0 Comments/by
,

Judas and Mary Magdalene

In the middle of Holy Week, money has the leading part, both in the anointing Mary Magdalene performs and in the deed of Judas.  In both cases, money is the instrument of the opponent who wants to break Jesus’ power.  When the woman anoints Jesus’ head with oil, the disciples are indignant because of the waste of so much money.  They are blind to the meaning of His consecration to death.  The only thing that counts is money.

When Judas betrays his master, the chief priests offer him the paltry amount of thirty pieces of silver for his capture.  That is how slaves were traded in those days.  But usually, when someone sold a slave, the price was mentioned by the slave trader.  Then they haggled, until the trade was made.  Now the roles are reversed:  a human being (Ecce homo—See, the human being) is sold for what the buyer offers.  There is no haggling at all.  In the eyes of the chief priests, Jesus is less than a slave.

With all these humiliating actions you can become desperate about the power of money and the shortsightedness of people.  But Jesus sees beyond their shortsightedness.

Even when evil works openly, when Satan takes possession of Judas, even when evil triumphs—even then it is no more than a tool of the power that prevails.

That’s how it went when the decision about the lot of Jesus was made.  There was no escaping it.  But on the way that is waiting for Him, Jesus is much more than just a victim.

Church Father Augustine tried to put himself in Jesus’ state of mind from that moment.  He put the words in His mouth: “I suffer not for my sins, but when I die I fulfill the will of my Father.  Then I DO more than I SUFFER.”

What from the human point of view is the deepest suffering, is from the divine point of view the highest form of strength.  Golgotha is at the same time the deepest tragedy and the greatest deed.  In the words of archangel Michael that sound in the fall in the epistle at the altar: “The deed that created life out of death on Golgotha.”

 

Rev. Bastiaan Baan, April 18, 2025

/1 Comment/by
,

The Entry into Jerusalem

In the months of the life of Christ that led up to Golgotha, what will take place there sounds again and again.  Christ Himself foresees His future.  Three times He proclaims the way He is to go: See, we are going up to Jerusalem.  And everything foretold in the books of the prophets will be fulfilled on the Son of Man.

But the dead know it too.  During the Transfiguration on the mountain, Moses and Elijah appear.  Luke writes: “They spoke of the fulfillment that His earthly life was about to reach in Jerusalem,” literally, about His ex-hodos, His going-out.  Why is Jerusalem mentioned all the time?

Jerusalem means: City of Peace.  If there is one city in the world that is torn apart by fighting, it surely is Jerusalem.  Even today it is a bone of contention of peoples and religions.  Countless times, the city has been destroyed and built up again.  Under thick layers of sand and stones lie the remnants of destroyed and ruined cultures.  And thus it will probably continue to go in the future.

With foresight, Christ chose this city as the place of His entry and of His exodus.  Gently, seated on a donkey, He enters the city of peace that has become a city of strife, as if he wanted to say with this entry:

I create a way up in the way down
I create life in death
I create peace in violence
I go with you on the long way from the old to the New Jerusalem, the City of Peace.

-Rev. Bastiaan Baan, April 13, 2025

/0 Comments/by
, ,

“And He was transformed before them.” (Matthew 17:2)

“And He was transformed before them. His countenance shone like the sun, and His garments became shining white like light” (Matthew 17:2)

Every encounter with a human being leaves an impression of his or her outer appearance, mostly so clear that this outer image is etched into our memory.  Even when a person has died, this image stays with us; we still portray him the same way, whereas he has in reality left this form of existence behind long ago.  We do that with everyone who has died, even if they have laid their mortal sheath aside a century ago.  In reality, the dead are living in a very different world, in a very different appearance.  I think we would be surprised if we were allowed to see them in their actual appearance.  Would we still recognize them?

This is what we have also done for centuries with the human being Jesus Christ.  We picture Him the way He lived on earth, the way He suffered and died on the cross.  Countless times He has been represented in that way, as a mortal human being of flesh and blood.  And then?

That is usually the end of our imagination.  In pictures of the risen Christ we mostly see helpless efforts to express the unimaginable in earthly forms and colors.

That is not necessary, for once in His life He showed Himself in his true, immortal form—during the Transfiguration on the mountain.  “And He was transformed before them. His countenance shone like the sun, and His garments became shining white like light.”  That is the immortal Christ who comes to appearance in the mortal human being Jesus for a moment.  Above the infinite loneliness of the Passion stands the infinite consolation of the Redeemer.

That which once came to appearance in Christ is a distant, promising future for us humans.  In the words of the Apostle Paul:

“… we shall all be changed, in a moment, in the twinkling of an eye, at the last trumpet.” (1 Cor.15:52, RSV)

Maybe we should learn to view each human being in that way.  For behind the mask of our earthly personality hides another human being.  Once in a while we see a glimpse of this new human being in the sheen of the eyes, in a radiant face, or in a gesture of love.  At such moments we suddenly realize: This is the real you.

In our deepest essence, every human being longs to be known, to be revealed, to come to appearance—freed from the enchantment of our perishable existence.

-Rev. Bastiaan Baan, March 16, 2025

/4 Comments/by