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

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

When we read about the countless healings in the Gospels, sooner or later the question will arise: why at that time, and not today?

Just like at that time, when Jesus was living on the earth, there are lots of sick people in our time, bent and weak, deformed, paralyzed, possessed—and no one is able to heal them as if by magic. Jesus, however, only needed to look to come to a diagnosis at first glance, give a therapy, and bring about the healing of body, soul, and spirit. For that reason it was said of Him: “He has taken our sickness from us; He has borne all our infirmities.” (Matthew 8:17)

But now? Is He still healing? Or is He leaving us alone with our illnesses? Or are we so hardened and ill that He cannot reach us anymore? Or are we now supposed to bear our illnesses and weaknesses ourselves?

When you wonder how in the world in which we now live Christ deals with our illnesses and weaknesses, the Consecration of the Human Being has a very different answer to these questions. “Sickness of sin” is what the altar service calls the illness we all suffer from. That is an illness that has left its traces in the corporeality of humanity. In our Creed, it seems as if the sickness of sin was already healed by the spirit with the birth of Jesus. Only, that is no healing by magic, neither is it a healing from one day to the next, but hope for a far future. “They may hope for the overcoming of the sickness of sin…” says the promise of the Creed.

We may be ever so sick when we stand before the altar, the medicine that makes whole can permeate us so that in the core of our being we become perfectly healthy—even if we are mortally ill. This is why from the earliest days of Christianity the meal of bread and wine was called pharmakon athanasias, meaning medicine of immortality.

When we then, strengthened by the medicine that makes whole, pass from life into death, He will say also to us: “You are released from your illness.”

-Rev. Bastiaan Baan, February 23, 2025

John 21: 21-23

When Peter saw him [John], he said to Jesus: “Lord, what about this man?”  Jesus said to him, “If it is my will that he remain until I come, what is that to you?  Follow me!”  The saying spread abroad among the brethren that this disciple was not to die; yet Jesus did not say to him that he was not to die, but “If it is my will that he remain until I come, what is that to you?” (RSV)

These words are among the most enigmatic expressions in the New Testament—the last words John quotes from the life of the Risen Christ: “If it is my will that he remain until I come, what is that to you?”

The fact that this sentence has caused misunderstandings and riddles is evident from the rumor that since then goes around among the disciples: “This disciple was not to die.”  No one has understood what Christ meant with these words.  The evangelist is silent about it.  Strangely, he merely repeats what the Risen One said.

Perhaps a tip of the veil that lies over these words is lifted when we recognize that this simple little word remain is one of the key words in the Gospel of John.  From the beginning to the end, the word remain sounds again and again, forty times.[*]  This is in contrast with the other Gospels, where this word is used only sparingly, mostly in the everyday sense of a stay in a city, a house, or by a lake.

But from the first time this word sounds in the John Gospel, something different from the physical world is indicated.  The Spirit, which descended on Jesus at the Baptism in the Jordan, remained on him (John 1:32).  Whereas the prophets of the Old Testament were at unexpected moments sometimes inspired, Jesus made no single step in His life without inspiration from the Spirit of God.

Again and again, seemingly monotonously, Christ speaks about the lasting connection between Him and us: “Abide in me, and I in you.  As the branch cannot bear fruit by itself, unless it abides in the vine, neither can you, unless you abide in me.”  […]  Abide in my love.” (John 15: 4, 9)

And now, at the end of the whole Gospel, there is one disciple who remains, John, who has experienced the highest form of love, agape.  The others, even though their names may be great, such as Peter, the rock, or James and the other John, the Sons of Thunder, they are changeable just like us—wavering, then believing again; afraid, then foolhardy again.

But John, who remains united with Christ forever, in his Gospel wants to unite himself with the living and the dead—in order to enable us to share in God’s love, which to the end of the world remains.

[*] In the English Bible the word abide is also used in the same meaning.

–Rev. Bastiaan Baan

 

That looks like an impossible task in a world full of troublesome developments.  In times of harmony and peace it is not difficult to live without anxieties, but now?  Peace and harmony have been replaced by conflicts and chaos, wherever you look.

And yet it is Christ’s appeal not to be anxious about tomorrow—a task for all times, in well-being and adversity, in fortune and misfortune.  How do you do that?

One means to obtain trust in the future is the Act of Consecration of Man.  The more you become part of the joint prayer, the more you can carry and are carried.  Because for whom do we pray this intercessory prayer?

The offering gives an answer to this question.  With every step of the offering our prayer grows.  Not only the visible community, but also that of all true Christians and all those who have died are part of it.  And then we realize that there is another person who offers and prays with us.

This is Christ, who brings His offering anew in every service.  For that is how it is called: the Christ offering, even as it would come to life in us, through us.

How does our prayer get wings?  That happens because He prays with us, as He offers Himself with us.  In this awareness our trust can grow, for He goes with us in well-being and adversity, in fortune and misfortune.

Whoever has come to know the light of Christ in the Act of Consecration of Man will begin to recognize this light also in our daylight.

That is why we trust – also in tomorrow!

-Rev. Bastiaan Baan, September 22, 2024