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Peace be with you! (John 20:27)

The more often you hear these words, the more you may be surprised that they do not express an incontrovertible truth, but a possibility. Why did Christ never say: “Peace is with you”—not even to doubting Thomas, who was allowed to touch him? And why do we never hear at the altar: “Peace is with you”—whereas He is giving it to us? Does this mean that we have to make this possibility a reality?

What do we do with the soft touch of Peace that we receive at the altar? What does this touch bring about?

Peace is a mood that wants to reach further than a feeling of rest and harmony. It wants to be part of our voice, our gestures, even our feet. Are our feet—speaking with Paul—“…shoed with preparedness to spread the message of peace…?” (Ephesians 6:15)

With our feet we walk the path of our life. Semiconsciously and consciously we leave our traces. Only when we walk with Christ and He with us, do our feet begin to spread the message of His Peace. His Peace is not only meant for me, not only for my destiny, but also for everyone’s destiny. This Peace wants to go into the world in us, through us, to save what can be saved. For, Peace in the world is inconceivable. But walking the still, narrow path of Peace—this creates in a torn world an indelible track.

– Rev. Bastiaan Baan, April 27, 2025

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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

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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

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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

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“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

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“You are released from your illness.” (Luke 13:12)

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

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Judgment

Many people, perhaps even all of us, have a deeply rooted tendency to judge other people by their outer appearance.  When we walk through a city, we look all the time either with sympathy or antipathy at people and pass judgments.  We haven’t even really seen them, spoken with them, met them, and we have our judgments ready, read off their clothes, their outer get-up, facial expression—all those fleeting impressions that can’t really tell us anything essential.

Imagine how God looks at these people.  What does He see?  The proverb says: For God all human beings are equal.  That is almost unimaginable for us.  His love is not limited to a little bunch of favorites.  Every creature bears a precious treasure, even if it is hidden far away or perhaps even buried.  In spite of this, every human being can dig up this hidden treasure and bring it to light.  For God it makes no difference whether it is a gift from rich talents or from deep poverty.  Even when I think: I have nothing—I can still offer Him the present moment.

We try to do that at the altar: to be totally present, from moment to moment.  And although we never completely succeed in this, God sees our efforts.  For each single moment can become a royal gift for Him, offered from our pure thinking, our loving heart, our willing devotion.

That is why for God all human beings are equal, because in each of us slumbers a hidden king with a hidden treasure.

 

–Rev. Bastiaan Baan, January 16, 2025

 

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John 21: 21-23

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

 

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The Good News

The Good News

Not without reason the New Testament has been called the Good News for centuries.  Countless people have drawn infinite consolation from it.

You can’t say the same of the last book in the Bible.  In the Apocalypse we are confronted with evil, so overpowering that when reading it we risk losing courage.  It is as if all the consolation of the Gospel is washed away by death, destruction, and demons.  And not only is this true for all the evil that is spreading in the world; the same is true for each one of us.

“You have the name of a living being, yet you are dead.” (Revelation 3:1, the letter to the congregation in Sardis).  How come that in our time—for this letter speaks of our time—we are dead before the countenance of God, in the middle of our lives?

Imagine how we look in the eyes of the divine world when we have occupied ourselves all day only with eating, drinking, money, technology, and the countless distractions away from the ONE, which God needs.  When we then fall asleep in the evening, we not only appear with empty hands, but eventually what will happen is what the Offering in the Consecration of the Human Being calls burying our eternal being for the sake of our temporal.

And yet this shocking word of the Apocalypse gives us a gleam of hope when it is followed by the call: “Strive to awaken in your consciousness, and strengthen what is still living in your soul so that it die not.” (3:2)

Not all in us has to die, even though we are taken up day after day by a world that wants to turn us into willess slaves of technology, money, and power.

A single prayer by a righteous one can bring about miracles in silence.

A single deed of unselfishness strengthens what is left and otherwise threatens to die.

A single service at the altar is a beacon of light in a darkened world—not only for us human beings, but also for the divine world, which looks for traces of life in our mortal, dying earth existence.

 

-Rev. Bastiaan Baan, October 27, 2024

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Do not be anxious about tomorrow… (Matthew 6:34)

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

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