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

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

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