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

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  Peace and harmony have been replaced by conflicts and chaos, wherever you look.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

“My son was dead and is alive again, he was lost and is found.”

The century that lies behind us has received the name of the century of the child.  There was a good reason for this.   More than ever before in history people were interested in the child.

We would be equally justified to call our 21^st century the century of youth.  In our current society youth and youthfulness have become an ideal.  This ideal not only applies to younger people; adults too and even older people have to follow it and stay young and vital as long as possible.  The ideal picture of eternal youth is only relatively new.  Formerly, people looked at the course of life differently.  A well-known saying went: “In youth an idealist, as an adult a realist, as a greybeard a mystic.”  When we grow old we have a natural inclination to turn inward more and look back on our life.  “Looking back in wonder,” a well-known authoress called it.

Only, when we do that at an advanced age, life does not look anymore as it did before.  If we are honest with ourselves, we see more and more the shortcomings.  The last stretch of the path of life, which we go through in increasing loneliness, is permeated by the realization: I have separated myself from my divine origin and intended purpose.  I come home with empty hands, poor and needy like the prodigal son.  At the end of life we are all prodigal sons and daughters.

But precisely then, when we have lost all, the Father comes to meet us and bestows on us the only thing we still lack after a life of separation: forgiveness.

 

-Rev. Bastiaan Baan, August 11, 2024

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