Latest News

Kitchen Chat and more…

For the Advancement of the World 2: The Living and the Dead¹

When preparing for the festival of Michael, we looked at the way our human role in the world is highlighted in the call of the archangel, as heard in the prayers of this festival time.² After the Creed has described Christ’s resurrection it speaks of the way Christ, since his ascension, lives as “the fulfiller of the fatherly deeds of the ground of the world”. But he does not only fulfill those fatherly deeds which keep the world as it is in good shape, but he, the Son will, “for the advancement of the world”, unite with all those whom he, through their bearing, can wrest from the death of matter. Thus Christ’s resurrection becomes world-scale resurrection. But this will only become possible when human beings heed that call of Michael, heard in the prayers of his festival. Only when we come to a deeper, a higher awareness, a new grasp of this deed of life and death on Golgotha, will Christ’s forces of resurrection work in us, human beings on earth. To become a creative force, a light-carrying force which will keep alive heavenly light in the darkness of our earthly existence.

The Creed actually introduces Christ by first stating his human connection: “through whom human beings attain the re-enlivening of the dying earth-existence”; then, he is also introduced as “the Son born in eternity”. “The helper of the souls of the dead”, he in future will ally himself with those whom he can wrest from the death of matter. Truly he is the “God of Man”, as is said in the prayers which describe Michael as the countenance of this god. Christ has become the helper of all human beings, both the living and the dead, of all those who have taken his transubstantiating power into their thinking.

With Michael, we are moving into an apocalyptic world, into a world turning more and more apocalyptic. Recently, the line between the physical and the spiritual has become diffuse, the threshold between the world of earth and the world of spirit having shifted. Not only are nowadays human beings able to reach out across the threshold, the threshold as such is “moving down” into the human being itself. This creates a totally new situation, putting human beings into their role of actually becoming co-actors, “players”, becoming directly, actively engaged in the eschatological drama which begins when the world slowly prepares for its “last stage” of death and judgment, of new heaven and new earth. In the book of the Apocalypse, the “Apocalypse to John”, we can perceive how humanity becomes more and more engaged in this process, both while on earth as well as in heaven. It shows how the Christ mystery, encompassing both earth and heaven, is becoming more powerful within a Christian humanity on its way to maturity.³

“With Michael”, I said, meaning on the one hand that Michael, who is the archangel specifically active in our times, presents us with a unique opportunity to become conscious of how to cross that line between the physical and spiritual, at least in intention (see the talk titled Michael’s Call). On the other hand, in the course of the Christian year, from the festival of Michael onwards through Advent, our Christian Community gospel readings carry this apocalyptical signature, first during Michaelmas in the sense that for us living on earth this line between the physical and the spiritual has already shifted with many consequences in our personal sphere. In November we look more at the apocalyptical process on a world-scale, as mirrored in the last book of the Bible. Advent heightens our apocalyptical awareness for the “second coming” of Christ in an apocalyptical setting, until at Christmas the fact that Christ appears on earth can be grasped as an historical and at the same time continuing reality. . At least half the gospel readings of those 12 to 13 weeks are taken from the Apocalypse, the Revelation to John. Here, we’ll focus on this aspect. By the way, this is the great yearly recurring example of the “the hour iscoming and is now” of John’s gospel (4:23 and 5:25), of which Christ’s “second coming” is the prime example. He hás come, he hás risen – but between him and our conscious perception the distance has grown which his disciples experienced as his ascension. Christ’s presence has become obscured to our perceptions; hence for ús he needs to “come again”, needs a “second coming”.

September 11, 2011/0 Comments/by CCNA

Essays and Articles

Apocalypse (3)¹ “The Second Coming”

It’s somewhat misleading to speak of a “Second Coming” of Christ, of Christ “returning” or “coming again”. Such expressions go back to words of the two angels who appear when the disciples have seen Christ going into heaven, when he was “being lifted up”, a cloud taking him out of their sight. At this ascension, the angels become visible to them, standing by them and asking why they are standing there looking into heaven. “This Jesus, who was taken up from you into heaven, will come in the same way as you saw him going into heaven” (Acts 1:11).

“He will come in the same way as you saw him going into heaven.” You saw him going from you – you will see him coming to you. In essence, this Ascension experience has to do with their “seeing”, their ability to perceive; it doesn’t say anything about Christ departing and returning. Their eyes can’t follow him anymore now that he is carried up into heaven because “a distance” has grown between them, as Luke puts it in his gospel (Lk 24:51).² Once more, it will be a question of human perception when “a cloud will bring him into your sight” – as we might paraphrase and conclude what these angels say. He has not really gone away – he has been “seen to go”, and in the same way he will be “seen to come”. It’s a question of perception, of awareness even.

In the Gospels, in the words of Christ himself, in times of earthly and also of cosmic disturbances, there will “appear the sign of the Son of man in heaven”, and people on earth “will see the Son of man coming on the clouds of heaven” (in Matthew’s version, 24:30). In this way, Christ answers a question about his parousia, which is Greek for his “presence”, his “arrival”, his “coming”, and about the close of the age (24:3). – Would it be possible that Christ speaks about the “coming of the Son of man” when he speaks about the way he himself will once more enter human perception, human awareness, as anyhow he is “with you always, to the close of the age” (28:20)? As “lightning comes from the east and shines as far as the west”, as “were the days of Noah” when “the flood came and swept them all away”, so will be this presence, the awareness of the presence of the Son of man (24:27 and 37-39) by human beings able to see him.

The “Son of Man” in his coming: are these indeed the words Christ uses when He wants to signal that human beings are starting to become aware of His cosmic presence – of Him who had become the “God of man” through death and resurrection? For many of the apostles, his contemporaries, this coming was almost at hand, was “coming” soon”, in the near future; in line with the general apocalyptic mood of the century. Yes, soon indeed he will be with us again! – that’s what they felt.

This urgency was for instance felt by Paul when he invoked an encompassing apocalyptic picture: “We who are alive, who are left until the coming of the Lord, shall not precede those who have fallen asleep. For the Lord will himself descend from heaven with a cry of command, with the archangel’s call, and with the sound of the trumpet of God. And the dead in Christ will rise first; then we who are alive, who are left, shall be caught up together with them in the clouds to meet the Lord in the air; and so we shall always be with the Lord” (I Thess 4:15-17). Or by James, who uses an amazing picture of preparation: “Be patient, therefore, brethren, until the coming of the Lord. Behold, the farmer waits for the precious fruit of the earth, being patient over it, until it receives the early and the late rain. You also be patient. Establish your hearts, for the coming of the Lord is at hand” (5:7-8). “Establishing your hearts”: this would mean preparing your hearts by “strengthening”, by “buttressing”. The Greek word, for instance, is used about the way the abyss is there between the living and the dead, in the story of the rich man and poor Lazarus (Luke 16:26), or of the way Christ “set” his face to go steadfastly to Jerusalem (Luke 9:51). – Let your hearts receive both the early and the late rain!

September 11, 2011/0 Comments/by CCNA

Essays and Articles

Apocalypse (4)¹ Apocalyptic Times

The word “apocalyptic” is often used rather loosely, when we speak about catastrophic or overwhelming events which might remind us of things described in the last book of the Bible. In fact, hardly anything which happens to us today has this apocalyptic signature – what (forcefully) disrupts our more or less placid life is hardly “apocalyptic”, even if nowadays we use the word for such events. When we look more precisely, we must acknowledge that only what happens when the heavens begin to make their presence felt can be called “apocalyptic”, that is: when our own human world and our world of earth is being shaken up by as yet unknown, “revealing” forces.

This is what the “Apocalypse to John” is about, when after an introduction and a first vision it describes a series of events triggered off by the opening of seven seals, by the sounding of seven trumpets and the pouring out of seven bowls of wrath. We have already looked at this apocalyptic process by focusing on the Writer, on the Book and on the so-called “Second Coming”. Let’s here look at what we can find out about the process itself.

An important moment in the course of the unfolding apocalypse has come when the 24 elders who sit on their thrones before God, at the beginning of the Third Throne Vision, when the 7th Trumpet has sounded, state that He “has begun to reign” (11:17). Now, the forces of adversary in earnest show themselves in battles of various kinds: the heavenly dragon and the beast rising out of the sea as well as the beast rising out of the land. Another such moment comes when, after the pouring out of the seven bowls and the sacking of Babylon, at the beginning of the Sixth Throne Vision, the voice of a great multitude resumes with another Hallelujah, crying that “The Lord our God the Almighty reigns” (19:6). Now the die is really cast, and the White Rider and his armies begin to mop up the forces of evil, who with Death and Hades eventually all end up in the “lake of fire that burns with sulphur” (19:20, 20:2, 10 and 14).

Decisive moments of the apocalyptic process happen when the Godhead takes steps to overcome the forces of evil, of adversary, which have taken over parts of the world. What goes before, through seals and early trumpets, is all in preparation of such final apocalyptic confrontations.

We can look at one of Rudolf Steiner’s “Anthroposophical Leading Thoughts”² for help, to understand more about the stages of overcoming cosmic adversaries. In the aphorism numbered 112 in this series, he states that the Divine Spiritual in cosmos manifests itself in the following stages:

1. By way of its innate, very own, Being;

2. By way of the Revelation of its Being;

3. By way of Activity, when the Being has drawn back from revealing;

4. By its manifestations itself, when the Divine is not anymore present in the “universe of manifestations”, but only in its forms.

September 10, 2011/0 Comments/by CCNA