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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

April 14, 2025/0 Comments/by CCNA

Blog, Homilies, Uncategorized

“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

April 1, 2025/4 Comments/by CCNA

Blog, Homilies

“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

March 31, 2025/0 Comments/by CCNA

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