The Christian Community in North America

A New Year

A New Year

In our time it does not often happen that people face the future full of confidence. Everywhere sounds concern about the future, fear of the future, doom-thinking about what the future has in store for us. There is even a “no-future-generation,” young people for whom the future is hopeless. How can they, how can we have hope for the future? Isn’t it an illusion when at the beginning of the year we wish each other Happy New Year?

Indeed, in the world that is built by human hands the security of existence is steadily crumbling away. It is as if we no longer stand on firm ground, as if from time to time the water rises to our lips, as if the only choice we have left is: survive or drown. How can you wish someone who has the water standing at his lips a Happy New Year?

In the physical world happiness is often hard to find. Wealth does not usually bring happiness; of course, neither does poverty. Happiness must be found far from the perishable world—in an invisible world which we call providence. In this word you recognize a world that foresees in the spirit what is going to happen, even before it becomes earthly reality. But the word “providence” also has another meaning: the spiritual world provides for our needs, and takes care of us—albeit often in very different ways than we imagine.*

One thing is certain concerning the future that is waiting for us: less and less will we be able to build on outer certainty of existence. But whatever happens, we can build on trust in the ever present help of the spiritual world. You don’t find this help on every street corner; it isn’t thrown into your lap. You have to keep your eyes and ears open for the people who cross your path, for the possibilities life is offering you, for the lucky circumstances that may occur. That asks for uninterrupted wakefulness. But in due course we will then recognize that in our fate and destiny we are never alone. The Lord of fate and destiny, the Lord of providence, goes with us, always, at all times, to the end of the world.

-Rev. Bastiaan Baan, 1-10-2021.

* The Latin word provideo means literally: to see ahead, foresee, see into the future, as well as: to provide for, to take care of someone or something.

January 13, 2021/0 Comments/by CCNA

Blog, Homilies

Christmas Epistle

Christmas Epistle

One of the paradoxes of Christianity is that the Son of God lived only once on the earth, and that he is at the same time “the Son born in eternity.” The reality of His one-time embodiment is expressed in classical Christianity with the words Et incarnatus est. The Word became flesh.

The reality of His timeless embodiment is expressed in the epistle of the Christmas season with the words: “Christ has chosen the earthly body.” More is meant with this than a mortal, material body. Since His death and resurrection, the whole earth is His body. In a certain sense, He moved his dwelling place from heaven to the earth. Our dying earth existence is permeated with His presence—no matter how sick, damaged, and exhausted this earth may be—in order to transform the quintessence of this existence into a new earth and a new heaven in the future.

Undoubtedly, this is for Him, even though He rose from the dead, a lasting path of suffering. It means an uninterrupted battle with the opposing powers, “in all future cycles of time,” as the epistle expresses it. For us humans, death is sooner or later a liberation. As long as we are more or less healthy, and are living without too many worries, we don’t want to think of dying. But when we grow old and weak, when we cannot expect anything from life anymore, death is our liberator—the crown on our earthly existence.

And for Christ? His death is but the beginning of a new, unknown path of suffering, a way He has chosen Himself. The epistle expresses this with the unusual words: “Christ has chosen the earthly body.” Just as He once came as a human being of flesh and blood—not for the righteous, but for the sinners, the ill, the possessed—so he chooses the dying earth existence “to release man from the deceiving false light, to release man from the senses’ unworthy craving,” always, to the end of the world.

–Rev. Bastiaan Baan, 1-3-2021

January 4, 2021/0 Comments/by CCNA

Blog, Homilies

Do You Love Me? (Jn.21)

Do You Love Me? (Jn.21)

Love has to be a two-way street. In this well-known saying the secret of the alchemy of love is expressed. Love should not just be given; we should also learn to receive it. Only through the interactive effect of both, giving and receiving, something new comes into being that neither of the two persons involved would have been able to achieve alone. That is called alchemy: the beginning of a new creation.

Some people only want to receive love, and it is never enough. Others can only give, so that you are buried under a superabundance, and there is no room left for you. In the shadow of such people, endowed with a shining charisma, you may feel small and insignificant.

Christ gives a love that transcends all human ability to imagine it. People who have experienced it themselves say: “His love knows exactly all I have done in my life, all I have done wrong—and in spite of that He loves me. This is why Christ is called the teacher of human love. But He not only bestows His love on us; He also asks each one of us:

“Do you love me more than the others?”

And when we, like Peter, are not capable of giving Him unconditional love, He asks more modestly: “Do you love me?”

And when we, like Peter, are also incapable of doing that, He finally asks: “Are you my friend?”

He does that for our sake, for in His love for the imperfect, even our deficient friendship is for Him an indispensable gift.

Love has to be a two-way street. Can I give Him something?
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Commentary on the text in John 21: 15-18

In many versions of the Bible the text is not correctly translated. It looks as if the Risen One asks Peter three times almost the same thing: Do you love me more than these? Do you love me? Do you love me? (RSV) Moreover, in this translation it looks as if Peter gives three times the same answer as the question he was asked: You know that I love you.

However, in the first question Christ speaks of the highest form of love (Greek agapē): Do you love me more than the others? Peter, who is not capable of giving this unconditional love, replies three times: You know that I am your friend. (Greek phileō) (Madsen: you are dear to me)

The second time Christ no longer asks for love “more than the others,” but for unconditional love without comparison to the other disciples: Do you love me? Again, Peter can give nothing other than philia, friendship.

The third time Christ, knowing that this is all Peter is capable of, asks him for friendship. That is His unconditional love for the imperfect.

With these three questions Peter is, in a certain sense, set free from his three denials. And to indicate the connection between these two events, John specifies: They saw a charcoal fire there (Greek anthrakia, the only two times this word occurs in the New Testament—Jn.18:18 and 21:9).

–Rev. Bastiaan Baan, Dec. 27, 2020

December 28, 2020/0 Comments/by CCNA

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