The Christian Community in North America

You have the name of being alive…(Rev. 3:1)

You Have the Name of Being Alive… (Rev. 3:1)

When we are tired after a busy workday and look back on what we have done, we are likely to feel the heavy burden of all the obligations we had to fulfill. That is because our pace of life does not allow us to stand still. We run from one obligation to the next. And when we are not running, we get left behind by the facts. Our hectic world cannot be compared with the time when daily life consisted of work and prayer: ora et labora. When prayer started to disappear from daily life, the motto became: work and relax—in which relaxing usually means: do nothing, do not think, look for recreation. In our time there is a new, grim perspective: work and burn out. In a world that roars past at a breathtaking speed we run the risk of being driven on until we fall down. How can we stand up in such a world?

Sooner or later we will be facing a moment when we realize: this is the last day of my life. Would we then still think the same way about all the so-called obligations of our existence?

From the perspective of eternity, everything looks different. Much of what on earth looks necessary becomes insignificant, or even less. For the spiritual world we humans are like walking dead: “You have the name of being alive, and you are dead.” For our narrow-minded, utilitarian thinking, to pray or to sit before an altar is a waste of time: we are doing nothing, producing nothing, earning nothing.

But for the spiritual world things are different. In prayer, at the altar, our mortal existence is called to life. There Christ invests our perishable being with the white robe of His pure life—that we bury not our eternal being for the sake of our temporal.

–Rev. Bastiaan Baan, November 1, 2020.

November 2, 2020/1 Comment/by CCNA

Blog, Homilies

The White Horseman

The White Horseman (Rev. 19)

After an exhausting, eventful life, the wish to finally find rest is perhaps as old as humanity. The most common expression of it can be found in our cemeteries. Time and again we see the words chiseled into headstones: “Rest in Peace,” or even “Here Rests…” As if all is past—no more troubles, sorrow, tears. Is it really that simple? Or is this wishful thinking?

One day Rudolf Steiner was walking in a cemetery with a friend. As he was reading the constantly repeated words on the headstones, his commentary was: “First of all he is not here; second of all he is not resting.” In other words, the deceased evidently are having a very different life than we imagine or wish.

The Book of Revelation of John helps us to get to know the sobering reality of the spiritual world. Instead of finding comfortable rest or an eternal paradise we are confronted with a world of crisis and battle—just like the world we have daily around us and which we would rather not see.

The word of the white horseman is as a sword that strikes humanity and causes separation. With the staff of iron He reigns as shepherd and warrior at the same time. Christ is more than the gentle shepherd of a flock of sheep, the way He is so often represented in tradition. He is the shepherd who leads humanity to the moment when we are irrevocably confronted with ourselves and the consequences of our deeds. He is the shepherd who wants to wake us up: do not fall asleep with the promises of false prophets who delude us with hopes of an earthly paradise or eternal peace.

Wake up to Him who will gather the harvest of the Earth. We—humanity—we are the harvest. The harvest is His alone.

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