With the day of the Archangel Michael on September 29, a weeks-long hushed period comes to an end, a time without highlights, seemingly standing still between the great festivals of St. John and Michael. Those who have experienced these ten weeks at the altar will be impressed with the always returning prayer to the Trinity. Although this epistle disappears and is, in a certain sense, overwhelmed by the appeal to Michael, it also resounds, barely audibly, like under- and over-tones in music. In due time, these words become the undercurrent of all our religious life. It is as if the words of this epistle want to say:
Whatever may happen:
I am there.
I shall be there.
Always shall I be there.
Whatever befalls you,
In good and bad fortune,
In joy and sorrow,
Your life is My creating life.
No matter how dark the future will be,
Stronger than all darkness that will lame you
Is the light of the Spirit
That shines on everything and everyone.
That is the silent, strong undercurrent of infinite trust of God in human beings, which is with us always, from the cradle to the grave,
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Long ago, there was a time when it was necessary not just to recognize Christ in silence, but to also confess Him emphatically, as Peter was the first to do: “You are the Christ.” Of course, because at that time there was almost no one who recognized the Son of God, Christ, in the Son of Man, Jesus. In our time you cannot just pronounce that. When you loudly start proclaiming that He is the Christ, no one wants to hear it. On the contrary, you then just irritate others, or your words are blown away in the wind.
Confessing Christ—how do you do that in our world?
Actually, we constantly confess something without words as we go through the world. Just look at the faces of the people around you: so much somberness, so much sorrow, so much annoyance, so much anger. Just look at yourself when you are walking through the streets of a city. Without sensing it ourselves, we spread and confess our moods, for our face, our posture, our footsteps speak volumes. We leave our tracks non-stop, visible and invisible. In the world in which we are living these days you don’t need to pronounce what you know and believe; without speaking a word, you can DO what you know and believe.
When we receive His peace at the altar, this gift can become our confession. This peace is not only meant for us, but through us for the world. That is the appeal of Christ after He has bestowed His peace on us: My peace is not of this world. My peace wants to work in the world through you. Are you ready to confess my peace?
Give me your hands, your head, your heart, your feet – and walk the way of peace with me.
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“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.
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When we become familiar with the Consecration of the Human Being we will sooner or later discover contradictions that cannot immediately be reconciled. Perhaps that is because our human world cannot so easily be reconciled with the divine world. Between these two worlds there is an abyss that has to be bridged.
Now, how can you as “unworthy creature,” as the words sound in the Offertory, “worthily fulfill the Consecration of the Human Being”? In the world of logic these two exclude each other: you are either worthy or unworthy, but not both at the same time.
Even more of a riddle is the contradiction that comes to light at the time of Advent. The service speaks then about hopeful expectation. Expectation is the key word in the weeks before Christmas; four times does this word sound in the epistle and insert of the service.
And in the same weeks the apocalyptic Gospel reading speaks of “fear and expectation of what is breaking in upon the whole earth.” (Luke 21:26) Fear, helplessness, oppression, despair—in many different ways Christ lets us know that we, all of humanity, have to go through the eye of the needle. The initiation of humanity is another name for this path. All ways to the future go through the eye of the needle, across the threshold.
On a very small scale, as a prelude to this future, in the Consecration of the Human Being we cross the threshold every time, in order then to come back again to the here and now. And there, past the threshold, past all fearful expectation of what shall happen to us, a world is awaiting us in which all our hopeful expectation finds its purpose.
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On April, 25th, 2024 at 1:30 pm MDT, Rev. Jim Hindes crossed the threshold peacefully at his home in Denver, Colorado.
Born June 23rd 1947 in Sand Diego, California, Rev. Jim Hindes was ordained into The Christian Community priesthood on February 22nd 1975 by one of the founding fathers, Rudolf Frieling. He has served congregations in England and Germany, as well as in New York City, western Massachusetts, Los Angeles, and, most recently the Denver congregation as its resident pastor for 20 years.
A vigil will be held at the Christian Community in Denver beginning, April 26. The Christian Community Funeral will be held for the Rev. Jim Hindes on Tuesday, April 30 at 11:00 am at
Horan & McConaty Funeral Services
1091 S. Colorado Blvd, Denver, CO 80246
(303) 757-1238
The Act of Consecration for Rev. Jim Hindes will be celebrated on Saturday, May 4 at 10 am at the church in Denver.
When we hear the story of the Last Supper we know already what will happen and what comes next: the martyrdom, His death, and resurrection. Of course it was not that way for His disciples when He had the meal with them. He was speaking in riddles to them. He kept them guessing about the future. Every event that followed was another riddle: Gethsemane, the sleep that overcame them, the capture, the flight. None of them was able to stand by Him to the end. Of course not, none of us would be able to maintain our footing in such circumstances. How could a person at that time ever foresee that the last evening meal would not only be followed by the first morning meal of the Resurrected One, and that He from now on would give Himself, day in day out, in bread and wine, to every human being who hungers and thirsts for His presence?
At the end of His life on earth, Christ indicates with an unusual word that this end is the beginning of a completely new life. Of all the disciples only John was present as witness when this last word sounded on the cross: “It is fulfilled.” He is the only evangelist who wrote this word from the cross down. What is so special in these words?
Christ here used an expression that originated in the old mysteries: tetelestai. It means something like: the goal has been reached. (telete was the ancient word for initiation. The place where the initiation took place was called in Eleusis: telesterion.) The expression tetelestai is no finality, but an indication of a completely new life. From then on the initiate stood on the other side of the threshold and was at home with the Gods. From the other side he could order life on earth according to the hermetic principle: As above, so below. The holy order of heaven had to be reflected in life on earth.
Where was Christ after He had spoken His last words? He too crossed a threshold, but not to go to the Gods, but to the demons and the dead. In the three days after His death He was not in heaven, not on earth, but “in the heart of the earth.” (Mat. 12:40) There He brought light into the hopeless existence of death and the underworld. There the germ of a new heaven and a new earth was planted.
Since His death and resurrection every death experience can become the germ of a new life. For whoever dies in Christ walks with Christ through death into deathless life.
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Die Gruender der Christengemeinschaft: Ein Schicksalsnetz By Rudolf F. Gaedeke
Translated by Gail Ritscher
September 9th, 1888 Leukersdorf/Erzgebirge – July 20th, 1944 Friedrichshafen/Lake Constance
According to all his friends, Johannes Perthel was taken far too early from his life and work for The Christian Community. In a strange twist of fate, he lost his life in a bombing raid on Friedrichshafen on Lake Constance, where he had traveled for a vacation.
Despite a kind of cloud hanging over his destiny, those in his circle, particularly his colleagues, treasured the radiant humanness that he had wrested from his life.
The way he himself described it, ever since childhood he had always experienced himself if not quite like an outsider, then still as different, and he therefore kept to himself.
Born on September 6, I888, in Leukersdorf/Erzgebirge, he grew up in a very strict and traditional parish house. He disliked school and had no friends there. Already in elementary school, he wrote in an essay about wanting to become a pastor, and after graduating high school he studied liberal theology. He literally had to wrangle permission from this traditional father to spend the semester in “liberal” Marburg.
During semester breaks at home, he and his father quarreled constantly. His mother said nothing. Johannes became increasingly withdrawn. New forces needed to be extracted from family tradition.
Although he became a member of the national, anti-Semitic “German Student Association,” at 22 he wrote a positive review of a lecture by the Jewish Social Democrat Bernstein for the association’s magazine. Once again, he had shocked his friends.
Johannes Perthel passed his theology exam before the First World War and he fulfilled his one- year mandatory military service. During that time, however, an inner struggle caused him to withdraw from an officer candidate’s course after the first 6 months. Once again, he was totally misunderstood.
After the war began, an inner sense of duty—he had just become a pastor—made him encourage his colleagues in Saxony to take up arms for the fatherland. His best friend answered this call and fell shortly thereafter. Johannes Perthel himself was not called up and was used as a field chaplain only for the last year and a half of the war. He found this task extremely difficult both inwardly and outwardly, but he gained a great deal of important insight into the destinies of soldiers.
In May 1915, Johannes Perthel married Mechthild Grohmann, the sister of the famous Goethean botanist Gerbert Grohmann. The couple had three children.
In typical Perthel style, after his time as auxiliary pastor he chose a pastorate that required a pioneer spirit. The small Saxon mining town of Oberwürschnitz, between Zwickau and Chemnitz, had just become an independent parish. There was neither church, nor community room, nor parish house, nor congregation. Perthel reported humorously about how he managed to acquire a parish house and community room. The congregation, however, just would not coalesce. The locals were largely taciturn, hard-working miners.
Johannes Perthel now attempted to bridge the gulf between his work-world and the church. He became a member of the Social Democratic Party, again shocking his colleagues, friends, and family. Even harder to swallow, however, was the realization that the gap between workers and church was not bridgeable, even though the Saxon workers now often invited the Social Democratic pastor to give lectures.
The most valuable experience in all this was the complete inner freedom from all previous obligations, for in his social class, a Social Democratic pastor was treated like a leper.
It was under these circumstances that a friend introduced him to a young man from the youth movement, presenting him as the representative of a new world view (Weltanschauung). It was the spring of 1920, the same time that the very first request went to Rudolf Steiner for a new religious practice.
Johannes Perthel and his wife purchased Rudolf Steiner’s “Basic Issues of the Social Question” and “How to Know Higher Worlds.” Understanding what was written there came only gradually, but it was inspirational. Later, Johannes Perthel would suffer a severe shock to the system from this first introduction to anthroposophy, but for now the first step had been made. He met Rudolf Steiner in Chemnitz and learned about the preparations for religious renewal.
From this moment on, Johannes Perthel knew that he wanted to join in the work. It was soon very obvious to him that the renewals Rudolf Steiner had proposed to the founder circle would find no place in the existing church. He wished to set to work establishing independent congregations in the Ore Mountains. This became clear to him during an inner struggle in the fall of 1921, when he was attending the theological course in Dornach. According to his own account, it was thanks to his wife, who was with him in Dornach, and to the construction of the first Goetheanum that he was able to overcome “the intellect man” (Kopfmensch), as he called it. The sense impression of the large columns of the Goetheanum hall, each different and yet emerging from and connected with one another, was a decisive help.
Perthel gave up his parish in 1922 and was present in Breitbrunn. During the actual founding deeds in 1922, Rudolf Steiner had himself suggested a lenker position for Perthel. And so, on September 16, 1922, he was ordained as a priest by Friedrich Rittelmeyer during the first Act of Consecration of the Human Being.
He then established the congregation in Leipzig with Rudolf Frieling, and from there he supervised as lenker the founding of congregations in Saxony, Thüringen, and Silesia. He worked in Breslau from 1926 through the 30s, and up until the ban of The Christian Community in 1941. He was part of The Circle of Seven from the very beginning and, as such, he played a significant role in building up and initially forming The Christian Community until it was banned.
On June 9, 1941, as the ban was coming into effect, Perthel participated in the lenker meeting in Erlangen. His two daughters in Breslau came under intense pressure from the Gestapo. They were forbidden to inform their brother in the field. Perthel lived through the time of the ban as a bookkeeper for the company of a Breslau congregation member.
Although Perthel is not known for writing anything of great length, from year one of the magazine first called “Tatchristentum” his articles and reports appeared every year, as well as in the “messages” for the member, which he issued as of 1936.
Perthel worked as a lecturer, particularly during the large conferences that took place then throughout Germany, often several times a year. But it was primarily his humanity, won through much suffering, that earned him great respect and gratitude in the priest circle and among all members.
In the summer of 1944, Johannes Perthel was staying in Oberstaufen in the Allgäu visiting Elfriede Straub, the renowned community helper from first Breslau then Stuttgart. From there, he went to visit his sister-in-law, the wife of Gerbert Grohmann, as well as Marta Heimeran in Horn on Lake Constance. As the train pulled into the station at Friedrichshafen on July 20, 1944, there was an air raid alarm. All the passengers were forced to exit the train for a nearby above ground air raid shelter. It received a direct hit. There were no survivors. Days later, Elfriede Straub searched for her missing guest in Friedrichshafen. She found Perthel’s passport, riddled with holes, in a laundry basket at the police station. His memorial stone is located in a large communal burial site. He was ripped from his life not knowing that his son had preceded him, falling in the field in Russia on July 13.
Memorandum
Oberwürschnitz, February 21, 1922
It seems clear to me from recent experiences that bringing about religious renewal in the church in the sense we mean will be impossible. To remain viable in the present, and faced with inner emptiness, the church is forced to shift more and more into outer forms. In the process, it must enclose itself in a protective shell that will render it impenetrable to all new impulses coming from outside. Furthermore, the people we need to reach today are not to be found in church. On the contrary, one gets the impression that we are not benefitting the people who come to church today if we let the new spiritual impulse flow into the sermon. As people who still somehow draw strength from the past, they also want to be uplifted by the past. So, in the long run, we ultimately do ourselves and them no favors by chaining ourselves together.
Once we have recognized this, the moment must come sooner or later when the inner impossibility becomes an outer impossibility, and if the kind of religious activity we intend is still to have any value, it must take place outside the church in the formation of independent congregations.
Because of the enormous responsibility involved, it will no doubt be tempting to postpone this decision and to wait for stronger outer relationships and greater inner readiness, but the decision must nevertheless be made at some point. Therefore, because there will have to be a decision and because the times require something, it would be good for this decision to be made today.
I thus declare myself ready to give up my parish when the time is right and help form independent congregations. My only request is that I be allowed to bring everything to some kind of conclusion by Easter.
When I think about where to work, I think I should be able to work my way into the local mining community from neighboring Oelnitz, the center of the local suburbs. These people are finished with the past and do not yet have anything new. It would just be a matter of shaking them out of their apathy. They might be able to trust someone whom they just recently knew as a pastor.
I would be most grateful if Dr. Steiner could make the effort to unite us once again for an immediate introductory course.