Fourth Sunday in Johnstide (Mt 11:2-15)

When we reach the end of a novel or biography, we close the book and there is no doubt, no question about what happened. It is finished. And we can feel a little disappointed, especially if someone has already told us the ending. We want to experience it for ourselves.

In the Gospel reading this week we hear John ask a question: Are you the Christ? He doubts. Indeed, there is nothing compelling us to believe that Jesus is the Son of God, that he died on the cross and resurrected after three days. There is no proof. We are left free to question and to doubt. Even John, the one who baptized Jesus and testified that he is the Son of God, he doubts. He questions. The story is not over.

But there is evidence: the blind see, the lame walk, the impoverished are given the good news. Perhaps in our own lives we have experienced, through our relationship with Christ, a new kind of seeing, a new kind of walking, a kind of abundance where there was poverty. We can come to believe that yes, He is the Christ. Through our own experience and not just because someone told us, we can know this truth. And we are still free to doubt and to question again and again. We are free to find for ourselves again and again that yes, He is the Christ.

-Rev. Jeana Lee, July 18, 2021

Third Sunday in Johnstide (John 3:22-36)

Rev. Bastiann Baan’s latest homily can be found here….

When you go over to Foster Beach in Chicago, you can perceive two very distinct ways that the water of Lake Michigan reaches the shore. On the one hand you have the sandy beach where the breakers in lovely, almost poetic repetition, reach the shore completely of their own accord. Observing this scene for a while can have a quieting effect on the soul. Next to the beach is a section where a concrete wall has been erected with metal dividers several hundred feet apart. The water in this section is chaotically churned up, the waves crash helter skelter into each other. Directing one’s gaze to this area can have a dizzying effect on the senses.

When we step back and take a look at our lives, we can experience times when everything runs according to life’s natural rhythms. We may need to exert little conscious effort to live simply according to nature’s plan. At other times, we take great pains to accomplish our goals, sometimes against mightily opposing forces from without, sometimes with resistance from our own complacency. As human beings, we walk a fine line between these two areas of life, falling now into the one, then into the other. A truly human goal is to seek the balance between these opposing forces.

Another truly human aspect of our lives is that we can not only look to the right and the left and all around us. WE are gifted with the ability to turn our attention to the ultimate source of all balance and life. As John the Baptizer called out: “No human being can grasp anything for themselves if it is not given b the higher worlds”. At times we need the ever-repeating rhythms, at other times we need the chaos to pull us out of the wilderness of our complacency. We can always strive to reach out to The One who has come to Earth, stayed with the Earth and continually permeates the Earth with His Resurrection forces. In prayer, in meditation, in communion of the Holy Sacraments we can receive Christ as the one who masterfully walks the fine line between the strongest opposing forces imaginable.

We receive Him as the Bestower of Light, as the one who helps us learn to create light in our own souls, In receiving and working with His gifts, we become His coworkers in the transformation of the Earth into the planet of Love.

Rev. Craig Wiggins, July 11, 2021

Johnstide

Rev. Bastiann Baan’s latest homily can be found here….

Johnstide

In the Summertime, we can see fields full of wheat, every stalk growing straight up towards the sun. Like an arrow, each one points toward the source of life and light. Sometimes a heavy rain or wind will bend the wheat away from the sun, but as soon as the rain or wind stops, the wheat returns to its true direction.

For us human beings it is different. We do not necessarily know where we are heading or how to get there. We fall short. We miss the mark. As we hear in the Johnstide liturgy, one way to describe this aspect of our humanness is guilt. This is not a condemnation, but information. Saint John brings us consciousness of our guilt, of the fact of our shortfall.

We hear in the liturgy that this guilt-consciousness actually brings us healing, which may seem strange. But without the recognition of having missed the mark, of not yet being our true and full selves, we cannot ever reach the goal.

John points the way. He shows us the true human being, the One towards which we are all evolving. In seeing this One, we can feel the guilt of our faults and at the same time feel the possibility of growing towards His life and light. John points like an arrow, showing us the direction to go.

—Rev. Jeana Lee
The Christian Community Movement for Religious Renewal
2135 West Wilson Ave. Chicago, IL 60625
831-227-6066

Johnstide

In the Summertime, we can see fields full of wheat, every stalk growing straight up towards the sun. Like an arrow, each one points toward the source of life and light. Sometimes a heavy rain or wind will bend the wheat away from the sun, but as soon as the rain or wind stops, the wheat returns to its true direction.

For us human beings it is different. We do not necessarily know where we are heading or how to get there. We fall short. We miss the mark. As we hear in the Johnstide liturgy, one way to describe this aspect of our humanness is guilt. This is not a condemnation, but information. Saint John brings us consciousness of our guilt, of the fact of our shortfall.

We hear in the liturgy that this guilt-consciousness actually brings us healing, which may seem strange. But without the recognition of having missed the mark, of not yet being our true and full selves, we cannot ever reach the goal.

John points the way. He shows us the true human being, the One towards which we are all evolving. In seeing this One, we can feel the guilt of our faults and at the same time feel the possibility of growing towards His life and light. John points like an arrow, showing us the direction to go.

—Rev. Jeana Lee
The Christian Community Movement for Religious Renewal
2135 West Wilson Ave. Chicago, IL 60625
831-227-6066

Giving Thanks

Giving Thanks

“Life can only be understood when contemplated backward, but it has to be lived forward.”  That  is the life wisdom of a well-known philosopher, Søren Kierkegaard.

Under normal conditions, these two one-sidednesses keep each other in balance.  Imagine that we would only go back: we would eventually, literally and figuratively, be unable to make another step in life.  And imagine we would only live forward: we would lose ourselves in bustling busyness.  Unfortunately, we see the latter all too often: lots of people do nothing but rushing along without understanding where they come from and where they are going.

Of old, it was known that every day we should look back to understand in retrospect what really happened.  Through reflection—and most of all self-reflection—we will sooner or later understand the threads of destiny in the fabric of our life.  And once we learn to have an overview of all the threads of the fabric, we can lastly be thankful for everything in our life, for joy and suffering, happiness and unhappiness, good and bad luck, because we recognize: it belongs to me.  For life is right, in every case.

We take the highest standpoint in the backward contemplation only after we have died.  In the life panorama that the Lord of Destiny shows us, we understand backward how we lived forward.  If there is anything that connects the living and the dead, it is thankfulness.  But as long as we are only thankful for this one human being, for this one happiness that came our way, we have not yet arrived at the right destination with our thanks.  The dead recognize Whom we have to thank for our existence.

And we?  At St. John’s Tide we join in with this highest standpoint, and cry to Him at the altar: “To the Father God, all wielding, all blessing, shall stream our souls’ devoted and heart-warmed thanks.”

—Rev. Bastiaan Baan, St. John’s Tide, 2021

“I pray for the human beings which You have given me.” (Jn.17:9)

When praying we are never alone.  No matter how lonely we are, there are always others who pray with us in silence.  We can notice that especially in the Act of Consecration of Man, where our weak attempts are supported from all sides.  That is also the actual reason why at the altar we form a community: communal prayer gets wings.  The individual forces are not only added together, they multiply, they potentize each other.  More than ever it is necessary in our time to work together in prayer.  “One single one does not help, but whoever unites himself with many at the right moment.” (Goethe)

In the Act of Consecration we unite in prayer not only with the visible congregation, but also with all “those from whom You received before us Your Son’s offering.”  Soon after this sentence is spoken in the Act of Consecration, sounds the Lord’s Prayer.  Have we in that moment connected ourselves with the invisible congregation?  At any rate, they, the deceased, connect themselves with us.

But more than any other, the Father connects Himself with us whenever we speak a true prayer.  In antiquity it was said: “God hears our prayer.”  The psalm in which this sentence occurs does not add: God answers our prayer.  That is up to God alone.  But since Christ lived on earth, He prays with all and for all who want to follow Him.  The High Priestly Prayer, spoken by Christ just before He was taken captive, is one great intercession: “I pray for the human beings which You have given me.”

Therefore we trust, even in the greatest loneliness: when praying we are never alone.

 Bastiaan Baan, May 30, 2021