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Report by John-Peter Gernaat The Gospel of John 11: 1 - 44 gives us the fifth of the seven “I am” statements of Christ in John’s Gospel and the seventh of the Seven Signs recorded in this Gospel. The fifth “I am” statement is “I am the resurrection and the life”, and the seventh Sign is the Raising of Lazarus from the tomb.
The initiation known as Temple Sleep was common in the Egypto-Chaldean Cultural Epoch. During this initiation the one undergoing initiation was able to enter a state of death where the astral body was completely released for the physical body and the etheric body lifted out of the physical body but was able to continue to sustain the physical body while outside of the body. The etheric could be called back into the physical body after three days. The effect of re-entering the physical body drew the astral body back into the physical. The initiate, because of careful preparation, was then able to relay the experiences that the astral body had encountered in the spiritual world. However, by the Greco-Roman Epoch the constitution of the human being had developed to the point where the etheric body was no longer able to sustain the physical body from the outside and Temple Sleep initiation could no longer be practiced after a time. In the Sign of the Raising of Lazarus the etheric body of Christ had been so penetrated by the incarnating Christ that it had loosened from the physical body and Jesus was able to make his life forces available to other people. Lazarus had died and experienced the first death where the etheric body leaves the physical body. However, his etheric body did not dissipate, and he did not experience the second death. It is worth noting that Jesus arrives at the tomb of Lazarus on the fourth day. This tells us that this had gone beyond a Temple Sleep initiation. This was indeed the last Temple Sleep initiation. On the fourth day the etheric life forces of Jesus, permeated with the Christ, were able to draw the etheric body of Lazarus from around his physical body back into the physical body and the etheric is able to call back the astral body. Lazarus had died and on the fourth day was called from the tomb by Christ. As a result of this death, Lazarus receives a title, he becomes John. This death also means that his final death was not a martyr’s experience (he did not have a bear witness in death). He was able to slip peacefully across the threshold into the spiritual world. More importantly, this death initiated him into being able to cross the threshold of death and return to life, which he did on the Island of Patmos. There he was called into the Spiritual World and experienced the revelation of the Spiritual World that he was asked to record. This revelation provides us with the Book of Revelation at the end of the New Testament. Lazarus receives an experience of Golgotha before Jesus was crucified; he experiences the Resurrection forces of Jesus Christ. This is the “I am” statement: “I am the resurrection and the life”. Christ calling Lazarus from the tomb expresses and manifests the overcoming of the dying earth existence. “I am the resurrection” is related to the Spirit Self of the Human constitution, The Sprit Self is the transubstantiation of the astral body through the ‘I’-constitution, through the Christ-in-me. When we relate the Signs to the Sacraments the seventh Sign is related to the Sacrament connected to the crossing of the threshold of life and death. This is the Sacrament of the Last Anointing. An anointing was only given in ancient times to someone who needed to cross this threshold while living on the earth. These were prophets, priests and kings. The last prophet was John the Baptist. No new message from the spiritual world has come since John the Baptist proclaimed the nearness of the Kingdom of God and the need to turn around within oneself. The fullness of revelation came with Christ and was expounded at hand of his Resurrection forces at work in Lazarus-John. Since then, we are able to deepen and more fully appreciate what has been revealed – for all that we need in revelation flows from Christ alive in our experience of earth existence. The role of the king has also come to an end as the human being in the age of the Consciousness Soul must become king in his or her own body. The time of an external king to guide the human being is over. Only priests are still anointed to cross the threshold into death to proclaim the message of the Divine when the ritual is fulfilled at the altar. The Last Anointing is the sacrament that strengthens the soul to cross into the spiritual world at death. Report by John-Peter Gernaat This talk was given on Sunday 4 February 2024, the first day of the first Trinity period of the year. On this day a change in the movements and gestures at the altar during the Act of Consecration of Man was introduced world-wide in The Christian Community. The change means that the chalice will remain centrally placed on the altar and in the central altar space for the duration of the Eucharist service, except when Communion is brought to the congregation.
What is meant by Christ in the centre? When we encounter a circle we usually encounter the circumference of the circle, the periphery. But we can also understand that there is no circle without the centre point around which the circle is drawn. The periphery does not exist without the centre. It does not matter how large the circle is, it is held by the centre. Our experience of life comes from the creative act of the Divine. The creative activity of the Father God is through the Son God. This is wonderfully captured in the Trinity Epistle. We learn through the investigative work of Dr Rudolf Steiner that in development there is always a recapitulation of what came before. Thus, we may ponder what preceded the initial act of creation. The very first act of creation by the Divine was a recapitulation of the Divine essence. In the Earth Cycle of evolution there was a recapitulation of the previous stages of evolution before the full phases of our experiential reality came together. We experience four phases of matter, although schools still teach only three phases. Science has identified solid, liquid, gas and plasma as the four phases of matter experience. These are the same four phases that the ancient civilisations described as the four elements of earth, water, air and fire. They also represent the three stages of past evolution that the Earth Cycle recapitulated before the seven cultural epochs of the productive period of the Earth Cycle began. Those who have an understanding of the Great Cycles of earth evolution will know that the first can be described as Old Saturn and was experienced as warmth which we can identify with the material existence of plasma today. Rudolf Steiner has said that if we were to experience Adam and Eve, the community of the first human being, they would present as fiery beings. This was the recapitulation of Old Saturn. The second Great Cycle may be described as Old Sun and experienced as gaseous which was recapitulated in the Lemurian Epoch. The third Great Cycle may be described as Old Moon and was experienced as watery and was recapitulated in the Atlantean Epoch. This Epoch came to an end with the flood of Noah after which dry land appeared as we know it today. The first Cultural Epoch is known as the Ancient Indian Epoch; the second Cultural Epoch as the Ancient Persian Epoch, the time started with the ancient Sumerians; the third Cultural Epoch was the Egypto-Chaldean Epoch; the fourth Cultural Epoch was the Greco-Roman Epoch and we are currently in the Fifth Cultural Epoch with two more to follow. In any cycle of seven there is a turning point in the fourth period. The fourth Cultural Epoch of this time period in the Earth Cycle is marked by the birth of Christ at the baptism in the Jordan that was the beginning of the Mystery of Golgotha. Christ influenced the Earth Cycle at the experience of a centre of time. This was the turning point of time for the Earth Cycle and for the evolution of the human being. Christ is central to the human being. The incarnation of Christ provided the human being with their incarnated centre, the ‘I’-constitution which will transubstantiate the three-fold human earthly constitution into the three-fold spiritual constitution by sacrificing itself in the process of transubstantiation to become part of the three transubstantiated bodies. But if Christ is the centre this implies that there are two poles. These two poles provide the human being with the motivation we need as earthly beings. However, to remain fixated at either pole deprives the human being of their full development. These poles are named for the spiritual beings that influence the human being in the particular direction of the pole. Thus, we have the pole that wants us to fixate on earthly life and refute everything that is not physical and material. We speak of this as the Ahrimanic influence. The opposite pole draws us away from the earthly experience and suggests that we can skip the hardships of earth reality by withdrawing into a spiritual, dreamlike, euphoric existence. This is the influence of Lucifer. We know through the research of Rudolf Steiner that we would not be able to walk without these influences. The Luciferic influence allows us to overcome gravity in order to lift a foot off the ground. The Ahrimanic influence ensures gravity pulls our foot back to earth so that we do not float away. These two influences work to enable life on earth. One might describe, simplistically, the influence of Ahriman as gravity and the influence of Lucifer as levity. The centre point between two opposing forces is the fulcrum. Christ is the fulcrum that allows these two forces to come into balance. We need both forces of levity and gravity and our earthly human nature will tend to pull us in one direction or the other. We may tend towards materialism or, alternatively, prefer to exist in a state of meditation, avoiding a material life. Our challenge is to maintain a balance. We need to draw from both poles to be human beings but must learn to do so without losing the balance. How do we experience the centrality of Christ in the Act of Consecration of Man? During the Act of Consecration of Man, we are in conversation with Christ as earthly beings and as spiritual beings. The Epistle, that is a letter from the Angel of our Community that we hear and is read back to the Angel, is only possible while we are earthly beings. This is read (prayed) from the right of the altar. The right-hand side of the altar is connected with our earthly nature. The Word, the Gospel, is a message to us from Christ. It is the pure word of Christ in its ideal form, and we respond to the Word with the Creed. This ideal, spiritual proclamation and our ideal response to it, comes from the left of the altar. If we were in the spirit there would be no need for an epistle from the angel nor a proclamation from the spiritual world. The centre of the altar is the space of Christ where the substance of earth, sacrificed as the work of human labour – changing wheat into bread and grapes into ‘wine’ – can be transubstantiated through the Spirit. The transubstantiation occurs at hand of the spoken word that finds its echo in the soul of the participating congregation. The Spirit works through the words having been spoken, not just contemplated. The movements and gestures seen at the altar should present the picture of what is occurring. Therefore, as from the first Sunday of the first Trinity Time in 2024 the celebrating priest will no longer remove the chalice from the central area of the altar except for the distribution of Communion to the congregation, when the centre comes to the periphery. The priest also will remain with the chalice once the chalice in unveiled, except for the opening prayer of the Offertory. This will probably change in the future so that the priest does not physically move away from the chalice once it has been unveiled. This change brings the Act of Consecration of Man closer to the original celebrations as can be determined from the notebooks of the founding priests. No one is clear why the changes occurred that strayed from this original picture and it is good to return to the original. In renewing the rituals as we have done we can experience a recapitulation of what came before so that we live in the creative stream of the Divine when a new creation comes into being. Report by John-Peter Gernaat Something that is different in The Christian Community is that we do not begin the preparation for Holy Week and Easter with a period of that is called Lent. We begin the preparation for Holy Week and Easter with a period we call Passiontide. For centuries the preparation for Easter has begun on a day called Ash Wednesday. A period of forty days from Ash Wednesday takes us to the end of Thursday in Holy Week and the Last Supper. These forty days are a representation of a period of preparation. Forty is a significant number; it is the number of weeks of human gestation from conception to birth. The number forty is more important that the unit of time in terms of considering this period as a period of preparation.
We find the number repeatedly in scripture. Noah and his family and a representation of all of creation were in the ark for forty days and forty nights. When the family of Israel left the condition of slavery in Egypt to a new beginning in the ‘Promised Land’ they wandered through the desert for forty years. The current conflict in Gaza has brought to everyone’s attention how very small the area between Egypt and Palestine is in reality, and it would be impossible to wander around in it aimlessly for 40 years, unless this period had less to do with getting to a destination and more to do with the time required for the preparation of arriving in the new land. Elijah journeyed for forty days and forty nights to arrive at the mountain where, at the threshold of a cave – between outer world and the inner world of the cave, he experienced in the ‘slender silence’ the Divine; in the pause that exists between one sound and another, one beat and another. Therefore, in undergoing a period in which something begins for us and needs to grow in us for it to come to birth, this number forty makes sense. Thus, the preparation for Easter was determined to be a period of forty days. To emphasise this very reality for the being of Christ on the earth the first Sunday of Lent has been marked for centuries, including for us, with a reading from the fourth chapter of Matthew: the Temptation. We heard this reading on the second last Sunday of Trinity after Epiphany. After forty days in the desert Jesus bearing the Christ is ready to meet the False Accuser. The week before Holy Week was known in the old tradition, as Passiontide. Our experience in The Christian Community is different. We extend Passiontide to four weeks – a period of a lunar month – and begin Passiontide when other churches are beginning the third week of Lent. The last week of Passiontide for us is Holy Week – the week between Palm Sunday and Easter Sunday. We have a different relationship to the period of preparation. It is not a forty day preparation, it is an intense four week preparation that mirrors the four week preparation for Christmas: Advent. It also mirrors the four weeks of Epiphany and of St John's-Tide and of Michaelmas. The experience of a lunar month is a different experience of rhythm and time. It allows us to enter into the preparation for Easter in a modern way, a way that suggests that we have gone through and completed over the centuries our Lenten preparation. We are now ready for a Passiontide preparation expanded to the four weeks before Easter Sunday. When The Christian Community was founded the cycle of the pericopes (the gospel readings from the altar) was set. Some Sunday’s pericopes were set as specified passages while some were indicated as to the content, but the passage left open for the priest to choose. As an example, the reading for the last Sunday of Epiphany is indicated as an appropriate healing to match the contents of the reading of the previous three Sundays, which are passages that are set. There is structure and guidance in the way that the cycle of pericopes is set. Some of the readings echo centuries of tradition. What we are doing in our context is to find a new possibility in our relationship to the Divine out of a form and a structure that has existed for centuries. The structure and the form and pattern are to a large extent maintained. We are looking at what is new in the way in which we approach it. Thus, although we start our preparation for Easter with Passiontide rather than Lent, the pericopes for the two Sundays before Passiontide follow the old tradition of Lent. These are the readings of ‘The Temptation’ and ‘The Transfiguration’. Thus, we prepare for Passiontide in as much as Passiontide is a preparation for Easter. We will follow the old traditions in the pericopes that are set for Passiontide as they continue the Lenten tradition. This will be explored in the next talks and in these talks we will explore what is new for us to understand, that takes us a step further, and is not just a repetition of what has been, but rather a transformation into what can be. In the reading of the last Sunday before Passiontide we hear something of the relationship to fasting from Christ. The disciples ask Jesus why they were unable to cast out the demon from the child who could not hold himself. Jesus points to this kind of healing, being able to move beyond into a new phase of life, one that does not throw one to left and right, into the fire and into the water, but keeps one centred, able to hold one’s self, happening at hand of prayer and fasting. Our understanding of prayer and fasting will be investigated in the next talk. Today, fasting does not necessarily require the abstinence of food and we will investigate what this means and what fasting today can mean. The pericopes for the two Sundays before Passiontide establish a pattern that we must understand. In both the readings there is the possibility of jumping ahead and not fulfilling what must come. What must come is hard, what must come is that the Son of Man, the Son of the Future Human Being – this human being bearing the full expression of Divinity in him (this is what the voice from the radiant cloud says: “This is my Son, in whom I am fully expressed”) – must undergo suffering and death. We express this in the Act of Consecration of Man, that what thinks in us is His Suffering and Death, His Resurrection and His Revelation through all Ages of the Earth to come. The old translation of the Act of Consecration used the word ‘passion’ where we now translate it as ‘suffering’. Passiontide is the time in which we learn how to manage suffering. We cannot escape it. We learn and grow through suffering in life. In the penultimate pericope of Trinity time between Epiphany and Passiontide we hear the False Accuser say to Christ that He should turn the stone to bread. The great power that involves bread is not the turning of stones to bread but rather the turning of bread into the Body of Christ. That is the great change that cannot occur until Easter, through the Mystery of Life and Death and the Mystery of Resurrection. Then the False Accuser tempts Jesus to throw himself off the temple and the angels will bear him up so that his foot does not touch a stone. What is needed is that the body will be lifted onto the cross and the feet nailed to it. Lastly, the False Accuser shows Jesus the glittering kingdoms of the world, but the real Kingdom is the Kingdom within us, and this does not happen without Whitsun. Whitsun does not happen without the Resurrection. Everything depends on the great Mystery of Easter to happen. It is not possible to jump ahead of it so that it does not happen. In ‘The Transfiguration’ Peter sees a spiritual conversation happening between the Law, the Prophets and the Christ – Moses and Elijah and the shining, radiant Jesus bearing the Christ. Peter thinks that this is the conclusion and wishes to establish it through the reference to the Festival of Tabernacles, and now inaugurate a permanent set of tent-canopies. As they come down the mountain Jesus reminds the trio of disciples that the Son of Man, the Son of the Future Human Being, must suffer. Passiontide is about understanding why we must suffer and knowing that we cannot avoid it. These two pericopes prepare us for Passiontide, knowing that we cannot jump ahead no matter the alure of the temptation. We must face the world. Nothing in the world changes except through the human being and the world is in a state of chaos because nothing changes in us. The changes must take place through our actions. Our activity in the world requires a certain suffering to be endured. We grow and learn through suffering. Yet, our task – for the one who follows in the path of Christ – is to relieve suffering for the other. The path of Passiontide is not so much giving up something but rather giving freely of ourselves. We replace fasting with a different form of giving. We have the traditional readings of the Lenten period in the structure of The Christian Community, but at hand of a new way of experiencing the preparation for Easter. This allows us to reflect on what it means for the outer form to remain as it was but for our inner experience to change. The form remains but the content is new. The structure remains but the experience is renewed. There is tension between the two poles of that which is formed and the formless. There is another tension between renewal and repetition. We work with renewal in form, not just repetition in form, nor do we try to find renewal in the formless. The form is needed to renew something. The structure is needed to embody it with new meaning. The tension we carry in this community of Christians is to find renewal in the form. It is not to change the form but rather to change the experience of the substance within the form. This is the tension that we have with our new understanding of the preparation for Easter with Passiontide. We also have the beautiful sequence of readings that have been with us for centuries and we must find new meaning within them. That is the amazing reality of a living scripture. The scripture must be telling us what must be happening for us today. They must speak into the experience of our lives, not just speak about the experience of the disciples at the time of the occurrences in Palestine. When we read the story, we should not be reading a story of what occurred then, but rather the story should help us come to terms with what is happening in our world now. Scripture must address how we must be today. Otherwise, scripture is the past without meaning for the present. It lives when it is available to us in the present in order to prepare us for the future. Passiontide is a preparation for our future. |
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