​On Sunday, 15 March, Rev. Bridgette Siepker spoke about the Passiontide Epistle. What can we learn from the letter from the world of spirit about our relationship to the spiritual world and the spiritual world to us?

Before Christ came to the earth, human beings felt themselves to be separated from the spiritual world. The desire to connect with the spiritual world led people to attempt to purify themselves as a way of reconnecting. Through a long process of purification, an initiate could raise himself out of life into the spiritual world for a short period of time. The writings of the Hebrews share that they had to remove sins before they were worthy to enter the Temple.

When John the Baptist was able to proclaim, “There goes the Lamb of God”, it signified that Jesus had become the scapegoat for human sin. The divine united with human sin. The divine entered into the realm of sin and took this realm upon himself.

Through this deed, we can now live with sin and with God at the same time. The need for purity to approach the divine is past. The One bearing our sins lives in us!

Although we have this new knowledge, we have continued to live from the old mysteries. We no longer have to ascend to God; God has come down to humanity. In the Movement for Religious Renewal, we are working from this new Mystery.

In 2 Corinthians 4,

​we hear that God Himself spoke the word, “Out of the darkness let the light shine forth!” He has lit the light in our hearts. This tells us that although we may live in the place of death, death will not overcome us: the life of Christ is in us. Our heart may feel empty, yet Christ is the seed within our core.

We experience earthly life as if we are asleep because the spirit of awakening is difficult to access. It is in our blood that we experience the place of our life where longing arises. We share the air we breathe with every other living being. It is here that we may experience hope arising. Our consciousness experiences the separation from the divine, and we may become aware of a mournful lamenting within our consciousness that is seeking to reunite with the divine. We recognise the sting of evil within us and ask only for it to be overlooked. We can overcome the tempting power of weakness within ourselves. We, who should be upright in this world experience ourselves as being flat on the ground. The spirit that lives in us and brings us to Christ Consciousness can raise us. The “I” is accessible to us through the spirit.

We are never alone in earthly life; our work is met with grace. Hope is the doorway for grace.

​The Gospel of Matthew has opened up a particular theme for me that I hope to follow as we continue. Matthew was Levi, the tax collector. He was well educated in the religious understanding of the Hebrews, and he uses his Gospel to show the Hebrews how the man, Jesus of Nazareth, is the fulfilment of the promised “Anointed One” (Messiah) spoken of in the Holy Scriptures. He therefore regularly refers back to the Old Testament, demonstrating how these teachings are fulfilled in Jesus.

Matthew begins his Gospel with the lineage of Jesus from Abraham, the father of the Hebrew people, to Jesus. This is a kingly lineage and tells the Hebrew people that this human being is the rightful king of the Hebrew people, from King David. This is emphasised in the wise men from the east who arrive in Jerusalem seeking the king newly born.

Now Matthew draws the attention of the Hebrew people to an important parallel. Herod orders the slaughter of the children two years old and younger. Pharaoh ordered the Hebrew midwives to kill all Hebrew boys born. Moses was saved by being placed in a basket and set adrift on the Nile, where he was rescued by the daughter of the Pharaoh. Jesus is rescued by being taken by his parents into the land of the Pharaoh. This parallel draws the attention of the Hebrews to an important event in the life of Moses: the meeting of the “I am” in the bush that was green but appeared to be burning. Through this parallel, Matthew introduces the “I am” incarnate in the man Jesus.

Then Matthew introduced John the Baptist and his message that the Kingdom of Heaven is near. Jesus repeats the message when he first begins preaching. John makes it clear that the teaching of the Pharisees and Sadducees has come to an end.

Then Jesus comes to John, and John is the witness to the Spirit of God descending and remaining on Jesus, and he hears the voice from heaven confirming that the Kingdom of Heaven has descended to the world of human beings.

In Matthew’s Gospel, Jesus immediately goes into the wilderness to be tempted. The period of forty days is a clear message that this is an initiation for the man Jesus. The initiation is completed with the physical body experiencing hunger. Even though the Gospel says that Jesus went into the wilderness to be tempted, the tempter arrives only when Jesus experienced hunger.

The temptation is very interesting. The tempter does not force any of the situations in the way that a human temptation might be played on someone. The tempter leaves the way open for Jesus to respond to each temptation. In each case Jesus responds with a quote from scripture, whereby Matthew strengthens his case for this being the Anointed One.

The first temptation can be seen as a temptation of the power of the will, feeding himself and averting the whole course of his ministry. The second temptation can be seen as a temptation of the life of feeling. Jesus even responds by using the word, the ‘capricious’ nature of the human being. The last temptation relates to thinking, the human capacity to see and know the world. In each case, Christ in Jesus brings the human quality under control, suggesting to the Hebrew people that a new condition is now at work in a human being that can shepherd the will, the feeling and the thinking. This condition arises from the “I am” that Moses encountered in the burning bush, which Matthew indicates is now present in this ‘new Moses’.

Matthew makes the case that the “I am” that Moses engaged with is now present in the man Jesus as a result of the baptism and the event that John the Baptist witnessed.

After making himself known throughout Galilee, Jesus gives his first teaching to the disciples he has gathered, known as the ‘Sermon on the Mount’. Rudolf Steiner suggests that the beatitudes are pictures of the condition of the human being as the “I am” works into the human constitution, beginning with the physical body, the etheric body, the astral body, the sentient soul, the intellectual soul, the consciousness soul, transforms the astral nature into Spirit Self, the etheric nature into Life Spirit and the Physical nature in Spirit Human. The beatitudes represent the evolution of human consciousness as a result of Christ, the “I am”, working in the human being. Christ demonstrates this as He penetrates the human being Jesus through the next three years. The completion is the Resurrection Body that appears to the apostles in the Upper Room and by the lake shore. This is the future evolution of the human being made manifest.

The message of Matthew appears to be to the Hebrews that the “I am” of the burning bush is now among them, the incarnate Spirit of God in the Anointed One, the Messiah. This means that the Kingdom of God is now in a human Being. We know from the events that unfold that at Pentecost this Spirit alights on each Apostle and enters into them. From that time on, the Kingdom of Heaven is in the human Being as Christ preached, fulfilling the promise of John the Baptist and Jesus in his early preaching that the Kingdom of God is at hand.

​by John-Peter Gernaat

We experience the Holy Nights at the time of the birth of Jesus as being connected with the month of the year. We can experience the events of Holy Week connected with human destiny.

In the southern hemisphere, we are in Autumn and the days are getting darker. Nature does not mirror the renewal of life that is celebrated at Easter. In the northern hemisphere, it is the opposite, and the mirror between nature and the renewal of life in the Resurrection is visible. Is it possible for us to hold both of these images within us simultaneously in balance?

Nature in the southern hemisphere can teach us something of the path towards death, the turning of the leaves, the ripening of fruit and the surrendering of seeds into the dark of earth. Holy Week is the path to death; it leads to the Deed of Golgotha. This was part of Christ’s time on earth. The possibility of Christ being on earth had been there from the beginning, yet the Deed was not accomplished until it was accomplished. What might have been the state of the spiritual world at this time?

Before this Deed of Christ there was a way of being for humanity; after the Deed of Christ there was another way. There was no going back. The Deed of Christ was done for all humanity.

In Holy Week, Christ walked the way to death. How do we walk this way? Resurrection is possible only after the process of death. We can experience resurrection more clearly in our lives if we can walk this way of death.

Each day of Holy Week has a particular signature of how to walk this way of death. Becoming conscious of this signature leads us to approach this way of death in a conscious manner.

Beginning on Palm Sunday, there is a deliberate act of entering Jerusalem. Christ is saying ‘yes’ to what lies ahead. The great welcome that he receives does not deter him from the road ahead.

In the picture of the palm tree, we have a plant that has no branches, only a trunk. At the top of the tree is the heart of three from which new fronds arise. It is a picture of a tree that raises its heart to the light of the sun.

From Palm Sunday, we see a frenzy of chaos and in the midst, Christ, undeterred, travels the road into this week. In this week we hear that Christ is in the Father. How may we receive the will of the Father in our lives? It is through the higher self that we access the will of the Father.

On Holy Monday, the day of the Moon, we are confronted with the story of the cursed fig tree. This is not so much a physical tree and the representation of a spiritual way that has ended and is no longer valid. The new way is clearly declared by Christ; it is faith. We can contemplate what this looks like.

There is a second activity connected with Holy Monday, the deliberate activity of clearing the Temple. Interest and active participation bring about change.

Holy Tuesday is a very active day with every section of society questioning Christ in order to find fault with him. It is the day of Mars and decisive activity. Christ answers the challenges in a way that points to the incorrect thinking of the questioner. He responds with parables. Some of the greatest teaching given by Christ is done on this day. We can experience hope in the change of thinking needed.

Holy Wednesday is the middle of this Holy Week. Nothing is said of the day. It is as if something ends, and in the evening something new can open up. In the evening we confront the deed of devotion of Mary in anointing the feet of Christ. Devotion for Christ arises out of love for Christ. We encounter two people who have been with Christ for an equal period of time, yet they have very different approaches to the developing way to death. Mary has developed devotion, while Judas has developed another way and walks out. Both of these ways live in each of us, and we can become aware of them. We can also contemplate the sacrifice of Mary, which angered Judas, because it is only through sacrifice that human destiny moves forward.

The full report may appear again in the next newsletter.